“Honoured gentlemen, I do not desire to find fault. I doubt not but you have been prejudiced both against me and my friends. The event will shew what friends we are to Georgia. The Orphan House will certainly be of great utility to the colony; and the children educated therein will, I trust, be the glory of the society to which they belong. They are bred up to industry, as well as to other things; and are taught to fear God and honour the king. I heartily pray God to bless all who are concerned in the management of Georgian affairs.
“I hope to be in London in about two months. In the meanwhile, I would beg the favour of a line by your secretary, and I also entreat you, honoured gentlemen, to write to the magistrates of Savannah, to let the Orphan House managers alone. If I, or my friends, should happen to say or do anything amiss, I assure you, you shall have all possible satisfaction given you by them, and also by, honoured gentlemen, your very humble servant,
Such was Whitefield’s letter to the Trustees of Georgia, written in the midst of the great revival at Cambuslang.
On the same day, he wrote a long letter to his good friend, the Rev. Mr. Willison, of Dundee, who seems to have been far more anxious about Whitefield’s reputation than Whitefield was himself. The letter is historical, and extracts from it must be given.
“REV. AND VERY DEAR SIR,――I heartily thank you for your concern about unworthy _me_. Though I am not very solicitous respecting what the world says of me, yet I would not refuse to give to any one, much less a minister of Jesus Christ, all reasonable satisfaction about my doctrine or conduct.
“I am sorry that ‘The Associate Presbytery’ have done me much wrong. As to what they say about the _supremacy_, my sentiments agree with what is said in the Westminster Confession of Faith (chapter xxiii.). I do own the Lord Jesus to be the blessed Head and King of His Church. I never abjured the Solemn League and Covenant; neither was it ever proposed to me to be abjured.
“As for my _missives_, if ‘The Associate Presbytery’ will be pleased to print them, the world will see that they had no reason to expect I would act in any other manner than I have done.
“What that part of my _experience_ is that savours of the grossest _enthusiasm_, I know not. It is not specified; but this one thing I know, when I conversed with them, they were satisfied with the account I then gave of my experience, and also of the validity of my mission. Only, when they found I would preach the gospel promiscuously to _all_, and _for every minister_ that would invite me, and not adhere only to them, one of them said, ‘That they were satisfied with all the other accounts which I gave of myself, except of my call to Scotland at that time.’ They would have been glad of my help, and would have received me as a minister of Jesus Christ, had I consented to preach only at the invitation of them and their people. I thought their foundation was too narrow for any high house to be built upon. When I was last in Scotland, I declared freely, (and I am more and more convinced of it since,) that they were building a Babel.