On a doctor’s suggestion, he withdrew from school for a time, but he never after doubted his Christian faith.
The events of the following years reinforced Whitefield’s conviction that the conversion had been a turning point in his life. The Bishop of Gloucester, Martin Benson (1689–1752), sought him out, gave him a small scholarship for the purchase of books, and offered to ordain him before the canonical age of twenty-three. Once he began preaching, Whitefield found that people responded to his message, whether he spoke in London churches, in the American colonies (which, on the advice of the Wesleys, he first visited in 1737), or in fields (as he began to do in 1739).12 Before his life ended, he would deliver an approximate total of eighteen thousand sermons in England, Scotland (fourteen visits), Ireland (two visits), and America (seven visits). Supporters said that his voice was so rich that he could bring people to tears with the mere saying of the word Mesopotamia. He could be heard by thirty thousand and yet speak intimately to a small prayer group.13
While he recognized that not all would have—or needed—conversion experiences as dramatic as his own, he was absolutely convinced that, without some experience of new birth, salvation was impossible. That experience had to involve, moreover, real personal struggle:
My dear friends, there must be a principle wrought in the heart by the Spirit of the Living God. … If I were to ask how long it is since you loved God, you would say, As long as you can remember; you never hated God, you know no time when there was enmity in your heart against God. Then, unless you were sanctified very early, you never loved God in your life. My dear friends, I am more particular in this, because it is a most deceitful delusion, whereby so many people are carried away, that they believe already. … It is the peculiar work of the Spirit of God to convince us of our unbelief—that we have got no faith. … Now, my dear friends, did God ever show to you that you have no faith? Were you ever made to bewail a hard heart of unbelief? Was it ever the language of your heart, Lord, enable me to call thee my Lord and my God? Did Jesus Christ ever convince you in this manner? Did he ever convince you of your inability to be close with Christ, and make you to cry out to God to give you faith? If not, do not speak peace to your heart.14
Fig. 11 John Wesley and his Friends at Oxford
Whitefield’s reference to peace was an allusion to Jeremiah 6:14 (“They have healed the wounds of my people lightly, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”).15 Converted Christians could not find peace until after they had first experienced what supporters of the Awakening came to call “legal fear”—the knowledge that one’s own efforts always fell short of fulfilling the Law of God.16
Whitefield had even stronger words for those “false doctors” who suggested that the New Testament concept of the new birth did not imply personal conversion:
Suppose any of these doctors were to come to any woman when her travailing pains were upon her, and she were crying out, and labour pains came on faster and faster, and they should stand preaching at the door, and say, Good woman, these are only metaphorical pains, this is only a bold expression of the Easterns, it is only metaphorical; I question whether the woman would not wish the doctor some of these metaphorical pains for talking so, which he would find real ones. … I am of an odd temper, and of such a temper, that I heartily wish they may be put under the pangs of the new birth, and know what it is by their own experience, know that there is nothing in nature more real than the new birth.17
Whitefield explained that the new birth created “a new understanding, a new will, … new affections, a renewed conscience, a renewed memory, [and] a renewed body.”18
Whitefield had rejected the high church argument that a valid ministry required ordination by a bishop in episcopal succession. His stress on a new birth that was often marked by dramatic conversion meant that he also departed from the covenant teaching of many of his coreligionists in another way. In Catechetical Lectures, Thomas Bray had equated renewal of the covenant with baptism and the Eucharist; Whitefield connected it with personal conversion.
After a not particularly successful missionary stint in Georgia and conversion experiences of their own, John and Charles Wesley followed Whitefield on the preaching circuit in England. Never quite as dramatic in the pulpit as Whitefield, they had other gifts that Whitefield lacked. In particular, they had a gift at organization and were able to create a network of societies that sustained the revival between visits of the great preachers.
John and Charles Wesley had loosely patterned the Holy Club at Oxford, which Whitefield had joined, on the English religious society Anthony Horneck (1641–97) had introduced in 1687. Horneck’s society, based on German pietistic models, had been an exclusively male group devoted to prayer, Bible study, and conversation about practical piety. John and Charles Wesley’s father, Church of England clergyman Samuel Wesley (1662–1735), had introduced one such group in his Epworth parish. Samuel, however, dissolved the organization when his wife Susanna (1669/70–1742) insisted on active participation.19
Whitefield and the Wesleys worked with existing religious societies and also helped to form new ones. They began, however, to change the Horneck model in significant ways, in part to conform to what they had learned from Moravian pietists. (John Wesley had been deeply impressed by the Moravians he met on the ship to Georgia in 1735, had joined their Fetter Lane Society organized by Peter Böhler in London, and had visited the Moravian community in Germany in 1738.) The newer religious societies segregated those who had not yet experienced the new birth from those converted Christians who were seeking holiness of life. The Wesleys opened membership to women, and introduced the singing of hymns, the lyrics of many of which were written by Charles Wesley.20
While Whitefield and the Wesleys both made use of such societies, the Wesleys would develop a structure with which to coordinate and connect them. By 1746, John Wesley had established a hierarchy with “class leaders” presiding over “classes” or “bands” of a dozen or so and “lay preachers” leading societies composed of several such classes. The societies were, in turn, grouped into circuits led by “superintendents.” The lay preachers and superintendents (some of whom were clergy of the Church of England) then met together in “annual conferences.”21 Thus, while Whitefield’s visits produced more immediate effect, the long-term influence of the Wesleys would be greater.
Whitefield’s tour of 1739–40 left a permanent mark on the churches in the American colonies. The call for revival was so strong that it was impossible for American Christians to ignore. They had either to align themselves with it or become outside critics of the movement. Congregationalists who approved of the Awakening formed “New Light” congregations. Presbyterian clergy and congregations created a separate “New Side” synod (1741–58). Other supporters of the Awakening came to see adult baptism as an appropriate sign of the awakening of adult faith. They left Presbyterian and Congregational churches altogether
