“By Mr. C. Wesley I had the honour of being presented to Lady Huntingdon, who kindly admitted me to the office of a private chaplain, and granted me full leave to assist my old friends as often as I would. “By means of her ladyship I was afterwards introduced to Mr. Whitefield, and had the honour of assisting him also both in London and Bristol, and found myself peculiarly happy in showing, by my equal readiness to throw my mite of assistance where it was accepted, that though I was the Lord’s free man I delighted to be the common servant of all. I was glad also to have from time to time an opportunity of bearing a kind of practical testimony against the spirit of party and division, which, to my great grief, crumbled the Church of Christ around me. “After taking a dangerous turn into the doctrines of election and reprobation, my sentiments settled at last into the anti-Calvinist way, in which Mr. Wesley was rooted. Notwithstanding this, it became a steady, invariable point with me never to be so attached to his, or any one party, as to be shy of, much less break with another. “I had soon an opportunity of being closely tried in my spirit of catholic love. Mr. Maxfield separated from his and my old friend Mr. Wesley. I thought him rather in the wrong, and Mr. Wesley was my oldest acquaintance. Notwithstanding, I ventured upon the loss of his friendship, and of my connection with him, by publicly assisting Mr. Maxfield when the breach between them was widest, and the press groaned under the unkind productions of their unhappy division.[224] Though I touched Mr. Wesley’s friendship in the tenderest part, he bore with me, and his patience increased my regard for him; nor is it at all abated now, though I have had little opportunity to show it him, having hardly exchanged one or two letters with him these many years. “Soon after Lady Huntingdon founded her College, and partly by her unmerited esteem, partly by Providence, and partly by my desire to be a Gibeonite to God’s people and hew wood if I could not draw water, I was brought to have a principal share in the management of it. The free spirit that breathed in the noble foundress’s proposals, and the general terms of admittance, suited my catholic taste, and the liberty of sentiment granted to all that firmly maintained our total fall in Adam, attached me no less to the institution than its excellence and the prospect of its usefulness.