and exhortations. Already the preaching and printing of Gilbert
Tennent's "Nottingham Sermon" had made further fellowship between the
two parties for the time impossible. The sermon flagrantly illustrated
the worst characteristic of the revivalists--their censoriousness. It
was a violent invective on "The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry,"
which so favorable a critic as Dr. Alexander has characterized as "one
of the most severely abusive sermons which was ever penned." The answer
to it came in a form that might have been expected. At the opening of
the synod of 1741 a solemn protestation was presented containing an
indictment in seven grave counts against the men of the New Side, and
declaring them to "have at present no right to sit and vote as members
of this synod, and that if they should sit and vote, the doings of the
synod would be of no force or obligation." The protestation was adopted
by the synod by a bare majority of a small attendance. The presbytery of
New Brunswick found itself exscinded by this short and easy process of
discipline; the presbytery of New York joined with it in organizing a
new synod, and the schism was complete.

It is needless further to follow in detail the amazing career of
Whitefield, "posting o'er land and ocean without rest," and attended at
every movement by such storms of religious agitation as have been
already described. In August, 1740, he made his first visit to New
England. He met with a cordial welcome. At Boston all pulpits were
opened to him, and churches were thronged with eager and excited
hearers.[168:1] He preached on the common in the open air, and the
crowds were doubled. All the surrounding towns, and the coast eastward
to Maine, and the interior as far as Northampton, and the Connecticut
towns along the road to New York, were wonderfully aroused by the
preaching, which, according to the testimony of two nations and all
grades of society, must have been of unequaled power over the feelings.
Not only the clergy, including the few Church of England missionaries,
but the colleges and the magistrates delighted to honor him. Belcher,
the royal governor at Boston, fairly slobbered over him, with tears and
embraces and kisses; and the devout Governor Talcott, at New Haven, gave
God thanks, after listening to the great preacher, "for such refreshings
on the way to our rest." So he was sped on his way back to the South.

Relieved thus of the glamor of his presence, the New E