The Life of the Reverend George Whitefield (Complete)
9781465643698
281 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Nothing is known of the years of Whitefield's boyhood, except what is furnished by himself. In the year 1740, he published an octavo pamphlet of seventy-six pages, entitled "A Short Account of God's Dealings with the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield, A.B., Late of Pembroke College, Oxford: from his Infancy to the Time of his entering into Holy Orders." This was written on board theElizabeth, during his first voyage to America, and contains not a few unguarded and objectionable expressions—expressions which brought upon him the ridicule of his enemies, and which he himself afterwards regretted. In 1756, he "revised, corrected, and abridged" this imprudent publication; and, in the Preface, confessed that "many mistakes were rectified," and "many passages, that were justly exceptionable, erased." In the present work, Whitefield, as far as possible, is made to be his own biographer; and though, perhaps, it is scarcely fair to print again what he himself erased, yet, as the sentences and paragraphs which he subsequently omitted were the occasion of many of the virulent attacks made upon him by his earliest opponents, these attacks cannot be properly understood without the text from which they had their origin. Besides this, the publication in question is now extremely scarce. Not one in a thousand of Whitefield's admirers has ever seen it. It has never been re-published in its entirety since it was first issued, in the year 1740. It exhibits, not only Whitefield's honesty, but his weaknesses and faults, at the early age of twenty-five; and, without it, the reader cannot have a full and correct conception of Whitefield's character at the commencement of his marvelous and illustrious career. For such reasons, the pamphlet of 1740 is here given in its completeness, without abridgment and without revision. The words and passages, however, which he himself, in 1756, altered or erased, will be marked by being enclosed in brackets, or by notes. Another remark must be added. What Whitefield says of his boyhood's wickedness must be received with caution. To exalt the grace of God in his conversion, he seemed desirous to magnify his own depravity and sin. Without intentional exaggeration, he, perhaps, makes himself worse than he really was. At all events, the following extract from his preface deserves attention:— "In the accounts of good men which I have read, I have observed that the writers of them have been partial. They have given us the bright, but not the dark side of their character. This, I think, proceeded from a kind of pious fraud, lest mentioning persons' faults should encourage others in sin. It cannot, I am sure, proceed from the wisdom which cometh from above. The sacred writers give an account of their failings as well as their virtues. Peter is not ashamed to confess that, with oaths and curses, he thrice denied his Master; nor do the Evangelists make any scruple of telling us, that out of Mary Magdalene Jesus Christ cast seven devils. "I have, therefore, endeavoured to follow their good example. I have simply told what I was by nature, as well as what I am by grace. I am not over cautious as to any supposed consequences, since none can be hurt by these but such as hold the truth in unrighteousness. To the pure all things will be pure. "As I have often wished, when in my best frames, that the first years of my life might be put down as a blank, and had no more in remembrance, so I could almost wish now to pass them over in silence. But as they will, in some degree, illustrate God's dealings with me in my riper years, I shall, as I am able, give the following brief account of them."
