George Whitefield was a student at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he came into contact with the ‘Holy Club’ and subsequently experienced spiritual conversion. He was ordained and soon gained the reputation of being a gifted preacher. After a short period of service in London lie accepted an invitation from the Wesleys to go to Georgia in 1737. On a visit home that same year he preached for the first time in the open air at Bristol, a practice which he continued for the remainder of his life. During this visit he also laid the foundations for the famous Kingswood School near Bristol. He then returned to Georgia until 1741.
Whitefield was an itinerant evangelist on a par with John Wesley in effectiveness, and (it is said) more eloquent in style. He often preached some twenty sermons a week, and travelled vast distances under hazardous conditions, including seven journeys across the Atlantic to America. In consequence of his association with Calvinistic divines in New England, including the famous Jonathan Edwards, he became convinced of their view of salvation (that the sovereign God pre-ordains man’s salvation) as opposed to Wesley’s Arminian view (that God’s salvation is available to all men on the basis of free choice). While this divergence in viewpoint made no difference whatever in the quality or effectiveness of Whitefield’s preaching, it separated him from the Wesleys. In 1743, in association with the Countess of Huntington, he founded the Calvinistic Methodist Society.
Like John Wesley, Whitefield tended to make his home in London and to return there after his frequent journeys. He first preached in the area of Islington, and over the years he filled the pulpits of many churches in Central London, in particular St Helen’s. His first tabernacle was in the Moorfields just north of Wesley’s Foundry on a road called Windmill Hill (now Tabernacle Street). Later when he became better known Whitefield built a larger tabernacle on Tottenham Court Road which attracted great crowds, including certain of the important and famous as Lord Chesterfield, David Hume, Horace Walpole, David Garrick and the Prince of Wales. Critics called it ‘Whitefield’s Soul Trap’. But he was ever mindful of the plight of the working classes and of orphans, widows, prisoners and others in need. A fitting tribute was written by the poet William Cowper:
He followed Paul—his zeal a kindred flame, His apostolic charity the same.