“P.S. The bearer will bring your lordship’s answer; or, if your lordship favour me with a line, be pleased to direct for me, to be left with Mr. J. Syms, in Pitfield Street, near Hoxton.”
Instead of writing, the Bishop sent, by the bearer of Whitefield’s letter, a verbal message, to the effect that Whitefield should hear from him; but the only further communication which came to hand was the following, written, two days after the date of Whitefield’s letter to the Bishop, by the printer of the “anonymous papers.”
“SIR,――My name is Owen. I am a printer in Amen Corner, and I waited upon you to let you know that I have had orders from several of the Bishops, to print, for their use, such numbers of the ‘Observations upon the Conduct and Behaviour of the Methodists,’ with some few additions, as they have respectively bespoken; and I will not fail to wait upon you with one copy, as soon as the impression is finished.
There can hardly be a doubt that the “Observations” were the productions of Bishop Gibson’s pen. Others, besides Whitefield and his friends, fully believed this. Zinzendorf, on receiving a copy of the anonymous pamphlet, wrote a long letter, in Latin, to the Bishop, expressing his surprise that any one belonging to the Church of England should have evinced such ignorance by the remarks made respecting the Moravians. A Moravian deputation also waited upon Gibson, on the same subject; and a further correspondence ensued between the Bishop, Zinzendorf, and James Hutton;[94] in which Zinzendorf almost indignantly repudiated any present connection with the Methodists, telling his lordship, that, it was “very difficult to decide whether the Moravians have a greater dislike to the Methodists’ plan of salvation, or the Methodists to that of the Moravians.”
But leaving this, all candid readers will acknowledge that the “conduct and behaviour” of the Bishop of London and his brethren were disingenuous. To be the circulators of anonymous “fly-sheets,” full of the most serious accusations, was an act dishonourable to a bishop’s dignity, and savoured more of the assassin than of a pastor of the flock of Christ.
Whitefield lost no time in replying to the Bishops’ pamphlet. On the 10th of March, he finished, and committed to the press, “An Answer to the first part of an anonymous Pamphlet, entitled, ‘Observations upon the Conduct and Behaviour of a certain Sect usually distinguished by the name of Methodists.’ In a Letter to the Right Reverend the Bishop of London, and the other the Right Reverend the Bishops concerned in the publication thereof.” (8vo. 26 pp.) Before the year was ended, Whitefield’s “Letter” passed, at least, through three editions in England, besides being printed and published at Boston in America. The motto on his title-page was Psalm xxxv. 11, “False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I knew not.”