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Later Reformers
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both in the university and as they were entering the ministry. They
and a few others who sympathized with them were contemptuously
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called Methodists by their ungodly fellow-students,—a name which
is at the present time regarded as honorable by one of the largest
denominations in England and America.
They were members of the Church of England, and were strongly
attached to her forms of worship; but the Lord had presented before
them in his word a higher standard. The Holy Spirit urged them to
preach Christ and him crucified. The power of the Highest attended
their labors. Thousands were convicted and truly converted. It
was necessary that these sheep be protected from ravening wolves.
Wesley had no thought of forming a new denomination, but he
organized them under what was called the Methodist Connection.
Mysterious and trying was the opposition which these preachers
encountered from the established church; yet God, in his wisdom,
had overruled events to cause the reform to begin where it did. Had
it come wholly from without, it would not have penetrated where it
was so much needed. As the revival preachers were churchmen, and
labored within the pale of the church wherever they could find op-
portunity, the truth had an entrance where the doors would otherwise
have remained closed. Some of the clergy were roused from their
moral stupor, and became zealous preachers in their own parishes.
The churches that had been petrified by formalism were quickened
into life.
Men of different gifts performed their appointed work. They did
not harmonize upon every point of doctrine, but all were moved by
the Spirit of God, and united in the absorbing aim to win souls to
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Christ. The differences between Whitefield and the Wesleys threat-
ened at one time to create alienation; but as they learned meekness
in the school of Christ, mutual forbearance and charity reconciled
them. They had no time to dispute, while error and iniquity were
teeming everywhere, and sinners were going down to ruin. They
labored and prayed together, and their friendship was strengthened
as they sowed the gospel seed in the same fields.
The servants of God trod a rugged path. Men of influence and
learning employed their powers against them. After a time many
of the clergy manifested determined hostility, and the doors of the
churches were closed against a pure faith and those who proclaimed