“If it be enquired, what was the foundation of this integrity, or of his sincerity, courage, patience, and every other valuable and amiable quality, it is easy to give the answer. It was not the excellence of his natural temper; not the strength of his understanding; it was not the force of education; no, nor the advice of his friends. It was no other than faith in a bleeding Lord; faith of the operation of God. It was a lively hope of an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. It was the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost, which was given unto him, filling his soul with tender, disinterested love to every child of man. From this source arose that torrent of eloquence, which frequently bore down all before it; from this, that astonishing force of persuasion, which the most hardened sinners could not resist. This it was, which often made his head as waters, and his eyes as a fountain of tears. This it was, which enabled him to pour out his soul in prayer, in a manner peculiar to himself, with such fulness and ease united together, with such strength and variety both of sentiment and expression.
“I may close this head with observing, what an honour it pleased Godto put upon His faithful servant, by allowing him to declare His everlasting gospel in so many various countries, to such numbers of people, and with so great an effect on so many of their precious souls. Have we read or heard of any person since the apostles, who testified the gospel of the grace of God, through so widely extended a space, through so large a part of the habitable world? Have we read or heard of any person, who called so many thousands, so many myriads of sinners to repentance? Above all, have we read or heard of any, who has been a blessed instrument in the hand of God of bringing so many sinners from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God?”
Like all Wesley’s writings, this sketch of Whitefield’s character is concise, but terse, pointed, and comprehensive. He concludes by improving Whitefield’s death. The grand lesson to be learned was to “keep close to the grand doctrines which” Whitefield “delivered; and to drink into his spirit,” a lesson which the Methodists of the present day have more need to study and to lay to heart than the Methodists of any previous generation.
The “grand doctrines” specified by Wesley were, that “There is no power (by nature) and no merit in man. All power to think, speak, or act aright, is in and from the Spirit of Christ: and all merit is in the blood of Christ. All men are dead in trespasses and sins: all are by nature children of wrath: all are guilty before God, liable to death, temporal and eternal. We become interested in what Christ has done and suffered, not by works, lest any man should boast; but by faith alone. We conclude, says the Apostle, that a man is justified by faith, without the works of the law. And to as many as thus receive Him, giveth He power to become the sons of God: even to those that believe in His name, who are born, not of the will of man, but of God. And except a man be thus born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. But all who are thus born of the Spirit, have the kingdom of God within them. That mind is in them which was in Christ Jesus, enabling them to walk as Christ also walked. His indwelling Spirit makes them both holy in heart, and holy in all manner of conversation.”
These were the doctrines of Wesley, Whitefield, and the first Methodists, par excellence, and no pulpit of the present age has a right to be designated Methodist, in which these doctrines do not occupy the same prominent position. “Maythey not,” says Wesley, “be summed up, as it were, in two words, The new birth, and justification by faith”?
Immediately after the publication of his sermon, Wesley was attacked by the Gospel Magazine, and charged “with asserting a gross falsehood,” in saying that “the grand fundamental doctrines which Mr. Whitefield everywhere preached,” were those just specified. In an unamiable outburst of Calvinistic zeal, the editor maintained that Whitefield’s “grand fundamental doctrines, which he everywhere preached, were the everlasting covenant between the Father and the Son, and absolute predestination flowing therefrom.”
To this Wesley quietly replied:—
“I join issue on this head. Whether the doctrines of the eternal covenant, and of absolute predestination, are the grand fundamental doctrines of Christianity or not, I affirm again, 1. That Mr. Whitefield did not everywhere preach these; 2. That he did everywhere preach the new birth, and justification by faith.
“1. He did not everywhere preach the eternal covenant, and absolute predestination. In all the times I myself heard him preach, I never heard him utter a sentence, either on one or the other. Yea, all the times he preached in West Street chapel, and in our other chapels throughout England, he did not preach these doctrines at all,—no, not in a single paragraph; which, by the bye, is a demonstration that he did not think them the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.
“2. Both in West Street chapel, and all our other chapels throughout England, he did preach the necessity of the new birth, and justification by faith, as clearly as he has done in his two volumes of printed sermons. Therefore all that I have asserted is true, and proveable by ten thousand witnesses.”[711]