"Hear this, all ye self-justiciaries, tremble, and behold your
doom! a dreadful doom, more dreadful than words can express, or
thoughts conceive! If you refuse to humble yourselves, after
hearing this parable, I call heaven and earth to witness against
you this day, that God shall visit you with all His storms, and
pour all the vials of His wrath upon your rebellious heads. You
exalted yourselves here, and God shall abase you hereafter.
You are as proud as the devil, and with devils shall you dwell
to all eternity. Notwithstanding you come up to the temple to
pray, your prayers are turned into sin, and you go down to your
houses unjustified. And, if you are unjustified, the wrath of
God abideth upon you. You are in your blood. All the curses of
the law belong to you. Cursed are you when you go out; cursed
are you when you come in; cursed are your thoughts; cursed are
your words; cursed are your deeds. Everything you do, say, or
think, from morning to night, is only one continued series of
sin. However highly you may be honoured in the Church militant,
you will have no place in the Church triumphant. 'Humble
yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God.' Pull down
every self-righteous thought, and every proud imagination, that
now exalteth itself against the perfect, personal, imputed
righteousness of the dear Lord Jesus. 'For he,' and he alone,
'that humbleth himself, shall be exalted.'"
No wonder that fiery eloquence like this attracted notice; and no
wonder that it brought upon the preacher the fierce censures of his
enemies. The _Weekly Miscellany_ was more furious than ever. The
following are specimens of its outpourings:--
On July 7, there was a long letter "to the Rev. Mr. Seagrave," in
which Whitefield and his friends were accused of causing "all the
miseries attending those poor, weak wretches and their families,
who, by the woes and curses denounced on them in default of raising
their imagination to the pitch of enthusiasm, had been driven into a
belief of their certain damnation, and, consequently, into all the
horrors of despair and distraction."
On July 21, the leading article, filling nearly two folio pages,
says:--
"The novelist in religion passes with me either for a fool or
a knave. These things frequently begin in want of sense, but
always end in want of honesty. To keep attention and prevent
satiety, false religion is continually changing its dress, as in
masquerades, varying its voice, and accommodating its motions,
according to all the mazes of error and sportive turns of
madness and folly. It gives the rein to every licentious humour,
or practises amazing austerities; it distorts the limbs, and
screws the features; it laughs, it sings, it weeps, it screams,
it groans, it raves in streets, bawls on commons, preaches from
walls, and carts, and stools, and windows; expounds, prays,
exclaims. The enthusiast is now a quietist, and does nothing;
and, anon, in perpetual motion, and never at rest. Sometimes, he
is a meteor, which just flashes and disappears; and, sometimes,
a direful comet, seen for a long time, and carrying mischief and
destruction in the sweep of his tail."