History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

short, and the design itself was spoken of with great caution, yet a considerable number of persons
attended at that early hour. The late Mr. Richardson, who now lies with him in the same vault, read
the funeral service in a manner which made it peculiarly affecting. The discourse, which was
afterward printed, was delivered in the chapel at the hour appointed in the forenoon to an astonishing
multitude of people; among whom were many ministers of the gospel, both of the Establishment and
the Dissenters. The audience was still and solemn as night; and all seemed to carry away with them
enlarged views of Mr. Wesley's character, and serious impressions of the importance of religion, and
the utility of Methodism."
These interesting facts are referred to by Watson only of all his biographers, and he quotes
Whitehead's account. Moore and Stevens and Tyerman give no hint of this important section of the
obsequies. It may be found in full in Stockton's reprint of Whitehead's "Life of Wesley." It is
elaborate, and so masterful that the reader will confirm the judgment of the London preachers in his
selection for this responsible task. The text is 2 Samuel iii. 38: "Know ye not that there is a prince,
etc." It occupies near sixteen octavo pages in minion type, and must have occupied at least two hours
in its delivery. It is divided into four parts, considering respectively Wesley as a man of learning and
intellect; his religious sentiments, exhaustively treated; his labors as a minister of the gospel; and his
experience with him as his chosen physician in his dying days. The time absolutely necessary for the
preparation of such a discourse may have been among the reasons for delaying the obsequies for a
full week. Dr. Whitehead had been appointed by Wesley's Will, conjointly with Dr. Coke and Henry
Moore, one of his literary executors, and at a formal meeting held in London of all the executors, the
preachers representing the Conference, and other friends as representing the societies at large, for
the purpose of selecting a biographer, on motion of Mr. Rodgers, the superintendent of the London
circuit within which Dr. Whitehead resided and labored, he was unanimously selected to write the
Life of Wesley, and the ensuing Conference of 1791 approved the selection, and added a farther
distinction of making him, though but a local preacher at this time, a member of the Book
Committee. He had also been selected previously as the literary executor of Charles Wesley by his
widow and near friends, so that all the data, papers, letters, etc., essential to a thorough performance
of such an onerous task were put into his possession. He accepted the trust. How well he performed
it the genuine edition of his "Life of Charles and John Wesley," preserved in two editions of it for
American Methodists, attests. Strenuous efforts were made in England to suppress it, and bury the
author in oblivion if not disgrace, so soon as it was found by Coke, Moore, and the Conference party
that it was to be an independent and not a partisan work from their point of view. Whitehead was a
Dissenter in his principles, though in his "Life of the Wesleys" he adheres to Charles' opinions as to
the inconsistency of John's departure from Episcopalianism in the Deed of Declaration and the
American Ordinations. He was for the most part of the Methodist locality, and an advocate of
popular government for the Methodist people. Such principles and views were a red flag to the
bovine nature of the opposition now entrenched in the Legal Hundred, and buttressed by all the
property of the United Societies. The bitter and unrelenting controversy which raged around Dr.
Whitehead and his friends made them the center of a strife, the inevitable outcome of the Deed and
the Ordinations, which has not ceased in its remoter murmurings to this day in British Methodism.
The reputation of this man merits the fullest vindication possible, without assuming that he was free
from faults, contradictions, and frailties in common with his aspersers. It will be found in Appendix
A of this volume.
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