Such was the public testimony of the Independent minister at Charleston, delivered at the time when the clergyman of the Church of England was doing his utmost to bring young Whitefield into disrepute. His chapel, in which Whitefield preached, and where he collected upwards of £70 sterling for the Orphanage, was then called the "White Meetinghouse," and occupied the site of the present circular church. ("Methodism in Charleston," p. 20.)
[317] Mr. Garden was born in Scotland in 1685, and came to Charleston about 1720. He was the commissary of the Bishop of London for the Carolinas, Georgia, and the Bahama Islands. He died in 1756.
[318] "Memoir of General Oglethorpe," p. 268.
[319] Mr. Stephens, in his "Proceedings in Georgia," 1742, says:—"1740, March 22. Mr. Whitefield returned from Charleston. The Carolina newpapers advertise that he has published two letters there; one shewing 'Archbishop Tillotson knew no more of Christianity than Mahomet,' and the other shewing the fundamental errors of a book entitled 'The Whole Duty of Man.' This confirmed my belief of what I had been told—that he made one of his orphans throw that book into the fire, with great detestation."
[320] A reply, by A. Croswell, to the first half of these letters, was published in 1741, with the following title: "An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Garden's first three Letters to the Rev. Mr. Whitefield. With an Appendix concerning Mr. Garden's Treatment of Mr. Whitefield. Boston, 1471." (16mo. 60 pp.) The "Answer" is purely theological; the "Appendix" will be referred to hereafter.
[321] Whitefield's letter on the "Whole Duty of Man" was published in the Daily Advertiser of July 2nd, 1740. It is an immensely long production, and really not worth quoting. He says he had looked over "the index and general titles" of the book, and could not find "the word Regeneration so much as once mentioned." The letter is chiefly theological; but Whitefield would have been better employed in preaching, than in writing this verbose epistle. It did no credit either to his head or heart, and was not inserted in his collected works in 1771.
[322] "Memoir of General Oglethorpe," p. 272.
[323] See vol. i., pp. 74, 78, 79, 101-113, etc.
[324] See his Journal.
[325] See Whitefield's Works, vol. i., p. 88.