Note 228 — Chapter VIII · COMMENCEMENT OF THE CALVINIAN CONTROVERSY. 1770 AND 1771.

The letter of the Countess, dated “August 2, 1771,” in substance was an apology for the apparently presumptuous way in which she and her friends had proposed to invade Wesley’s Conference; accompanied with an excuse founded on the fact that they regarded Wesley’s “Minutes,” of 1770, as “repugnant to Scripture, the whole plan of man’s salvation under the new covenant of grace, and also to the clear meaning of our Established Church, as well as to that of all other Protestant Churches.” Shirley’s letter was to the same effect. (See Shirley’s “Narrative of the Principal Circumstances relative to the Rev Mr. Wesley’s late Conference, held in Bristol, August 6, 1771.”)