"Blendon, in Kent, June 16, 1739.
"Reverend and dear Brother,—By God's providence, we are not yet embarked for Georgia, so I have had the pleasure of receiving your kind and well-meant answer. I knew my letter would surprise you. I should have been surprised myself, had I been in your circumstances. Before long, I hope we shall all be of one mind. My brother Benjamin once opposed, as you do; but, blessed be God, he is now become a fool for Christ's sake.
"On my own behalf, I cannot sufficiently praise God for bringing me out of that darkness in which you left me, into His marvellous light. I know you imagined me to be a true Christian before you embarked, and so I thought myself. But I was almost a stranger to the doctrines of the Spirit of God, of regeneration, and of justification by faith only; nor do I remember to have heard any of them preached or explained by our clergy. I prayed, went to church, and gave alms; but why and wherefore I knew not. I knew little or nothing of a vital faith in Jesus Christ. I obeyed God and Christ in part, but not universally. I hated sin, but had not dominion over it. You say, my dear brother, that 'if a man who believes in Christ, and obeys God, is not a Christian, what is Christianity?' But the question is, what this belief may be? Not a bare historical assent to the truths and facts recorded in the Scripture, (for this is only the faith of devils,) but a vital faith wrought in the heart by the blessed Spirit of God, and productive of good works. This is a faith I never fully felt before Mr. Charles Wesley expounded the seventh of Romans, and I cannot but always honour him as an instrument in God's hand of shewing me the true way of salvation by Jesus Christ. You may call this Quakerism, or what you please; but I know it is the faith which Christ and His apostles preached.
"You pray, my dear brother, that we may return to the Church of England. We are not dissenting from it; neither are the Methodists, as the world, in derision, calls them. They constantly preach up the articles, collects, homilies, and liturgies of our own Church. But here lies the truth of the matter. The doctrines of the Reformation have lain a long while dormant. The generality of our English clergy have sadly fallen from them. God has raised up some to preach the truth as it is in Jesus, and as held by our Church. He has set His seal to their ministry. They have made abundantly more converts than those zealous atheists you mentioned. The pleasure, preferment-loving clergy envy their success, and, therefore, are confederate against them. Perhaps you may think this uncharitable; but I think I speak the truth in Christ.
"I am far from being bigotted to the Methodists, or to Mr. Whitefield in particular, out of a blind zeal. I will follow him no farther than he follows Christ. I believe him to be a sincere good minister of Jesus Christ. You do not seem to think so. Who wants charity, you or I? 'By their fruits ye shall know them,' says our Lord. Do the other clergy bring forth such fruit? You seem to reflect on me for going round the kingdom with such a knight-errant as Whitefield. I wish you had used milder terms. But, my dear brother, may I not justly turn the tables upon yourself, and reflect on you for leaving your flock, and travelling merely for profit, or little else? Perhaps you may answer, you have committed your flock to the care of a curate. But may I not reply to you, as St. Bernard did once on a like occasion, 'Will your curate be damned for you?' Do not charge others with being righteous over-much, before you can prove you are righteous enough yourself. Return home, my dear brother; watch diligently that flock committed to your care; catechize and visit from house to house; live as Christ lived; teach as He taught; leave off hunting after preferment, and cease to please the polite world; and then I will think you a proper person to judge whether the Methodists are enthusiasts or not.
"Excuse me, my dear brother, this seeming severity. Love for God, love for you, constrains me to use this freedom. Yet a little while, and I embark for Georgia. I have settled my worldly affairs, and have taken care of my dear child. God has begun a good work in our house. I believe He will carry it on. He has given me my brother Benjamin, and will He not give me my brother Thomas also? I am, your affectionate, though weak and unworthy brother in Christ,
"William Seward."
It has been already stated that, on the 14th of June, Wesley was with Whitefield on Blackheath, and preached to Whitefield's congregation. Four days afterwards, Wesley returned to Bristol, and, a week later, Whitefield addressed to him the following important letter. The two friends on some points differed in their opinions. Whitefield disapproved of the "convulsions" of Wesley's converts in Bristol. And again, though no Calvinism can be found in any of the sermons which Whitefield as yet had published, it is evident, from the subjoined epistle, that already he was inclined to the predestinarian creed.
"London, June 25, 1739.
"Honoured Sir,—I cannot think it right in you to give so much encouragement to those convulsions which people have been thrown into under your ministry. Were I to do so, how many would cry out every night! I think it is tempting God to require such signs. That there is something of God in it, I doubt not. But the devil, I believe, does interpose. I think it will encourage the French Prophets,[225] take people from the written word, and make them depend on visions, convulsions, etc., more than on the promises and precepts of the gospel.
"Honoured sir, how could you tell that some who came to you 'were in a good measure sanctified?' What fruits could be produced in one night's time? 'By their fruits,' says our Lord, 'shall ye know them.'
"I hear, honoured sir, that you are about to print a sermon against predestination.[226] It shocks me to think of it. What will be the consequences but controversy? If people ask my opinion, what shall I do? I have a critical part to act. God enable me to behave aright! Silence on both sides will be best. It is noised abroad already that there is a division between you and me, and my heart within me is grieved. Providence to-morrow calls me to Gloucester. If you will be pleased to come next week to London, I think, God willing, to stay a few days at Bristol. Your brother Charles goes to Oxon. I believe we shall be excommunicated soon. May the Lord enable us to stand fast in the faith, and stir up your heart to watch over the soul of, honoured sir, your dutiful son and servant,
"George Whitefield."[227]
Wesley did not come to London; but, as will soon be seen, Whitefield went to Bristol. Meanwhile, the young Georgian clergyman was one of the most notorious men in England. Even the Gentleman's Magazine, in its number for the month of June, inserted a laudatory poem "on Mr. Whitefield's preaching," in which Whitefield's sermons are contrasted with the sermons of the Arians, and wonder is expressed that the people should object to Whitefield's doctrines. With indignant feeling the versifier writes:—
"No words for such a preacher are too bad;
Enthusiast, babbler, and a fool run mad!"
The Weekly Miscellany hardly allowed a week to pass without fulminating its wrath against the open-air preacher. In the month of May, the Rev. Josiah Tucker,[228] a young man of eight-and-twenty, curate of All Saints', Bristol, but afterwards a doctor of divinity, and Dean of Gloucester, proposed three "queries" to Whitefield. In the month of June, an anonymous friend deigned to answer them. This increased the young curate's angry indignation, and he immediately replied, accusing Whitefield of propagating "blasphemous and enthusiastic notions which struck at the root of all religion, and made it the jest of those who sat in the seat of the scornful." He also related, rightly or wrongly, that "Whitefield, by his friends, prevented the printing of his" (Tucker's) "queries in the Bristol Journal;" and, instead of replying to them, wrote a letter telling the querist "very lordly and laconically, 'My motto is, Answer him not a word.'" Mr. Tucker continues, "He has, likewise, pronounced sentence against me, 'That while I remain in this way of thinking, he absolutely despairs of meeting me in heaven;' and says he can produce two cobblers in Bristol who know more of true Christianity than all the clergy in the city put together."
Whitefield had dared to preach at Charlton, in close proximity to Greenwich, and this aroused Dr. Skerret, who published a corrective sermon, for the safety of his flock, with the following title: "The Nature and Proper Evidence of Regeneration; or, the New and Second Birth: considered in a Sermon preached in the Parish Churches of East Greenwich, in the County of Kent, upon Whitsunday, and St. Peter the Poor, London, on Trinity-Sunday, 1739. By Ralph Skerret, D.D., Chaplain to the Right Honourable Henry Earl of Grantham. London, 1739." (8vo, 36 pp.) In his preface, Dr. Skerret accuses Whitefield and his friends as "restless deceivers of the people;" as "subtle and designing men;" and says "they break in upon all relative duties, and the benefits of social life, by daily assembling themselves in troops, upon hills and the neighbouring commons, under a vain pretence of serving God more acceptably. But all such service is contrary to common decency, unanimity, and good order, and is a contempt of the established places of worship in their own parishes."
The celebrated Dr. Byrom met Whitefield in London, at the end of June; and, in a letter to his wife, observed:—
"While we were at Cousin W. Chad's last night, the so much talked of Mr. Whitefield came in. He stayed about a quarter of an hour and then took coach to Gloucestershire. I am surprised at the progress which he has made, to which the weakness of his printing adversaries does not a little contribute. He had lords, dukes, etc., to hear him at Blackheath, who gave guineas and half-guineas for his Orphan House. He does surprising things, and has a great number of followers, both curious and real. This field-preaching, they say, is got into France, as well as Germany, England, Scotland, Wales, etc. People are more and more alarmed at the wonder of it, but none offer to stop it, that I hear of."[229]