“The British arms were never more formidable, than when our soldiers went forth in the strength of the Lord; and, with a Bible in one hand, and a sword in the other, cheerfully fought under His banner, who has condescended to style Himself ‘a man of war.’ What Bishop Saunderson says of study may be said of fighting: ‘Fighting without prayer is atheism, and prayer without fighting is presumption.’ I would be the more particular on this point, because, through a fatal scrupulosity against bearing arms, even in a defensive war, his Majesty has been in danger of losing the large province of Pennsylvania, the very centre and garden of all North America. Such very scrupulous persons, grasping at every degree of worldly power, and, by all the arts of worldly policy, labouring to monopolize and retain in their own hands all parts both of the legislative and executive branches of civil government, certainly act a most inconsistent part. Say what we will to the contrary, civil magistracy and defensive war must stand or fall together. Both are built upon the same basis; and there cannot be a single argument urged to establish the one, which does not corroborate and confirm the other.”
Whitefield then adverts to the recent earthquakes, at Lisbon and elsewhere, and proceeds to say:—
“Were even the like judgments to befal us, they would be but small, in comparison of our hearing that a French army, accompanied with a popish pretender, and thousands of Romish priests, was suffered to invade England, and to blind, deceive, and tyrannize over the souls and consciences of the people belonging to this happy isle. How can any serious and judicious person be so stupid to all principles of self-interest, and so dead to all maxims of common sense, as to prefer a French to an English government; or a popish pretender, born, and bred up in all the arbritary and destructive principles of the court and Church of Rome, to the present Protestant succession, settled in the illustrious line of Hanover?”
Whitefield next refers to popish persecutions of Protestants, and remarks:—
“After perusing this,” (a late declaration of ‘his Most Christian Majesty’ Louis XV.,) “read, also, I beseech you, the shocking accounts of the horrid butcheries and cruel murders committed on the bodies of many of our fellow-subjects in America, by the hands of savage Indians, instigated thereto by more than savage popish priests.[389] And if this be the beginning, what may we suppose the end will be, should a French power, or popish pretender, be permitted to subdue either us or them? Speak, Smithfield, speak, and, by thy dumb but persuasive oratory, declare to all who pass by and over thee, how many English Protestant martyrs thou hast seen burnt to death in the reign of the cruel popish queen, to whom the present pretender to the British throne claims a distant kindred! Speak, Ireland, speak, and tell how many thousands and tens of thousands of innocent, unprovoking Protestants were massacred, in cold blood, by the hands of cruel Papists, within thy borders, about a century ago! Speak, Paris, speak, and say, how many thousands of Protestants were once slaughtered, to serve as a bloody dessert, to grace the solemnity of a marriage feast! Speak, Languedoc, speak, and tell how many Protestant ministers have been lately executed; how many more of their hearers have been dragooned and sent to the galleys; and how many hundreds are now lying in prisons, fast bound in misery and iron, for no other crime than that unpardonable one in the Romish Church, hearing and preaching the pure gospel of the meek and lowly Jesus!
“And think you, my countrymen, that Rome, glutted with Protestant blood, will now rest satisfied, and say, ‘I have enough’? No, on the contrary, having through the good hand of God upon us, been kept so long fasting, we may reasonably suppose, that, the popish priests are only grown more voracious, and, like so many hungry and ravenous wolves pursuing harmless and innocent flocks of sheep, will with double eagerness, pursue after, seize upon, and devour their wished-for Protestant prey; and, attended with their bloody red coats, these Gallic instruments of reformation, who know they must either fight or die, will necessarily breathe out nothing but threatening and slaughter, and carry along with them desolation and destruction, go where they will.”
This was strong language, but, under the circumstances, not too strong.[390] No wonder, however, that infuriated Papists sent the writer threatening letters. Whitefield expresses his confidence in God’s interposition, and in England’s“glorious fleet,” and “well-disciplined army;” and then finishes with the following peroration:—
“If we can but make God our friend, we need not fear what France and Rome and hell can do against us. All the malicious efforts and designs of men and devils shall, so far from obstructing, be made to subserve the enlargement of His interests, who, in spite of all the strivings of the potsherds of the earth, will hold the balance of universal monarchy in His own hands, and, at last, bring about the full establishment of that blessed kingdom, whose law is truth, whose King is love, and whose duration is eternity. Fiat! fiat! Amen and amen!”
These are long quotations, but they help to shew the excited state of public feeling in 1756; and, perhaps, they may help the reader to understand the secrets of the disgraceful clangours, riots, and threatening letters already mentioned.
In his pamphlet, Whitefield refers to the persecution of Protestants in France. Much might be said respecting this; but suffice it to remark, that, on the general fast day, February 6th, Whitefield made a collection in his Tabernacle, eighty pounds of which he devoted to a fund which was being raised for the assistance of these poor persecuted people.[391] Remembering that, in 1756, money was probably of four times greater worth than it is at present, this collection of the poor Methodists was a noble one; but even this fell far short of the sum, which Whitefield, three months afterwards, obtained, within a week, towards the erection of his Tottenham Court Road chapel. Hence the following, addressed to the Countess of Huntingdon:—