Again, “His sermons were sometimes as confused and senseless as you can imagine.” It is well they were not always so. “He seemed to have a particular quarrel with reason, learning and morality; for he seldom finished a sermon without saying something against them.” Never I believe, but when these things are magnified to the prejudice of divine revelation, illumination, or of CHRIST’s imputed righteousness: for Mr. _Tennent_ is a solid, learned, rational, and not only a moral, but true holy man. The Rev. Doctor _Colman_, in a letter to me published in the first weekly paper printed at _Glasgow_, writes thus of him: “We received him just as we did you, as an angel of CHRIST. He was abundant and fervent in labours, and GOD has been pleased to own his labours with abundant success.” The honourable and truly pious Secretary _Williard_, writes thus: “There has been so evidently the finger of GOD in directing you into this province, and after your departure, the Rev. Mr. _Tennent_, through your earnest and importunate request to him, and in the wonderful success that has attended both his and your ministry, as also the labours of our own ministers for some months past; that many who like not the work, are sadly put to it, to keep their eyes shut against the evidences thereof.”
The Rev. Mr. _Cooper_, in a letter printed in the _Weekly History_, No. 2d, (which the printer has mistaken for _Colman_,) calls him, “Dear Mr. _Tennent_. He came,” says he, “in the fulness of the blessing of the gospel indeed. He was with us several months. Many thousands were awakened, and I believe many truly converted. There is quite another face of religion in this town, as well as in many places in the country. Many ministers as well as people are greatly quickened. Blessed be GOD, who put it into your heart to move him to come, and inclined his heart to come, and help us.” I could bring a cloud of witnesses to testify the falseness of the character given to Mr. _Gilbert Tennent_ by this letter-writer. The account which he gives of himself to me in a letter published in the _Weekly History_, No. __ is admirably sweet: his book, intitled, _The Presumptuous Sinner detected_, and his many printed sermons, and his preface to his deceased brother’s treatise upon the _New Birth_, which is now in the country (and which I would recommend) shew him to be a man of great learning, solidity, and piety. And I am not without some distant hopes, that the people of _Scotland_ will have an opportunity of hearing him ere long, and then they may judge for themselves.
After such a false and scandalous character given of that great man of GOD Mr. _Gilbert Tennent_, I think I may justly suspect the truth of all that this writer says in the subsequent part of the letter. From such a letter-writer as this, what truth can we expect?
The writer himself gives me leave to speak in this manner. For he seems to make the validity of what follows, to depend on the character he gave of me and Mr. _Tennent_, page the 6th, “From such men as these (_Whitefield_ and _Tennent_) and such doctrines and ways of preaching as theirs, what fruit can you expect”? Now all he says about me is, “That I collected in _New-England_ 5 or 600 _l._ sterling for the Orphan-house in _Georgia_: that I was a bold and importunate beggar,” &c. This could have no influence upon the people’s minds, to raise a bad spirit among the people. And as for the character he gives of Mr. _Tennent_, I have proved it to be absolutely false: consequently, whatever he builds upon the foundation of Mr. _Tennent_’s bad character, amounts to nothing at all, since he has not proved the character given of him to be true.
But suppose Mr. _Tennent_ was the man he is represented to be, does it therefore follow that all the great and glorious work carried on in _New-England_, by other ministers, and in other places where Mr. _Tennent_ and I never were, is _enthusiasm_ and _delusion_? By no means; and yet this is the whole drift of the pamphlet.
Surely the writer knows not what spirit he is of. In the 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10th pages, he represents things in a most ridiculous dress, and takes upon him to condemn all the converts, to a man, (though he could not possibly be acquainted with the hundredth part of them,) as “Self-conceited, superstitious, enthusiastic, censorious, slanderous.” At the same time he seems to ridicule the concern which the people were under when they were brought to cry out, “What shall we do to be saved.” He laughs at them for asking one another “How do you feel? have you seen CHRIST?” He boldly asserts, that “the boasted converts, not one in a hundred excepted, make religion consist, in the feeling of inward impulses, impressions, and in an inexplicable faith, joys, extasies, hearing of sermons, and such like.” In short, he by this and the whole drift of his letter, seems to me to be far from deserving the character given of him, in the advertisement affixed to the title-page of the pamphlet.