CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE 18th CENTURY - ( CHAPTER 4 ) - { PT. 18 }


 { PT.  18 } - If other Christians misrepresented him, he forgave them. If they refused to work with him, he still loved them. Nothing could be a more powerful testimony against narrow-mindedness than his request, made shortly before his death, that John Wesley should be asked to preach his funeral sermon when he died. Wesley and he had long ceased to agree about Calvinistic points, but Whitefield, to the very end, was determined to forget minor differences and to regard Wesley as Calvin did Luther--only as a god servant of Jesus Christ. On another occasion, a critical professed follower of religion asked him whether he thought they would see John Wesley in heaven. No, sir, was the remarkable answer. He will be so near the throne, and we will be at such a distance, that we will hardly get a sight of him! Certainly George Whitefield was not a man without faults. Like all of God's saints, he was an imperfect creature. He sometimes erred in judgment. He often made rushed conclusions about Providence and mistook his own inclination for God's leadings. He was frequently hasty both with his tongue and his pen. He had no business to say that Archbishop Tillotson knew no more of the gospel than Mohammed. He was wrong to categorize some people as the Lord's enemies and others as the Lord's friends so quickly and emphatically as he sometimes did. He was to blame for denouncing many of the clergy as letter-learned Pharisees because they could not receive the doctrine of the new birth. 

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