relish any sentiments so much at variance with
high rank and good breeding. I shall be most happy to come and hear your
favourite preacher.'[759] Horace Walpole (who, however, is not always to
be trusted when he is writing on religious matters) wrote to Sir Horace
Mann, March 23, 1749: 'Methodism is more fashionable than anything but
brag; the women play very deep at both--as deep, it is much suspected,
as the Roman matrons did at the mysteries of Bona Dea. If gracious Anne
were alive she would make an admirable defendress of the new faith, and
would build fifty more churches for female proselytes.'[760] It is fair
to add, however, that some of the ablest among the hearers were the most
impressed. David Hume's opinion of Whitefield's preaching has already
been noticed. David Garrick[761] was certainly not disposed to ridicule
it. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Lord Bolingbroke's
sentiments expressed in a private letter to the Earl of Marchmont: 'I
hope you heard from me by myself, as well as of me by Mr. Whitefield.
This apostolical person preached some time ago at Lady Huntingdon's, and
I should have been curious to hear him. Nothing kept me from going but
an imagination that there was to be a select auditory. That saint, our
friend Chesterfield, was there, and I heard from him an extreme good
account of the sermon.'[762] Lord Bolingbroke afterwards did hear
Whitefield, and said to Lady Huntingdon: 'You may command my pen when
you will; it shall be drawn in your service. For, admitting the Bible
to be true, I shall have little apprehension of maintaining the
doctrines of predestination and grace against all your revilers.' We do
not hear that this new defender of the faith _did_ employ his pen in
Lady Huntingdon's service, and few perhaps will regret that he did not.
The extreme dislike of Lords Bolingbroke and Chesterfield for the
regular clergy, whom they would be glad to annoy in any way they could,
might have had something to do with their patronage of the 'new lights,'
as the Methodists were called. But this cannot be said of others. The
Earl of Bath, for instance, accompanied a donation of 50_l._ to Lady
Huntingdon for the Tabernacle at Bristol with the following remark:
'Mocked and reviled as Mr. Whitefield is (1749) by all ranks of society,
still I contend that the day will come when England will be just, and
own his greatness as a reformer, and his goodness as a minister of the
Most High God.'[763