What ought to be said respecting this remarkable publication? At the time, it was pre-eminently remarkable, much more so than it would have been a hundred years afterwards. The world was not accustomed to such pious outpourings. It might have passed muster among Cromwell's Roundheads; and in the present age it would probably have died a silent death, no one either brandishing the scalping knife of the censorious critic, or dropping the tear of a loving lamenter upon its tomb. A hundred and thirty years ago the state of things was widely different to the circumstances now existing. Then religion was ridiculed rather than revered. Rare were the pious biographies committed to the press. It was almost--perhaps an absolutely--unheard-of thing for a man to publish his own religious experience. At all events, never before had a young clergyman of the Church of England, only twenty-five years of age, perpetrated an act like this. Bishops, priests, deacons, and literati of all descriptions were unpleasantly surprised; many were almost savagely indignant. Who was the piously pert neophyte writing in a strain like this? How should his publication be treated? Would it be best to be silently contemptuous? That was impossible; for the writer, though so young, had become one of the most notorious men in England. Would it be wise to review it out of existence by philosophical and sober disquisitions on its mysterious expressions, its general style, and its startling statements? Nay, this would be _infra dignitatem_. The only way remaining was to treat the book with disdainful ridicule, and its youthful author with the sarcastic severity merited by a vain, conceited, bouncing enthusiast, whose religion had made him mad. This was the kind of treatment young Whitefield had to meet. Did he deserve it? Answers to this question will be different, according to the standpoints occupied. The man of the world will say "Yes." The response of the educated, fastidious religionist will, perhaps, be to the same effect--quite as firm, though not so loud. Men who experience and practise the same religion Whitefield did, will yield a general approval, but object to particular statements and expressions.