It is impossible to determine what were the “trying exercises,” which Whitefield mentions. One was the affliction of his wife. Perhaps, another was occasioned by the insertion of a letter in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, proposing that, because “Whitefield preached that man, the chief work of God in this lower world, _by nature is half brute and half devil_,” the following lines should be inscribed on the door of Whitefield’s house, and should not be removed until he “recanted his shocking account of human nature, and declared that man is the _offspring of God_, and formed _by nature_ to approve and love what is _just_ and _good_”:―― “Here lives one by nature half brute and half devil. Avoid him, ye wise, though he speak kind and civil. The devil can seem like an _angel of light_, And _dogs_ look _demure_, the better to bite.” It is rather surprising that a squib so paltry was admitted into Mr. Cave’s respectable magazine; and yet it gave birth to a controversy, in that periodical, which lasted until the month of October next ensuing, not fewer than six different articles, for and against, being published on the subject. Probably, another cause of Whitefield’s “trying exercises” was the publication, about this period, of the third part of Lavington’s “Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared,” an 8vo. volume of four hundred and twenty pages. This was the bishop’s big gun, pointed at Wesley almost altogether, but discharging a few stray shots at Whitefield. It was not pleasant, for instance, to find the author perverting Whitefield’s honest acknowledgment of the errors into which he had unwittingly fallen, by declaring, “Whitefield has _confessed_ that he has _imposed_ upon the world by many _untruths_” (p. 263). Whitefield never confessed anything of the sort; and Dr. Lavington, Bishop of Exeter, knew, when he wrote these words, that he himself was writing an _untruth_.