CHAPTER XXVII.

WHITEFIELD AND

EDMUND-HALL.

THE well-known expulsion of six students from Oxford, in 1763, was thus announced in the St. James's Chronicle :"On Friday last, six students belonging to Edmund-Hall, were expelled the University, after a hearing of several hours, before Mr. Vice-Chancellor, and some of the heads of houses, for holding Methodistical tenets, and taking upon them to pray, read and expound the Scriptures, and singing hymns in a private house. The (principal) of the College, (Dr. Dixon) defended their doctrines from the Thirty-nine Articles of the established church, and spoke in the highest terms of the piety and exemplariness of their lives: but his motion was over-ruled, and sentence pronounced against them. One of the heads of houses present observed, that as these six gentlemen were expelled for having too much religion, it would be very proper to inquire into the conduct of some who had too little! Mr. (the Vice-Chancellor) Durell, was heard to tell the chief accuser, that the UNIVERSITY was much obliged to him for his good work!"

The form, as well as the facts of the Oxford bull, deserves preservation-because it will be the last of its race :-for now, public opinion would expel from the University of Christian fellowship, any number of heads of houses, who should repeat this act of tyranny. That great tribunal has just pronounced the sentence of unqualified condemnation against the late popish "Oxford Tracts," and neither the chancellor, nor the vice-chancellor, could obtain, were they to try, any mitigation of the sentence. The tracts are unprotestant, and therefore, unpopular.

The hisses and yells of the raw witlings of Oxford, against dissenters, at the late installation, were the mere ebullitions of political folly, and prove nothing against the University but the want of good manners on gala days: whereas the tracts

prove want of good theology; a defect not so easily remedied as ill-breeding.

It is one way of remedying both to keep up for a time the names and the acts of the conclave, who excluded six Oxonians for extempore prayer, and kept in one who was proved guilty of ridiculing the miracles of Moses and Christ. Another way, (which I prefer,) is, to perpetuate the names of the wise and good men, who protested against these outrages on truth, decency, and consistency. Oxford was never without some Abdiels. Her cloud of witnesses is not great; but it is splendid enough to inspire both hallowed recollections, and high anticipations. I have felt and enjoyed this when musing in her cloisters and halls. Often have her re

deeming spirits gathered around my own spirit, in such numbers and radiance, that I forgot every thing but the service she had rendered to the Reformation, and the power she could apply to the defence and diffusion of the gospel. Oh, that she were wise to win souls! She has won all kinds of fame, but the immortality of leading on the evangelization of the world. If I am not her enemy in writing thus,then she has no enemies amongst orthodox dissenters. Their eyes are upon both Universities:-not to divide the popish spoil, nor to divert the national endowments into sectarian channels, or foreign enterprises; but to secure for all who can pay for it, free access to all the literature and science of Cam and Isis.

The junto who expelled Matthews, Jones, Shipman, Kay, Middleton, and Grove, were Drs. Durell, Randolph, Fothergill, Nowell, and the senior proctor, Atterbury. They evidently feared a new edition of Whitefield and Wesley! These men, who had "turned the world upside down," and the church inside out, had begun with reading, praying, and expounding in private houses; and, if two did so much damage to the old system, what might not six do? To prevent this danger, "each of them, for the crimes above mentioned," was deemed "worthy of being expelled the Hall!" "I, therefore, by my visitorial power," said the vice-chancellor, "do hereby pronounce them expelled." This was the form of the bull!

Middleton, in his "Ecclesiastical Memoir," laments that "the archives" of Oxford "should preserve the entry of a record which seemed unsuitable to the character of a great protestant community in the eighteenth century but its un

suitableness is just the reason for its preservation. Were it not in the archives, it would hardly be credited now; and the next century would deem it a mere calumny.

Amongst the writers who exposed the folly and infamy of this decree, was Dr. Horne, afterwards bishop of Norwich. He nobly defended the students, whilst Sir Richard Hill lashed, and M'Gowan shaved, their judges. But neither this defence, nor that volunteered at the trial by two heads of houses, prevented Dr. Nowell, the principal of St. Mary's Hall, from attempting to justify the expulsion. He had even the effrontery to plead drunkenness as Welling's excuse for ridiculing the miracles!

Whitefield rebuked this conclave with much severity; but, in a better spirit than the baronet or the Shaver. His letter to Durell on the occasion, is scarce now, and as it is not likely to be re-printed, I subjoin some specimens of it. They are not, however, the best as remonstrance, although the best as history. Whitefield never wrote better than on this occasion.

"It hath gladdened the hearts of many, and afforded matter of uncommon joy and thanksgiving to the Father of mercies and God of all consolation, to hear, that for some time past, there bath been a more than common religious concern and zeal for promoting their own and others' salvation among some of the sons of the prophets. What a pleasing prospect hath hereby been opened of a future blessing to the rising generation! A blessing which we well hoped would be not less salutary and beneficial to the moral, than the new cruse of salt was to part of the natural world, which the prophet Elisha, when complaint was made that the water was naught and the ground barren, cast into the spring of waters, with a Thus saith the Lord, There shall not be from thence any more dearth or barren land; so the waters were healed unto this day.'

"But alas! how is this general joy damped, and the pleasing prospect almost totally eclipsed, by a late melancholy scene exhibited in that very place, from whence, as from a fountain, many of their preachers frequently and expressly pray that pure streams may for ever flow, to water the city of the living God. You need not be told, reverend sir, what place I mean; it was the famous University of Oxford. Nor need I mention the scene exhibited :-it was a tribunal, a visitatorial tribunal, erected in Edmund-Hall. Six pious students, who

promised to be the salt of the earth, and the lights of the world, entire friends to the doctrines and liturgy of our church, by a citation previously fixed upon the college-door, were summoned to appear before this tribunal. They did appear; and, as some were pleased to term it, were tried, convicted, and-to close the scene-in the chapel of the same hall, (consecrated and set apart for nobler purposes, (had the sentence of expulsion publicly read and pronounced against them.

"So severe a sentence, in an age when almost every kind of proper discipline is held with so lax a rein, hath naturally excited a curiosity in all that have heard of it, to inquire of what notable crime these delinquents may have been guilty, to deserve such uncommonly rigorous treatment. But how will

their curiosity be turned into indignation, when they are told, that they were thus rigorously handled for doing no evil at all, and that no fault could be found in them, save in the law of their God?'

"It is true, indeed, one article of impeachment was, that some of them were of trades before they entered into the University.' But what evil or crime worthy of expulsion can there be in that? To be called from any, though the meanest mechanic employ, to the study of the liberal arts, where a natural genius hath been given, was never yet looked upon as a reproach to, or diminution of, any great and public character, whatsoever. Profane history affords us a variety of examples of the greatest heroes, who have been fetched even from the plough to command armies, and who performed the greatest exploits for their country's good. And if we examine sacred history, we shall find, that even David, after he was anointed king, looked back, with sweet complacence, to the rock from whence he was hewn, and is not ashamed to leave it upon record, that God took him away from the sheep-folds, as he was following the ewes, great with young ones; and, as though he loved to repeat it, he took him,' (says he,) that he might feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance.'

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"But why speak I of David? when Jesus of Nazareth, David's Lord, and David's King, had, for his reputed father, a carpenter, and in all probability, as it was a common proverb among the Jews, that he who did not teach his son a trade, taught him to be a thief,' he worked at the trade of a

carpenter himself. For this, indeed, he was reproached and maligned; Is not this,' said they, the carpenter's son?' nay, Is not this the carpenter!' But who were these ma

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ligners? The greatest enemies to the power of godliness which the world ever saw, the Scribes and Pharisees, that 'generation of vipers,' as John the Baptist calls them; who, upon every occasion, were spitting out their venom, and shooting forth their arrows, even bitter words, against that Son of man, even that Son of God, who, to display his sovereignty, and confound the wisdom of the worldly wise, chose poor fishermen to be his apostles; and whose chief of the apostles, though bred up at the feet of Gamaliel, both before and after his call to the apostleship, laboured with his own hands, and worked at the trade of a tent-maker.

"If from such exalted and more distant, we descend to more modern and inferior characters, we shall find that very late, not to say our present, times, furnish us with instances of some, even of our dignitaries, who have been called from trades that tended to help and feed the body, not only to higher employs of a spiritual nature, but to preside over those that have the care of souls. And who knows but some of these young students, though originally mechanics, if they had been suffered to have pursued their studies, might have either climbed after them to some preferment in the church, or been advanced to some office in that University from which they are now expelled? One of the present reverend and worthy proctors, we are told, was formerly a lieutenant in the army, and as such a military employ was no impediment to his being a minister or proctor, it may be presumed, that, being formerly of trades could have been no just impediment to these young men becoming, in process of time, true gospel ministers and good soldiers of Jesus Christ.

"Their being accustomed to prayer, whether with or without a form, would by no means disqualify them for the private or public discharge of their ministerial functions. For if it did, what sinners, what great sinners must they have been, who prayed in an extempore way before any forms of prayer could be printed! Why also are not some few others expelled for extempore swearing?" Lett.

Of the six exiles from Edmund-Hall, Erasmus Middleton was the most distinguished. He was sustained at Cambridge by Fuller, the banker, a dissenter: and ordained