On the subject of “giving private exhortations,” Whitefield aptly observed:—
“Our all-wise Master sent His disciples on short excursions, before He gave them the more extensive commission to go into all the world; and were our students in general, under proper limitations, to be thus exercised, they would not turn out to be such mere novices, as too many raw creatures do when they make their first appearance in the pulpit. I remember, above thirty years ago, some young students had been visiting the sick and imprisoned, and had been giving a word of exhortation in a private house; and, upon meeting the minister of the parish on their return to college, they frankly told him what they had been doing; when he turned to them, and said, ‘God bless you! I wish we had more such young curates;’—a more Christian sentence this, than that of a late expulsion for the very same supposed crimes and misdemeanours.”
Whitefield proceeded to remind Dr. Durell of the effort which was being made to establish the episcopacy in the American colonies, and of the opposition of the colonists to the scheme, and then added:—
“That persons of all ranks, from Quebec down to the two Floridas, are at this time more than prejudiced against it, is notorious; but how will the thought of the introduction of lord bishops make them shudder, if their lordships should think proper to countenance the expulsion of religious students, whilst those who have no religion at all meet with approbation and applause.”
Turning to the general subject of Methodism, Whitefield continued:—
“It is notorious that the grand cause of these young men’s expulsion was, that they were either real or reputed Methodists. Scarce any now-a-days can pray extempore, sing hymns, go to church or meeting, and abound in other acts of devotion, but they must be immediately dubbed Methodists.”
And then, in reference to the first Oxford Methodists, he added:—
“If worldly church preferments had been their aim, some of them, at least, might have had ladders enough to climb up by; but having received a kind of apostolical commission at their ordination, they would fain keep up the dignity of an apostolic character; and, therefore, without ever so much as designing to enter into any political cabals, or civil or church factions, without turning to the right hand or the left, or troubling the world with a single sermon or pamphlet on the bare externals of religion, they have endeavoured to have but one thing in view, namely, to think of nothing, to know nothing, and to preach of nothing but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified; to spend and be spent for the good of souls, and to glory in nothing saving in the cross of Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto them and they unto the world.”
Such was Whitefield’s last description of the first Methodist preachers. May this be the character of all their successors to the end of time!
Of course, Whitefield’s “Letter” to Dr. Durell evoked replies; but only one of these can be noticed here. It was entitled, “Remarks upon the Rev. Mr. Whitefield’s Letter to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford; in a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Whitefield. By a late Member of the University of Oxford. Oxford, 1768.” (8vo., 62 pp.) Two or three extracts from this angry and abusive production must be given. In reference to Whitefield himself, the author says:—