What Whitefield, for want of time, could not undertake was accomplished by the redoubtable Grimshaw, who, in an 8vo. pamphlet of 98 pages,cudgelled White almost unmercifully.[234]
Whitefield was answering Lavington. Notwithstanding the recantation extorted from him by the Countess of Huntingdon, only six months before, the irritable prelate could neither forget nor forgive the publication of the fictitious charge that has been already mentioned; and now he vented his anger by issuing anonymously the first part of “The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared.” (8vo. 82 pp.) No good end would be served by lengthened quotations from this scolding pamphlet. The Bishop of Exeter was too angry to be polite. Suffice it to say, that, so far as Whitefield is concerned, Lavington’s attacks are founded upon incautious and improper expressions in Whitefield’s publications—expressions most of which Whitefield himself had publicly lamented and withdrawn, or modified. The pith of the bishop’s pamphlet is contained in his last paragraph but one. The italics in the following quotations are his lordship’s own:—
“This new dispensation is a composition of enthusiasm, superstition, and imposture. When the blood and spirits run high, inflaming the brain and imagination, it is most properly enthusiasm, which is religion run mad; when low and dejected, causing groundless terrors, or the placing of the great duty of man in little observances, it is superstition, which is religion scared out of its senses; when any fraudulent dealings are made use of, and any wrong projects carried on under the mask of piety, it is imposture, and may be termed religion turned hypocrite.”
The title of Whitefield’s answer was as follows: “Some Remarks on a Pamphlet, entitled, ‘The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared;’ wherein several mistakes in some parts of his past writings and conduct are acknowledged, and his present sentiments concerning the Methodists explained. In a letter to the Author. By George Whitefield, late of Pembroke College, Chaplain to the Right Honourable the Countess of Huntingdon. ‘Out of the eater came forth meat’ (Judges xiv. 4). London: printed by W. Strahan, 1749.” (8vo. 48 pp.)
The title-page indicates the contents of Whitefield’s pamphlet. He honestly acknowledges his errors by insertingthe letter already given, under the date of “June 24, 1748,” and which, with very little alteration, had been published in Scotland, before Lavington’s malignant ridicule had been committed to the press. Three brief extracts, from Whitefield’s “Remarks,” will be enough. In reply to the accusation of claiming to be inspired and infallible, Whitefield says:—
“No, sir, my mistakes have been too many, and my blunders too frequent, to make me set up for infallibility. I came soon into the world; I have carried high sail, whilst running through a whole torrent of popularity and contempt; and, by this means, I have sometimes been in danger of oversetting; but many and frequent as my mistakes have been, or may be, as soon as I am made sensible of them, they shall be publicly acknowledged and retracted.”
Again, having stated what are the doctrines of the Methodists, Whitefield writes:—
“These are doctrines as diametrically opposite to the Church of Rome, as light to darkness. They are the very doctrines for which Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and so many of our first reformers burnt at the stake. And, I will venture to say, they are doctrines which, when attended with a divine energy, always have made, and, maugre all opposition, always will make, their way through the world, however weak the instruments, who deliver them, may be.”
Then, again, the object at which Whitefield and his friends were aiming is thus described:—
“To awaken a drowsy world; to rouse them out of their formality, as well as profaneness, and put them upon seeking after a present and great salvation; to point out to them a glorious rest, which not only remains for the people of God hereafter, but which, by a living faith, the very chief of sinners may enter into even here, and without which the most blazing profession is nothing worth—is, as far as I know, the one thing—the grand and common point, in which all the Methodists’ endeavours centre. This is what some of all denominations want to be reminded of; and to stir them up to seek after the life and power of godliness, that they may be Christians, not only in word and profession, but in spirit and in truth, is, and, through Jesus Christ strengthening me, shall be the one sole business of my life.”