nd to call herself and those in connexion with
her, Dissenters. She tried to find some middle term; it was not a
separation from the Church, but a 'secession;' which looks very like a
distinction without a difference. 'Our ministers must come,' writes her
ladyship in 1781, 'recommended by that neutrality between Church and
Dissent--secession;' and to the same effect in 1782: 'Mr. Wills's
secession from the Church (for which he is the most highly favoured of
all from the noble and disinterested motives that engaged his honest and
faithful conscience for the Lord's unlimited service) brings about an
ordination of such students as are alike disposed to labour in the place
and appointed for those congregations. The method of these appears the
best calculated for the comfort of the students and to serve the
congregations most usefully, and is contrived to prevent any bondage to
the people or minister. The objections to the Dissenters' plan are many,
and to the Church more; that secession means the neutrality between
both, and so materially offensive to neither.'[774]

One result of this 'secession' was the withdrawal from the Connexion of
those parochial clergymen who had given their gratuitous services to
Lady Huntingdon--Romaine, Venn, Townsend, and others; but they still
maintained the most cordial intimacy with the countess, and continued
occasionally to supply her chapels.

It must be admitted, in justice to the Church rulers of the day, that
the difficulties in the way of co-operation with Lady Huntingdon were by
no means slight. Her Churchmanship, like that of her friend Whitefield,
was not of the same marked type as that of John Wesley. It will be
remembered that John Wesley, in his sermon at the foundation of the City
Road Chapel in 1777--four years, be it observed, before Lady
Huntingdon's secession--described, in his own vigorous language, the
difference between the attitude of _his_ followers towards the Church,
and that of the followers of Lady Huntingdon and Mr. Whitefield. So far
as the two latter were concerned, he did not overstate the case. The
college at Trevecca could hardly be regarded in any other light than
that of a Dissenting Academy. Berridge saw this, and wrote to Lady
Huntingdon: 'However rusty or rickety the Dissenters may appear to you,
God hath His remnant among them; therefore lift not up your hand against
them for the Lord's sake nor yet for consistency's sake, because your
students are as r