CHAPTER IV. 



Whitefield begins his course, and rises fair, 

 And shoots and glitters like a blazing star. 

 He lets his light on all impartial shine, 

 And strenuously asserts the birth divine, 

 While thousands listen to th' alarming song, 

 And catch conviction darted from his tongue. 

 Parties and sects their ancient feuds forget, 

 And fall and tremble at the preacher's feet; 

 With horror in the wise inquiry join, 

 "What must we do t' escape the wrath divine?" 



(Charles Wesley.) 



THE ship Samuel, that carried back John Wesley 

 to England, passed at the Downs the Whitaker, 

 that brought out George Whitefield to America. He 

 was now in the twenty-fourth year of his age. He was 

 born in the Bell Inn, at Gloucester, England, Decem- 

 ber 16, 1714; w r as admitted as servitor in Pembroke 

 College, Oxford, in his eighteenth year, and took his 

 degree of Bachelor of Arts in July, 1736. His conver- 

 sion, which took place about seven weeks after Easter, 

 in 1735, he thus describes: 



After having undergone innumerable buffetings of Satan, and 

 many months of inexpressible trials by night and day under the 

 spirit of bondage, God was pleased at length to remove the heavy 

 load, to enable me to lay hold on his dear Son by a living faith, and 

 by giving me the spirit of adoption to seal me, as I humbly hope, 

 even to the day of everlasting redemption. But O with what joy — 

 joy unspeakable, even joy that was full of and big with glory — was 

 my soul filled when the weight of sin went off, and an abiding sense 

 of the pardoning love of God and a full assurance of faith broke in 

 (92) 



