s which sound rather overstrained, not to say
irreverent, to English ears; but allowance should be made for the
'effusion' in which foreigners are wont to indulge. 'Our conversation,'
he writes to Charles Wesley, 'was deep and full of the energy of faith.
As to me, I sat like Paul at the feet of Gamaliel; I passed three hours
with a modern prodigy--_a pious and humble countess_. I went with
trembling and in obedience to your orders; but I soon perceived a little
of what the disciples felt when Christ said to them, _It is I--be not
afraid._' John Wesley, in spite of his differences with her, owned that
'she was much devoted to God and had a thousand valuable and amiable
qualities.' Rowland Hill, when a young man, wrote in still stronger
terms: 'I am glad to hear the _Head_ is better. What zeal for God
perpetually attends her! Had I twenty bodies, I could like nineteen of
them to run about for her.'[772]

The good countess was not unworthy of all this esteem. In spite of her
little foibles, she was a thoroughly earnest Christian woman. Her
munificence was unbounded. 'She would give,' said Grimshaw, 'to the last
gown on her back.' She is said to have spent during her life more than
100,000_l._ in the service of religion.

Lady Huntingdon's Connexion, like John Wesley's societies, drifted away
rather than separated from the National Church. In consequence of some
litigation in the Consistorial Court of London about the Spa Fields
Chapel, it became necessary to define more precisely the 'status' of
Lady Huntingdon's places of worship. If they were still to be considered
as belonging to the Church of England, they were, of course, bound to
submit to the laws of the Church. In order to find shelter under the
Toleration Act, it was necessary to register them as Dissenting places
of worship. Thus Lady Huntingdon, much against her will, found herself a
Dissenter. She expressed her regret in that extraordinary English which
she was wont to write. 'All the other connexions seem to be at peace,
and I have ever found to belong to me while we were at ease in Zion. I
am to be cast out of the Church now, only for what I have been doing
these forty years--speaking and living for Jesus Christ; and if the days
of my captivity are now to be accomplished, those that turn me out and
so set me at liberty, may soon feel what it is, by sore distress
themselves for those hard services they have caused me.'[773] Still she
could not make up her mi