George Whitefield: Sermons George Whitefield

Whitefield welcomed opposition because as he said, "the more I am opposed, the more joy I feel".[67] He proved himself adept at creating controversy. In his 1740 visit to Charles Town, it "took Whitefield only four days to plunge Charles Town into religious and social controversy."[68] Whitefield thought he might be martyred for his views. After he attacked the established church he predicted that he would "be set at nought by the Rabbies of our Church, and perhaps at last be killed by them".[4]

Clergy

Whitefield chastised other clergy for teaching only "the shell and shadow of religion" because they did not hold the necessity of a new birth, without which a person would be "thrust down into Hell".[4] In his 1740–41 visit to North America (as he had done in England), he attacked other clergy (mostly Anglican) calling them "God's persecutors". He said that Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London with supervision over Anglican clergy in America,[69] knew no "more of Christianity, than Mahaomet, or an Infidel".[4] After Whitefield preached at St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina, the Commissary, Alexander Garden, suspended him as a "vagabond clergyman." After being suspended, Whitefield attacked all South Carolina's Anglican clergy in print. Whitefield issued a blanket indictment of New England's Congregational ministers for their "lack of zeal".[4]

In 1740, Whitefield published attacks on "the works of two of Anglicanism's revered seventeenth-century authors". Whitefield wrote that John Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury (1691–1694), had "no more been a true Christian than had Muhammad". He also attacked Richard Allestree's The Whole Duty of Man, one of Anglicanism's most popular spiritual tracts. At least once Whitefield had his followers burn the tract "with great Detestation".[4] In England and Scotland (1741–1744), Whitefield bitterly accused John Wesley of undermining his work. He preached against Wesley, arguing that Wesley's attacks on predestination had alienated "very many of my spiritual children". Wesley replied that Whitefield's attacks were "treacherous" and that Whitefield had made himself "odious and contemptible". However, the two reconciled in later life. Along with Wesley, Whitefield had been influenced by the Moravian Church, but in 1753 he condemned them and attacked their leader, Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf, and their practices. When Joseph Trapp criticized Whitefield's Journals, Whitefield retorted that Trapp was "no Christian but a servant of Satan".[4]

English, Scottish, and American clergy attacked Whitefield, often in response to his attacks on them and Anglicanism. Early in his career, Whitefield criticized the Church of England. In response, clergy called Whitefield one of "the young quacks in divinity" who are "breaking the peace and unity" of the church. From 1738 to 1741, Whitefield issued seven Journals.[70] A sermon in St Paul's Cathedral depicted them as "a medley of vanity, and nonsense, and blasphemy jumbled together". Trapp called the Journals "blasphemous" and accused Whitefield of being "besotted either with pride or madness".[4] In England, by 1739 when he was ordained priest,[71] Whitefield wrote that "the spirit of the clergy began to be much embittered" and that "churches were gradually denied me".[72] In response to Whitefield's Journals, the bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, published a 1739 pastoral letter criticizing Whitefield.[73][74] Whitefield responded by labelling Anglican clergy as "lazy, non-spiritual, and pleasure seeking". He rejected ecclesiastical authority claiming that 'the whole world is now my parish'.[4]

In 1740, Whitefield had attacked Tillotson and Richard Allestree's The Whole Duty of Man. These attacks resulted in hostile responses and reduced attendance at his London open-air preaching.[4] In 1741, Whitefield made his first visit to Scotland at the invitation of "Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, leaders of the breakaway Associate Presbytery. When they demanded and Whitefield refused that he preach only in their churches, they attacked him as a "sorcerer" and a "vain-glorious, self-seeking, puffed-up creature". In addition, Whitefield's collecting money for his Bethesda orphanage, combined with the hysteria evoked by his open-air sermons, resulted in bitter attacks in Edinburgh and Glasgow."[4]

Whitefield's itinerant preaching throughout the colonies was opposed by Bishop Benson who had ordained him for a settled ministry in Georgia. Whitefield replied that if bishops did not authorize his itinerant preaching, God would give him the authority.[4] In 1740, Jonathan Edwards invited Whitefield to preach in his church in Northampton. Edwards was "deeply disturbed by his unqualified appeals to emotion, his openly judging those he considered unconverted, and his demand for instant conversions". Whitefield refused to discuss Edwards' misgivings with him. Later, Edwards delivered a series of sermons containing but "thinly veiled critiques" of Whitefield's preaching, "warning against over-dependence upon a preacher's eloquence and fervency".[4] During Whitefield's 1744–1748 visit to America, ten critical pamphlets were published, two by officials of Harvard and Yale. This criticism was in part evoked by Whitefield's criticism of "their education and Christian commitment" in his Journal of 1741. Whitefield saw this opposition as "a conspiracy" against him.[4] Whitefield would be derided with names such as "Dr. Squintum", mocking him for his esotropia.[75]

Laity

When Whitefield preached in a dissenting church and "the congregation's response was dismal," he ascribed the response to "the people's being hardened" as were "Pharaoh and the Egyptians" in the Bible.[76]

Many New Englanders claimed that Whitefield destroyed "New England's orderly parish system, communities, and even families". The "Declaration of the Association of the County of New Haven, 1745" stated that after Whitefield's preaching "religion is now in a far worse state than it was".[4] After Whitefield preached in Charlestown, a local newspaper article attacked him as "blasphemous, uncharitable, and unreasonable."[77] After Whitefield condemned Moravians and their practices, his former London printer (a Moravian) called Whitefield "a Mahomet, a Caesar, an imposter, a Don Quixote, a devil, the beast, the man of sin, the Antichrist".[4]

In the open air in Dublin, Ireland (1757), Whitefield condemned Roman Catholicism, inciting an attack by "hundreds and hundreds of papists" who cursed and wounded him severely and smashed his portable pulpit.[4] On various occasions, a woman assaulted Whitefield with "scissors and a pistol, and her teeth". "Stones and dead cats" were thrown at him. A man almost killed him with a brass-headed cane. "Another climbed a tree to urinate on him."[78] In 1760, Whitefield was burlesqued by Samuel Foote in The Minor.[79]

Nobility

Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, made Whitefield her personal chaplain. In her chapel, it was noted that his preaching was "more Considered among persons of a Superior Rank" who attended the countess's services. Whitefield was humble before the countess saying that he cried when he was "thinking of your Ladyship's condescending to patronize such a dead dog as I am". He now said that he "highly esteemed bishops of the Church of England because of their sacred character". He confessed that in "many things" he had "judged and acted wrong" and had "been too bitter in my zeal". In 1763, in a defense of Methodism, Whitefield "repeated contrition for much contained in his Journals".[4]

Among the nobility who heard Whitefield in the Countess of Huntingdon's home was Lady Townshend.[80] Regarding the changes in Whitefield, someone asked Lady Townshend, "Pray, madam, is it true that Whitefield has recanted?" She replied, "No, sir, he has only canted."[81] One meaning of cant is "to affect religious or pietistic phraseology, especially as a matter of fashion or profession; to talk unreally or hypocritically with an affectation of goodness or piety".[82]