“I had great expectations from the Methodists and Moravians; and I am grieved that so many things have occurred among them which have been quite unjustifiable. I suppose they have also produced the same sentiments in the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, to my certain knowledge, received Count Zinzendorf with open arms, and wrote of his being chosen the Moravian Bishop, as what was done ‘_plaudente toto cœlesti choro_.’ I shall always be ready to weigh whatever can be said against Mr. Whitefield; and, though I must have actual demonstration before I can admit him to be a dishonest man, and though I shall never be able to think all he has written, and all I have heard from him to be nonsense; yet, I am not so zealously attached to him as to be disposed to celebrate him as one of the greatest men of the age, or to think that he is the pillar which bears up the whole interest of religion among us. “I had heard before of the offence which had been taken at two of my pupils in the west, for the respect they shewed to Mr. Whitefield: and yet they are both persons of eminent piety. He whose name is chiefly in question, I mean Mr. Darracott, is one of the most devout and extraordinary men I ever sent out, and a person who has, within these few years, been highly useful to numbers of his hearers. Mr. Fawcett labours at Taunton; and his zeal, so far as I can judge, is inspired both with love and prudence. Yet, I hear those men are reproached because they have treated Mr. Whitefield respectfully; and that one of them, after having had a correspondence with him for many years, admitted him into his pulpit. “I own, I am very thoughtful where these things will end. In the meantime, I am as silent as I can be. I commit the matter to God in prayer. I am sure I see no danger that any of my pupils will prove Methodists. I wish many of them may not run into the contrary extreme.”[79] These are long, almost tedious, extracts; but they are of great importance as plainly shewing that, at the beginning of his career, the Independents looked upon Whitefield with as much suspicion as many of the clergy of the Church of England and many of the Presbyterian ministers of Scotland did. It was a heinous sin against all the proprieties of their Church, that Doddridge and two of his ordained pupils had countenanced the preaching of this young, popular, powerful, and successful evangelist.