“I intended, a long while since,” says he, “to hear Mr. Whitefield at Tottenham Court, and I have at length compassed my design. The prayers were performed with as much devotion as one generally finds at any church, and, as well as I remember, without any excursions foreign to the Church Service. Fame had represented him to me as a great orator; but in this I was a little disappointed, not but he performs, upon the whole, tolerably well. The tunes and concordance of the singing are also very proper and agreeable; though I thought that psalms, or anthems, would be better than hymns; or the true harmony of sense and numbers, than such poor poetry as was sung.
“When he began his sermon, the oddness of some of his conceits, his manner, and turn of expression, had I not been in a place of public worship, would have excited my laughter. As he went on, I became serious, then astonished, and at length confounded. My confusion arose from a mixture of sorrow and indignation, that any man bearing the name of a minister of our meek and blessed Redeemer, or the dignity of the Christian priesthood, should demean himself like an inhabitant of Bedlam. I thought I saw human nature in distress, as much as in the cells of lunatics; with this difference, that he was permitted to go abroad, and make others as mad as himself; which he might be able to accomplish by means of the credulity of his audience, joined to the art of making them think that himself and his fraternity are the only people in their senses.
“I must inform you, that, opposite to this celebrated preacher, sat a dozen or more of old women, of that class who, within this half-century, might easily have been persuaded, by threats or promises, that they had rode in the air on broomsticks, and, confessing it, might have been put to death by people as much bewitched as themselves. Their intellectual powers are so far decayed, that they do not distinguish between receiving alms, in relief of their misery, and receiving hire, as hummers and hawers. This is the denomination given, by many sober persons, to theseold women, some of whom, I am assured, have confessed that they are retained by hire, for sighing and groaning.”
Mr. Hanway proceeds to say that he had been to the Haymarket, to see “The Minor” acted, but “had not health, nor patience to sit out above half of it.” He adds:—
“I wish the principles of the Methodists may be understood more clearly by being brought on the stage; but I question if the character of the bawd, in ‘The Minor,’ has any existence, and, if so, the whole fabric of the drama is built on false grounds. If it does exist, is it so proper a subject for the theatre, as for St. Luke’s Hospital? This dramatic piece may possibly intimidate some from becoming Methodists; but, however popular it may be, I am very doubtful concerning the propriety of the measure, as to the end of correcting the enthusiasm in question. It is said, that, this comedy ‘has shaken the pillars of Tottenham Tabernacle,’ and I must add, that, I believe no harm would happen were it to tumble, provided the poor people, who frequent it, were at their work, or saying their prayers in their parish churches.
“As to the peruke and shoemaker declaimers, whose recommendation is consummate impudence, warm imaginations, and the remembrance of texts which they have no capacity to understand, it would be an indignity offered to the Christian priesthood to call such persons Teachers or Preachers of the Gospel. And as to the gentlemen of Methodistical tenets, who have had a scholastic education, how few among them are there who would not face about to the right, for the consideration of a good ecclesiastical benefice. I have very particular reasons to believe the major part of them would conform to Church orthodoxy and intelligible Christianity, if they did not find a better living in another way.”
7. So much for the eccentric Jonas Hanway. Another pamphleteer—much more able, though not so well known to fame—must now be introduced. Whitefield had already been attacked by the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Lichfield, and the Bishop of Exeter. Now, he came under the lash of the Rev. John Green, D.D., Bishop of Lincoln. In 1760, Dr. Green published an 8vo. pamphlet of seventy pages, addressed to Berridge, of Everton; but that must be passed without further notice. A year later, he issued another pamphlet with the title, “The Principles and Practices of the Methodists farther considered; in a Letter to the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield. Cambridge, 1761.” (8vo. 74 pp.) The Bishop of Lincoln wrote with great ability. The chief fault to be found with him is, that, he based his strictures upon the first editions of Whitefield’sJournals, and his “Short Account of God’s Dealings with him,” published in 1740. This was hardly fair, because Whitefield, since then, had, more than once, publicly expressed his regret for having used certain loose and extravagant expressions in these productions. Dr. Green was either not acquainted with Whitefield’s apologies, or he chose, for some hidden purpose, not to acknowledge them. Anyhow, remembering that such apologies had been made, and that Whitefield’s health was now even dangerously affected, paragraphs, like the following, were neither courteous nor fair:—
“In that curious repository of religious anecdotes, called your Journals, I have often seen and pitied the distress you have been in between strength of inclination and want of ability; when you have recited several things, which bordered on the marvellous, and which, notwithstanding, you did not care to vouch for miraculous.
“All the exalted things you have said, and all the wonderful things you have done, will pass, I fear, with many, only for the frenzy and rant of fanaticism. They will be apt to think your journeyings the effects of a roving and itinerant temper, and ascribe them to a strong tincture of that heroical passion, by which so many saints of the Romish communion have been actuated.
“Though possessed of so happy a talent at opening the hearts and purses of the people, that you were traduced under the name of ‘the Spiritual Pickpocket,’ yet you have not ventured to trust your support to the precarious offerings of voluntary contribution. Though you have not chosen to put yourself in a situation to claim any legal dues; yet you have lately dispensed your instructions, on the stipulation of certain periodical payments, and under the sanction of that unquestionable truth, ‘that the labourer is worthy of his hire.’