"1739. Sunday, February 4. Preached in the morning at St. George's in the East; collected £18 for the Orphan House; and had, I believe, six hundred communicants, which highly offended the officiating curate. Preached again at Christ Church, Spitalfields; and gave thanks and sang psalms at a private house. Went thence to St. Margaret's Westminster; but, something breaking belonging to the coach, could not get thither till the middle of the prayers. Went through the people to the minister's pew, but, finding it locked, I returned to the vestry till the sexton could be found. Being there informed that another minister intended to preach, I desired several times that I might go home. My friends would by no means consent, telling me I was appointed by the trustees to preach; and that, if I did not, the people would go out of the church. At my request, some went to the trustees, churchwardens, and minister; and, whilst I was waiting for an answer, and the last psalm was being sung, a man came, with a wand in his hand, whom I took for the proper church officer, and told me I was to preach. I, not doubting but the minister was satisfied, followed him to the pulpit, and God enabled me to preach with greater power than I had done all the day before.
"After this, I prayed with and gave an exhortation to a company that waited for me. Then I went to Fetter Lane, where I spent the whole night in watching unto prayer, and discussing several important points with many truly Christian friends. About four in the morning, we went all together, and broke bread at a poor sick sister's room; and so we parted, I hope, in a spirit not unlike that of the primitive Christians."
This is soon related, but the service at St. Margaret's must have further notice. It engendered a rancorous controversy, which cannot, in fairness, be omitted.
In a long leading article in the Weekly Miscellany of February 10, 1739, the following account was published:—
"On Sunday last, our new Methodists discovered a more violent temper than is consistent with their great pretensions to meekness and sanctity. The story is as follows, and it was related to me by the gentleman that read the prayers:—
"At St. Margaret's, Westminster, there is a Society Evening Lecture; and when the Reader came, he found in the churchyard, at the west door, a number of people singing psalms. When he got into the church, he was affronted by some unknown persons as he passed through a great crowd to the vestry. As soon as the clergyman appointed to preach came, he was solicited (if an overbearing importunity may be so called) to resign the pulpit to Mr. Whitefield, who (as is supposed by his not appearing at the prayers) was waiting at some neighbouring house to know the issue of their application. But the preacher continuing as determined to do his duty as Mr. Whitefield was to do it for him, they at last effected that by force which they could not gain by treaty. So the preacher was safely confined in his pew, which was locked (the sexton being appointed by the Society, and in Mr. Whitefield's interest), and guarded by several lusty fellows; while another party conveyed the unlicensed intruder triumphantly up into the pulpit, and kept sentry on the stairs for fear he should be taken down in as forcible a manner as he got up."
Mr. Venn, the writer of this account, then adds:—
"There are many instances of these unauthorised teachers using fraudulent and unfair means of getting into pulpits against the inclination of the proper minister or appointed preacher. Sometimes they ask the pulpit for a friend, and then send Mr. Whitefield or some other Methodist. Another method has been by slipping up into the pulpit as soon as the prayers are over, without asking any leave at all. And all these disorders, irregularities, and artifices are practised by persons who have no warrant, but their pretended call from heaven, to preach in any church in the diocese."
The reader has thus before him the two conflicting statements. A fortnight afterwards, in the same newspaper, Mr. Bennett, one of the stewards of the Society, whose evening lecture at St. Margaret's had caused so much uproar, declared that the simple facts were these:—
"On Sunday, February 4, Mr. Whitefield, at the desire of the Friendly Society, came from Spitalfields Church to St. Margaret's, of Westminster. He would have gone into the minister's seat, but could not, there being no one to unlock the door. He then went into the vestry, and stayed there during prayers. The usual preacher before the Society[175] was out of town, otherwise they would have acquainted him with their desire of Mr. Whitefield preaching, which they doubt not but he would have complied with. That he had desired another to preach, they knew not, when they asked Mr. Whitefield to do it; but when he was come, in compliance with their frequently repeated desire, they did insist upon his preaching."
Mr. Bennett adds, that all the rest of Mr. Venn's letter, relating to the affront offered to the Reader of Prayers, the Rev. Mr. Durant; the "overbearing importunity" brought to bear upon the Rev. J. Majendie, the gentleman who had promised to preach for the absent lecturer; the assumed waiting of Whitefield in a neighbouring house; the employment of the sexton in Whitefield's interest; the taking of the pulpit by "force;" and the sentry of lusty fellows on the pulpit stairs, were not facts, but fiction, created by the writer's "own ingenuity, purely to heighten and embellish his story."
Much more was printed respecting the St. Margaret's fracas; but the case, in brief, was this: The Rev. Mr. Morgan, the Lecturer, having to be out of town, asked the Rev. J. Majendie to supply his place on February 4, at St. Margaret's, and Mr. Majendie readily consented to do so. Meanwhile, the officers of the Friendly Society, ascertaining that their "usual lecturer" would be from home, and very improperly taking it for granted that he had provided no one to occupy the pulpit for him, rashly went to Whitefield, and obtained from him a promise to preach in Mr. Morgan's stead. When Whitefield found that Mr. Majendie was present, as Mr. Morgan's properly engaged substitute, he wished to retire, and would have done so, if, to use Mr. Bennett's own expression, the officers of the Society had not "insisted upon his preaching."