their willingness to be so
disposed of before they went out. This I could not do. It was my
conviction that God had called me to labor in my own country, and to do
good amongst my own people. I did not believe myself called to go to any
foreign country to preach the gospel, and I did not therefore feel at
liberty to offer to go out on the terms required. I felt as if I should
do wrong to expose myself to unseen dangers and unknown trials and
difficulties in foreign lands, without a conviction that God required it
at my hands. And I could not think that I should be likely to succeed in
missionary labors, unless I could enter on them with a belief that those
were the labors for which God designed me.

There was another difficulty. Conference had made a new law,
establishing a new test of orthodoxy, and no one could be taken out as a
travelling preacher now, who could not subscribe to the doctrine of the
Eternal Sonship, as taught by Richard Watson and Jabez Bunting, in
opposition to Adam Clarke. This test I could not subscribe. I cannot say
that I altogether disbelieved the doctrine of the Eternal Sonship; but I
was not in a state of mind to justify me in subscribing the doctrine.
Whether the doctrine of the Eternal Sonship was right or not, I had not
a firm belief in it: and that was reason enough why I should refuse to
subscribe it.

About this time Conference passed laws forbidding the teaching of
writing in all the Sunday Schools. I disapproved of these laws, and was
unable to bind myself to enforce them. I was obliged therefore to give
up all thoughts of becoming a travelling preacher in the Old Connexion.

Not long after this, disturbances took place in the Methodist society in
Leeds, respecting the introduction of an organ into Brunswick Chapel.
Conference, through the importunities of some rich people, had broken
through its own laws, and given authority for the introduction of an
organ into Brunswick Chapel contrary to the wishes of a great part of
the members, trustees, local preachers, and leaders. I of coarse
disapproved of this proceeding on the part of Conference. I had heard
the Rev. Joseph Suttcliffe speak very seriously and with great and
sorrowful dissatisfaction of the proceedings of those who were then at
the head of Methodistical affairs, and though I did not, at the time,
rightly understand him, events that took place afterwards, both brought
his words to my mind, and showed me their meaning. In c