Four “The Fiery Trial of Popularity”: George Whitefield, Field Preacher
“THE FIERY TRIAL OF POPULARITY”: GEORGE WHITEFIELD, FIELD PREACHER
Whitefield’s English friends prayed for him while he was in Georgia. At the Aldersgate meeting—the place where John Wesley’s heart had been “strangely warmed” a month earlier—participants read out loud from the first installment of Whitefield’s journal at a crowded service in June 1738. In August, the wildly popular journal of his journey to Savannah was printed. Finally, in December, newspapers published the stirring report: Whitefield was returning to England.1
But for the itinerant, this Atlantic crossing was nearly deadly. Unfavorable winds interminably slowed the voyage from Charleston. By November, supplies were running dangerously low, and passengers faced acute dehydration. The captain cut daily rations to a pint of water, a bit of salty beef, and flour cake. Whitefield suspected that the devil was delaying the ship, seeking to prevent his further ministry in England.2 Withered and listless, he shivered on his bed, wrapped in a buffalo-skin blanket. The desperate captain diverted the ship to the west coast of Ireland, where they finally landed in mid-November. Whitefield believed that God had a purpose in putting him through the ordeal, humbling him in preparation for the “fiery trial of popularity.”3
Rejuvenated by water, food, and rest, Whitefield traveled across Ireland, from Kilrush to Dublin, to gain passage to England. He found the poverty in Ireland appalling, with many peasants living in squalid thatch huts. But even more appalling to Whitefield was, as he perceived it, the people’s ignorant “Romish profession.” The Bible, which Whitefield called the “key of knowledge,” had been translated into Irish in the seventeenth century, but the Catholic hierarchy frowned upon the vernacular edition, and it hardly penetrated Irish culture. Thus, to Whitefield, the Irish lacked the essential tool for religious reformation.4
Whitefield crossed the Irish Sea, landed in England, and arrived in London in early December 1738. Delighted to be back among Methodist friends, he concluded that the Lord had “greatly watered the seed sown” by his earlier ministry in the metropolis. The night of his arrival, he attended a “truly Christian society in Fetter Lane.” In doing so, Whitefield entered into a meaningful, though temporary, alliance with the Moravians.5
The Moravians made a powerful imprint on Anglo-American evangelicals in the 1730s, not least because they helped precipitate John and Charles Wesley’s conversions. Led by Peter Böhler, Moravians began meeting for prayer and spiritual accountability with Methodists at Fetter Lane in May 1738. The Moravians’ role reminds us that eighteenth-century Anglo-American revivalism had broader, Continental roots. In 1722, Pietists from Moravia, seeking religious freedom, had migrated to the estate of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf in Upper Lusatia, an area of Saxony, near Dresden. The community, called Herrnhut, experienced a quasi-Pentecostal awakening in 1727, which mobilized Moravian missionaries to seek out like-minded believers across Europe and in the American colonies. The Moravians combined fervent piety, intense missionary zeal, and an interdenominational sensibility, all of which matched Whitefield’s convictions. London was the hub for the Moravians’ international network, and they readily identified with the Methodist movement there.6
In April 1738, Böhler began working with James Hutton (Whitefield’s publisher), speaking at a fellowship led by Hutton. (This in spite of the fact that Böhler knew almost no English.) As Böhler recalled, “The movement among the English grew and grew. They invited me here and there [and] asked me again and again to tell them something of the Savior.” Soon he was addressing meetings of hundreds, with friends translating his combined German and Latin addresses into English. On May 1, the Methodists and Moravians formed a new society committed to prayer and mutual confession of sin. Böhler soon departed to continue his missionary work in America. Hutton then led the fellowship, which rented a room on Fetter Lane once it outgrew his print shop. The Wesley brothers attended frequently. By fall, the society had begun holding “love-feasts,” gatherings with simple meals, singing, and testimonies of spiritual experiences.7
The week after his return to London, Whitefield turned twenty-four years old. He was entering a frenzied season of ministry. The excitement of his pre-Georgia preaching had weathered his absence. The London-based Methodists, along with the Moravians and larger crowds of admirers, composed a volatile mass eager for revival. Whitefield saw the unfolding awakening as a work of the Holy Spirit. He continued writing of a “feeling possession of the Holy Spirit,” a divine presence residing in his body and bringing guidance, comfort, and courage. The “Holy Spirit makes me do things,” he wrote. He was certain that the Holy Spirit had moved powerfully not just in the gospels or the book of Acts, but that he was “the common privilege and portion of all believers in all ages.”8
Within days of the itinerant’s return, overflowing crowds pressed into London churches, and scores made professions of new faith in Christ. Whitefield viewed these scenes through biblical lenses. His preaching was blessed, he wrote, “with great demonstration of the Spirit, and with power,” echoing the Apostle Paul’s words to the church of Corinth in 1 Corinthians 2:4. Some who had been converted a year earlier under Whitefield had become influential laypeople or ministers themselves, partly through the training supplied by his “dear friends and fellow-labourers, John and Charles Wesley.” God was pouring out the Holy Spirit on London, Whitefield concluded, mindful of Old Testament promises such as Isaiah 44:3, “I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring,” and Joel 2:28, “It shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.”9
God was also pouring out the Spirit at Fetter Lane. On Christmas Eve 1738, Whitefield stayed at Fetter Lane until four in the morning, “in prayer, psalms, and thanksgiving, with many truly Christian brethren”; he added, “God gave me a great spirit of supplication [prayer]. Adored be his free grace in Christ Jesus.” He did not go to bed, but instead visited another society early on Christmas morning, preaching in a sultry room packed with hundreds of people. That day he preached again three more times.10
On the night of New Year’s Day 1739, the Methodists and Moravians had a wondrous love-feast at Fetter Lane that reached unprecedented fervor. John Wesley recorded: “The power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground.” The assembly “broke out with one voice, ‘We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.’” God sustained Whitefield as he stayed up all night again. “It was a Pentecost season indeed,” he recalled. “Often have we been filled as with new wine,” with people crying out “Will God, indeed, dwell with men upon the earth! [2 Chronicles 6:18] How dreadful is this place! This is no other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven! [Genesis 28:17].”11
The Methodists found both ancient and modern sources for this revivalistic zeal. The book of Acts is filled with scenes similar to what the Methodists were experiencing. Moreover, the Wesleys and Whitefield had heard of other recent accounts of revival. The most immediate sources were their Moravian contacts, who had seen similar awakenings on the Continent, particularly during the 1727 revival at Herrnhut. John Wesley visited Herrnhut in mid-1738, where they assured him that the abiding “indwelling of the Holy Ghost” and “full assurance of faith” were available to believers today.12
Wesley had also read Jonathan Edwards’s account of the remarkable revival of 1734–35 in Northampton, Massachusetts, which was published in two London editions in the late 1730s by two prominent English evangelicals, John Guyse and the hymn writer Isaac Watts. Edwards’s account, which established his international fame—and which continues to be the most influential revival narrative in modern Christian history—recorded how almost everyone in the frontier town developed a “deep concern about their eternal salvation.”13
A number of émigré French Protestants in London, especially a group called the “French Prophets,” had also begun to explore the kinds of spiritual experiences described in Acts. Charles Wesley had recently met an Englishman, Isaac Hollis, who had been influenced by the French Prophets. Wesley was once staying the night at Hollis’s home, where he received an unpleasant introduction to Hollis’s charismatic proclivities. While they were preparing to retire for the night—as was typical when hosting guests in a small house, Wesley and his host were occupying the same bed—Hollis “fell into violent agitations,” Wesley wrote, “and gobbled like a turkey-cock.” Hollis was speaking in tongues. Wesley thought Hollis was suffering from demonic possession. The Methodist faced down the infernal force by quoting Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, who had rebuked a disease-causing demon by saying, “Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more.” Hollis soon recovered from his fit of inspiration. Then the two awkwardly proceeded to bed, with Wesley “not half liking [his] bedfellow.”14
The new evangelical movement was emerging simultaneously across America, Wales, Scotland, England, and the Continent. So striking was this simultaneity that many Christians saw the hand of God’s providence behind the growing awakening. An example of the remarkable coincidence of similar spiritual experiences was the conversions of Whitefield and Howell Harris of Wales. Even as Whitefield endured his Lenten travail of 1735, Harris went through a comparable ordeal in the village of Trevecka, about sixty miles west of Gloucester. Harris was a twenty-one-year-old schoolteacher, rather uninterested in spiritual matters until his parish pastor recommended Richard Allestree’s classic The Whole Duty of Man (1658). In May 1735, at a communion service, Harris received salvation: “I was convinced by the Holy Ghost,” he wrote, “that Christ died for me, and that all my sins were laid on him.”15
The convert began to visit house to house, and village to village, proclaiming the message of God’s grace to sinners. He immediately ran afoul of Anglican authorities, who cautioned him that laypeople had no authority to offer religious instruction beyond their own home and family. Harris prayed and received spiritual confirmation that his ministry was legitimate, and he resolved to proceed in the face of opposition, “not fearing,” he wrote, “to have my guts torn in pieces, entirely relying on God for my qualification.” In spite of the criticism he received, he wanted to stay within the Anglican Church as long as he could, seeking to reform the church from within.16
The Welsh revival surged in late 1737 through the preaching of Harris and his colleagues Howel Davies, Griffith Jones, and Daniel Rowland. (The latter two were Anglican ministers.) Refusing to heed Anglican warnings, Harris continued to itinerate, and also began the unusual tactic of preaching in the open air. Sometimes he did this at fairs, but at other times he preached impromptu in fields in order to accommodate the teeming crowds rallying to his sermons.17
Harris’s innovative style and his Calvinist convictions drew Whitefield’s attention. Like the Moravians, Whitefield wished to reach out beyond his immediate sphere of influence to strengthen the new evangelical network. In December 1738, Whitefield wrote to Harris. Encouraging him to keep preaching in spite of opposition, Whitefield reported that there was a “great pouring out of the Spirit, at London.” Whitefield implored Harris to write him back, asking why they should not “tell one another, what God has done, for our souls.”18
Harris was delighted and flattered when he received Whitefield’s letter. Harris immediately replied and said that he had already read Whitefield’s journal, which had suffused his soul with “uncommon influences of the divine presence.” He was thrilled to hear of the London revival and returned news of awakenings in Wales, including a “great reformation in Cardiganshire through one Mr. Daniel Rowland.” Harris hoped that Whitefield would soon visit Wales. Whitefield, although a year younger than Harris, had surpassed him in fame. But Whitefield did not necessarily see—or admit—this fact; he soon wrote to another correspondent that Harris “outstrips” him. “May I follow him, as he does Jesus Christ,” Whitefield prayed.19
Whitefield also corresponded with Philip Doddridge, the influential Dissenting minister of Northampton, in central England. They exchanged letters at the same time that Whitefield and Harris did. Clearly, Whitefield had planned to contact these pastors as soon as he returned from Georgia. (Doddridge and Whitefield had become aware of each other’s ministries at least two years earlier.) Doddridge had the same idea, since he composed a letter to Whitefield in mid-December 1738, but unexpectedly received one from Whitefield before he sent it. The irenic Doddridge believed in the religion of a converted heart, and that priority led him, like Whitefield, to de-emphasize denominational boundaries. Like Harris, Doddridge had read Whitefield’s journals, which had “not a little comforted and edified” him. He prayed that the Methodists would renew the Church of England, since he loved that church, “notwithstanding our dissent.”20
Whitefield would meet Harris and Doddridge in due course, but in the meantime he pursued the final step into priesthood. The Georgia trustees officially appointed him minister to the colony in December, and he traveled to Oxford in January 1739 to receive ordination. He and other assembled candidates went through the rituals confirming their readiness for pastoral ministry, but Whitefield “secretly prayed” for some of them, wondering whether they were all really converted believers with their “names written in the Book of Life.”21
On Sunday, January 14, came the moment Whitefield had been waiting for since he went to Oxford: his entrance into the priesthood. It was a “day of fat things,” Whitefield wrote. The service took place at Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral, a small, elegant twelfth-century sanctuary. As in his ordination as deacon, the bishop laid hands on the kneeling Whitefield, prayed for him to receive the Holy Ghost and to be a “faithful dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments.”22
In spite of his surging popularity and ordination as priest, not all was well for Whitefield. His celebrity and penchant for controversy drew critics. One early anti-Whitefield tract, Remarks on the Reverend Mr. Whitefield’s Journal, accused him of basing his faith on “perturbations of mind, possessions of God, ecstatic flights, and supernatural impulses.” This would become the most enduring line of attack on Whitefield as some began suggesting that he was a fanatic and an “enthusiast.”23
Another early opposition piece, A Letter to the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, written by the Anglican curate Tristram Land, showed that some of Whitefield’s fellow priests were stung by the Methodists’ criticisms of the established church. Land warned against “these young quacks in divinity, who are running about the city and taking great pains to distract the common-people, breaking the peace and unity of our excellent church.” He suggested that the Methodists’ were unwittingly serving the devil. The great spiritual enemy wished to turn people into enthusiasts, whose brief seasons of frenzy would eventually lead to burnout and disillusionment with Christianity.24
One might think that the disagreement between Anglicans such as Land and Whitefield was primarily about power in the church, and power was certainly a factor. But Land and Whitefield also had basic theological disagreements about the nature of salvation, the new birth, and regeneration. Land argued that Whitefield, in teaching that the new birth was an experience subsequent to baptism, was contradicting the baptismal liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer. In that ritual, the priest was to thank God (after sprinkling the child) for regenerating the infant by the Holy Spirit. Thus, to Land, those baptized in the church had already been regenerated and born again, and there was no need for them to be “born again a second time.” The bishop of London likewise said that Whitefield’s notion that the new birth must be “instantaneous, and inwardly felt” was not biblical. Whitefield strictly differentiated between infant baptism with water and the subsequent baptism with the Holy Spirit that accompanied salvation. “Many are baptized with water” as infants, he said, “which were never, effectually at least, baptized with the Holy Ghost.” True spiritual baptism, to him, was not external washing, but internal transformation by the Holy Spirit.25
Whitefield read a tract written against him, probably Land’s, the day after his ordination. The criticism wounded him, but he wrote in his journal that he had found strength to pray for the author. The next day, Whitefield prayed for Land publicly. He was coming to realize that his popularity would necessarily generate disapproval. But controversy also meant more popularity, and a bigger audience for the gospel.26
Whitefield went out of his way to show Tristram Land that he harbored no ill will toward him. The Sunday following his ordination, he attended Land’s church, the Christopher Wren–built St. James Garlickhythe, in London, and received communion from Land himself. Whitefield subsequently wrote in his published journal that he loved Land and believed that the priest had a “zeal for God, though, in my opinion, not according to knowledge.” Land apparently did not think much of this sentiment, for he wrote a second, even angrier letter against Whitefield in 1741.27
Whitefield and John Wesley held an important meeting with a group of their Anglican critics in late January 1739. Whitefield tried to explain the new birth to them theologically and told them about his conversion experience. Disappointed with their reaction, he said that they viewed him as a “madman.” Whitefield may have at first hoped to convince some Anglican authorities to support the revivals, but after the meeting he concluded, “There is a fundamental difference between us and them.” They had divergent understandings of regeneration, but more importantly, Whitefield believed, many of his opponents had no experience of regeneration: “They believe only [in] an outward Christ, we further believe that he must be inwardly formed in our hearts also.” Expecting that many pastors and bishops would oppose him, Whitefield took their hostility as a sign that they had never personally tasted the grace and power of God.28
Even as Whitefield wrestled with growing opposition, large crowds appeared wherever he preached. And he preached often: on the afternoon and evening of the Sunday he attended Land’s church, Whitefield spoke four times. At one of those assemblies, he estimated that almost a thousand souls pressed into the churchyard.29
He wrote later that this meeting was the moment at which he began to contemplate “preaching without doors” as a normal part of his ministry. Outdoor preaching would allow Whitefield to accommodate many more listeners than would fit in the limited confines of most sanctuaries. It would also allow him to preach in places where he was banned from the pulpit. It is not clear how many ministers had refused him because of opposition to his teaching. Some may simply have hesitated to open the church to the young priest, wishing to avoid needless controversy.30
In addition to preaching in the open air, he now began speaking without notes. Whitefield had given extemporary addresses before, practicing the method even before his first public sermon. But now he began to do so routinely, by design. Often-repeated, memorized sermons were essential components of his mature preaching. As he gained experience, he could also respond on the fly to an audience’s mood. Sometimes he did not know what he would say until he ascended the field scaffold. He picked texts and biblical stories based on the feel of the moment and matched his remarks to the crowd’s emotions.31
By all accounts, Whitefield was a passionate preacher, pleading with audiences to respond to the gospel. He regularly shed tears, and there is no compelling reason to see such tears as inauthentic or simply theatrical. Whitefield was utterly certain about the Christian gospel, the delights of divine grace, and the horrors of divine judgment: these truths understandably elicited strong feelings. But his emotions also flowed from his conviction that true religion—and excellent public speaking—engaged the heart, not just the head. You could go to any number of parishes in England and hear dry recitations of traditional doctrine. His background in the theater, the dramatic setting of the field sermon, and the freedom of the extemporaneous mode helped the young preacher shake people out of complacency.32
Whitefield was also a physically striking man, which helped fuel his popularity. Most of the surviving portraits of Whitefield show an older, genteel pastor who is balding and overweight. But in 1739 he was twenty-four and regarded as quite attractive (see figure 4.1). Some described him as angelic. Portraits usually depicted his crossed eyes too, and some caricatures ridiculously exaggerated them. (Later Whitefield would receive the epithet “Dr. Squintum.”) He developed this ocular ailment during a childhood illness. In eighteenth-century British culture, however, some regarded crossed eyes as a sign of mystical power.33
Whitefield’s surging popularity not only provoked criticism in print, but also sometimes precipitated altercations, such as a February 1739 incident at St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster. (St. Margaret’s is the parish church of the British House of Commons. A number of famous people are buried there, including Sir Walter Raleigh, who was beheaded in 1618 after running afoul of King James I.) No one at St. Margaret’s that day seemed to know whether Whitefield had permission to preach. He almost left the building, but then a man he assumed was the parish officer or warden took him to the pulpit, where he proceeded with the sermon. A hostile account in the Weekly Miscellany, however, claimed that Whitefield’s supporters had locked in a pew a minister who was scheduled to preach, and had had several strapping “lusty fellows” stand guard while Whitefield spoke. This seems unlikely—Whitefield called the charges lies—but he may not have taken every step possible to defuse a volatile situation.34
Shortly after the St. Margaret’s incident, Whitefield set out for a tour of western England, including Bristol. During this period, Whitefield was raising money for Georgia and his proposed orphan house, which was the chief justification for his itinerant preaching. His controversial reputation followed him from London, with hecklers appearing nearly everywhere he spoke. In Basingstoke, southwest of London, people tried to shout him down. Some even pelted the church windows with stones.35
Whitefield’s letters make clear that he found this open hostility both troubling and bracing. As usual, he filtered the experience through scripture, writing, “Wherever I go, many indeed wait for my halting and shoot out their arrows, even bitter words [Psalm 64:3], but I know in whom I have believed [2 Timothy 1:12] and am persuaded that neither death nor life, principalities nor powers, shall ever be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, my Lord [Romans 8:38].” Whitefield gave no chapter-and-verse references in this letter—he had so deeply internalized the scriptures, and so ingrained were they in the surrounding culture of English rhetoric, that verses flowed naturally from his pen.36 The young minister seemed to feed off the attacks. An Anglican minister reportedly told one of Whitefield’s friends that the “Devil in hell” was in the Methodists, and that Whitefield had set England ablaze with the devil’s flames. Whitefield countered: “It is not a fire of the Devil’s kindling, but a holy fire that has proceeded from the Holy and Blessed Spirit. Oh, that such a fire may not only be kindled, but blow up into a flame all England, and all the world over!”37
Whitefield needed this kind of resolve. From Bath to Bristol, Whitefield found more priests and officials unwilling to open their churches to him. But he was prepared to preach in alternative locations. For several days, following the traditional Methodist practice, he preached at Bristol’s notorious Newgate prison. John Wesley would later campaign for reform at the whitewashed jail, which one critic called “white without and foul within.” Prisoners were packed into a basement dungeon there, sleeping in “putrid hotbeds of disease.” Whitefield did not comment on the abuses at Newgate (he was likely aware of the jail’s reputation from his childhood), but he was pleased with the results of his preaching, hoping that the “power of the Lord was present” to awaken some of the destitute prisoners to Christ.38
Greater preaching opportunities lay in the fields, however, so Whitefield went to the coal-mining district of Kingswood, just east of Bristol. The coal mines fueled England’s early industrial revolution, with thousands of men, women, and children—“colliers,” as they were called—toiling in the coal pits. Residents of towns like Bristol viewed the coal miners with suspicion, sometimes for good reason. In 1753, the Kingswood colliers were so enraged by soaring grain prices that two thousand of them marched under colors into Bristol, demanding relief. When none was forthcoming, they broke windows at Bristol’s council house and occupied the city. A military detachment sent from Gloucester forced them out of Bristol a week later, but not before they took thirty captives in hopes of a prisoner exchange.39
The typical collier in eighteenth-century Britain earned relatively high wages, but only because, as the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith wrote, of the “hardship, disagreeableness and dirtiness of his work.” Their diet consisted mainly of beer, tea, bread, and cheese, with meat a luxury that was enjoyed maybe once a week. The Church of England had never opened a parish church in Kingswood, leaving the devout with few options other than a lengthy trip into Bristol. For Whitefield, the colliers seemed like an attractive, untapped audience. (Methodism generally thrived in mining villages, where rapid growth drew in rootless folks and disrupted traditional parish organization.) “My bowels have long since yearned toward the poor colliers, who, as far as I can find, are very numerous and as sheep having no shepherd,” he wrote.40
Upon arrival, Whitefield and William Seward went to the pits, calling the miners “out of their dens and holes in the earth.” Then he ascended a nearby hill and spoke to about two hundred curious onlookers. “Blessed be God that I have now broken the ice!” he wrote in his journal. To a Methodist friend, he wrote, with a touch of amusement, “Where do you think I have been preaching? Upon a mount at Kingswood.” Whitefield considered the setting reminiscent of that of the Sermon on the Mount: Christ “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 highways and hedges.”41
Repeatedly returning to Kingswood, Whitefield preached to crowds that were exponentially larger at each appearance. In late February, he spoke to a crowd he estimated, “at a moderate computation,” to be about ten thousand people. Onlookers climbed trees (like Zaccheus in Luke 19) to see and hear him. He recorded in his journal: “All was hush when I began; the sun shone bright, and God enabled me to preach for an hour with great power.” He spoke as loud as he could, projecting his voice as taught by his acting instructors in Gloucester. All could hear him; many responded. Whitefield saw some faces with “white gutters made by their tears, which plentifully fell down their black cheeks, as they came out of their coal pits.” His critics spoke right, Whitefield decided: “The fire is kindled in the country; and, I know, all the devils in hell shall not be able to quench it.”42
Crowd estimates that ran into the tens of thousands drew almost immediate criticism as gross exaggerations. Whitefield’s publicist, Seward, had previously not tried to estimate crowds in newspaper reports, but now demanded that printers include them, chastising James Hutton for not publishing “the success of the Gospel here in the papers” and admonishing him: “Pray put in the 10,000 and the 15,000.” Seward presumably believed that these were reasonably accurate numbers, and he told Hutton that if they did not report the astounding figures, “the stones will cry out against us.” The crowd counts, to them, demonstrated the remarkable blessing of God on Whitefield’s ministry. By May 1739, specific numbers began to appear in the newspapers, and Whitefield included them in new editions of his journals.43
The itinerant found field preaching exhilarating and liberating: “The open firmament above me . . . with the sight of thousands and thousands, some in coaches, some on horseback, and some in the trees, and at times all affected and drenched in tears together . . . was almost too much for, and quite overcame me.” Neither parish boundaries nor church buildings, neither traditions nor pastoral recalcitrance, confined him. Using a saying often attributed exclusively to John Wesley, Whitefield wrote: “The whole world is now my parish. ‘Tis equal to me whether I preach in field or in a church.”44
Still, Anglican officials tried to corral the brash preacher. The chancellor of Bristol virtually banned him from the diocese and prohibited him from preaching in private meetings too. Whitefield asked why; the chancellor replied that he taught “false doctrine.” He threatened Whitefield with excommunication should he continue his unlicensed preaching in Bristol. That evening, as was his practice, Whitefield prayed publicly for the chancellor, and the congregation “said most earnest amens to all the petitions I put up for him.”45 Whitefield also wrote to the chancellor’s superior, Bishop Joseph Butler of Bristol. Butler was one of the Church of England’s most influential apologists against Deism; his best-known book was The Analogy of Religion (1736). Butler’s reply to the itinerant offered some encouragement, but when Whitefield showed the bishop’s letter to the chancellor, the chancellor chastised him again and sent him away. So Whitefield wrote back to Butler, assuring him that he desired only to promote the glory of God. Whitefield again compared his trials to Christ’s: “My Master was long since spoken evil of before me.”46
His followers saw the controversy the same way. One concluded that Whitefield was preaching true “evangelical principles in an age swallowed-up so much by apostasy.” Doing so provoked “the old serpent,” the devil, and now the devil’s “baleful eyes send forth a hellish glare and a wrathful hiss is heard.” Both sides in the growing rift over Whitefield’s ministry accused the other of succumbing to demonic influence. This kind of talk made reconciliation unlikely.47 Indeed, Whitefield and his friends routinely used the rhetoric of “spiritual warfare,” as William Seward put it. They understood his successes, and the opposition to his ministry, in terms that would be readily familiar to many charismatic or Pentecostal Christians today. Seward wrote of their “common cause of pulling down the kingdom of darkness” and advancing Christ’s kingdom. Whitefield reported to a correspondent that as he preached in Wales and England, upon coming to the entrance of any town, “I said I came in the name of King Jesus, and if the Devil would not surrender, I should by the sword of the spirit . . . pull down his strongholds.” He said that seeing so many repenting and believing reminded him of nothing so much as “Joshua passing on from city to city to destroy the devoted Canaanites.”48
Fulfilling the request of Howell Harris, Whitefield left Bristol and took a ferry across the Severn estuary to Cardiff, Wales. There he met Harris face-to-face. They instantly warmed to one another and stayed up late talking and praying. He and Harris, Whitefield wrote, “joined hands and hearts and were so loving that I believe Satan envied us, but by the help of God, we intend to make his kingdom shake.” Seward marveled that Harris routinely preached two-, three-, or four-hour sermons, sometimes going all night long. Here was a true collaborator for Whitefield.49
Antagonism toward Whitefield and Harris was growing, and sometimes opponents adopted clever means to disrupt their sermons. Denied the Anglican pulpit in Cardiff, Whitefield began preaching at the town hall, where Seward had a connection. Whitefield spoke from the judge’s bench in the hall courtroom. During one of these sermons, Whitefield noted with amusement, “Somebody did me the honor of getting a dead fox and hunting him with the hounds all round the hall,” hoping that the dogs’ howls would drown out the evangelist. But Whitefield pressed on, shouting above the din. That night “there was such a prodigious power that all were melted into floods of tears by the love of Jesus Christ.”50
Whitefield could have easily stayed longer in the Bristol area. He enjoyed a response there surpassing even that in London. He was near new friends in Wales, as well as home and family. But he intended to go back to America as soon as possible. Whitefield was already assuming the true itinerant mode: preaching in one place for a time, but always leaving follow-up and consolidation to pastors in longer-term residence. By March 1739, Whitefield had begun to urge John Wesley to come to Bristol, and especially to Kingswood, where “there is a glorious door opened among the colliers.” “You must come,” Whitefield told Wesley, “and water what God has enabled me to plant.”51
Whitefield’s relationship with Wesley was changing. Wesley was still enjoying great successes in his own ministry, but Whitefield had clearly surpassed him in popularity. Even though Whitefield still called himself Wesley’s “son,” he was adopting a more assertive stance, and even treating Wesley as something of a lieutenant. Though Wesley was interested in following up the work in Bristol, he was a bit annoyed by Whitefield’s newfound independence.52
Later that month, Wesley rebuked Whitefield for recruiting William Seward and John Cennick to work for him without formally securing the permission of other Methodists. Speaking to Whitefield as a co-leader of the movement, Wesley chided him, “Is it well for you or me to give the least hint of setting up our will or judgment against that of our whole society?” But Wesley insisted that he meant only to address a concern he had; he did not wish to break off their friendship.53
Confronting a brother’s sin was a Methodist hallmark, and Whitefield received Wesley’s correction. He meekly thanked Wesley for the “kind rebuke.” Moving past that topic, he asked Wesley again to come to Bristol. (Wesley wrote that he asked “in the most pressing manner.”) Could Wesley arrive by “the latter end of next week,” before Whitefield left town? In a follow-up letter, he told Wesley that a Bristol newspaper had already announced Wesley’s imminent arrival.54
Wesley cast lots and opened a Bible to random passages, but these efforts did not settle his mind about going to Bristol. The lot and the Bible did not give the same advice. The Bible passages frightened him: they repeatedly indicated that his life would be in jeopardy if he went. Nevertheless, he decided to go to Bristol.55 Upon arrival, Wesley began to realize what a sensation “dear brother” Whitefield’s preaching had created. That Sunday morning, Whitefield preached at a bowhng green to a crowd, according to Wesley’s estimate, of up to seven thousand. At noon he preached to the same-sized audience in Kingswood; at five, Whitefield drew a titanic throng of thirty thousand to a mount at Rose Green. The next day, the itinerant left Bristol. “I have seen none like him,” wrote the flabbergasted Wesley.56
Before Whitefield departed, he proclaimed that Wesley would give his inaugural open-air sermon the next day. He sought to smooth the way for Wesley as best he could, telling supporters in the modified words of John the Baptist that “there was one coming after him whose shoe laces he was not worthy to unloose.” It is not clear whether Whitefield had gotten Wesley’s permission to make the announcement, for Wesley remained uneasy at the prospect, writing frankly, “I could scarce reconcile myself to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which he [Whitefield] set me an example on Sunday, having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.”57 Wesley broke through his reluctance to “be more vile,” as he put it, and on April 2 he spoke at a local brickyard to about three thousand people. He spoke on Luke 4:18–19, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.” But he complained to Hutton that his clerical robes had not yet arrived with his luggage. “I want my gown and cassock every day,” he said. Preaching outdoors was one thing, but he did not intend to give up all sense of propriety.58
Not all of Whitefield’s followers were happy with his replacement. Wesley could not match Whitefield’s preaching brilliance, and some had already begun to balk at Wesley’s Arminian doctrine, which held that all people had free will to accept Christ’s offer of salvation or to refuse it. A woman identified as “Jenny, a servant maid at Bristol,” knew Whitefield’s sister, Elizabeth Greville, who was going through her own conversion travail and being counseled by John Wesley. Jenny wrote a remarkable letter to Whitefield with concern about his sister’s struggle to accept Christ. This letter not only gives us an all too rare perspective of an evangelical woman of modest background, but also reveals growing discontent with Wesley’s anti-Calvinist theology, a discontent that would eventually help precipitate Wesley and Whitefield’s split.59
Jenny noted that belief in the eternal security of a Christian believer (meaning that once saved, a person cannot lose his or her salvation) was “very great encouragement” to new believers. But Wesley taught against the doctrine. He told people that “the best may finally fall away.” Apparently, Jenny personally confronted Wesley with her objections, telling him that “God’s promises were as firm as his throne.”60 She objected also to Wesley’s notion that everyone could be saved. He taught that instead of Christ dying just for the elect, “all the world is elected alike.” Wesley had debuted this teaching, after some hesitation and prayer, on April 26, 1739. The confrontation with Jenny almost certainly happened on the day she wrote the letter, when Wesley wrote of meeting a woman who opposed the notion that “God ‘willeth all men to be saved'” (I Timothy 2:4). Wesley jotted “Jenny Worlock comforted” in his personal diary for the date; this must be the Jenny of the letter to Whitefield, but she was hardly “comforted.” Instead, she assured Whitefield that she would countenance no theological error from Wesley or anyone else, and that she would “dash out the brains of [the devil’s] Babylonish brats against the stones.”61
Before his return to London, Whitefield preached in Wales, Gloucester, and Oxford. In Gloucester, he learned of rumors circulating that he had gone entirely mad, that he claimed to be the Holy Ghost himself, and that he had “walked bareheaded through Bristol streets singing psalms.” Whitefield certainly had not claimed to be the Holy Spirit, but he did emphasize the distinction between those who had received the Spirit, and those who had not. At one meeting, he observed, “Some were so filled with the Holy Ghost, that they were almost unable to support themselves under it. This, I know, is foolishness to the natural and letter-learned men.” William Seward told a Methodist friend that “Brother Whitefield has had joy in the Holy Ghost without intermission for three years.”62
Whitefield’s emphasis on the indwelling Holy Spirit alienated some potential allies. For example, Bishop Joseph Butler became increasingly uncomfortable with what he heard about the Methodists’ ministry, and in August 1739 he met with John Wesley and upbraided him for enthusiastic excesses. He singled out Whitefield in particular: “Mr. Whitefield says in his Journal [for February 11, 1739], ‘There are promises still to be fulfilled in me.’ Sir, the pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.” Wesley told the bishop that he was not responsible for what Whitefield said, and insisted that, for his part, he claimed “no extraordinary revelations or gifts of the Holy Ghost.”63
At the same time, the Dissenting pastor and celebrated hymn writer Isaac Watts of Stoke Newington, a neighborhood in London, wrote to the bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, expressing similar concerns about Whitefield’s claims of special revelations from the Holy Spirit. In personal conversation, Whitefield had confirmed to Watts that he occasionally received impressions in his mind—thoughts or messages, often in response to prayer—that, he knew with certainty, came from God. Watts warned him against the “danger of delusion.”64
Moderate evangelical leaders such as Watts rejoiced as great numbers of new converts came to believe in Christ for salvation, but they hesitated as Whitefield, Seward, and others emphasized the Holy Spirit’s operations in the modern age. Most Protestant theologians believed that miracles and special revelations had “long since ceased,” as Bishop Gibson put it in a pastoral letter against Whitefield, with the end of the time of Christ’s apostles and the assembling of the New Testament canon. Miracles and revelations, such as those seen in the book of Acts, verified Christ’s messianic claims, and special revelation was needed in the absence of a codified New Testament. But for many Protestants, contemporary claims of revelations from the Spirit were symptoms of enthusiastic madness or, worse, part of the deceitful repertoire of the Roman Catholic Church, which routinely reported healing miracles and divine signs such as bleeding icons. Most Protestants wished to confine the Spirit’s operations to those available to all believers, such as comfort, encouragement, and conviction of sin. But early Methodists became convinced that astonishing operations of the Spirit had not ceased. In both John Wesley’s and Whitefield’s published journals, works of the Spirit seemed to confirm the authenticity of the new Methodist ministry. Whitefield had not yet determined, however, how to distinguish between the promptings of the Spirit and the workings of the flesh. Watts, Gibson, and other critics saw the risks that came from focusing on the gifts of the Spirit, especially the dangers of spiritual arrogance and deception. In 1739, Whitefield saw the Spirit’s work as the means to break out of the churches’ spiritual lethargy.65
Nevertheless, Whitefield had his limits regarding evidence of the Spirit. Sometimes John Wesley and other Methodists tested those limits. Wesley was more open than Whitefield to the extreme manifestations of the Holy Ghost, such as those seen among the French Prophets. Wesley regularly witnessed people thrown into violent convulsions, and some who exhibited signs of demonic possession. In May 1739, Wesley reported that an unconverted man was reading one of his sermons, and upon “reading the last page he changed color, fell off his chair, and began screaming terribly and beating himself against the ground.” When Wesley came to visit the man, others were pinning him to the ground. The man fixed his eyes on Wesley and seemingly began casting demons out of himself, roaring out, “O thou devil! Thou cursed devil! Yea, thou legion of devils! Thou canst not stay. Christ will cast thee out.” The penitent flailed against the floor, sweating profusely, and Wesley and his followers surrounded him, praying until he calmed down and his “body and soul were set at liberty.” Whitefield cautioned John against encouraging such excessive displays. Doing so would give credence to the radical charismatics in their midst and would make new converts “depend on visions, convulsions, etc., more than on the promises and precepts of the gospel.”66
Whitefield also became more circumspect about claiming inspiration from the Holy Spirit as Anglican authorities began criticizing him in mid-1739. In Whitefield’s response to Edmund Gibson’s pastoral letter, he explicitly denied that he had experienced any “extraordinary operations of working miracles, or of speaking with tongues.” In a letter registering concerns about the Moravians’ activities at the Fetter Lane Society, he noted dubiously, “I hear there is a woman among you, who pretends to the spirit of prophecy.” He encouraged them to follow the counsel of scripture and “try the spirits,” because he feared that the “devil is beginning to mimic God’s work.” Similarly, the itinerant had heard that some of the Moravians expected a resumption of the power to work miracles reminiscent of those seen in the book of Acts. What need did the church have of spectacular miracles such as bodily healings, he asked, “when we see greater miracles every day,” most notably spiritual healings in salvation? Nevertheless, Whitefield maintained that any true Christian should expect “to feel and discern” the work of the Spirit living within, just as Whitefield himself felt the Spirit moving. He did not let the charge of enthusiasm dissuade him, for he believed that “every Christian, in the proper sense of the word, must be an enthusiast—that is, must be inspired of God, or have God in him.”67
When Whitefield returned to London in late April 1739, eager crowds waited to hear him. In one case, some “Arch Wags” falsely advertised his return and first preaching engagement, drawing a disappointed group of hundreds. The skeptical Country Journal concluded that “Mr. Whitefield has many fools.” Nevertheless, Whitefield was coming back to the metropolis, where he intended to implement what he called the “mad trick” of field preaching. When he was banned from preaching at one of the churches on his usual London circuit, St. Mary’s Islington, Whitefield took it as confirmation that he should “go out into the highways and hedges, and compel harlots, publicans, and sinners to come in, that my Master’s house may be filled” (Luke 14:23). He began preaching regularly in two open-air locations: Moorfields, an eighteen-acre park near the Fetter Lane meetinghouse, and Kennington Common, a twenty-acre open area south of the Thames, where the city kept a permanent scaffold used for executions. Anti-Methodist writings highlighted Kennington’s macabre setting: one print pictured Whitefield preaching with bodies hanging from the Kennington gallows in the foreground and a whiskey seller hawking his goods underneath. A ditty printed in the Daily Post put it this way: “And if his frantick sermons miss their aim, / It’s hoped the gallows will their lives reclaim.” Whitefield often spoke at Moorfields on Sunday mornings and at Kennington Common on Wednesday evenings, reporting crowds in the tens of thousands.68
Whitefield was an extraordinarily creative religious entrepreneur, leading critics to label him a huckster or a “pedlar in divinity,” as the historian Frank Lambert has noted. Whitefield became the first celebrity pastor of the modern era, which raised questions—as it has for his many successors—about the line separating marketing from piety. Whitefield might have told us that the gospel is so important that it warrants innovative techniques to reach the largest possible audience. Whether Whitefield always handled the “fiery trial of popularity” without succumbing to the temptation of self-aggrandizement is hard to say; surely there were ways in which the sensational responses went to his head. But we also know that Whitefield largely avoided the most obvious signs of trouble associated with celebrity pastors today, including scandalous sexual affairs and financial improprieties. Whitefield funneled most of his income into charity; he did not become especially rich, in spite of his phenomenal popularity. Indeed, he struggled for much of his early career with personal debt, even though he showed few signs of frivolous consumption.69
Not surprisingly, other, more secular entrepreneurs saw financial opportunity in the legions whom Whitefield attracted. A newspaper reported, for example, that once when Whitefield was delayed in arriving at Kennington Common, a notorious medical vendor named Richard Rock showed up, “took the advantage of [Whitefield’s] absence, and talked so pathetically to the multitude of the efficacy of his [medicinal] packets, that he disposed of abundance of them.” The hostile writer concluded that “the quack for the body made greater profit that afternoon than the quack for the soul.” This association between Rock and Whitefield’s “quackery” became a staple of anti-Whitefield writings and prints (see figure 4.2).70
A more famous (and more reputable) entrepreneur in Philadelphia took note of the young evangelist, too. Benjamin Franklin, the publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, soon began reporting on Whitefield’s phenomenal meetings at Kennington. Or rather, he began printing extracts of stories about those meetings from London’s Daily Advertiser, extracts originally supplied by William Seward.71
Franklin was a native of Boston, Massachusetts, about nine years older than Whitefield, and like Whitefield, he came from a relatively modest background. Unlike Whitefield, Franklin found no path to anything more than an autodidactic education. After falling out with his older brother, James Franklin, the printer of the New-England Courant, Benjamin made his way to Philadelphia, where he began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729. Franklin was no traditional Christian, but he knew a good news story when he saw it. So when reports began to emerge that the boy preacher was returning to America in late 1739, Franklin began wondering how he could hitch his publishing wagon to Whitefield’s star. By the end of the year, Franklin had become Whitefield’s key publicist in America. They also became lifelong friends.72
Whitefield seized upon new opportunities in the religious marketplace, yet his sermons could also have a distinctly anticommercial edge. He especially criticized London’s obsession with fashion. One report mockingly noted that several “fine ladies who used to wear French silks; French hoops of four yards wide,” and other luxurious clothes had now turned into Methodist “followers of Mr. Whitefield.” Their conversion, and Whitefield’s preaching on the new birth, convinced them to wear only plain clothes and simple hairstyles.73
Whitefield continued to cultivate a broader British evangelical network, and in May 1739 he traveled about seventy miles northwest of London to Northampton, where he finally met the Dissenting pastor Philip Doddridge. Preaching on the town common, he concluded that nothing assured him more of God’s plans to do a great work in England “than to find how his children of all denominations everywhere wrestle in prayer for me.” When Whitefield returned to London, he received a letter from the brothers Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, leaders of the secessionist Associate Presbytery in Scotland, who had also begun experimenting with outdoor preaching. The Erskines had seen audiences numbering in the tens of thousands. “Blessed be God!” wrote Whitefield, “there are more field-preachers in the world besides myself.”74
Back in London, Whitefield kept preaching before gargantuan audiences. Reading his journals, the enormous crowds start to seem routine: ten thousand here, twenty thousand there. On one occasion, June 1, he claimed to have spoken to eighty thousand people. Historians have long debated whether to take these estimates seriously. There can be no doubt that Whitefield and Seward exaggerated the numbers of people, and in later editions of his journals, Whitefield reduced some, but not all, of the highest totals. But with so many people present, how could either man have formed a reasonable estimate anyway? Conversely, it is difficult to envision how, in an age without electrical amplification, tens of thousands of people could hear Whitefield, or even physically jam into spaces to catch a glimpse of him. Yet a recent study by acoustic scientists on his intelligible speaking range has largely confirmed Whitefield’s claim that crowds of twenty thousand or even thirty thousand could hear him.75
We need not assume that everyone at an assembly could actually hear Whitefield, either, or needed to do so in order to stay. Perhaps some could just faintly hear him speaking far off in the distance, and were satisfied with that. Whitefield noted at times that his audiences maintained “deep silence” during his sermons, and he typically ascended a hill or a scaffold in order to project his voice. Those who wished to hear would undoubtedly have pressed in as close as possible, while others may have hung around the periphery, chatting with friends or selling their wares. An outdoor Whitefield meeting, we must remember, was as much a festival as a formal church gathering.76
Many thousands regarded their attendance at Whitefield’s sermons as a spiritual milestone, however. One who undoubtedly attended Kennington meetings in 1739 was Mercy Good, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a “hair seller” in Southwark, south of the Thames. She told Whitefield that his preaching gave her hope of forgiveness “by the power [of] the word by you tho’ in a field.” Her conversion was unexpected: “I went out of curiosity but came home with joy . . . I have done 17 years of age and not knew Jesus Christ ‘til now.” She sheepishly apologized for her writing, “for it is not spelt proper at toll,” but implored him to write her back.77
His sensational London sermons in May and June of 1739 drew the harshest criticism against him yet. A burlesque, misogynist poem titled The Methodists portrayed Whitefield literally as the devil in disguise, charging that he was intent upon charming and seducing weak-willed women—perhaps those such as Mercy Good?—with rapturous talk of heaven:
What maid wou'd not be holy kist? Or who her teacher can resist?
Or when he tells her of her H—-n, what blessings thence to all are giv'n,
Which after death she’s sure to meet; the dear temptation is so sweet.
In those soft moments, (all the soul unbent), the maid on heavenly joys intent,
Who could withstand the pleasing proffer, or withstand the pious lecher’s offer?
Say wou'd she not in her New Birth, know some part of Heav'n on Earth?78
Whitefield had his defenders, too. The Conduct and Doctrine of the Reverend Mr. Whitefield Vindicated was as zealous to defend Whitefield as The Methodists was to ridicule him. Conduct and Doctrine presented Whitefield as a “Moses-like man” sent by God to “stand in the gap” (Ezekiel 22:30) and turn the British away from their sins before the judgment of God fell. His fiercest critics, the tract asserted, were the most “careless and debauched” members of the Church of England clergy, timeservers who delivered stultifying sermons a couple times a week and spent the rest of their time in “gaming, drinking, horse-racing, hunting and bowhng about in quest of fresh diversions and merriment.” This kind of assertion touched a raw nerve among Church of England clergymen, especially senior ones, who did not appreciate young Whitefield or his followers making blanket characterizations of their character. As the rhetoric became more heated, it became difficult to maintain a moderate position on the Methodists.79
The anti-Whitefield tracts attracted a sizeable audience. Joseph Trapp’s The Nature, Folly, Sin, and Danger, of Being Righteous Over-Much went through four editions in 1739. In April, Whitefield heard Trapp preach a version of this sermon and concluded that “with all his learning, [Trapp] knew nothing yet as he ought to know.” He prayed that God would rebuke Trapp’s spirit. Trapp was quite learned: an Anglican clergyman as well as Oxford’s first professor of poetry, he represented the Methodists as charlatans peddling faux religion. To Trapp, Methodism succeeded only because “the generality, the main bulk of the people, are injudicious, and easy to be imposed upon.” And charmed by novelty: “They are wonderfully struck with every thing that is new and unusual . . . never considering, that truth is the oldest thing in the world; and that in religion and morality whatever is really new, is certainly false.” Trapp earned a rejoinder from a pro-Whitefield author who wrote as “A Lover of Truth” and published the pointedly titled Doctor Trapp Vindicated from the Imputation of Being a Christian. The London Daily Post and Daily Advertiser likewise scoffed at Trapp and other clerical critics as “Reverend Papguns.”80
By mid-1739, the literature for and against Whitefield had reached flood tide. Whitefield, Hutton, and the Methodists had already transformed the British publishing world with the preacher’s sermons and journals, and now the anti- and pro-Whitefield titles began to crest, too. By one count, 154 anti-Whitefield titles appeared in 1739–40, which represented three-quarters of the total volume of anti-Methodist publications overall in those two years.81
By June 1739, Whitefield was preparing for his return to America. As he waited for passage, his relationship with John Wesley began to disintegrate. Wesley had decided to declaim against predestination and Calvinism, and to teach that Christians could achieve a state of sinless perfection in this life. Wesley began preaching on “free grace” in Bristol by the end of April, and soon correspondents apprised Whitefield of Wesley’s theological turn. Whitefield wrote to an English pastor that he “by no means” approved of Wesley’s teachings on perfection. Later he explained to a Scottish minister that he was “no friend to sinless perfection,” for he believed that “relics” of the sinful nature always remained in Christians’ hearts. In the succeeding months, Whitefield still encouraged his old mentor to preach alongside him. But their breakup was imminent.82
Behind the scenes, Whitefield wrote to Charles Wesley and pleaded with him to try to avoid a public split: “If your brother will be but silent about the doctrine of election and final perseverance, there will never be a division between us. The very thought of it shocks my soul.” But John had made a firm decision. He told James Hutton that via the casting of lots, God had not only confirmed his teaching against Calvinism, but also told him to publish his views.83
Whitefield and Wesley’s divide over predestination reflected a larger, long-term split among Anglicans on this question. (It also represented an ancient Christian debate. In the early fifth century, Augustine and Pelagius—who may have been born in the British Isles—had engaged in theological debates over election, free will, and people’s need for grace.) By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Calvinism had few strong Anglican advocates, even though the church’s Thirty-Nine Articles explicitly affirmed predestination and taught against free will. The Wesleys’ mother, Susanna, had brought them up with hostility to Calvinism, telling John in 1725 that rigid predestination “charges the most holy God with being the author of sin.” Whitefield, conversely, became convinced that a recovery of robust Calvinist teaching was essential to a renewal of pure gospel preaching. The theological controversy became an outlet for John Wesley and Whitefield to vent their personal frustrations with each other. Whitefield would never question Wesley’s salvation (as he did with latitudinarians), probably because of their personal relationship, and because he knew that Wesley had a clear testimony of conversion. Still, their theological rift would become vicious.84
On June 25, 1739, Whitefield addressed Wesley directly, telling him that he had heard of Wesley’s intention to “print a sermon against predestination.” The prospect saddened him: “It shocks me to think of it. What will be the consequence but controversy?” Whitefield implored him to maintain silence and reminded him that there were already public rumors about animosity between them. A week later, Whitefield asked him again not to distribute the sermon, but glumly noted that Wesley had cast the lot. “Oh! my heart in the midst of my body is like melted wax!” Whitefield exclaimed.85
But the die was already cast—literally. Wesley published the sermon in Bristol. Although Wesley opened with an appeal for civility, he left no doubt that he considered the doctrine of election to be abhorrent and blasphemous. Limited atonement—the notion that Christ died only for the elect—suggested that “God condemned millions of souls to everlasting fire . . . for want of that grace he will not give them.” Surely, God would not willingly “doom his creatures whether they will or no, to endless misery.” With Whitefield and other Calvinistic Methodists directly in his sights, Wesley stubbornly declared, “Here I fix my foot. On this I join issue with every asserter of it. You represent God as worse than the devil.”86
With his “fixed foot,” Wesley intended to cause a public rift with Whitefield. The doctrine of predestination certainly caused consternation among its opponents, and Wesley joined a long line of Arminian theologians who had begged Calvinists to consider the logical implications of their theology, and the awful light in which it ostensibly presented God. It is hard to resist the conclusion that Wesley had also determined, for whatever reason, to use such inflammatory language that it would inevitably cause a split. It was a perennial theological dispute playing out between two strong personalities. The clash over Calvinism badly damaged not only Wesley and Whitefield’s relationship, but also the British evangelical movement. (American evangelicals’ feuding over Calvinism largely came later, after the Revolution.) One of Wesley’s biographers notes that “the Calvinist controversy would be a running sore in the bowels of the Revival.”87
Whitefield did not immediately take Wesley’s bait. He continued to speak of Wesley as his “honoured friend” and wrote to Wesley in March 1740, saying, “Provoke me to it as much as you please, I do not think ever to enter the lists of controversy with you on the points wherein we differ.” But Whitefield’s printed reaction to Wesley would eventually come, in late 1740, after Whitefield had spent a year in America, where effectively all his revivalist allies were Calvinists.88
Whitefield was doubly frustrated as the break with Wesley unfolded: he should have already sailed for America. The British navy, however, had placed an embargo on outgoing commercial shipping until they could recruit (or forcibly impress) sailors needed for its ongoing conflict with Spain, the descriptively named War of Jenkins’ Ear. Thomas Carlyle popularized this moniker in the nineteenth century: the war’s name came from an ill-fated English captain, Robert Jenkins, whose ship the Spanish boarded near Florida in 1731. Accusing Jenkins of smuggling, Spanish sailors slashed his head with a sword, nearly cutting off his ear. Finally, according to newspaper reports of the incident, “they made a last assault on Jenkins; clutched the bloody slit ear of him; tore it mercilessly off; flung it in his face,” and said, “Carry that to your King, and tell him of it!” Jenkins kept the severed ear and apparently produced it during hearings before the House of Commons when he testified about his ordeal in 1738. Britain declared war against the Spanish in 1739. The naval war convulsed ports in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Whitefield’s ally James Oglethorpe led a British force out of Georgia in a failed assault against St. Augustine, Florida, in 1740.89
So Whitefield waited and preached. On June 22 came sensational news about the itinerant: “The famous Mr. Whitefield,” the Daily Post and other outlets reported, had “dropt down dead.” The (still-living) Whitefield found the rumor annoying. He preached at Blackheath, south of the Thames, on June 23, to an audience unusually small because of the report, he wrote, “that I was dead.” Whitefield admitted that he longed to be with Christ in heaven, yet he believed his time on earth was not up yet. He recorded his resolution in his journal: “I shall not yet die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord” (Psalm 118:17). But the report frightened his followers; Ralph Erskine’s family heard the news in Scotland. They were devastated until they “heard other accounts.” It was not the last instance of a false report of his demise—they were part of his trials of popularity.90
Throughout his time in England, Whitefield had raised money for the Georgia orphanage. The papers reported in June that Whitefield had accumulated £1,193 for his charitable projects. Nevertheless, critics questioned what Whitefield actually intended to do with that money, and lamented the gullibility of the (ostensibly) working-class audiences who gave it to him. The Daily Post of London said that many bosses were glad to see him go to America so that the lazy employees who flocked to the preacher would return to work. The article implied that Whitefield would visit Philadelphia to great personal advantage, spending the “fools pence he has talk'd out of the pockets of his lunatic audience.”91
Threats of violence and arrest accompanied the printed attacks against him. Hostile sheriffs could not find legal justification for detaining Whitefield, although some tried to frighten him by raising the prospect. In July, Whitefield engaged in a particularly nasty exchange with the mayor of Basingstoke, where an angry innkeeper refused to house him, crowds jeered him, and hooligans shot fireworks at his door. The nervous mayor tried to forbid him from preaching in the town, fearing a riot.92 Whitefield demanded to know on what legal basis the mayor intended to ban him. Furthermore, Whitefield reminded him that the town was simultaneously hosting a “revel,” which included cudgeling and wresthng matches. Wresthng, boxing, and cudgeling were spectator sports that people would travel for miles to see. Those were presumably more a threat to the public peace than an assembly of God worshippers, Whitefield reasoned; why not ban the revel instead of his revival? If the mayor did not comply, Whitefield bluntly warned the magistrate that he would “rise up against you at the great day [i.e., Judgment Day], and be a swift witness against your partiality.”93
On the appointed evening, Whitefield preached with little incident other than a few boys calling him “strange names.” But Whitefield decided that he had to confront the revelers, so he went to the “stage, erected for the wrestlers, and began to show them the error of their ways.” Some youths shouted him down with cries of “huzza,” and one of the brawlers accosted him and hit him with a cudgel. Whitefield, fearing for his life, left the stage, pushed through the shouting crowd, and escaped on his horse. It was a frightening experience, but in his published journal, he reckoned it a great success. He resolved to mount “an offensive war with Satan,” whatever the risks.94
Finally, in August 1739, the navy lifted the embargo. As Whitefield prepared to depart, he spent much of his time at Blendon Hall, the estate of Thomas Delamotte, a London sugar merchant who traded with Caribbean slave plantations. The estate lay down the Thames toward Gravesend and other ports from which Whitefield might ultimately depart. The Delamottes had become something of a second family for him. Of particular interest to him was the Delamottes’ daughter, Elizabeth, whom Whitefield had met through Charles Wesley in the fall of 1737. Elizabeth had experienced conversion in 1738, becoming a zealous Methodist. Whitefield did not reveal in his writings exactly when his acquaintance with her grew into a romantic interest, but he certainly did not forget about Elizabeth as he traveled in the colonies.95
As he waited to sail, he tidied up his remaining affairs, hastily penning a response to Bishop Gibson’s recent pastoral letter. Whitefield could not possibly respond to the avalanche of writings against him, but given Gibson’s prominence as the bishop of London, Whitefield felt it necessary to reply to his missive. The itinerant tried to paint his view of the Holy Spirit as the moderate, biblical position, instead of an example of enthusiasm, as the bishop had charged. In his published journal, Whitefield suggested that Gibson had made good works a necessary condition of salvation, a theological error that Whitefield saw as the root of many of the Anglican Church’s problems.96
Appropriately, he preached his Kennington farewell sermon on Paul’s parting address to the elders of the church of Ephesus in Acts 20. In that passage, Paul concluded by saying, “Behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.” Acts records that the elders then “wept sore, and fell on Paul’s neck, and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more. And they accompanied him unto the ship.” The crowd at Kennington did not accompany Whitefield to the ship, but many did weep sore.97
When Whitefield finally boarded the Elizabeth on August 13, he wrote, “Blessed be God for detaining me in England by the embargo.” He resolved, as best he could, never to question God’s timing. He set out again for America. Before, he had gone as a relatively unknown missionary to Georgia. Now he was the sensation of the British Atlantic world.98