George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

CANONS AND CUEEDS 299
tradition. Neither were matters mended by his appealing so
solemnly to the Almighty, as he did in the following words :
' But, my lord, to come nearer to the point in hand—and for Christ's
sake let not your lordship he offended by ray using such plainness of
speech—I would, as in the presence of the living God, put it to your
lordship's conscience whether there is one hishop or presbyter in England,
Wales, or Ireland, that looks upon our canons as his rule of action? Ii
they do, we are all perjured with a witness, and consequently in a very
bad sense of the word irregular indeed. When canons and other Church
laws are invented and compiled by men of little hearts and bigoted prin-
ciples on purpose to hinder persons of more enlarged souls from doing
good, or being more extensively useful, they become mere briita fulmina
and when made use of only as cords to bind up the hands of a zealous few,
that honestly appear for their king, their country, and their God, like the
withes with which the Philistines bound Samson, in my opinion they may
very legally be broken. ... As good is done, and souls are benefited, I
hope your lordship will not regard a little irregularity, since at the worst it
is only the irregularity of doing well.'
Impossible as it is to withhold sympathy from an irregular
well-doer, who was singled out as the object of pastoral
warnings and the mark of scoundrels' brickbats, while card-
playing, gambling, idle clergymen were passed by without
rebuke or punishment, there is no gainsaying that he was
irregular. To judge his conscience is not our office ; but it
would have made one inconsistency the less in his life had
he severed himself from a Church with which he could hold
but a nominal connection so long as he persisted in his
irregularities ; and it would have been a yet happier thing had
no Church been so rigid in its forms as to make the warmest
zeal and the tenderest love in its communion things which
it could not tolerate, and yet remain true to its constitution.
It is strange when the best Christian becomes the most objec-
tionable member of a Church.
Early in 1756, the year which our narrative has now reached,
a great change passed over Whitefield's personal appearance.