Victorian Church and Society

The Countess was an English religious leader who played a prominent part in the religious revival of the eighteent h century and the Methodist movement in England and Wales which grew during the nineteenth century. She founded a branch of this in England and Sierra Leone known as the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion. She helped finance and guide early Methodism and was the first principal of Trevecca College, (in Wales) established in 1768 to train Methodist ministers. With construction of sixty four chapels in England and Wales, plus mission work in colonial America, she is estimated to have spent over £100,000 on these activities, a huge sum at the time. A regular correspondent of George Whitfield and John Wesley she is also remembered for her adversarial relationships with other Methodists. Selina Shirley was born in June 1707, second daughter of the Earl of Ferrers. In 1728, she married Theophilus Hastings, ninth Earl of Huntingdon. In 1739, Lady Huntington joined the ...

The dispute that split John Wesley and George Whitfield was more acute and became more damaging than the one of the revivalists with the Moravians over “stillness”. The argument centred on the extent to which an individual was chosen by God for eternal salvation or eternal damnation. Did God choose people for salvation or damnation from the start of their lives or did they have the free will to respond to God? Whitfield held the first view, Wesley upheld the second. This leads to a further question that is key to the matter: if God chooses the people He wishes to save (the elect) than did Christ die only for them or for all humanity? If Christ died only for the elect then they may not need to lead a holy life, some might contend, leading others to make the allegation of antinomianism (becoming lawless). These considerations were not novel having originated at the time of the European Reformation among followers of John Calvin (1509-1564) and Jacob Arminius (1560-1609). Wesley...

  The influence of the John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield on Church life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: A Review of “Reviving the Heart” -Richard Turnbull (Lion Hudson, publisher, 2012) Initial chapters focus on the early lives of John Wesley and George Whitfield. John was born in Epworth Rectory in 1703. His parents Samuel and Susannah Wesley were high church members of the established church. A fire destroyed their home and the rescue of the family was regarded as an act of divine providence.. John went to Charterhouse then to Christ Church Oxford in 1720. He struggled with inner conflict about his faith and became part of a group known as the “ Holy Club” in Oxford. George Whitfield grew up by contrast in a pub and due to the breakdown of his mother and step father’s marriage lack of money meant that initially he was unable to go to Oxford, so he began work in the pub. Eventually he went to Oxford as a servitor (caring for three or four oth...