eal Dissenting preachers as any in the land, unless a
gown and band can make a clergyman. The bishops look on your students as
the worst kind of Dissenters; and manifest this by refusing that
ordination to your preachers which would be readily granted to other
teachers among the Dissenters.'[775] Berridge also thought that the
Wesleyans would not retain their position as Churchmen. In the very same
year (1777) in which Wesley gloried in the adhesion of his societies to
the Church, Berridge wrote to Lady Huntingdon: 'What will become of your
students at your decease? They are virtual Dissenters now, and will be
settled Dissenters then. And the same will happen to many, perhaps most,
of Mr. Wesley's preachers at his death. He rules like a real Alexander,
and is now stepping forth with a flaming torch; but we do not read in
history of two Alexanders succeeding each other.'[776]

But to return to Trevecca. The rules of the college specified that the
students after three years' residence might, if they desired, enter the
ministry either of the Church or any other Protestant denomination. Now,
as Trevecca was essentially a theological college, it is hardly possible
to conceive that the theology taught there could have been so colourless
as not to bias the students in favour either of the Church or of
Dissent; and as the Church, in spite of her laxity, still retained her
liturgy, creeds, and other forms, which were more dogmatic and precise
than those of any Dissenting body, such a training as that of Trevecca
would naturally result, as the Vicar of Everton predicted, in making the
students, to all intents and purposes, Dissenters. The only wonder is
that Lady Huntingdon's Connexion should have retained so strong an
attachment to the Church as they undoubtedly did, and that, not only
during her own lifetime, but after her death. 'You ask,' wrote Dr.
Haweis to one who desired information on this point,[777] 'of what
Church we profess ourselves? We desire to be esteemed as members of
Christ's Catholic and Apostolic Church, and essentially one with the
Church of England, of which we regard ourselves as living members....
The doctrines we subscribe (for we require subscription, and, what is
better, they are always truly preached by us) are those of the Church of
England in the literal and grammatical sense. Nor is the liturgy of the
Church of England performed more devoutly in any Church,' &c.

The five worthy Christians whose cha