Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/459

Rh him within the bounds of his parish. The staunch Hugh Neill from his rectory at Oxford wrote to the Society in October, 1764, of the powerful efforts that Mr Whitfield is now making in Philadelphia and places adjacent. St. Paul's, the College, and Presbyterian Meeting houses were open to him ; but the Salutary admonitions of His Grace of Canter- bury to the Rector &c of Christ Church and St Peter's has prevented his preaching at this time in either of them. 6 It is a curious coincidence that this good missionary was succeeded in this Oxford cure sixteen months later by William Smith, the Provost. 7 6 Letter 1 8 October, 1764, in Perry's Historical Collection, ii. 363. Yet we find it in the year before Whitfield had preached in the Churches, and this per- haps had brought the admonition which led to the present inhibition. Dr. Peters wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 17 October, 1763, of the request his Church Wardens and others made of him to allow the great preacher in Christ Church, and said, ' ' therefore after Mr. Whitfield has shown his regard to the Government by waiting on the Governor, and had paid me likewise a very kind and polite visit, I invited him to preach in the Old Church the first Sunday his health would permit, and he has preached four times in one or other of the Churches without any of his usual censures of the clergy and with a greater moderation of sentiment * * * and I am in hopes his stay will be attended rather with good than harm to the Churches." . 393- 7 "I have in several late letters informed you that since Mr. Neill's departure in October last, I have twice in three weeks supplied the Mission at Oxford in order to prevent that old and respectable Mission from dwindling away, and as the act of our Assembly which was made for selling the old and purchasing the new Glebe, required that there should be a Minister to constitute a Vestry and do any legal act, I was obliged last February to let the people nominate me their Minister in order that we might proceed to get possession of the Glebe for the use of the church, and I accordingly consented to supply them for one year, or till you appoint another, unless so far as Mr. Peters' indisposition might require my assistance in Town, which has been but seldom till within these few weeks past." Letter i September, 1767. In Dr. Buchanan's Early History of Trinity Church, Oxford, 1885. Dr. Buchanan says, " he continued to officiate here, certainly till 1770, and, most probably, for several years longer." p. 32.