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The Great Controversy
tuously 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.
As members of the Church of England they 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 within the church itself.
Had it come wholly from without, it would not have penetrated where
it was so much needed. But as the revival preachers were churchmen,
and labored within the pale of the church wherever they could find
opportunity, 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. Churches
that had been petrified by formalism were quickened into life.
In Wesley’s time, as in all ages of the church’s history, 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 Christ. The differences
between Whitefield and the Wesleys threatened at one time to create
alienation; but as they learned meekness in the school of Christ, mutual
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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.
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 it. The
course of the clergy in denouncing them from the pulpit aroused the
elements of darkness, ignorance, and iniquity. Again and again did
John Wesley escape death by a miracle of God’s mercy. When the
rage of the mob was excited against him, and there seemed no way of