CHRISTIAN LEADERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

  { PT.  7 } - The gospel proclaimed in the fields was listened to and eagerly received by hundreds who never dreamed of going to a place of worship. The cause of pure religion was advanced, and souls were plucked from that hand of Satan like brands from the burning. However, it was going much too fast for the Church of England of those days. The clergy, with a few honorable exceptions, entirely refused to support this strange preacher. In the true spirit of the dog in the manger,they neither liked to go after the semi-heathen masses of population themselves nor did they like anyone else to do the work for them. The consequence was that the sermons of Whitefield in the pulpits of the Church of England from this time almost entirely stopped. He loved the Church in which he had been ordained, he gloried in her Thirty-nine Articles of belief, and he used her Book of Common Prayer with pleasure--but the Church did not love him, and so lost the use of his services. The plain truth ...