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SEPARATION BETWEEN WHITFIELD AND WESLEY.

must now engage our attention; but the biography of Sir Richard Hill would be incomplete without it, and a record of the zeal and of the mistakes of each party, will have its uses both of encouragement and warning.

The foundation of the theological disputes in which the brothers Richard and Rowland Hill occupied so prominent a situation, was unquestionably laid in the separation of Whitfield from John Wesley in the year 1741, when Mr. Richard Hill was a child; but these particular controversies did not break out till the very year in which Whitfield died, or they would most likely have been checked by his master hand. The breach between him and Wesley just alluded to, was both singular and humiliating; but like the jar of the natural elements, had perhaps its uses upon the general system in preventing extremes on either side. A recent biographer1 of Whitfield says on this subject, "Had they been united in either extreme, truth would have made less progress. As joint Arminians, they would have spread Pelagianism; and as joint Calvinists they would have been hyper, but not antinomian. It was well, therefore, that they modified each other; for they were two suns which could not have fixed in one meridian, without setting on fire the whole course of sound theology." Be this as it may, it was still a tempest, and when one of the suns set in the other hemisphere2 the storm became a very hurricane in this.

The history of the whole dispute is very extraordinary, both as respects the manner in which the fire was kindled, and the way in which, to use Whitfield's expression, "busy bodies blew up the coals." In August 1739, Whitfield went to America, where he founded his well

WHITFIELD AND JONATHAN EDWARDS.

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known Orphan-house, and made extensive circuits producing various effects, one of which was a revival of the zealous spirit at Northampton. While thus engaged, he caught the tone and imbibed the opinions of the great, the searching, but too gloomy Jonathan Edwards, whose Treatise on "Religious Affections" will ever remain as a monument of his almost superhuman insight into Christian character. Some of his sermons, however, are painful evidences of a state of mind occasionally chilled and clouded by the mists of ultraism. Compared with this gifted man, the other writers of his stamp in America have been, as it was remarked by Robert Hall, "but as insects that swarmed in his carcase." His "Treatise on the Will" was too deep a book for Whitfield; and the probability is, that the author himself was somewhat out of his own depth when he wrote it. No wonder then that Whitfield when he first came in contact with Edwards, "winced a little under his metaphysical probe;" but at last he adopted his Calvinistic views, though it may be fairly doubted if he ever fully understood them as their defender, any more than Wesley did as their opponent. The same may be also said of many who have followed far behind in their respective wakes.

The polemics on each side announced themselves respectively as Calvinist and Arminian, but neither one nor the other of them adopted in full the tenets usually implied in these names. The Whitfieldians did not advocate the doctrine of reprobation; the Wesleyans willingly acknowledged the sinfulness of human nature, its guilt, and pollution, with the necessity of divine grace to direct and purify the will. But their phraseology was ill selected, and their doctrine of perfection altogether indefensible upon any grounds connected with the right meaning of that word. Whitfield thought it his duty

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SITUATION OF WHITFIELD.

on arriving in England, to make known the opinions which had been confirmed in his mind during his sojourn in America, and bore with extreme patience the cutting severance of long friendships which this declaration cost him. Some of his once attached hearers ran past him while preaching in Moorfields, as if his breath conveyed a pestilence, and others, who had in times past hung upon his lips for every word he uttered, stood staring in his face with their fingers in their ears, to shew their abhorrence of his new sentiments. The least that could be expected under these circumstances, was the painful breach that soon ensued; and men who had never read a page of Calvin' in their lives, or of Arminius either, began fighting for their respective tenets with a most unchristian violence. The Wesleys commenced with "We will drive John Calvin out of Bristol," even before Whitfield went to America, who previously to his journey, conjured them to be silent on topics which might lead to their being "divided among themselves;" for at that time Whitfield somewhat favoured the doctrine of election, though he was silent upon it in his sermons, to prevent controversy. Wesley met his remonstrance by a superstitious appeal to sortilege. He drew lots upon the question, preach and print, or be silent. The lot decided the former, but the printing did not take place till Whitfield had left England. In his reply to what Wesley sent forth, he revealed under the influence of the moment, a private transaction of a similar kind which had exhibited the folly of having recourse to the practice of drawing lots. It was this. In 1736, the vessel which brought Wesley back from America passed that which was carrying Whitfield out, in the Downs. These

1 "Whitfield," says Philip, "assured Wesley when they began to differ, that he had never read a page of Calvin !"

SORTILEGE OF WESLEY.

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two eminent evangelists crossed each other without recognition; but when Wesley landed he found it was not too late to communicate with his fellow labourer. What he had experienced in the other hemisphere, induced him to think that Whitfield would do more good by staying at home than by going to Georgia, but he referred the question to chance! The result he communicated to Whitfield in a letter containing the lot drawn.—Let him return to England. This he called "asking counsel of God!" However, the less superstitious Whitfield had made up his mind and proceeded on his way. Wesley afterwards partly acknowledged that it was a wrong lot, but made this singular excuse, Though God never before gave me a wrong lot, yet perhaps he suffered me to have such a lot at that time, to try what was in your heart." But Whitfield said pointedly, "It was plain you had a wrong lot given you here, and justly, because you tempted God in drawing one." Still the whole was a private affair between these two zealous men, and Whitfield was not justified, as he afterwards most penitently acknowledged, in revealing it to the world. Wesley's remark was sufficiently cutting and not unmerited-"He had said enough of what was wholly foreign to the question, to make an open and probably irreparable breach between him and me, seeing 'for a treacherous wound, and for the betraying of secrets, every friend will depart.' "1 This observation was made in an interview with Whitfield, in adverting to the result of which Wesley observes, "I most approved of his plainness of speech." In fact, he had plainly said to his old friend and coadjutor, "You and I preach two different gospels, and therefore I cannot

1 Wesley's Journal, April 4, 1741.

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SINGULAR PROCEEDINGS.

join you or give you the right hand of fellowship, but must publicly preach against both you and your brother, whenever I preach at all. But, Sir," said a friend of Wesley, who was present, "you promised only a few days ago, that whatever your private opinion might be, you would never publicly preach against them." To this he replied, "That promise was only an effect of human weakness, and I am now of another mind." Wesley justly called this "the putting of weapons into their hands, who loved neither the one nor the other;" but the breach was permitted, and, as I have before observed, was not without its uses. Moreover, whatever Whitfield might have been disposed to do with regard to other topics, he never could have passed unnoticed Wesley's absurd doctrine of perfection, about which its originator was not a little sore, as well he might be, when his sortilege and other weaknesses proved him to have been no more than others an exemplification of it in his own person. Neither can we for a moment vindicate the rashness of his great opponent. The spirit of both, and of their respective partisans, was utterly wrong; and so was that in which the controversy thus begun was perpetuated after Whitfield's voice was hushed in the silence of death. Southey says truly, that

Wesley's was a heart in which resentment never could strike root;" and therefore, upon Whitfield's acknowledgment of his regret, enmity soon ceased, though they came no closer in opinion. In fact, it was determined by the former that a solemn record of his views should be entered in the minutes of a conference. This took place at the well-known Foundry, on Monday, June 25, 1744, and five succeeding days, as appears in the following extract from Wesley's Journal:-" Monday, 25, and the five following days, we spent in conference with