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CHAPTER V.

WHITEFIELD'S FIRST VISITS TO THE COUNTRY.

WHATEVER disadvantages may attend the mode in which I trace the first labours and influence of Whitefield, the divisions I have adopted will enable the reader to follow him without effort or confusion, and to judge fairly of each of his successive spheres: many of which were very dissimilar, however much alike were the effects of his preaching in them. Besides, it is much easier to realize the changes which passed upon his spirit as he moved from country to country, and from spot to spot, in the glory or gloom of circumstances, than to realize places, however vividly characterized; for they seldom gave a character to his preaching. I mean, that he did not exactly adapt himself to localities; but came into a new field in the spirit he had left the old one. He preached "the common salvation" everywhere, although with varied power. According to "the brook in the way," he "lifted up the head." He came to London under the Bristol impulse; and he embarked for America under the London impulse. This is evident from his journals. He had no plans, but for winning souls; and these, although they could never be set aside by circumstances, could be inflamed by them. Accordingly, whilst the vessel was detained in the river or on the coast, he was never idle. Wherever he could land, he preached; and when on board, he read prayers and expounded daily; just as might be expected from a man fresh from the impulses of London.

His work in England, as distinguished from London and its immediate vicinity, began on his return from Georgia; and then, he was full of his orphan school: an institution which, if it did little for the colony, led him to do much for the mother country! Humanly speaking, but for that school, and the college he intended to graft upon it, Whitefield would never have traversed England as he did, nor visited Scotland

so often. It compelled him to travel, and inspired him to preach. It was his hobby, certainly; but by riding it well, he made it like "the white horse" of the Apocalypse, the means of going forth conquering and to conquer."

Having been ordained a priest at Oxford, and received a "liberal benefaction" from the bishop of Gloucester for Georgia, his first visit was to Windsor. There he could find only a school-room to expound in; but such was the impression made by his address, that he exclaimed on leaving, "Not unto me, O Lord, not unto me; but unto thy name be all the glory."

Next morning he went to Basingstoke, and expounded to about a hundred very attentive hearers, in the dining-room of the inn; but on the evening of the next day, the crowd outside was noisy, and threw stones at the windows. This roused Whitefield's zeal and the curiosity of the town. the following day, he had three large rooms nearly filled; and although some interrupted him, many were so struck and overawed, that they said they would "never oppose again."*

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At this time he visited and revisited Dummer, where he had once been so useful and happy amongst the poor. “I found," says he, "that they had not forgotten their former We took exceeding sweet counsel, prayed, and sang psalms, and eat our bread with gladness and singleness of heart. How did Jesus comfort us by the way! Monstrare nequeo sentio tantum! Lord, melt down my frozen heart with a sense of thy unmerited love."

From Dummer he went to Salisbury, and there visited "an old disciple, Mr. Wesley's mother;" but found no opportunity for preaching. He then went to Bath, with the hope of preaching in the abbey church, for the orphan-house, the trus tees having obtained leave of the bishop; but Dr. C. would not permit him. "He was pleased" (so Whitefield expresses it) "to give me an absolute refusal to preach either on that or any other occasion, without a positive order from the king or the bishop. I asked him his reasons. He said he was not obliged to give me any. I therefore withdrew, and reached Bristol." There a welcome awaited him; and he felt the difference. "Who can express the joy with which I was received?" It was not long, however, unmixed joy. He was refused the use of Redcliffe church, although he had the prom

*See Letter 51; Works, vol. i.

ise of it. The clergyman pretended that "he could not lend his church without a special order from the chancellor." Whitefield, with his usual promptitude, put this excuse to the test at once. "I immediately waited on the chancellor, who told me frankly, that he would neither give positive leave, nor would he prohibit any one that should lend me a church; but he would advise me to withdraw to some other place, till he heard from the bishop, and not to preach on any other occasion. I asked him his reasons. He answered, Why will you press so hard upon me? The thing has given general dislike.' I replied, Not the orphan-house; even those that disagree with me in other particulars, approve of that. as for the gospel-when was it preached without dislike?'

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"Soon after this I waited upon the reverend the dean, who received me with great civility. When I had shown him my Georgia accounts, and answered him a question or two about the colony, I asked him, whether there could be any just ob jection against my preaching in churches for the orphanhouse? After a pause for a considerable time, he said, he could not tell. Somebody knocking at the door, he replied, 'Mr. Whitefield, I will give you an answer some other time: now I expect company.' Will you be pleased to fix any time, sir,' said I. I will send to you,' said the dean. Ŏ Christian simplicity, whither art thou fled ?"

Whitefield himself fled that afternoon to the Newgate of Bristol, and obtained the jailer's permission to preach there to the prisoners. "I preached a sermon on the Penitent Thief, and collected fifteen shillings for them." On the following Sabbath he preached at St. Werburgh's church to a large audience. Even St. Mary Redcliffe was open to him soon, though not for a collection. "Blessed be God, I thought yesterday I should not have the use of any pulpit; but God has the hearts of all men in his hands." The old effects ace companied this new visit to Bristol. "Great numbers were melted down. Thousands could not find room." He thus verified a prediction which had been sent from London to Bristol, by some raving blasphemer;" Whitefield has set the town on fire, and now he is gone to kindle a flame in the country. I think the devil in hell is in you all."

The flame was kindled in Bristol; and the devil had certainly something to do with those who tried to extinguish it. "The chancellor told me plainly, that he intended to stop my proceedings. I have sent for the registrar here, sir, to take

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down your answers.' He asked me by what authority I preached in the diocess of Bristol without a license? I answered, I thought that custom was grown obso ete. Why, pray, sir, did not you ask the clergyman who preached for you last Thursday, this question?' He said, that was nothing to me!" Dr. Southey says, that Whitefield's reply to the chancellor was given "without the slightest sense of its impropriety or its irrelevance." But where is its irrelevance ? It is certainly quite ad rem, whatever it may be as etiquette, when curates argue with chancellors; and in all respects, it is more gentlemanly than the chancellor's "what is that to you." That is real vulgarity.

The Doctor narrates the remainder of this high-church scene, with more discrimination. "The chancellor then read to him those canons which forbade any minister from preaching in a private house. Whitefield answered, he apprehended they did not apply to professed ministers of the church of England. When he was informed of his mistake, he said,― There is also a canon forbidding all clergymen to frequent taverns and play at cards: why is not that put in execution?' And he added, that notwithstanding these canons, he could not but speak the things he knew, and that he was resolved to proceed as usual." Now, if the Doctor pleases, Whitefield is as unpolite as the apostles were to the chancellor of the Jewish sanhedrim ! "His answer was written down, and the chancellor then said, I am resolved, sir, if you preach or expound any where in this diocess till you have a license, I will first suspend and then excommunicate you.' With this declaration of war they parted; but the advantage was wholly on the side of Whitefield; for the day of ecclesiastical discipline was gone by." Southey's Wesley. "He waited upon

Whitefield says, they parted politely. me very civilly to the door, and told me, "What he did was in the name of the clergy and laity (laity indeed!) of the city of Bristol;' and so we parted. Immediately I went and expounded at Newgate as usual!"

The unusual, as might be expected, soon followed this Bartholomew day in Bristol. Ejected from the churches, Whitefield betook himself to the fields at once. "All the churches being now shut-and if open, not able to contain half that came to hear-I went to Kingswood, among the colliers." There he took his station upon Hannam Mount, on Rose Green, and preached, not, as Dr. Gillies says, from the ser

mon on the mount, but from John iii. 3, on regeneration, his favourite subject. The other text was on a subsequent occasion. "I thought," says he, "it would be doing the service of my Creator, who had a mountain for his pulpit, and the heavens for his sounding-board; and who, when his gospel was refused by the Jews, sent his servants into the high-ways and hedges."

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In thus renewing a practice which, as Dr. Southey says, "had not been seen in England since the dissolution of the monastic orders," and by commencing it at Kingswood, Whitefield dared not a little danger. The colliers were numerous and utterly uncultivated. They had no place of worship. Few ventured to walk even in their neighbourhood; and, when provoked, they were the terror of Bristol. But, none of these things moved" Whitefield, although he was told them all by his timid friends. The fact is, the chancellor had told him something he dreaded more than insult,— that he must be silent; and that, he could not endure. Instead of insult or opposition at Kingswood, however, "the barbarous people," although they had never been in a church, "showed him no small kindness." His first audience amounted to nearly two thousand, who heard him with great attention and decorum for nearly an hour. His third audience increased to five thousand; and thus they went on increasing to ten, fourteen, and twenty thousand. On one of these occasions, he says, "The day was fine-the sun shone very bright-and the people, standing in such an awful manner around the mount, in the profoundest silence, filled me with holy admiration. Blessed be God for such a plentiful harvest. Lord, do thou send forth more labourers into thy harvest."

Although Whitefield had thus drawn the sword against the obsolete canons of the church, he had not "thrown away the scabbard;" for, on the morning of the very next day, he waited again on the chancellor, and showed him a letter he had received from the bishop of London. "After usual salutations, I asked why he did not write to the bishop, according to his promise? I think he answered-he was to blame. I then insisted on his proving I had preached false doctrine, and reminded him of his threatening to excommunicate me in the name of the clergy and laity of the city of Bristol. But he would have me think-that he had said no such thing! and confessed, that, to this day, he had neither heard me preach,

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