George Whitefield

Scripture is inspired, written as its authors were moved by the Holy Ghost, and is "the grand charter of our salvation," which every fallen person is obliged to search. The argument he actually presses is not Scripture against tradition but Scripture against the Spirit apart from Scripture: Christ, who had the Spirit without measure, still made the written word his "constant rule and guide," so those who say the Spirit alone and not the Spirit by the Word is our rule stand refuted. A Scripture that even the Spirit's leadings answer to leans toward the first stance, but he never sets it against church tradition or office in anything read, which is the question this locus asks.

Our blessed Lord, though he was the eternal God, yet as man, he made the Scriptures his constant rule and guide.The Duty of Searching the Scriptures, first head

The Holy Ghost is "truly and properly God, as well as the Father and the Son," argued from the Spirit being lied to in Acts 5 and from the three heavenly witnesses of 1 John 5:7, and stated in the Prayer Book's own form: what is believed of the glory of the Father is believed of the Son and the Holy Ghost "without any difference or inequality." He argues it because the sermon's claim, that every believer receives the Spirit, depends on who the Spirit is.

WORTH CORRECTINGHis 1 John 5:7 is the verse as the King James Version prints it — "there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost" — the Johannine Comma, which is absent from the early Greek manuscripts. The translations this site links (BSB, WEB, ASV) do not carry those words, so the linked verse will not read the way he quoted it. The argument from Acts 5 does not depend on it.

From all which passages, it is plain, that the Holy Ghost, is truly and properly God, as well as the Father and the Son.The Indwelling of the Spirit, the Common Privilege of All Believers, first head

One person, truly God and truly man, and he treats the deity as the thing the gospel stands on: "If Jesus Christ be not very God of very God, I would never preach the gospel of Christ again." The two natures each do work in redemption — as God he satisfies, as man he obeys and suffers — and he thinks it "no breach of charity to affirm that an Arian or Socinian cannot be a Christian," the one making Christ a created God and the other only a good man.

Christ was not only God, but he was God and man in one person.What Think Ye of Christ?, second division (the manhood or incarnation of Christ)

Fallen people do not merely fail to come to God; they "will not come, and never should come" unless the Father goes before them and draws them — and he reads that out of Adam hiding in the garden, whom God "prevented" in the same way. Original sin is guilt and not only corruption: a convicted sinner must own that he is "by nature" a child of wrath and that God may justly cut him off "though you never actually had offended him in all your life." The new birth is necessary because what is born of the flesh stays flesh.

WORTH CORRECTING"Prevent" is the eighteenth-century sense, to go before — the same word Wesley builds his doctrine of preventing grace on. The words match and the doctrines do not: in Wesley that grace reaches everyone and restores an ability to respond, while here the grace that goes before is the grace that draws and constrains, and he pairs it with an unconditional election in the 1740 letter. Reading the shared vocabulary as a shared position is the misreading to avoid.

We hide ourselves from God as long as we can, and will not come, and never should come, did not the Father prevent, draw, and sweetly constrain us by his grace, as he here prevented Adam.The Seed of the Woman, and the Seed of the Serpent (on Genesis 3:15), on Adam hiding after the Fall

Election rests on God's sovereign right "to dispense his favours to what objects he sees fit, merely at his pleasure," argued from Romans 9:15 and Romans 11:7, and he accepts reprobation too, defined narrowly: the non-elect are left in the sin they are already in and receive its just wages. The letter answers Wesley's Free Grace directly, sermon for sermon, and turns Wesley's own charge back — that election destroys holiness — with 2 Thessalonians 2:13, where the elect are chosen "through sanctification of the Spirit." None of it stops him preaching to everyone: "since we do not know who are elect and who are reprobate, we are to preach promiscuously to all."

WORTH CORRECTINGHis reprobation is preterition — God passes by and leaves the fallen in their sin — not a decree that makes anyone sin. The definition he gives says exactly that, and it is narrower than the doctrine Wesley's Free Grace attacks. The wording here is a 2015 modernization; a second online transcription puts the definition in quotation marks and uses a dash where this one has a comma, and neither has been checked against the 1741 printing.

I frankly acknowledge that I believe the Doctrine of Reprobation in this view: That God intends to give saving grace through Jesus Christ only to a certain number; and that the rest of mankind, after the fall of Adam, being justly left by God to continue in sin, will at last suffer that eternal death which is its proper wages.Letter to the Reverend Mr. John Wesley, Bethesda, Georgia, 24 December 1740 — modernized transcription (W. H. Gross, 2015)

Faith is closing with Christ, not believing that the Bible exists: "We mistake a historical faith for a true faith, wrought in the heart by the Spirit of God." The test he puts to hearers is whether they ever received Christ themselves. What he adds to bare trust is felt peace — faith that hears Christ "speaking peace" to the soul — which is why the sermon is aimed at people who have peace without that.

Did you ever close with Christ by a lively faith, so as to feel Christ in your hearts, so as to hear him speaking peace to your souls?The Method of Grace (on Jeremiah 6:14), application

Justification is by imputation — "in one word, by imputation" — of a righteousness that includes Christ's life as well as his death, and he complains that people mention only the second when the active obedience "is equally necessary." Works are excluded as any cause of it and required as its evidence: imputed righteousness "excludes works, indeed, from being any cause of our justification in the sight of God; but it requires good works as a proof of our having this righteousness imputed to us, and as a declarative evidence of our justification in the sight of men."

It implies the active as well as passive obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ.The Lord Our Righteousness (on Jeremiah 23:6), second head

Christ did not die for those who perish, and he argues it by reductio: anyone who says he did must end in universal salvation, and he cites a Moravian, Peter Böhler, who had conceded exactly that. He reads the "us all" of Romans 8:32 — Wesley's own text in Free Grace — as all the saints. A definite atonement does not narrow his preaching; the same letter requires preaching "promiscuously to all."

WORTH CORRECTINGThe gloss on Romans 8:32 appears in both online transcriptions as a bracket inside the verse — "[that is, all the saints]" in one, "[i.e., all the Saints]" in the other. His argument depends on that reading, so the reading is his; whether the bracket is his or an editor's could not be settled without the 1741 printing.

You cannot make good the assertion that Christ died for those who perish without holding that all the damned souls would hereafter be brought out of hellLetter to the Reverend Mr. John Wesley, Bethesda, Georgia, 24 December 1740 — modernized transcription (W. H. Gross, 2015); the sentence continues with a parenthesis naming Peter Böhler

Christ's sheep "shall never perish," and he calls John 10:27-28 the best text there is for final perseverance — preached in his farewell sermon at the London Tabernacle in 1769, near the end of his life, so this is a settled view and not only the 1740 polemic. He meets the objection that the doctrine licenses sin as "an abuse of the doctrine." The 1740 letter says the same against Wesley, from the latter half of Romans 8:32.

There is not a more blessed text to support the final perseverance of the saints; and I am astonished any poor souls, and good people I hope too, can fight against the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.The Good Shepherd: A Farewell Sermon (on John 10:27-28), London, 30 August 1769

His sermon on the indwelling Spirit ties receiving the Spirit to believing, following his text, John 7:39: whoever believes on Christ with the whole heart, however black the soul, "shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost," and this is the common privilege of all believers in every age. But the same corpus calls true faith "wrought in the heart by the Spirit of God," so the Spirit is at work before the moment of faith. He never sets out the order of regeneration, faith and indwelling, which is the question this locus asks, so the stance follows the wording of the sermon and the tier records that he did not frame it.

And, however some men may say, there is a fitness required in the creature, and that we must have a righteousness of our own, before we can lay hold on the righteousness of Christ; yet, if we believe the Scripture, salvation is the free gift of God, in Christ Jesus our Lord; and whosoever believeth on him with his whole heart, though his soul be as black as hell itself, shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.The Indwelling of the Spirit, the Common Privilege of All Believers, closing exhortation

Satan is a real enemy who works hardest on new converts, through six devices running from despair and presumption to blasphemous thoughts and withdrawing himself to lull them. The answers are Scripture, as Christ answered him with "It is written," persevering in the Lord's Supper and every other means of grace, and watching and praying.

"Rather persevere in the use of the holy communion especially, and all other means whatever"Sermon, "Satan's Devices" (2 Corinthians 2:11)

Not settled by what was read. Two things were located. He takes infant baptism for granted: he addresses hearers whose parents "presented them to the Lord Jesus Christ in their infancy" and does not object to the practice, only to resting hope on it. And he denies that the baptized are, as a class, regenerate: "comparatively but few of those that are 'born of water,' are 'born of the Spirit' likewise." What separates the stances on this locus — whether infant baptism is a covenant sign or effective for regeneration in those who receive it rightly — is not addressed in anything read, and Wesley shows that the second sentence is compatible with either. Infant inclusion is shown; the kind is not.

Which is notoriously false, it being too plain, beyond all contradiction, that comparatively but few of those that are 'born of water,' are 'born of the Spirit' likewise; to use another spiritual way of speaking, many are baptized with water, which were never baptized with the Holy Ghost.On Regeneration (on 2 Corinthians 5:17), first head

No position located. Three sermons were searched for it — The Great Duty of Family Religion, The Almost Christian, and Marks of a True Conversion — and the only mention is incidental: receiving "the sacrament once or twice a year" appears among the outward marks the world mistakes for true Christianity. Nothing read addresses the presence of Christ in the Supper. His journals, which record him administering it, were not read.

Miraculous gifts attended the founding of a new revelation, at Moses and at the apostles, and he is suspicious of anyone demanding them again: now that the world is "nominally Christian" there is no need of outward miracles, "but only an inward co-operation of the Holy Spirit with the word." What every believer must receive is the Spirit's sanctifying graces, "as really as they did" — and that, he says, continues to the end of the world. He hedges the historical claim with "perhaps it cannot be proved," which is why the state is leans-toward rather than affirms.

WORTH CORRECTINGNot a claim to miraculous gifts. The same sermon, on receiving the Holy Ghost, says in terms what it does not mean: "But, here I would not be understood of, to receiving the Holy Ghost, as to enable us to work miracles, or show outward signs and wonders."

Perhaps it cannot be proved, that God ever interposed in this extraordinary manner, but when some new revelation was to be established, as at the first settling of the Mosaic and gospel dispensation: and as for my own part, I cannot but suspect the spirit of those who insist upon a repetition of such miracles at this time.The Indwelling of the Spirit, the Common Privilege of All Believers, second head

The punishment of those who die impenitent lasts as long as the life of the righteous, since Matthew 25:46 uses the same word for both, and he gathers the other everlasting-fire and undying-worm texts behind it. His argument for the duration is that whatever reason justifies punishing a sinner for a day holds equally for an age or eternity, since the sinner dies still under the guilt of his sins. To the charge that this is unjust he answers that calling God unjust does not make him so, any more than a condemned prisoner's saying so makes the judge unjust.

If the wicked man dieth in his wickedness, and under the wrath of God, he must continue in that state to all eternity.The Eternity of Hell-Torments (on Matthew 25:46)