George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

HIS PRINTED WORKS 333
done. Besides the productions of his pen already noticed, he
wrote a ' Recommendatory Preface to the Works of John
Bunyan,' which would have been more appropriately called a
recommendation of Puritans and Puritan divinity ; it contains
not one discriminating remark on the writings of the dreamer.
Early in his ministry he began some ' Observations on select
passages of Scripture, turned into catechetical questions,'
which are much like questions that an ordinary Sunday
school teacher would put to his class ; but they were soon
discontinued. A more elaborate work was ' Law Gospelised,'
which means 'an attempt to render Mr. Law's " Serious Call,"
more useful to the children of God, by excluding whatever is
not truly evangelical, and illustrating the subject more fully
from the Holy Scriptures.' We never hear of Law in this
evangelical garb now, though we do hear of him without it.
He has been preferred ungospelised. ' A Communion Morn-
ing's Companion,' which he compiled, contained extracts from
Bishop Ken and Bishop Wilson and fifty-nine sacramental
hymns and seventeen doxologies taken from several authors
the book was a public favourite. Whitefield also published
' Pious Aspirations for the use of Devout Communicants,' a
book of quotations from a work of Professor Rambach, of
Giessen University. Whitefield published several prayers, some
of which are most appropriate in petition and language. Their
titles are a leaf of Church history, and the petitions contained
in some are as plain an index to passing conditions of life as
are the peculiarities of the psalms. They were composed for
persons desiring and seeking after the new birth, for those
newly awakened to a sense of the Divine life, for those under
spiritual desertion, for those under the displeasure of relations
for being religious ; then come the cases of servants, Negroes,
labourers, rich men, the sick, travellers, sailors, and persons in
a storm at sea.