Читать книгу The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: with a supplemental chapter on the revival in America онлайн

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Thus the term Methodism cannot, any more than Christianity, be contented with, or contained in one particular line of opinion. Thus, for instance, among the members of the “Holy Club” we find the two Wesleys and others distinctly Arminian—the apostles of that form of thought which especially teaches us that we must attain to the grace of God; while Whitefield first, and Hervey afterwards, became the teachers of that doctrine which announces the irresistible grace of God as that which is outside of us, and comes down upon us. No doubt the doctrines were too sharply separated by their respective leaders. In the ultimate issue, both believed alike that all was of grace, and all of God; but experience makes every man’s point of view; as he feels, so he sees. The grand thought about all these men in this Great Revival was that they believed in, and untiringly and with immense confidence announced, that which smote upon the minds of their hearers almost like a new revelation; in an age of indifference and Deism they declared that “the grace of God hath appeared unto all men.”