In reference to the immense congregations daily assembled on Kennington Common, the same article remarks:—
"If Whitefield and the Wesleys are permitted to hold their conventicles at pleasure, and to ramble up and down, singing psalms, and preaching in the open streets, or in the more open fields, wanton curiosity will carry thousands to hear them; hundreds of the ignorant multitude will innocently be corrupted; and the preachers' vanity and enthusiasm, if possible, will be still more inflamed by a fond imagination that their hearers are all admirers, whereas most of them would as eagerly attend any other monster equally as strange as that of a clergyman preaching in a gown and cassock on a common."
On May 26, nearly two pages of the same newspaper were again filled with virulent abuse of Whitefield. The following is an extract:—
"I am told that this unfortunate young man is forced upon this method of preaching. Hard, indeed, if it be so; but I take it to be much harder upon us that we must be forced to answer such impertinence. Have the bishops, from whom alone he ought to take directions, commanded him to turn mountebank? Is he compelled by military force, or by the violence of the people, to mount the stage? On the contrary, does he not put out bills in the daily papers, and invite people to assemble together contrary to law? I know of no force but an internal one—an impetuous impulse, from a degree of pride and vanity that is equalled by nothing but his weakness and folly."
This turbid wrathfulness was far from pleasant; but it failed in its purpose to put an end to Whitefield's preaching in the open air, and equally failed in diminishing the number of Whitefield's hearers. No doubt his action was irregular; perhaps, also, in his impetuous zeal, he sometimes indulged in censorious remarks respecting the clergy of the Established Church. As yet he was not a Dissenter; but his open connection with the Moravian brotherhood in Fetter Lane, and his repeated interviews with Quakers, fairly exposed him to the reasonable suspicion of his enemies, that he had Dissenting proclivities. He himself seems to have seen and felt this, and hence the somewhat ostentatious sacramental attendance at St. Paul's on May 20th. All this must be conceded; and it must likewise be allowed, that one of Whitefield's besetting sins, or rather one of his infirmities, was an unconsciously indulged inflatedness of mind, which led him (innocently enough on his own part) to the employment of bombastic expressions, and to the utterance of sentiments often silly, sometimes fanatical, and generally such as a more prudent and worldly wise man would not have used. It would be idle, it would be dishonest, to deny that his published Journals abound in such-like faults, though they have not in the present work been quoted. But what then? Was it right, was it fair, to treat him with so much contempt and ridicule? His moral character was without a speck. His intellect and literary attainments, though not equal to those of his friend Wesley, made him immensely superior to scores and hundreds who were enjoying rich livings in the Established Church. He had no wish to share their ecclesiastical emoluments, but was quite content with his mongrel parish among the swamps of far-distant Georgia. It is true, he desired to have the use of some of their churches, to which he was not at all entitled; but he desired even this not for his own benefit, but rather that he might have the opportunity of proclaiming, trumpet-tongued, some of the forgotten truths of the word of God, and that he might collect a little money for the orphans in Georgia. The clergy had a perfect right to deny him the use of their churches. Perhaps, being so young a man, it was hardly modest for him to expect the privilege of using them; but, having no other place in which to preach, why should he not be allowed to preach in Kingswood, at Rose Green, on Hannam Mount, in Moorfields, on Kennington Common, and Hampstead Heath? His zeal in the cause of Christ, and his love for the souls of men, were not fictitious. They were divinely implanted principles, the results of a genuine conversion, and which ought not to be repressed. Wherever Whitefield met a man, he met a sinner redeemed by the sacrificial death of his Divine Redeemer. As yet he had not become a Calvinist. On Kennington Common, he felt no restraint in "offering Jesus Christ to all" the thousands there assembled. Christ had died for them. Whitefield longed to save them. Why should doctors of divinity, and the writers of anonymous articles in the Church of England newspaper, dare to hinder him?
Whitefield has mentioned his collections for the Orphan House in Georgia; and some, considering the hugeness of his congregations, may think them scarcely worth recording; but two other facts must be borne in mind. The age in which Whitefield lived was not one remarkable for its charitable contributions; and, further, money then was at least three or four times more valuable than money now. Multiply by such a number the amount of Whitefield's collections, and their comparison with some of the Methodist collections of the present day will not dishonour them.
It may reasonably be asked, what was there in this youthful evangelist to draw around him such prodigious congregations? His warmest friends must admit that he was far from being perfect. Not only Churchmen, but Dissenters, saw his faults. It is a curious fact, that Dr. Doddridge, in some respects the most distinguished Nonconformist of the age, was present at one of the Kennington Common meetings which have been already mentioned. In a letter dated "Epsom, May 24, 1739," he writes:—
"I saw Mr. Whitefield preaching on Kennington Common, last week, to an attentive multitude, and heard much of him at Bath; but, supposing him sincere and in good earnest, I still fancy that he is but a weak man,—much too positive, says rash things, and is bold and enthusiastic. I think, what he says and does comes but little short of an assumption of inspiration or infallibility."[213]
In this unfavourable opinion, Dr. Doddridge was not alone. Dr. Watts, the other great Dissenter then living, in a letter dated "August 15, 1739," wrote as follows:—