Such was the conduct of the then vicar of Colne.[145]

Several new societies were formed in Yorkshire, and some changes were made in their discipline. On the admission of a member into their societies he received a ticket, which gave him admission to their meetings, which were very numerous, consisting of general meetings, love-feasts, choir-meetings of men, and choir-meetings of women, &c. &c. Stewards were also appointed, and the societies were constantly visited by the itinerant preachers, who were a kind of general rulers or elders. Yorkshire, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire, with parts of Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Lincolnshire, were included in their circuit.

Count Zinzendorff assisted in these regulations, as did his son-in-law, Joannes de Watteville,[146] a bishop of the Moravian Church. This good man had been married the preceding year to Henrietta-Benigna-Justina, eldest daughter of Count Zinzendorff, and after a short visit to the congregations of the Brethren in England, was to proceed to America. Lady Margaret Ingham was particularly pleased with the missionary spirit displayed by the Bishop’s consort, who had accompanied her father to America in 1741, and was now again about to visit that continent, full of zeal for the cause of God.

Count Zinzendorff had come to England to watch the cause of the Moravians in Parliament, and to arrange the affairs of his Church, by appointing Dr. Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, to succeed Dr. Cochins, Dean of the King of Prussia’s Chapel, in its administration. On a subsequent visit the Count was accompanied by the Countess of Zinzendorff, Count Reuss, and Agnes-Sophia, Countess of Promnitz. On their way to Yorkshire they had spent a few days with Lady Huntingdon, at Donnington Park, and were delighted and edified by the piety and zeal of the Countess and the Ladies Hastings. The Countess Zinzendorff, whose maiden name was Erdmurth-Dorothea, Countess Reuss, was a woman eminently devoted to God, and much esteemed by Lady Huntingdon and Lady Margaret Ingham. Whilst they remained with Mr. Ingham, the negotiation between him and the Count, concerning the premises on which the congregation place is built, was concluded. Mr. Ingham accompanied them in their visits to the congregations at Pudsey, Gomersal, Mirfield, Wyke, and Dukenfield, in Cheshire, and preached very frequently to large congregations in the Brethren’s chapels. On their return to London, a Provincial Synod was held at Lindsey House, Chelsea, at which the Rev. John Gambold, rector of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, a man greatly esteemed for his piety and learning, and Mr. Ingham’s contemporary and companion at Oxford, was consecrated a Bishop of the Church of the Brethren.

Much about the same time, the Rev. John Cennick arrived in Yorkshire, to assist Mr. Ingham in the great work in which he was engaged. This good man, whose grandfather had been a Bohemian refugee, had been preaching for Mr. Whitefield in and about Bristol, especially to the colliers of Kingswood, and also in Wiltshire, with much blessing, and endured much persecution in many places, especially at Exeter. After preaching a considerable time amongst Mr. Ingham’s societies, and those formed by the united Brethren in Yorkshire and Bedfordshire, he went over to Germany for a short time, and after his return received a pressing invitation to visit Ireland, and try to diffuse in that benighted country the light of the Sun of Righteousness.

No name of professing Protestants in our day has displayed more fervent zeal for the characteristic principles of Christianity than the Moravian Brethren. With peculiarities, perhaps, in some respects exceptionable, yet admitting no such impure ideas as imputed to them by a Warburton, a Lavington, and the translator of Mosheim, the more the principles of the Brethren are truly known, and the more intimately their lives are scrutinized, the more will they be acknowledged among the few faithful who follow the Lamb in the regeneration. On their first introduction into England they were led into many rhapsodies and startling singularities of sentiment and ceremony. Time, happily, has so pruned the wild luxuriance and the worldly policy of Moravianism, that it is almost impossible to believe now that Molther ever taught the doctrines, or Nitschman ever sung the hymns, or Zinzendorff ever sanctioned the practices in London which Whitefield and Wesley exposed. Their conduct in many instances did them no credit. They first alarmed, and then alienated both Watts and Doddridge, as well as Whitefield and Wesley. Lady Huntingdon seems to have kept herself more aloof from any connexion with them, and to have early discovered some of their perilous errors. Charles Wesley was saved by her means, when she induced him to withdraw from the society in Fetter-lane; and Mr. Ingham was eventually rescued by the influence she had over him.