The twentieth century conflict between evangelicals and anglo-catholics in the Church of England was not the first of its kind. Two hundred years earlier, George Whitefield and John Wesley had preached the necessity of conversion, and defined the word “Christian” in specific terms. It did not go over well with their Anglican colleagues. Iain Murray wrote:
The clergy immediately complained that such preaching was disturbing the baptized members of the church. As early as May 1742 Wesley and Whitefield were required to present themselves before the Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite their attempts to avoid causing needless offense, this was only the beginning of the trouble. Given the situation, they knew that opposition was inevitable. Whitefield believed: ‘It is every minister’s duty to declare against the corruption of that church to which they belong.’ Thus when the Bishop of London accused him of saying that he preached ‘a new gospel unknown to the generality of ministers and people’, far from modifying his words, Whitefield replied:
’Tis true, My Lord, in one sense, mine is a new gospel, and will always be to the generality of ministers and people, even in a christian country, if your Lordship’s clergy follow your Lordship’s directions.Whitfield then went on to quote the bishop’s counsel that a preacher should ‘leave no doubt’ in their [sic] hearers ‘whether good works are a necessary condition of your being justified in the sight of God’.In Whitefield’s eyes the bishop’s counsel on the need for good works was as needless as it was false, and not surprisingly, for ‘our pulpits ring of nothing more than doing no one any harm, living honestly, loving your neighbor as yourselves, and to do what you can and then Christ is to make up the deficiency.’Was the great apostle of the Gentiles now living, what anathemas would he pronounce against such Judaizing doctrine? . . . This is the great fundamental point in which we differ from the church of Rome. This is the grand point of contention between the generality of the established clergy and the Methodist preachers: we plead for free justification in the sight of God, by faith alone, in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, without any regard to works past, present, or to come.
—Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Banner of Truth, 2000), 159–160.
The Archbishop of York went as far as to quote the Council of Trent against the evangelists: “If any man shall say that justifying faith is nothing else but a confidence in the divine mercy, remitting sins for Christ’s sake, and that this confidence is that alone by which we are justified, let him be accursed. ” The response of Whitefield and Wesley stands in stark contrast to that of Packer and Stott. Rather than enter into dialogue with enemies of the gospel, they stuck by their guns and, with direct confrontation, did not allow the fundamental issues to be obscured.
Neither Wesley nor Whitefield would be drawn into a general debate on the theology of the sacraments. Nor did they attempt to explain how the teaching of the Articles was consistent with the language of other parts of the Prayer Book. They simply stuck to their witness as evangelists and scorned the idea that baptism was enough to identify a Christian. Wesley writes:I tell a sinner, ‘You must be born again.’ ‘No,’ says you: ‘He was born again in baptism. Therefore, he cannot be born again now.’ Alas, what trifling this is! What, if he was then a child of God? He is now manifestly a child of the devil; for the works of his father he doeth. Therefore do not play upon words. He must go through an entire change of heart. In one not yet baptized, you yourself would call that change, the new birth. In him, call it what you will; but remember, meantime, that if either he or you will die without it, your baptism will be so far from profiting you, that it will greatly increase your damnation.
—Ibid., 163.
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Posted in: Church History · Evangelicalism Divided · George Whitefield · Iain Murray · John Wesley
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