The Sermons of George Whitefield (Two-Volume Set) E-Book

George Whitefield

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1905

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

George Whitefield was the leading evangelical clergyman of the eighteenth century and one of the driving forces, humanly speaking, of revivals on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet until now, his sermons have been left as an untapped resource for today's church.Editor Lee Gatiss has thus reproduced 57 sermons that were originally authorized to be published by Whitefield himself in the late 1700s, in addition to two sermons edited by Gillies for Whitefield's Works, and two more that are of great importance. Gatiss includes careful and extensive footnotes detailing the historical and theological background to Whitefield's preaching, which puts the man and his messages into context for a new generation of readers. The text has also been updated for the twenty-first century with modern grammar, spelling, and punctuation—revised in a manner that leaves Whitefield's distinct voice intact and coherent for today's reader.Finally, the powerful and passionate preaching that set the world on fire in the Great Awakening is available to all.

Leseprobe

“George Whitefield was undoubtedly one of the greatest preachers of the modern Christian era, yet today he remains strangely neglected, even among evangelical Christians. Lee Gatiss’s excellent edition of Whitefield’s sermons will alleviate some of this undeserved obscurity. Pastors, professors, and laypeople would all do well to reflect on these sermons, which more than any other earthly force helped stir the massive revivals of the Great Awakening.”

Thomas S. Kidd, Associate Professor of History, Baylor University; author, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America

“Lee Gatiss has done us a service—dusting off, tidying up, and re-presenting Whitefield’s electric preaching to a new age. Gatiss’s introduction to the sermons is worth the price of the volumes alone. My prayer is that these sermons will raise up, and stir up, a generation to preach with gospel fire. Amen and Amen.”

Josh Moody, Senior Pastor, College Church, Wheaton, Illinois; author, The God-Centered Life: Insights from Jonathan Edwards

“George Whitefield has impacted my life and ministry more than I could ever measure. I could not be more excited about these sermons being back in print. One can only pray that the same Lord who used these sermons to shake the world so long ago will give us another Great Awakening through them. Whitefield’s own prayer for these sermons would surely accord with what he said when he gave the leadership of the Methodist movement to Wesley, ‘Let the name of Whitefield perish, if only the name of Christ be glorified.’”

Jason C. Meyer, Associate Pastor for Preaching and Vision, Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota

“I have read some comments on the printed sermons of Whitefield that say these sermons don’t translate well to the written medium. Well, I am sure it would have been amazing to hear him preach; but, given that, I find the written sermons to have an intrinsic fervor, power, clarity, and theological pungency that still leaps off the page into the conscience and affections in a gripping and edifying way. This publication is welcome; it will do us good and demonstrates once again that God’s truth transcends all generations and cultures and that God only rarely gives gifts to the church as transparently good as George Whitefield. Thanks to Lee Gatiss and thanks to Crossway.”

Tom Nettles, Professor of Historical Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

The Sermons of George Whitefield

Copyright North America edition © 2012 by Church Society

Published by Crossway                      1300 Crescent Street                      Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Erik Maldre

Cover image: George Whitefield preaching by John Collet (c. 1725–80)

Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library Nationality / copyright status: English / out of copyright

First printing 2012

Printed in the United States of America

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-3245-0 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-3246-7 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-3247-4 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-3248-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Whitefield, George, 1714 –1770.

The sermons of George Whitefield / edited and with an introduction by Lee Gatiss.

      p. cm. — (Reformed evangelical Anglican library)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4335-3245-0 (hc)

1. Presbyterian Church—Sermons. 2. Sermons, English—18th century. I. Gatiss, Lee. II. Title.

BX9178.W5S286              2012

252'.075—dc23 2012013402

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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For Darlo, Uncle Ro, and Steve.

All for the One

Acknowledgements

As with any large undertaking there are always a number of people to thank for helping it all come together. First and foremost I would like to thank James Crabtree and Duncan Boyd for their vision and confidence in supporting the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Library project, and these volumes in particular.

David Phillips at Church Society and Phil Roberts of Tentmaker Publications have done sterling work to produce the final product. Timothy and Deborah Edwards, Benedict Bird, David Meager, Tom D. Wright, and Kerry Gatiss were exceptionally eagle-eyed readers and discerning commentators, saving me from many embarrassing errors; any that remain are sadly all my own work.

Thanks are also due to my wife, Kerry, for constant encouragement as I tinkered away at my ‘spare time and insomniac project’, even on the rare occasions when she felt a little like a ‘Whitefield widow.’

These volumes are dedicated to the Reverends Paul T. Darlington, Rohintan K. Mody, and Stephen J. Walton (‘the Musketeers’) with gratitude for their faithful and prayerful friendship and partnership in gospel ministry over many years. May George Whitefield be an inspiration to them and to many others like them who preach the word, in season and out of season, wherever the Lord has called them.

By constitution the Church of England, into which I and they were ordained, is a Reformed, Protestant, and Evangelical denomination. In its original foundation it was never intended to be merely the religious expression of changing English culture; nor was it designed as a pluralistic melting pot of various contradictory persuasions. As the late John Stott rightly asserted (in his excellent book, Christ the Controversialist), ‘according to its own formularies, this church is reformed and evangelical.’

In recent years such firm confidence has been lost, as alternative versions of Anglican identity and history have gained sway. Evangelicals have too often been content to think, act, and be seen as marginal rather than as mainstream Anglicans. Part of the reason for this has been a neglect of the doctrinal deposit and pastoral piety of our rich heritage of heroes amongst Anglican reformers, revivers, and writers from years gone by.

To contribute towards the recovery of their more robust vision of Anglican theology and identity, these volumes of Whitefield’s sermons were originally published in the UK as part of the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Library (REAL). It is my hope and prayer that by God’s grace this collection will contain a variety of theological, homiletical, and pastoral works from previous generations to both edify and inspire us as we seek to reform the church and reach the lost in our day.

May God be pleased graciously to continue using us and the Church of England for his greater glory, in every corner of our land and throughout his world, as we uphold what the Queen’s Coronation Oath calls ‘the true profession of the Gospel . . . the Protestant Reformed Religion.’

Whitefield had a great heart for those on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean too, and so I am grateful to Crossway for giving his sermons a fresh lease of life both there and around the world. As his words begin thus to circulate more freely, it is my prayer that his passion for God’s glory, his biblical boldness, his ‘catholic’ spirit, and his heart for the lost will be a tremendous inspiration to a new generation of men and women as we think through the challenges of following the Lord Jesus in our own day and age.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Lee Gatiss

Tyndale House, Cambridge (UK)

Contents

Introduction by Lee Gatiss

1 The Seed of the Woman and the Seed of the Serpent [Genesis 3:15]

2 Walking with God [Genesis 5:24]

3 Abraham’s Offering Up His Son Isaac [Genesis 22:12]

4 The Great Duty of Family-Religion [Joshua 24:15]

5 Christ the Best Husband [Psalm 45:10-11]

6 Britain’s Mercies and Britain’s Duty [Psalm 105:45]

7 Thankfulness for Mercies Received, a Necessary Duty [Psalm 107:30-31]

8 The Necessity and Benefits of Religious Society [Ecclesiastes 4:9-12]

9 The Folly and Danger of Not Being Righteous Enough [Ecclesiastes 7:16]

10 A Preservative against Unsettled Notions [Ecclesiastes 7:16]

11 The Benefits of an Early Piety [Ecclesiastes 12:1]

12 Christ the Believer’s Husband [Isaiah 44:5]

13 The Potter and the Clay [Jeremiah 18:1-6]

14 The Lord Our Righteousness [Jeremiah 23:6]

15 The Righteousness of Christ an Everlasting Righteousness [Daniel 9:24]

16 The True Way of Keeping Christmas [Matthew 1:21] 

17 The Temptation of Christ [Matthew 4:1-11]

18 The Heinous Sin of Profane Cursing and Swearing [Matthew 5:34]

19 Christ the Support of the Tempted [Matthew 6:13]

20 Worldly Business No Plea for the Neglect of Religion [Matthew 8:22]

21 Christ the Only Rest for the Weary and Heavy Laden [Matthew 11:28]

22 The Folly and Danger of Parting with Christ for the Pleasures and Profits of Life [Matthew 8:23-34]

23 Marks of a True Conversion [Matthew 18:3]

24 What Think Ye of Christ? [Matthew 22:42]

25 The Wise and Foolish Virgins [Matthew 25:13]

26 The Eternity of Hell Torments [Matthew 25:46]

27 Blind Bartimeus [Mark 10:52]

28 Directions How to Hear Sermons [Luke 8:18]

29 The Extent and Reasonableness of Self-Denial [Luke 9:23]

30 Christ’s Transfiguration [Luke 9:28-36]

31 The Care of the Soul Urged as the One Thing Needful [Luke 10:42]

32 A Penitent Heart, the Best New Year’s Gift [Luke 13:3]

33 The Gospel Supper [Luke 14:22-24]

34 The Pharisee and the Publican [Luke 18:14]

35 The Conversion of Zaccheus [Luke 19:9-10]

36 The Marriage of Cana [John 2:11]

37 The Duty of Searching the Scriptures [John 5:39]

38 The Indwelling of the Spirit, the Common Privilege of All Believers [John 7:37-39]

39 The Resurrection of Lazarus [John 11:43-44]

40 The Holy Spirit Convincing the World of Sin, Righteousness and Judgment [John 16:8]

41 Saul’s Conversion [Acts 9:22]

42 Marks of Having Received the Holy Ghost [Acts 19:2]

43 The Almost Christian [Acts 26:28]

44 Christ the Believer’s Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification and Redemption [1 Corinthians 1:30]

45 The Knowledge of Jesus Christ the Best Knowledge [1 Corinthians 2:2]

46 Of Justification by Christ [1 Corinthians 6:11]

47 The Great Duty of Charity Recommended [1 Corinthians 13:8]

48 Satan’s Devices [2 Corinthians 2:11]

49 On Regeneration [2 Corinthians 5:17]

50 Christians, Temples of the Living God [2 Corinthians 6:16]

51 Christ the Only Preservative against a Reprobate Spirit [2 Corinthians 13:5]

52 The Heinous Sin of Drunkenness [Ephesians 5:18]

53 The Power of Christ’s Resurrection [Philippians 3:10]

54 Intercession Every Christian’s Duty [1 Thessalonians 5:25]

55 Persecution Every Christian’s Lot [2 Timothy 3:12]

56 An Exhortation to the People of God Not to Be Discouraged in Their Way, by the Scoffs and Contempt of Wicked Men [Hebrews 4:9]

57 The Day of Small Things [Zechariah 4:10]

58 Peter’s Denial of His Lord [Matthew 26:75]

59 The True Way of Beholding the Lamb of God [John 1:35-36]

60 The Method of Grace [Jeremiah 6:14]

61 The Good Shepherd [John 10:27-28]

Introduction

George Whitefield (1714-1770) was the leading Reformed Evangelical Anglican clergyman of the eighteenth century. The driving force, humanly speaking, of evangelical revivals on both sides of the Atlantic and both North and South of Hadrian’s Wall, he also made a substantial impact in Wales. He was a gigantic presence in the English-speaking church and world: dramatic and controversial, passionate and bold, heroic and flawed, adored and despised in equal measure. Yet despite the enormous influence and impact he had in his own time, today he is almost, as Dr. Lloyd-Jones put it, ‘the most neglected man in the whole of church history. The ignorance concerning him is appalling.’1

This is not the place for a full biography or character assessment. Born in Gloucester, Whitefield’s father was the proprietor of the Bell Inn, though, more widely, he came from a clerical, educated, and cultured ancestry. When he was about four years old he caught measles, the cause of his lifelong squint which can be seen in the best portraits of him and later earned him the sobriquet Dr. Squintum. He matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, performing servile duties to pay his way through the undergraduate degree (1732-1736). During this time he was a member of the so-called ‘Holy Club’ along with John and Charles Wesley, and was rigorously ascetic in his religious practice. Only in 1735 did he experience the freedom of new birth, an inner conversion to Christ and the gospel of grace. ‘God was pleased,’ he wrote, ‘to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold of his dear Son by a living faith.’2

In 1736, at the tender age of only 21, he was ordained in Gloucester Cathedral. That Sunday he preached his first sermon (Sermon 8 below). He was for a time a chaplain at the Tower of London and preached in various churches in the City, in Hampshire, and in Gloucestershire. In 1737, having resolved to follow the Wesleys to Georgia, he preached a great many ‘charity sermons’ in Bath, Bristol, and London to raise money for charity schools in England and Georgia. These were very successful fundraising events and churches were happy to open their pulpits to the young preacher for this purpose. He in return was often scathing about the lifeless, unspiritual nature of the clergy and their leadership, which did not always go down particularly well from one with so little experience. After his return from the first of many trips to America he found, unsurprisingly, many churches were closed to him because of this.

Perhaps inspired by the example of Howell Harris in Wales, Whitefield took to preaching instead in the open air. He met with extraordinary success. And thus he began to attract large crowds and become what Boyd Stanley Schlenther calls ‘the eighteenth century’s most sensational preacher in Great Britain and America.’3 The world became his parish.

More could be written on the development of Whitefield’s ministry, but for this the reader is directed to the suggestions for further reading at the end of this introduction. For our purposes here, we will begin by outlining Whitefield’s identity as a Reformed Evangelical Anglican par excellence and give a sense of the context in which he was writing. We will look, therefore, at his evangelical preaching, his entrepreneurial Anglicanism, and his developed Reformed theology. Sermon 58 begins with a complaint against those who write biographies without exposing the faults of their heroes. So whilst zeroing in on many things which are praiseworthy in Whitefield, we will also endeavour (as he would wish) to paint him not as a model of perfection but as a sinner saved by grace alone, warts and all.

WHITEFIELD THE EVANGELICAL PREACHER

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was bold enough to assert that Whitefield was, ‘beyond any question, the greatest English preacher who has ever lived.’4 J. C. Ryle was equally dogmatic, saying that, ‘No Englishman, I believe, dead or alive, has ever equalled him.’5 He was certainly one of the most active men of his age. Augustus Toplady, his contemporary, reported that, ‘It appears, from a little account-book, wherein that great man of God, the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, minuted the times and places of his ministerial labours, that he preached upwards of eighteen thousand sermons, from the era of his ordination to that of his death.’6 This probably did not include his other speaking engagements, talks to religious societies and such like which he referred to as ‘exhorting’, so all told it is probable that Dallimore’s estimate of around a thousand talks per year for thirty years is quite accurate.7 Whitefield was an extraordinarily prolific preacher.

This figure does not represent a thousand freshly-written talks every year of course, but repeated use of carefully refined and proven messages which he preached in a wide variety of venues and to a wide variety of listeners. He spoke to miners in Kingswood, orphans and slaves in Georgia, aristocrats at Lady Huntingdon’s house, churchgoers in their pews, and the seething masses of London on Kennington Common, sometimes up to 40,000 of them at a time. The statistics seem incredible in an age without microphones and amplification systems but are not exaggerated, or at least, not by too much it seems.8 His booming voice could be heard over a mile away. Occasionally we read (e.g. Sermon 9) something like, ‘Blessed be God, you are not such cowards to run away for a little rain!’ or an aside which reminds us that the original audience were standing in a field and not a church building. We can only imagine the electricity of the atmosphere on such occasions, though it is said that apart from those who came to heckle and throw stones there was often a holy hush amongst the crowds that gathered to hear.

Whitefield was a born orator with a flair for the dramatic. The great actor David Garrick (1717-1779) is reputed to have said he would give a hundred guineas to be able to say ‘O!’ like Whitefield.9 This should be borne in mind as one reads through the sermons, as that attention-grabbing ‘O!’ occurs frequently in the exhortations. We must imagine the weight and depth of each one to get a sense of the force of the sermons as they were heard, rather than passing over them quickly, like mere readers, as if they were just a single letter to be skirted over without much impact. Whitefield would stamp his feet for emphasis, don a black cap in imitation of a judge as he spoke of God’s death sentence upon sinners, and had a flair for vivid, descriptive narrative which had people of all kinds on the edges of their seats. He often spoke near the end of his sermons of his heart being enlarged, of an ardent longing for people to be converted, and he would use pathos, passion, and provocation to win them over to the Saviour. As J. C. Ryle put it, there was a ‘holy violence’ about him which grabbed people’s attention.10 ‘Pardon my plainness,’ he says in Sermon 31, ‘If it were a fable or a tale, I would endeavour to amuse you with words but I cannot do it where souls are at stake.’

Whether Whitefield ought to be imitated in these stylistic matters is debatable, though we need not doubt his integrity and sincerity as some have done; he was by no means attempting to be a mere entertainer or raise a personal following, as the rest of his life and ministry well attest. However, in an age when many ministers are afraid to make an appeal to their hearers to ‘close with Christ’ and make a commitment to him, preferring rather to invite them to a series of exploratory discussions, Whitefield may spur us on to be more courageous and bold. Fishermen, after all, should be able to reel in the fish and not just toss in bait and cast out the line without a hook. Seekers may not need to be heavy-laden with courses to attend and hoops to jump through before they find rest for their weary souls; a seasonable on-the-spot exhortation may sometimes do the job far better. It is possible to go too far, of course; hectoring, badgering, and manipulating people has no apostolic warrant. Yet are we, like Whitefield, like Paul, like Jesus, emotionally committed to desiring conversion and spiritual growth in a way that our earnestness can be heard and felt and people made to appreciate how serious the gospel call truly is? Can we honestly subscribe to Whitefield’s sentiment when he told his listeners (Sermon 27), ‘I shall return home with a heavy heart, unless some of you will arise and come to my Jesus. I desire to preach him and not myself. Rest not in hearing and following me.’

Amazingly, Whitefield was able to edify and reach a wide cross-section of society without ever needing to use PowerPoint or mood-music, or dumbing-down the theology of his sermons. Yet ‘God’s anointed barnstormer’ as J. I. Packer calls him,11 had such a lucid clarity about him that his message was crystal clear to everyone, as well as that rare sense of focus which made many in his audiences feel as if he were directly addressing them and them alone. He knew, however, that some would be disappointed with him, saying (in Sermon 12),

If any here do expect fine preaching from me this day, they will, in all probability, go away disappointed. For I came not here to shoot over people’s heads but, if the Lord shall be pleased to bless me, to reach their hearts. Accordingly, I shall endeavour to clothe my ideas in such plain language, that the meanest Negro or servant, if God is pleased to give a hearing ear, may understand me. For I am certain, if the poor and unlearned can comprehend, the learned and rich must.

We could certainly do with fewer exegetical lectures and more of this sort of personal, relevant appeal. Whitefield quite deliberately addressed both the heart and the head in his sermons. This was ‘the very life of preaching’ he said. To use his own words (from Sermon 59),

That we might deal with you as rational creatures, we have endeavoured calmly, and in the fear of God, to address ourselves to your understandings; but the hardest work is yet ahead, namely, to affect and warm your hearts. This I take to be the very life of preaching. For man is a compound creature, made up of affections as well as understanding; and, consequently, without addressing both, we only do our work by halves . . . Without a proper mixture of these, however a preacher may acquire the character, in the letter-learned and polite world, of being a calm and cool reasoner; yet he never will be looked upon by those whose senses are exercised to discern spiritual things, as a truly evangelical and Christian orator.

Truly evangelical preaching must combine both rational argument and exposition with an ‘affective’ and emotional aspect. Merely to ‘explain the Bible’ from a pulpit is not Christian preaching. In our enthusiasm to educate our congregations have we forgotten this? Nor would it be correct, in Whitefield’s eyes, to leave ‘application’ (or ‘improvement’ of the text as he would term it) to be tacked onto the end of a pulpit essay. Even the casual reader of these sermons will soon see how Whitefield cannot resist continually applying the text to his hearers rather than deferring this essential goal of preaching until the end. With tears he exhorted his hearers to know Christ and love him more; with white streaks appearing on their blackened, unwashed faces, the miners of Kingswood responded in kind, as did other congregations in many of the places Whitefield spoke the word.

We should add two notes of caution here. First, Whitefield says in Sermon 23, ‘I speak in plain language, you know my way of preaching. I do not want to play the orator, I do not want to be counted a scholar. I want to speak so as I may reach poor people’s hearts.’ There was a certain ‘noble negligence’ as one contemporary put it, about Whitefield’s style.12 He is not always grammatically polished and his style is not literary, smooth, and beautiful to read (though it should be easier to read in this edition than in the 1771 volumes). Yet he was certainly not an untutored dullard or the kind of minister who stopped reading books as soon as his theological credentials were in the bag. A cursory glance at the footnotes here, to observe the sources he cites, reveals a man of thoughtfulness and wide reading. Where it was appropriate for his particular audience he was perfectly capable of quoting Latin aphorisms and alluding to a variety of classical authors as well as to the best of Anglican and puritan biblical and devotional writing, Reformers, and contemporary theologians. From early on in the ‘Holy Club’ he had used the Greek New Testament daily, as the basis for his devotions and sermon preparation. He used his learning when he thought it could serve the goal of his preaching, but anyone who approaches these sermons expecting an uneducated rant because they hear he confessed, ‘I do not want to be counted a scholar,’ will be disappointed and somewhat surprised by what they find.

Second, we must be cautious at times about Whitefield’s style since he himself repented of some aspects of his early preaching. In 1748 he wrote to a friend, after revising all his published journals,

Alas! Alas! In how many things have I judged and acted wrong. I have been too rash and hasty in giving characters, both of places and persons. Being fond of scripture language, I have often used a style too apostolical, and at the same time I have been too bitter in my zeal. Wild-fire has been mixed with it, and I find that I frequently wrote and spoke with my own spirit, when I thought I was writing and speaking by the assistance of the Spirit of God. I have likewise too much made inward impressions my rule of acting, and too soon and too explicitly published what had been better kept in longer, or told after my death. By these things I have given some wrong touches to God’s ark, and hurt the blessed cause I would defend, and also stirred up needless opposition. This has humbled me much . . . I bless [God] for ripening my judgment a little more, for giving me to see and confess, and I hope in some degree to correct and amend, some of my mistakes.13

He amended his printed sermons so that much of the ‘wild-fire’ was removed from them, yet it may still be detected here and there, particularly where he is addressing serious gospel issues in the teaching of others (such as in Sermons 9 and 10). All of us who preach regularly know how important it is to correct prevailing errors in church and society in order to be faithful shepherds of God’s people. Yet we also do well to remember the humility of Whitefield in his 30s as he looked back on his earlier ministry and sought to amend his words and his ways. ‘Those who oppose him he must gently instruct,’ in a way they can hear and be corrected by, said the Apostle (2 Timothy 2:24-26). How important it is for us to remember these lessons in a day and age, not unlike Whitefield’s, which desperately needs clarity on the gospel and its implications, amidst a plethora of false opinions and a disdain for ‘enthusiasm.’ Do we treat our opponents as we would wish to be treated ourselves?

So much for Whitefield’s style. What about the content of this preaching which set the eighteenth century world ablaze and awakened sluggish souls? Whitefield ranges over a number of subjects, from the education of children and family religion (Sermon 4), persecution (Sermons 55 and 56), how to listen to sermons (Sermon 28), drunkenness (Sermon 52), cursing and swearing (Sermon 18), prayer (Sermon 54), and even British military victories (Sermon 6). Yet his main subject again and again is the gospel of God’s grace towards justly condemned sinners. The great themes to which he returns time after time are original sin, our inability to save ourselves, the gracious provision of the gospel in atonement, justification, sanctification, and final glory, and sober warnings of judgment to come for those who refuse to repent and turn to Christ. His great motto was, ‘You must be born again,’ Christ must be all to us and we must give our all to him.

Whitefield also opposed the great currents of heresy in his day: Arianism and Socinianism, both forms of anti-Trinitarian theology which emptied churches throughout the land as they evacuated the faith of the divine power of a divine Christ; Antinomianism, the lawless discipleship and dead ‘orthodoxy’ which led to ill-disciplined, proud, and ineffective Christians; Arminianism, which robbed God of his glory in the salvation and assurance of sinners in an attempt to make room for human free will; Roman Catholicism, which foisted a false gospel and a spurious authority onto people, and a great deal of anxious superstition. Whitefield opposed these things because they struck at the heart of his core message: God’s grace alone has the power to save, motivate, and preserve weak and sinful creatures, through faith alone, in the Christ of the scriptures alone, for God’s greater glory.

The great evangelist also called drowsy Christians to be more whole-hearted in following their Lord. He attacked the complacent, pleasure-seeking spirit of the age which infected the church and made believers feel that the pursuit of holiness was ‘being righteous over-much.’ His antipathy towards card-playing and especially the theatre tells us a great deal about the moral standards of the day, and such themes had been a stock in trade for puritan preachers since the previous century. In our supposedly more enlightened times we may feel this is a little overboard. And yet, it is true that if only Christians found more delight in Christ and his word they would not be so often at the cinema or engaged in other mindless entertainments, and they would be much more assured and confident in their faith as a result. Translated into twenty-first century garb his exhortations here have much to teach a generation ‘amusing themselves to death.’ As he says at the end of Sermon 27, ‘It is only owing to your losing sight of him that you go so heavily from day to day. A sight of Jesus, like the sun rising in the morning, dispels the darkness and gloominess that lies upon the soul. Take therefore a fresh view of him, O believers.’14

Whitefield goes about his subjects in an expositional way. The sermons here are generally presented in biblical order so it can quickly be seen that he preached from Law, Prophets, and Writings (the full range of Old Testament genres) as well as Gospels and Epistles, finding in each one something to make people wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15). Often he simply works his way through the text verse by verse; sometimes he just spends time putting it in context and then focuses on a single verse. Every time, he makes an appeal to his listeners to respond to what they have heard in the living and active word of God. His appeals were variously based on the text and could be either invitations to enjoy the benefits spoken of, warnings to escape the wrath to come, pleadings to accept an offer given, or commands to repent and obey a new Lord. Baptists will immediately recognise how Charles Spurgeon, in the nineteenth century, modelled himself and his ministry on Whitefield. Yet are there any evangelicals brave enough to do the same today? We may be orthodox in comparison with the church of our day, yet it may also be that we have little of this power to convict and change people through the gospel in our preaching. An unapplied, ossified orthodoxy will transform neither church nor world in the way the eighteenth century was moved by Whitefield and his friends.

There are some startling observations in Whitefield’s interpretations of his texts, which makes these sermons useful to the modern preacher and Bible reader. For example, it may surprise us to read that the serpent in the Garden of Eden himself ate the fruit forbidden to our first parents as part of his seduction; but how else, asks Whitefield, could Eve have argued with herself that it was ‘good for food’ as Genesis 3:6 narrates? We may wonder at the way he connects certain truths together or draws implications we may never have seen before. We may not always agree with Whitefield’s understanding, but it is refreshing to gain his perspective on a text which may have become too familiar to shock us.

We may be forgiven for a sense of déjà-vu as we read some of Whitefield’s polemic against one particular group of opponents. There is a peculiarly modern ring about the objections he deals with from ‘the reasoners’ and those who upheld ‘science’ as the cure for all ills. This was the time known as ‘the Enlightenment’, when rationality was king and the human mind with all its immense potential became like an idol to many as they scoffed at the traditional religion of Western Europe as old-fashioned and hopelessly backwards. Whereas in the previous two centuries the West had divided over the interpretation of religion, in the eighteenth century it began to be divided between the religious and the secular. Yet ‘however infidels may style themselves reasoners’, says Whitefield, ‘of all men they are the most unreasonable’ (Sermon 3). How so? ‘Let not,’ he says, ‘the deceived reasoner boast any longer of his pretended reason. Whatever you may think, it is the most unreasonable thing in the world not to believe on Jesus Christ, whom God has sent’ (Sermon 45). Indeed, ‘A modern unbeliever is the most credulous creature living,’ he says (Sermon 46) because, ‘this human wisdom, this science, falsely so called . . . blinds the understanding and corrupts the hearts of so many modern unbelievers’ (Sermon 45).

The same could be said for many of the heterodox religious groups at the time such as the Arians and Socinians who allowed reason to overrule scripture in their ‘theology’, in an attempt to make it more palatable to the modern mind and modern morals. Whitefield’s teaches us how to respond to multiple secular attacks on gospel truth. As Ryle so gloriously puts it, ‘He was among the first to show the right way to meet the attacks of infidels and skeptics on Christianity. He saw clearly that the most powerful weapon against such men is not cold, metaphysical reasoning and dry disquisition, but preaching the whole gospel – living the whole gospel – and spreading the whole gospel.’15 In this he has much to teach us as we fashion our own responses to the trendy atheism and aggressive secularism of our world. The gospel remains the power of God.

We noted above how Whitefield removed some of the over-exuberant ‘wild-fire’ from his early sermons. Yet does this also mean, as some have alleged, that all the fire has gone from these sermons? Without the man to speak the words have the words lost their power and effectiveness? Is it impossible to put such fiery, idiosyncratic preaching into cold black and white print without losing everything that was impressive? Lloyd-Jones was familiar with this line of argument, writing, ‘That is why people, when they have read the sermons of Whitefield, often say, “I cannot understand this. How could the man who produced sermons like this be such a phenomenon, such a wonderful preacher?”’ Yet, he concludes, ‘If you have ever said that, you are just displaying your ignorance of what is meant by preaching.’16 It may be thin as a commentary or unpolished and unsophisticated as literature. It may only give a faint idea of what it was like to hear Whitefield in the flesh. But is that not also the case for the sermons of Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, and even Lloyd-Jones himself? Their voices can no longer be heard and their ‘pulpit power’ experienced, but the message contained in their sermons is of lasting effect and continual relevance, and far more important than any personal anecdotes or amusing stories they may have been able to narrate in an effort to liven things up in print. An old sermon is a particular type of material, and must be read in a way that is sensitive to its genre and the distance that separates us from the original occasion. Yet once we have trained ourselves to make those tiny internal adjustments, we can indeed hear the voices of these preachers once more. They being dead, yet speak, if we let them. As one reader put it concerning Whitefield,

It is, indeed, acknowledged by one of his great admirers, Cornelius Winter, that his peculiar talents can be but faintly guessed from his printed works. Worthless, however, his writings are not, as specimens of that strain of preaching which, when combined with eminent powers of delivery, is fitted to arrest the attention of all classes of men from Hume, and Bolingbroke, and Lord Chesterfield, down to the lowest ruffian of Kingswood or Moorfields. It cannot but be most instructive to examine the sort of material which was capable of being wrought up into an instrument of such surprising and almost universal power. And we doubt not that men of sound judgments and benevolent hearts, might easily derive from Whitefield’s extant ‘Remains’, many an useful suggestion, for the improvement of their own ministrations.17

WHITEFIELD THE ANGLICAN ENTREPRENEUR

Whitefield is remembered as a great evangelical, and by those who (somewhat mistakenly) consider evangelical religion to have begun only in the 1730s, as a founding father of evangelicalism.18 His name has been honoured and kept alive in recent years by evangelical Baptists and Presbyterians, but he has been strangely undervalued by those in the Church of England. Yet he himself would have identified his churchmanship as classically ‘Anglican.’ As Packer puts it, ‘like all England’s evangelical clergy then and since, Whitefield insisted that the religion he modelled and taught was a straightforward application of Anglican doctrine as defined in the Articles, the Homilies and the Prayer Book.’19 Glancing through his sermons we find quotations from the Articles of Religion, especially where they touch on the doctrines of justification, original sin, and the place of good works. There are also many allusions to liturgical texts from the Book of Common Prayer, which Whitefield considered to embody the theology of the Articles and indeed of the Bible itself. His view of the Church of England was, ‘My dear brethren, I am a friend to her Articles, I am a friend to her Homilies, I am a friend to her liturgy. And, if they did not thrust me out of their churches, I would read them every day’ (Sermon 9).

Upon his first return to England from Georgia, Whitefield found that many pulpits were closed to his fundraising work for the orphanage there due to his youthful over-exuberance in denouncing the established clergy in his early sermons. As we have already noted, he took this opportunity to begin a new phase of evangelical mission in this country. Whitefield’s paternal grandfather, Andrew Whitefield, had been a successful businessman in Bristol which enabled him to retire early and live the life of a country gentleman. His father too was a businessman and George inherited a certain entrepreneurial streak from these men which made him go looking for opportunities to expand his ministry. Far from taking early retirement, however, he worked himself into an early grave!

His first step out of the established mould had been to go to Georgia, a brand new colony in America designed to take the poor and criminal elements from England and put them to good use (much as would happen in Australia some time later). Never becoming the incumbent of an ordinary parish, Whitefield was one of those who thrived on the edges of the establishment, and so when itinerant preaching proved more difficult in churches he took to the open air and began to preach anywhere and everywhere he could. Rather than waiting for people to invite him to preach or hoping that sinners would come to hear, he adopted the more aggressive strategy of going out and calling to them, in the ‘highways and byways’, rejoicing that this tactic had Gospel precedent and dominical sanction (Luke 14:23). ‘The world is now my parish’ he had declared six weeks after being ordained (antedating Wesley’s now more famous use of this phrase by a month).20 The grey skies of London, Bristol, and other cities became like the dome of his very own cathedral into which thousands of people poured to hear this curious and dramatic Anglican clergyman.

Augustus Toplady narrates how his hero Whitefield once tried to persuade him to become an itinerant preacher too, encouraging the younger man with promises of greater fruitfulness should he do so. Yet as Toplady told Lady Huntingdon, ‘I consider the true ministers of God as providentially divided into two bands: viz., the regulars and the irregulars.’ Some such as Whitefield were akin to cavalry and others, like him, were more like sentinels or guardsmen watching over a more circumscribed district.21 He could see the great blessing that the irregular and unusual ministry of men like Whitefield had been, but did not think it was for him, or for everyone; an ordinary Reformed Evangelical parochial ministry within the Church of England structures was just as vital and important as the more high-profile ‘celebrity’ roles. Yet Whitefield was clearly in his element as an Anglican cavalryman, with a self-endangering and self-sacrificing boldness which earned him the respect of many of his contemporaries. The important thing to notice is that other evangelicals in the Church of England like Toplady, Romaine, and Hervey – the regular guardsmen – considered him no less Anglican for his more irregular tactics, since he always remained doctrinally in line with the Anglican heritage even when he was being more adventurous in terms of institutional order.

Yet even cavalry need to have a settled base camp from which to operate, and eventually this led to Whitefield planting three churches: ‘The Tabernacle’ in East London at Moorfields, a chapel on Tottenham Court Road in the West End, and another ‘Tabernacle’ in Bristol. Add to this the orphanage in Georgia and a school at Kingswood and it is clear that Whitefield had a flair for fundraising and starting new projects, as platforms for gospel ministry. His expertise did not, however, extend to the maintenance of ‘empire.’ In that department he was far outstripped by the imperious John Wesley. He lost the school to Wesley, and the orphanage did not develop as he hoped (see Sermons 57 and 61), being saddled with a huge debt by the time that Whitefield died. Yet it is clear that with his entrepreneurial and radical style of Anglicanism, Toplady was not saying too much when he styled Whitefield, ‘The apostle of the English empire’ as well as ‘a true and faithful son of the Church of England.’22 He sought to extend the boundaries of the Church into places where no church buildings had yet been put up, where the ordinary parochial ministry had failed or had not even attempted to reach the populace. He found the harvest was plentiful though the workers were few (Matthew 9:37-38) and obeyed his ordination call (as the Ordinal annexed to the Book of Common Prayer puts it), ‘to seek for Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever… For they are the sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his blood.’

Whitefield may be fairly criticised, however, for undermining the Church of England in one respect. As Packer insightfully puts it, he ‘did in fact unwittingly encourage an individualistic piety of what we would call a parachurch type, a piety that gave its prime loyalty to transdenominational endeavours, that became impatient and restless in face of the relatively fixed forms of institutional church life, and that conceived of evangelism as typically an extra-ecclesiastical activity.’23 He may not have wished to have this effect, but involuntarily he did. It has taken evangelicals many years to rediscover the local church itself as a vehicle for evangelism and we must continue to value this God-given means for reaching our nation for Christ and not rely entirely on extra-parochial, parachurch missionary activity. A passion to see new spiritual life through evangelism must, rather, be part of the DNA of each local church, whatever is happening elsewhere. An Anglican church which is simultaneously a ‘shop front’ for outsiders, a nursery for new Christians, and a family in which to serve and grow is a magnificent blessing for any community, no matter how large it happens to be.

That being said, Whitefield’s ‘storm trooper’ activity gave huge impetus to the evangelical party within the Church of England. He was also keen to foster relations with those outside the pale of the established church, being a man with a famously ‘catholic spirit.’24 He says below in Sermon 23 that, ‘There is nothing grieves me more than the differences amongst God’s people,’ and he sought to work with any who loved the Lord in sincerity and truth, even if that meant a loss of face for him. He was able to work, despite some massive theological differences, even with John Wesley, on occasion, yet only by renouncing all his leadership roles in England and Wales in 1748 and appearing merely as one of Wesley’s ‘assistants.’ This speaks volumes about the true interests of both men, perhaps, but certainly about the humility of Whitefield and his willingness to work with those outside his own theological comfort zones. Unlike Wesley, he was also able to partner nonconformists, whom Wesley often despised and avoided. This, however, was a function of Whitefield’s other distinctive, his Reformed theology, which we will briefly examine next, and of Wesley’s more sectarian Arminianism, not to mention his upbringing.25 It is however vital to remember that Whitefield considered the Church of England itself to be ‘Reformed’ and was in no way unusual for holding to that view. It had been held by archbishops, bishops, clergy, theologians, and lay-people before him, many of whom he quotes with approval in the following pages (such as bishops Hall and Beveridge and archbishop Ussher), a noble line of theological predecessors standing in the same distinguished tradition of reflection on the holy scriptures.26

WHITEFIELD THE REFORMED DIVINE

One modern biographer claims that Whitefield ‘showed no interest in theology’, but was more concerned with feelings, imagination, and experience.27 This is palpable nonsense, as any casual reader with an awareness of theological issues will be able to discern in the pages which follow. To quote again from Augustus Toplady, Whitefield was not merely an evangelist but ‘a most excellent systematic divine.’28

His divinity began with an error-free Bible. ‘If we once get above our Bibles and cease making the written word of God our sole rule both as to faith and practice,’ he declared, ‘we shall soon lie open to all manner of delusion and be in great danger of making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience,’ going on to speak of ‘the unerring rule of God’s most holy word’ (Sermon 2); elsewhere he only ever uses the word ‘unerring’ of Jesus (Sermon 58) or the Holy Spirit (Sermon 39). It was the quintessence of ‘enthusiasm’ said Whitefield, ‘to pretend to be guided by the Spirit without the written word; yet it is every Christian’s bounden duty to be guided by the Spirit in conjunction with the written word of God,’ every inward impression or suggestion being tested against that inerrant standard. This doctrine of an entirely trustworthy Bible is a common point amongst Reformed Anglicans of the period.29 Indeed, it may have been encouraged by the Church of England’s Article 21, which portrays general councils as erring and in need of a higher authority to establish the truth, i.e. holy scripture, which is therefore by implication, unerring (while the Church of Rome, despite claims to inerrancy, ‘hath erred,’ Article 19). Some editions of the Book of Common Prayer in the eighteenth century even contained a version of the Psalms which spoke of God’s ‘unerring word’ at Psalm 119:81 and 119:114. We seem to have dropped this vital adjective in recent years, perhaps embarrassed by allegations of ‘fundamentalism’ or obscurantism. Have we also lost confidence in the dependability of the word?

Taught by his trustworthy Bible, Whitefield was a Protestant. He rejected the infallibility and inerrancy of the Pope or the Church and settled instead on the scriptures themselves as the final arbiter of his faith. As a result, he could be somewhat vehement in his dislike of Roman Catholicism, allied as it was at the time not just with ‘false divinity’ but with theories of arbitrary government, insidious plots, and the Jacobite Rebellion. Like the Reformers of the sixteenth century and the puritans of the seventeenth, he stood squarely against the Pope, transubstantiation, and other Roman ‘superstitions’ regarding Mary, the invocation of saints, purgatory, and the ‘idolatry’ of their religious ‘art.’ His anti-Catholicism is not to many people’s taste today, even among Protestants. Neither, though, is Whitefield’s restraint when he keeps his denunciation of Rome within bounds, ‘lest while I am speaking against antichrist, I should unawares fall myself and lead my hearers into an antichristian spirit’ (Sermon 6).

Continuing to be taught by his trustworthy Bible, Whitefield became a Calvinist. Yet as he said in a private letter to John Wesley in August 1740, ‘Alas, I never read any thing that Calvin wrote; my doctrines I had from Christ and his apostles; I was taught them of God.’30 Again, he wrote to another friend in 1742, ‘I embrace the calvinistical scheme, not because Calvin, but Jesus Christ, I think, has taught it to me.’31 Indeed, he only mentions Calvin once in these sermons (Sermon 15), and that is a passing and imprecise reference. Yet Whitefield’s Reformed theology is ultimately what separated him from Wesley, or rather, the latter’s insistent anti-Calvinism is what separated him from the Church of England and from those who adhered to its Articles by conviction. Wesley’s repeatedly republished Free Grace sermon, denouncing predestination and other Reformed Anglican tenets as satanic, unscriptural, and loathsome was highly provocative but ultimately unpersuasive for Whitefield. He considered Arminianism, a progressive and liberal view of theology which downplayed the sovereignty of God in favour of a more liberated human free will, to be ‘antichristian’ both in principles and practice, and to share too much in common with Roman Catholicism, indeed, to be ‘the back door to popery’ (Sermon 14). Such views were not at all unusual amongst the puritans of the previous century or amongst his contemporaries of course, and Wesley was entirely aware of his deviation from the Anglican tradition when he proclaimed himself an Arminian and fought for the acceptance of this avant-garde theology through his Arminian Magazine and other publishing endeavours.

Whitefield, however, was a firm believer in the Reformed doctrine of salvation and Reformed biblical theology, or as it is often known, covenant theology. He was a particular fan of seventeenth century Cambridge theologian, John Edwards (not to be confused with Whitefield’s American contemporary Jonathan Edwards),32 but he also recommended other classic Reformed works by Matthew Henry, Thomas Boston, John Pearson, John Owen, and John Bunyan (whether Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists).33 Whitefield was in harmony with the Anglican and Reformed tradition in general, holding as he did to predestination and reprobation (Sermons 41, 44), the inseparability of justification and sanctification (Sermon 14), the imputation of the active obedience of Christ (Sermons 14, 44) and the perseverance of the saints (Sermons 60 and 61). No wonder when he returned from Georgia in April 1741 and met Wesley, who disliked these doctrines and crusaded against them, he told him plainly face-to-face that they ‘preached two different gospels.’34

Whitefield’s Reformed credentials are also revealed by the use he makes of the Reformed doctrine of the covenant, which was the way the puritans gained an overview of ‘the Bible as a whole.’ He is happy to speak, for example, about ‘the covenant of works’ with Adam in creation (Sermons 1, 12, 24) and ‘the covenant of grace’ with the redeemed (Sermons 12, 44). Less noticed perhaps is the use he makes of the covenant of redemption, or pactum salutis – the teaching that the covenant of grace by which humans are saved in history is based on an eternal covenant between the members of the Trinity, which is revealed in the pages of scripture. Emphasis on this foundational covenant was about getting the biblical story straight rather than about abstract systematics. It was about seeing where the narrative of God’s grace and love for the world begins, so that we can properly appreciate the climaxes and consummation of his plan in the death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is part of the romance of the gospel, the Trinity bound together in partnership for our redemption, before the world began. Whitefield reveals this exegetically-based, Reformed framework to his thinking in several of his sermons. For example, while preaching on 1 Corinthians 1:30 (Sermon 44) he proclaims,

There was an eternal contract between the Father and the Son: ‘I have made a covenant with my chosen and I have sworn unto David my servant’ [Psalm 89:3]. Now David was a type of Christ, with whom the Father made a covenant, that if he would obey and suffer and make himself a sacrifice for sin, he should ‘see his seed, he should prolong his days and the pleasure of the Lord should prosper in his hands’ [Isaiah 53:10]. This compact our Lord refers to, in that glorious prayer recorded in the 17th chapter of John. And therefore he prays for, or rather demands with a full assurance, all that were given to him by the Father: ‘Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.’35

This was no small detail for Whitefield. ‘Would to God this point of doctrine was considered more,’ he says, ‘and people were more studious of the covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son!’ Then, in an aside clearly aimed against Wesley and other Arminian evangelicals, he says if people were more attentive to the eternal covenant between the members of the Trinity, ‘We should not then have so much disputing against the doctrine of election, or hear it condemned (even by good men) as a doctrine of devils. For my own part, I cannot see how true humbleness of mind can be attained without a knowledge of it; and though I will not say, that every one who denies election is a bad man, yet I will say… it is a very bad sign… for, if we deny election, we must, partly at least, glory in ourselves’ (Sermon 44). This emphasis in Whitefield’s preaching was not just evident in the heat of the Calvinist controversies; it is part of how he conceives of and preaches the gospel message. Characteristically, however, he says in his farewell sermon (Sermon 61), ‘They that are not led to see this [doctrine], I wish them better heads; though, I believe, numbers that are against it have got better hearts: the Lord help us to bear with one another where there is an honest heart.’ He referred of course to John Wesley, who intensely disliked both predestination and the idea of a covenant between the members of the Trinity.36

Another Reformed doctrine which Wesley despised but which Whitefield gloried in was particular redemption, or as it is sometimes known, definite or ‘limited atonement.’ This is the teaching that the Father’s election, the Son’s redemption, and the Spirit’s application of salvation are all coextensive; that God planned to save a certain people, his sheep, his church, the bride of Christ out of the corrupt mass of mankind, and sent his Son explicitly to achieve this goal, and his Spirit then to draw the elect to Christ. The opposite, Arminian, theory was that Christ came to die for everyone indiscriminately, not to actually save them but to make them saveable, on condition that they repent and believe, which they have the power to do if they want to. Both views limit the atonement in some way, of course: the Calvinist limits the number of people ultimately atoned for (some people are completely saved) while the Arminian view limits the effectiveness of the cross (all people are potentially saved if they fulfil the conditions on their side). It is often asserted that belief in definite atonement saps the energy out of evangelism somehow. Yet reading and studying the example of Whitefield shows just how facile and superficial it is to claim that one cannot be a Calvinist – one cannot believe in a Father who unconditionally chooses, a Son who intentionally redeems and a Spirit who irresistibly calls only the elect – and still be a passionate evangelist. To read Whitefield and to know something of what God did through him is to see how ridiculous such a claim truly is. Far from undermining evangelism, this doctrine seemed to fire all that Whitefield did. He believed that Christ ‘hath virtue enough in his blood to atone for the sins of millions of worlds’ (Sermon 51), and yet ‘he offered up his soul an offering for the sins of the elect’ (Sermon 38).

This is not the place to explore these knotty issues in full. Needless to say they were a source of controversy in Whitefield’s day just as they are today. Yet Packer is correct to observe that, ‘Whitefield was entirely free of doctrinal novelties.’37 That is, he did not have an eccentric, pick and mix style of theologising dependent on which passage of the Bible he had read that morning in his quiet time, and he was not especially idiosyncratic in his core doctrinal commitments. In his preaching, he wasn’t trying to show how clever he was to reinvent the faith from scratch with just his Bible and a set of selectively-adopted historical-critical tools in hand for mining it. He stood, self-consciously, in a tradition or stream of theology; not uncritically or unthinkingly, but loyally and humbly, realising he was not the first man to have dealings with the Saviour or to have heard him speak by his Spirit through his word. Someone described John Wesley’s approach to these issues by saying it had in it, ‘something of that provoking glibness with which young or half-cultivated people settle in a few sentences questions that have exercised the deepest minds ever since the dawn of speculation… Indeed, it is evident on reading [his anti-predestination sermon] that, of all the deep works which had been written on the subject, Wesley had never read one.’38 Whitefield’s approach appears markedly different to that of the more famous man eleven years his senior.

This being said, other more prominent aspects of Whitefield’s ‘framework’ will be remarkably familiar to modern evangelicals. It surfaces very clearly in a topical sermon called ‘Walking with God’ (Sermon 2). He treats the familiar themes of the Fall, salvation in Christ alone, and how to grow as a Christian through Bible reading, prayer, and meditation on heaven. He closes the sermon with application to the unconverted, the converted, and to ministers serving the church. Sermons such as these would not be unusual in any evangelical church today.

Whitefield may be thought ‘novel’ in one or two of his views, however. For example, evangelical Christians have always had differing opinions on some aspects of eschatology, and Whitefield appears to be best classified as what we might call a postmillennialist. So in Sermon 36 he rejoices that,

. . . there are more excellent things ahead. Glorious things are spoken of these times, ‘when the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’ There is a general expectation among the people of God, when the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile shall be broken down and all Israel be saved. Happy those who live when God does this. They shall see Satan, like lightning, fall from heaven. They shall not weep, as the Jews did at the building of the second temple. No, they shall rejoice with exceeding great joy. For all the former glory of the Christian church shall be nothing in comparison of that glory which shall excel. Then shall they cry out with the governor of the feast, ‘thou hast kept thy good wine until now!’

Later in Sermon 57 he prays, ‘Who shall live when God doth this? Hasten O Lord that blessed time!’ Not everyone would share his optimism about the future glorious state of the church this side of Christ’s return, but it is important that we acknowledge the evangelical pedigree this view does seem to have. As Packer says, Whitefield was not a man given to theological novelties and eccentricities (he had a sufficient number of personal eccentricities already!), so we must be careful, should we choose to dissent from him here, that we do so with gentle rigour and do not rule ‘off-side’ a view held by as foundational a figure (for evangelicals and Anglicans) as George Whitefield. We must not believe anything simply because he did; he objected to any kind of Pope. Yet if he held a view, after serious consideration, it is safe to say it deserves a respectful airing amongst those who claim to be Reformed and evangelical, even if we finally decide, like noble Bereans, that scripture teaches otherwise.