“If Mr. Whitefield had been more acquainted with the customs of the primitive Christians, he need not have asked, ‘Did the primitive Christians visit the graves of the deceased?’
“As to the illuminations, they are no part of the worship, and cannot concern him.
“As to their debts, he has no business to trouble himself about them.He will never be asked to pay them; for he, among the Brethren, to whom the Lord has been most bountiful, has taken upon himself to discharge them.
“As his intelligence has been from such as St. Paul distinguishes by the name of false brethren, any man, possessed of common sense, may know what regard it deserves.
“One fault among the Brethren is, that they do not abound with charity sermons, and look sharp after the plate, as is done he knows where and by whom.
“By this time, I doubt not, Mr. Whitefield is able to answer his own queries; and, I hope, wishes he had taken Paul’s advice to Timothy: ‘Foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.’”
On the other side, there was published a pamphlet, whose title will convey an idea of its contents:—“A true and authentic Account of Andrew Frey; containing the occasion of his coming among the Hernhuters, or Moravians; his Observations on their Conferences, Casting Lots, Marriages, Festivals, Merriments, Celebrations of Birth-days, Impious Doctrines, and Fantastic Practices, Abuse of Charitable Contributions, Linen Images, Ostentatious Profuseness, and Rancour against any who in the least differ from them; and the Reasons for which he left them; together with the Motives for publishing this Account.Faithfully translated from the German.”[327]
All this disreputable contention prepared the way for Bishop Lavington to publish, two years afterwards, his “Moravians Compared and Detected.” (8vo. 180 pp.)
It is time to return to Whitefield’s gospel wanderings, and correspondence.
About the middle of the month of May, he left London for a tour in Wales,and made “a circuit of about seven hundred miles.”[328] He preached above twenty times, at Narberth, Pembroke, Haverfordwest, and other places; and was again in London on the 7th of June. The Moravian controversy filled his mind and crushed his heart. To his old secretary, John Syms, who had joined the Moravians,and who had basely threatened a revelation of some of Whitefield’s secret affairs, he wrote:—