y_ college, _my_ masters, _my_ students!' When the unhappy Calvinistic
controversy broke out in 1770, Lady Huntingdon proclaimed that whoever
did not wholly disavow the Minutes should quit her college; and she
fully acted up to her proclamation.[770] Fletcher's resignation was
accepted, and Benson, the able head-master, was removed. John Wesley
himself was no longer suffered to preach in any of her pulpits.

Her commands, however, were not always obeyed. Thus, for instance, we
find Berridge good-naturedly rallying her on a peremptory summons he had
received to 'supply' her chapel at Brighton. 'You threaten me, madam,
like a pope, not like a mother in Israel, when you declare roundly that
God will scourge me if I do not come; but I know your ladyship's good
meaning, and this menace was not despised. It made me slow in resolving.
Whilst I was looking towards the sea, partly drawn thither with the hope
of doing good, and partly driven by your _Vatican Bull_, I found nothing
but thorns in my way,' &c.[771] On a similar occasion the same good man
writes to her with that execrably bad taste for which he was even more
conspicuous than Whitefield: 'Jesus has been whispering to me of late
that I cannot keep myself nor the flock committed to me; but has not
hinted a word as yet that I do wrong in keeping to my fold. And my
instructions, you know, must come from the Lamb, not from the Lamb's
wife, though she is a tight woman.' John Wesley plainly told her that,
though he loved her well, it could not continue if it depended upon his
seeing with her eyes. Rowland Hill rebelled against her authority.

These, however, were exceptional cases. As a rule, Lady Huntingdon was
in far more danger of being spoiled by flattery than of being
discouraged by rebuffs. Poor Whitefield's painful adulation of his
patroness has been already alluded to; and it was but natural that the
students at her college, who owed their all to her, should, in
after-life, have been inclined to treat her with too great subservience.

One is thankful to find no traces of undue deference on the part of
those parochial clergymen who were made her chaplains, and who at
irregular intervals, when they could be spared from their own parishes,
supplied her chapels. But though these good men did not flatter her,
they felt and expressed the greatest respect for her character and
exertions, as did also the Methodists generally. Fletcher described an
interview with her in term