on.']

[Footnote 741: 'I seldom,' he wrote to Fletcher in 1768, 'find it
profitable for _me_ to converse with any who are not athirst for
perfection and big with the earnest expectation of receiving it every
moment.'--Tyerman, iii. 4.]

[Footnote 742: 'With my latest breath will I bear testimony against
giving up to infidels one great proof of the unseen world; I mean that
of witchcraft and apparitions, confirmed by the testimony of all
ages.'--Id. 11. See also T. Somerville's _My own Life and Times_, p.
254. 'On my asking him if he had seen Farmer's _Essays on Demoniacs_,
then recently published, I recollect his answer was, "Nay, sir, I shall
never open that book. Why should a man attend to arguments against
possessions of the Devil, who has seen so many of them as I have?"']

[Footnote 743: Tyerman, iii. 252. It should not be forgotten that at the
beginning as well as at the end of their career the Wesleys met with
great consideration from some of the bishops. Charles Wesley speaks in
the very highest terms of the 'affectionate' way in which Archbishop
Potter treated him and his brother, and John seems never to have
forgotten the advice which this 'great and good man' (as he calls him)
gave him--'not to spend his time and strength in disputing about things
of a disputable nature, but in testifying against open vice and
promoting real holiness.']

[Footnote 744: Id. 384.]

[Footnote 745: Id. 411.]

[Footnote 746: Mr. Curteis (_Bampton Lectures_ for 1871, p. 382) calls
Wesley 'the purest, noblest, most saintly clergyman of the eighteenth
century, whose whole life was passed in the sincere and loyal effort to
do good.']

[Footnote 747: This passage on the contrast between Wesley and
Whitefield was written before the author had read Tyerman's _Life of
Whitefield_; a similar contrast will be found in that work, vol. i. p.
12.]

[Footnote 748: For some well-selected specimens of Whitefield's sermons
see Tyerman's _Life of Whitefield_, vol. i. pp. 297-304, and ii. 567,
&c.]

[Footnote 749: _Life and Times of the Rev. G. Whitefield_, by Robert
Philip, p. 130, &c.]

[Footnote 750: Whitefield's _Letters_; a Select Collection written to
his Intimate Friends and Persons of Distinction in England, Scotland,
Ireland, and America, from 1734 to 1770, vol. i. p. 277, &c.]

[Footnote 751: See Whitefield's _Letters (ut supra), passim_.]

[Footnote 752: Even Warburton owned, 'of Whitefield's oratorical powers,
and their