1756.
1756
Age 53
WHITEFIELD began the year 1756 with quinsy. A physician prescribed a perpetual blister; but Whitefield says, he found that a better remedy was perpetual preaching.[252] In February, he commenced preaching in a Dissenting chapel, in Long Acre. The bishop of the diocese sent him a prohibition.[253] Whitefield persisted. A mob, belonging to the bishop’s vestry, assembled, with “bells, drums, clappers, marrow bones, and cleavers,” and made the most hideous noises, to hinder Whitefield being heard. The chapel windows were smashed with stones, levelled at Whitefield in the pulpit. Anonymous letters were sent to him, full of the most fearful threats. One of these was forwarded to the government; who, at once, offered a reward and his majesty’s pardon to any one who would detect the writer. This, together with steps taken to bring such an ecclesiastical outrage into a court of law, stopped the evil.
The annoyances at Long Acre led Whitefield to commence the erection of Tottenham Court chapel. The sabbath after he took possession of the ground, he obtained nearly £600 towards the expense of building. It was begun in May, and opened in November, 1756, and was called, by a neighbouring doctor, “Whitefield’s Soul Trap.”[254]
During the present year, an octavo volume, of 229 pages, was published, with the title, “The History of Modern Enthusiasm, from the Reformation to the present Times.” A long list of subscribers’ names is given, including dukes, earls, lords, knights, members of parliament, bishops, deans, prebends, fellows of colleges, and rectors, vicars, and curates without number. In the preface, it is alleged that, “though Methodism is now almost quite extinct, yet several of its direful consequences still remain,—as, that sin is no sin in the elect; that faith can never be finally lost; and that once a saint, for ever a saint. The most zealous of the party now, in a great measure, wallow in lust and sensuality, and never stick at anything, be it ever so heinous.” The Moravians are said to be, “in principle and practice, a scandal to Christianity. Inward experiences, dispensations, manifestations, discoveries, improvements, pledges, privileges, and prerogatives; out-goings, in-goings, and returns,—all this glorious apparatus had ended in fulfilling the lusts of the flesh!” Whitefield is accused of reviving antinomianism, of vain glory and boasting, of self conceit, self applause, and self sufficiency, of Luciferian pride, and of intolerably profaning Scripture. Wesley is equally abused. “The petty exhorters” are said to “ramble from place to place, venting crude, nonsensical, heretical, and blasphemous opinions, which are swallowed by the gaping multitude.” “Most of their first admirers and followers were perfectly bewildered, and, having deserted both Wesley and Whitefield, had turned Moravians, or libertines, or deists, or papists, or quakers.” The itinerant preachers and exhorters were “mechanics and illiterate vagrants, pretending to expound by inspiration, and fathering all their crude conceptions on the dictates of the Holy Spirit.”
These are mild specimens of the rabid production of the Rev. Theophilus Evans, vicar of St. David’s, Brecon. Is it necessary to apologise for the reproduction of such mendacious scurrility? We think not; for, without this, the reader cannot form an adequate conception of the gross abuse poured upon Wesley and his friends, and of the terrific difficulties which the first Methodists had to meet.
Another attack, of a different kind, must be mentioned: “The Use and Extent of Reason in Matters of Religion. A Sermon preached before the University of Oxford, at St. Mary’s, June 8, 1756. By Thomas Griffith, M.A., Fellow of Pembroke College. Published at the request of the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses. Oxford, 1756.” 8vo, 25 pages. Of course, Mr. Griffith eschews Mr. Evans’s vulgarities, and it is fair to add, that the Methodists are hardly named; but it is also undeniable, that it was against them that he was chiefly preaching.
Wesley began the new year by writing his “Address to the Clergy,” which will be noticed hereafter. He was, also, not forgetful of his own itinerants. Joseph Cownley had had a fever in 1755, which had left a permanent pain in his head, and from which he suffered until his death, thirty-seven years afterwards. After consulting the principal physicians in Ireland, he consulted Wesley, who wrote thus.
“London, January 10, 1756.
“My dear Brother,—I have no objection to anything but the blister. If it does good, well. But if I had been at Cork, all the physicians in Ireland should not have put it upon your head. Remember poor Bishop Pearson. An apothecary, to cure a pain in his head, covered it with a large blister. In an hour, he cried out, ‘O my head, my head!’ and was a fool ever after, to the day of his death. I believe cooling things (if anything under heaven), would remove that violent irritation of your nerves, which probably occasions the pain. Moderate riding may be of use; I believe, of more than the blister. Only do not take more labour upon you than you can bear. Do as much as you can, and no more. Let us make use of the present time. Every day is of importance. We know not how few days of peace remain.