After about a fortnight’s stay in Bristol, he started for Plymouth, preaching at Taunton and Wellington on his way. On his return, he wrote to Hervey, dating his letter, “Exeter, April 11, 1751.” He tells the amiable invalid that he would count it “a great honour and privilege” to have him as his guest for the remainder of his life. During the last month, he had had “some trying exercises;” but he had “preached about forty times,” and, in several instances, had ridden forty miles a day. He had been among Hervey’s old friends at Bideford; and had been blessed with “sweet seasons at Plymouth.”
It is impossible to determine what were the “trying exercises,” which Whitefield mentions. One was the affliction of his wife. Perhaps, another was occasioned by the insertion of a letter in the Gentleman’s Magazine, proposing that, because “Whitefield preached that man, the chief work of God in this lower world, by nature is half brute and halfdevil,” the following lines should be inscribed on the door of Whitefield’s house, and should not be removed until he “recanted his shocking account of human nature, and declared that man is the offspring of God, and formed by nature to approve and love what is just and good”:—
“Here lives one by nature half brute and half devil.
Avoid him, ye wise, though he speak kind and civil.
The devil can seem like an angel of light,
And dogs look demure, the better to bite.”
It is rather surprising that a squib so paltry was admitted into Mr. Cave’s respectable magazine; and yet it gave birth to a controversy, in that periodical, which lasted until the month of October next ensuing, not fewer than six different articles, for and against, being published on the subject.
Probably, another cause of Whitefield’s “trying exercises” was the publication, about this period, of the third part of Lavington’s “Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared,” an 8vo. volume of four hundred and twenty pages. This was the bishop’s big gun, pointed at Wesley almost altogether, but discharging a few stray shots at Whitefield. It was not pleasant, for instance, to find the author perverting Whitefield’s honest acknowledgment of the errors into which he had unwittingly fallen, by declaring, “Whitefield has confessed that he has imposed upon the world by many untruths” (p. 263). Whitefield never confessed anything of the sort; and Dr. Lavington, Bishop of Exeter, knew, when he wrote these words, that he himself was writing an untruth.
Lampoons, and episcopal mendacity like this, were, without doubt, annoying. It was also a matter of profound grief, that, in the bulky volume just mentioned, his friend Wesley should be made the butt of all the sneering sarcasm which Lavington could bring to bear against him. There were likewise other annoyances, as may be gathered from the title of a pamphlet of sixteen pages, which was at this time published: “A Vindication of the Methodists and Moravians from an Assertion in a Sermon lately printed. Also some Thoughts on the Latter Times.” The “Assertion” was, that, at least, some of the Methodists and Moravians were endeavouring “to encourage and increase the Romish religion;” thatit was certain that Methodism and Moravianism would “at last issue in Popery;” and that some of the present preachers would be employed in spreading it “both here, and in all our colonies and plantations abroad.” The author of the pamphlet did his best to vindicate Whitefield and his friends; but he was so full of millenarianism, that his defence was worthless, and, instead of serving the Methodists, was likely to injure them.
In the midst of all this worry and vexation, Whitefield found comfort and cause of exultation in a fact which ought to have augmented the severity of his “trying exercises:” slavery was authorised in Georgia! Read in the light of the last hundred years, the following letter, addressed to a minister in America, is, to say the least, a curious production:—