The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, Volume 1 (of 2)Tyerman, L. (Luke)
History
The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, Volume 1 (of 2)
Tyerman, L. (Luke)
Whitefield, George, 1714-1770
"But you are the schismatics, you are the bane of the Church of
England, who are always crying out, '_the temple of the Lord,
the temple of the Lord_;' and yet starve the people out of our
communion, by feeding them only with the dry husks of dead
morality. We subscribe to our Articles, and make them serve for
a key to get into Church preferment, and then preach contrary to
these very Articles to which we have subscribed. Far be it from
me to charge all the clergy with this hateful hypocrisy. No,
blessed be God! there are some left among us who dare maintain
the doctrines of the Reformation, and preach the truth as it is
in Jesus. But the generality of the clergy are fallen from our
Articles, and do not speak agreeable to them, or to the form
of sound words, delivered in the Scriptures. Woe be unto such
blind leaders of the blind! How can you escape the damnation of
hell? Not all your learning (falsely so called), nor all your
preferments, can keep you from the just judgment of God. Yet a
little while, and we all shall appear before the tribunal of
Christ. There, there will I meet you. There Jesus Christ, that
great shepherd and bishop of souls, shall determine who are
the false prophets, who are the wolves in sheeps' clothing. But
I can no more. It is an unpleasing task to censure any order
of men, especially those who are in the ministry; nor would
anything excuse it but necessity; that necessity which extorted
from our Lord Himself so many woes against the scribes and
Pharisees, the letter-learned rulers and teachers of the Jewish
Church. And surely if I could bear to see people perish for lack
of knowledge, and yet be silent towards those who keep from them
the key of true knowledge, the very stones would cry out."
Whitefield brought upon himself great opprobrium by frequently
designating the carnal and unconverted man "a motley mixture of
brute and devil." One of the earliest uses of this strong expression
occurs in the sermon from which the foregoing extract has been
selected; and, as the following is a good specimen of the plain,
powerful language the young preacher used, no excuse is needed for
its insertion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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