I think I am much obliged to the writer, for what he says concerning me in this respect. But I wish he had not made so free with the character of my honoured friends. He cries out against slander in others, and at the same time, through the whole letter, he is guilty of the most palpable slander himself. He is pretty favourable to the Rev. Mr. Webb, and the Rev. Mr. Cooper of Boston. He only calls them, page the 7th, “Two great admirers of Whitefield and Tennent, flaming zealots for certain favourite opinions and tenets.” And so indeed they are, blessed champions, I know them well, for certain favourite opinions, and tenets of the church of Scotland; such as original sin, the imputed righteousness of Christ, election, and other glorious gospel truths. But as for Mr. Tennent, he seems quite angry with him.
Never was a man more wrongfully represented. This letter-writer says, “He has often heard, that Mr. Tennent had always been remarkable in the Jerseys, for his uncharitable and divisive courses.” But does the hearing of this, prove the truth of it. I have the happiness of being personally and very intimately acquainted with Mr. Tennent. I scarce know a man of a more catholic spirit. “He is a man of no learning.” His writings prove the contrary. His antagonists abroad dare not say they have found him so. “His great business in his sermons is either to puzzle, or to fright the hearers, but especially the last, which he did by roaring out, and bellowing hell and damnation, devils, and all the dreadful words he could think of.” Indeed, to the honour of the grace of God be it spoken, he is a son of thunder, especially in his application, and when he is preaching the law; at such times, under him, people cannot easily sleep: but withal, he is a workman that needs not be ashamed, and is taught of God rightly to divide the word of truth. As for puzzling his hearers, I fear that Mr. A. M. thinks he did so, because he generally insists much on the new birth, imputed righteousness, divine faith, and the other peculiar doctrines of the gospel. These things are all foolishness to the natural man, and puzzled Nicodemus himself, when discoursed with by our blessed Lord, John iii. 9. “Nicodemus answered and said unto him, how can these things be?” Again, “ministers in general, he calls carnal, unconverted, blind-leaders of the blind, rational, moral, dry, husky preachers, that were leading the people to hell.” I suppose Mr. Tennent said, “That carnal blind preachers who preach morality without due regard to gospel grace and motives; who do not preach justification by faith, and regeneration, they who do not preach Christ as all in all, were blind-leaders of the blind, and were leading the people to hell.” But it is absurd to suppose he thought that all ministers in general were such. I know a great body of ministers, of whom he thinks most highly. But, “He exhorted people to leave them, and to go about exhorting one another, and telling their experiences.” This I cannot believe is truly represented; for I have now a letter by me published by Mr. Tennent, against persons going about in the character of exhorters; but if they only exhorted christians not to forsake the assembling of themselves together, to provoke one another to love, and good works, and to tell one another what God had done for their souls, he did no more than what every gospel minister should do. He says, “He was followed by all sorts of people.” This I think was a proof that he was of a catholic spirit, and not of a divisive uncharitable temper. “As much as Whitefield was.” And I pray God he may be followed a thousand times more. “And by many preferred to him.” Very justly. “He was most censorious and uncharitable; every one that was not exactly of his mind he damn’d without mercy.” This is calumny indeed. I know many ministers who do not think as Mr. Tennent does in all respects; whom he notwithstanding highly values. But I suppose the writer was angry with him, because he pronounced all in a state of condemnation that were not born again, and that did not believe in, and lay hold on the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. His master authorizes him to pronounce such a sentence, “He that believeth not shall be damn’d.”
Again, “His sermons were sometimes as confused and senseless as you can imagine.” It is well they were not always so. “He seemed to have a particular quarrel with reason, learning and morality; for he seldom finished a sermon without saying something against them.” Never I believe, but when these things are magnified to the prejudice of divine revelation, illumination, or of Christ’s imputed righteousness: for Mr. Tennent is a solid, learned, rational, and not only a moral, but true holy man. The Rev. Doctor Colman, in a letter to me published in the first weekly paper printed at Glasgow, writes thus of him: “We received him just as we did you, as an angel of Christ. He was abundant and fervent in labours, and God has been pleased to own his labours with abundant success.” The honourable and truly pious Secretary Williard, writes thus: “There has been so evidently the finger of God in directing you into this province, and after your departure, the Rev. Mr. Tennent, through your earnest and importunate request to him, and in the wonderful success that has attended both his and your ministry, as also the labours of our own ministers for some months past; that many who like not the work, are sadly put to it, to keep their eyes shut against the evidences thereof.”
The Rev. Mr. Cooper, in a letter printed in the Weekly History, No. 2d, (which the printer has mistaken for Colman,) calls him, “Dear Mr. Tennent. He came,” says he, “in the fulness of the blessing of the gospel indeed. He was with us several months. Many thousands were awakened, and I believe many truly converted. There is quite another face of religion in this town, as well as in many places in the country. Many ministers as well as people are greatly quickened. Blessed be God, who put it into your heart to move him to come, and inclined his heart to come, and help us.” I could bring a cloud of witnesses to testify the falseness of the character given to Mr. Gilbert Tennent by this letter-writer. The account which he gives of himself to me in a letter published in the Weekly History, No. __ is admirably sweet: his book, intitled, The Presumptuous Sinner detected, and his many printed sermons, and his preface to his deceased brother’s treatise upon the New Birth, which is now in the country (and which I would recommend) shew him to be a man of great learning, solidity, and piety. And I am not without some distant hopes, that the people of Scotland will have an opportunity of hearing him ere long, and then they may judge for themselves.
After such a false and scandalous character given of that great man of God Mr. Gilbert Tennent, I think I may justly suspect the truth of all that this writer says in the subsequent part of the letter. From such a letter-writer as this, what truth can we expect?
The writer himself gives me leave to speak in this manner. For he seems to make the validity of what follows, to depend on the character he gave of me and Mr. Tennent, page the 6th, “From such men as these (Whitefield and Tennent) and such doctrines and ways of preaching as theirs, what fruit can you expect”? Now all he says about me is, “That I collected in New-England 5 or 600l. sterling for the Orphan-house in Georgia: that I was a bold and importunate beggar,” &c. This could have no influence upon the people’s minds, to raise a bad spirit among the people. And as for the character he gives of Mr. Tennent, I have proved it to be absolutely false: consequently, whatever he builds upon the foundation of Mr. Tennent’s bad character, amounts to nothing at all, since he has not proved the character given of him to be true.
But suppose Mr. Tennent was the man he is represented to be, does it therefore follow that all the great and glorious work carried on in New-England, by other ministers, and in other places where Mr. Tennent and I never were, is enthusiasm and delusion? By no means; and yet this is the whole drift of the pamphlet.
Surely the writer knows not what spirit he is of. In the 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10th pages, he represents things in a most ridiculous dress, and takes upon him to condemn all the converts, to a man, (though he could not possibly be acquainted with the hundredth part of them,) as “Self-conceited, superstitious, enthusiastic, censorious, slanderous.” At the same time he seems to ridicule the concern which the people were under when they were brought to cry out, “What shall we do to be saved.” He laughs at them for asking one another “How do you feel? have you seen Christ?” He boldly asserts, that “the boasted converts, not one in a hundred excepted, make religion consist, in the feeling of inward impulses, impressions, and in an inexplicable faith, joys, extasies, hearing of sermons, and such like.” In short, he by this and the whole drift of his letter, seems to me to be far from deserving the character given of him, in the advertisement affixed to the title-page of the pamphlet.
Page the 11th, he falls foul of Mr. Moorhead, and speaks almost as freely of him as of Mr. Tennent. I cannot say I was very intimate with Mr. Moorhead when at Boston: but the letters that have lately come from him, and from others concerning him, bespeak him to be a man of a good spirit, and one whom God has blessed with abundant success. And I have great reason to believe that he is a man not over credulous: because I have heard from his friends here, that he did not overmuch favour the work of God that was at Northampton in New-England some years ago, and therefore probably, would not readily favour the late work in Boston and other parts, had he not sufficient evidence that it was a work of God.
Page 14th, The letter writer takes upon him to assert, “That a pamphlet published in Scotland, intitled, Christ riding in the Chariot of Salvation, is stuffed with abominable lies.” As a proof of it, he urges, “That the students in Boston, got nothing by Whitefield and Tennent but enthusiasm, pride, a contempt of their betters, &c.” What they got by me I know not; but I have great reason to believe they got something that was good, under God, by Mr. Tennent; for Dr. Colman, in a letter to me, which was printed in the Glasgow Weekly History, No. 1, writes, “At Cambridge the college is entirely changed; the students are full of God, will I hope come out blessings in their generation, and I trust are so now to each other. Many of them are now, we think, truly born again, and several of them happy instruments of conversion to their fellows. The voice of prayer and praise fills their chambers; and sincerity, fervency, and joy, with seriousness of heart, sit visibly on their faces. I was told yesterday that not seven of a hundred remain unaffected. I know how the good tidings of this will affect and please you. God give you like joy every where in the fruit of your labours.”