"1739, Thursday, April 12th. Preached to nearly three thousand hearers in a field belonging to my brother. Cry out who will against this my frowardness, I cannot see my dear countrymen and fellow-Christians everywhere ready to perish, through ignorance and unbelief, and not endeavour to convince them of both. I call upon them who forbid me to speak to these poor baptized heathens, to give a reason for their so doing—a reason which may satisfy not man only, but God. I am, and profess myself, a member of the Church of England. I have received no prohibition from any of the bishops; and, having had no fault found by them with my life or doctrine, have the same general license to preach which the rectors are willing to think sufficient for their curates; nor can any of them produce one instance of their having refused the assistance of a stranger clergyman, because he had not a written license. And have their lordships, the bishops, insisted that no person shall ever preach occasionally without such special license? Is not our producing our Letters of Orders always judged sufficient? Have not some of us been allowed to preach in Georgia and other places, by no other than our general commission? His lordship of London allowed of my preaching in Georgia, even when I had only received Deacon's Orders; and I have never been charged by his lordship with teaching or living otherwise than as a true minister of the Church of England. I keep close to her Articles and Homilies, which, if my opposers did, we should not have so many dissenters from her. But it is most notorious that for the iniquity of the priests the land mourns. We have preached and lived many sincere persons out of our communion. I have now conversed with several of the best of all denominations; and many of them solemnly protest that they went from the church because they could not find food for their souls. They stayed among us till they were starved out. I know this declaration will expose me to the ill-will, not of all my brethren, but of all my indolent, earthly-minded, pleasure-taking brethren. But were I not to speak, the very stones would cry out against them. Speak, therefore, I must, and will, and will not spare. God look to the event!"
No doubt all this is true; but still, the clergy had a right to refuse the use of their churches to the young evangelist; and it must also be admitted that there is throughout Whitefield's statement a strain of egotism scarcely modest, and at the end of it a tone of censoriousness hardly in harmony with Christian courtesy. Unfortunately, this was not the only imprudent attack of Whitefield on the indolence, the earthly-mindedness, and pleasure-taking habits of his brethren in the ministry. There were ample grounds for it; but the attack was not politic. It resulted in no good, and not unreasonably exposed Whitefield to retaliatory critiques. But more of this anon.
Besides his preaching in the Booth Hall and in his brother's field, Whitefield preached out of doors at Painswick, Chalford, Stroud, Stonehouse, and Oxenhall. Strangely enough, his last service, for the present, was performed in the church he attended in the days of his boyhood. He writes:—
"1739, April 17, Tuesday. About eleven, by the bishop's permission, I baptized, in the Church of St. Mary de Crypt, Mr. Thomas W——d, a professed Quaker, about sixty years of age, who was convinced of the necessity of being born again of water as well as of the Spirit. Many of Christ's faithful servants attended on the prayers around him; and, I believe, the Holy Ghost was with us of a truth. After the solemnity was over, I gave a word of exhortation from the font; and, being the place where I myself not long since had been baptized, it gave me an opportunity of reflecting on the frequent breaches of my baptismal vow, and of proving the necessity of the new birth from the office of our Church.
"After this, and having dined, I prayed with and took leave of my weeping friends. When I came to the city, I found the devil had painted me in most horrible colours; for it was currently reported that I was really mad, that I had said I was the Holy Ghost, and that I had walked bare-headed through Bristol streets, singing psalms. But God was pleased to shew the people that the devil was a liar, and that the words I spoke were not those of a madman, but the words of soberness and truth."
Having baptized the old Quaker, and unnecessarily repudiated the stupid charge of being mad, because he had sung with uncovered head in the streets of Bristol, he set out for Cheltenham, accompanied by about a dozen of his friends. Until recently, Cheltenham had been a poor, straggling hamlet of a few thatched cottages, sheltered by the Cotswold Hills. The first Spa was discovered in 1716, and since then, during a period of twenty years, the insignificant village had been full of bustle, for its site was in the process of being transformed into the squares, crescents, terraces, and promenades of the fashionable Cheltenham of the present day. As Whitefield and his friends passed along, the rustic inhabitants, at the doors of their humble cottages, stood and stared. Whitefield applied for the use of the parish church. His application was refused; and therefore he preached, he says, "to near two thousand people,"[190] on the Plough Inn bowling-green. He adds, "Many were convicted. One woman wept greatly, because she had said I was crazy; and some were so filled with the Holy Ghost, that they were almost unable to support themselves under it."
From Cheltenham, Whitefield proceeded to Evesham, in the neighbourhood of which he spent three days among the relatives of his friend William Seward. He shall relate his own story.
"1739, April 18, Wednesday. Got safe to Evesham (where Mr. Seward's relations live) about seven at night. Several persons came to see me, amongst whom was Mr. Benjamin Seward, whom God has been pleased to call by His free grace very lately. For some years he had been at Cambridge. As touching the law, so far as outward morality went, he was blameless; but he disliked my proceedings, and once had a mind, he said, to write against Mr. Law's enthusiastic notions in his 'Christian Perfection.' Lately, however, he has had an eight days' sickness; in which time he scarce ever ate, or drank, or slept, and underwent great inward agonies and tortures. After this, God sent a poor travelling woman, who came to sell straw toys, to instruct him in the nature of the second birth; and now he is resolved to prepare for Holy Orders. He is a gentleman of very large fortune, which he has devoted to God. I write this to shew how far a man may go, and yet know nothing of Jesus Christ. Here is one who constantly attended on the means of grace, exact in his morals, humane and courteous in his conversation, who gave much in alms, was frequent in private duties; and yet, till about six weeks ago, was as destitute of any saving, experimental knowledge of Jesus Christ, as those on whom His name was never called, and who still sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. How often has my companion and honoured friend, Mr. William Seward, been deemed a madman, even by this very brother, for going to Georgia; but now God has made him an instrument of converting his brother. This, more and more, convinces me that we must be despised before we can be vessels fit for God's use.
"April 19, Thursday. Went to Badsey, about two miles from Evesham, where Mr. Seward's eldest brother lives. We were most kindly received. About four in the afternoon, the churches at Evesham, Bengeworth, and Badsey being denied, I preached from the cross, in the middle of Evesham street, to a great congregation; and then went to Badsey, and preached in Mr. Seward's brother's yard.
"April 20, Friday. Preached about nine in the morning at the cross in Evesham, went to public worship, and received the sacrament. Preached at Badsey at five in the evening, and returned and expounded in the town hall, which was quite thronged. The recorder himself procured the keys for us.
"April 21, Saturday. Preached in the morning at Badsey, to a weeping audience, and set out for Oxford, which I reached at about ten at night."
At Oxford, Whitefield was thrown into amusing perturbation by an event which might have been expected to secure his warm approval. Charles Kinchin, one of the most zealous of the Oxford Methodists, was Rector of Dummer and Fellow and Dean of Corpus Christi College. Greatly to Whitefield's distress of mind, Kinchin had resolved to declare himself a Dissenter. He had left the college, intended to resign his living, and purposed, as soon as he was really converted, to become an itinerant preacher.[191] Whitefield himself was already an itinerant, either by necessity, or choice, or both; and yet he seems to have been ridiculously horrified at the probability of Kinchin following his example. He writes:—
"The step taken by Mr. Kinchin gave me a great shock. For I knew what dreadful consequences would attend a needless separation from the Established Church. For my own part, I can see no reason for my leaving the Church, however I am treated by the corrupt members and ministers of it. I judge of the state of a church, not from the practice of its members, but its primitive and public constitutions; and so long as I think the Articles of the Church of England are agreeable to Scripture, I am resolved to preach them up without either bigotry or party zeal."
Already Hervey, another of the Oxford Methodists, had written to Kinchin a letter, of more than a dozen printed octavo pages,[192] and had strongly and lovingly entreated him not to leave the Church. Whitefield wrote to the same effect. His letter is thoroughly characteristic, and abbreviation would injure it.