Whitefield was born on 27 December [O.S. 16 December] 1714 at the Bell Inn, Southgate Street, Gloucester. Whitefield was the fifth son (seventh and last child) of Thomas Whitefield and Elizabeth Edwards, who kept an inn at Gloucester.[4] His father died when he was only two years old, and he helped his mother with the inn. At an early age, he found that he had a passion and talent for acting in the theatre, a passion that he would carry on with the very theatrical re-enactments of Bible stories he told during his sermons. He was educated at The Crypt School in Gloucester[5] and at Pembroke College, Oxford.[6][7]
Because business at the inn had diminished, Whitefield did not have the means to pay for his tuition.[8] He therefore came up to the University of Oxford as a servitor, the lowest rank of undergraduates. Granted free tuition, he acted as a servant to fellows and fellow-commoners; duties including teaching them in the morning, helping them bathe, cleaning their rooms, carrying their books, and assisting them with work.[8] But, Whitfield would later confess that though he did good works and tried to obey the law of God, he was not yet truly converted to Christ. It was Henry Scougal's book, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, that Whitfield says opened his eyes to the Gospel and led to his conversion. It was that book he says, that God used to show him that he was still lost despite all his attempts to gain the favor of God by means of good works. Only by God's grace can a person realize they have offended God and their need for Jesus Christ, God's Son, and His righteousness imputed to them by faith. Henry Scougal's book showed him the need for a man to be born of God from above, and that this is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit creating a new heart and a new nature within that wants to serve God, not in order to be saved, but because one has been graciously and undeservedly saved. In 1736, after Whitfield's conversion, the Bishop of Gloucester ordained him a deacon of the Church of England.[1]
