JOHN WESLEY AND GEORGE WHITFIELD: A FRIENDSHIP
During the lifetime of John Wesley and George Whitfield England was a cesspool teeming with immorality, vice, and declension on every hand. Religion had become a joke and the mob had taken on the flavor of ancient Rome. One historian described the mob as a “persistent, violent element” of Georgian England. And the historian J.H. Plumb wrote, “in every class, there is the same taut neurotic quality; the fantastic gambling and drinking, the riot, the brutality and violence and always a constant fear of death”. England had hit a kind of spiritual rock bottom that the most valiant efforts of the Anglican Church couldn’t resuscitate.
It was into this melting pot of immorality, crime, and decay that the work of Whitfield and the Weasleys found its way. It revived and strengthened the colors of a dying social fabric, giving it new life and vibrancy. Interestingly it was embraced most ardently among the poorer classes. It was this class that suffered the most in Georgian England and it was to this class that the truths of the gospel meant the most. J.H. Plumb again notes that “Methodism (became) not a religion of the poor but for the poor”. It was a force to be reckoned with that left an indelible mark not just on 18th century England but also on the world in years to come.
