The Doctrines Of Grace

It was these beliefs which were the source of his zeal.

The doctrines of our election, and free justification in Christ Jesus are daily more and more pressed upon my heart. They fill my soul with holy fire and afford me great confidence in God my Saviour.

I hope we shall catch fire from each other, and that there will be a holy emulation amongst us, who shall most debase man and exalt the Lord Jesus. Nothing but the doctrines of the Reformation can do this. All others leave freewill in man and make him, in part at least, a Saviour to himself. My soul, come not thou near the secret of those who teach such things...I know Christ is all in all. Man is nothing: he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Oh, the excellency of the doctrine of election and of the saints' final perseverance! I am persuaded, till a man comes to believe and feel these important truths, he cannot come out of himself, but when convinced of these, and assured of their application to his own heart, he then walks by faith indeed!...Love, not fear, constrains him to obedience.

To Whitefield the doctrines of grace were not separate tenets, to be accepted or rejected one by one, but a series of truths so joined together as to compose a great system of theology.

...

Though he sometimes used the word Calvinism, he did not give great place to it. He made much more of the fact that the views he held were those he had discovered in the Bible and he more frequently referred to them as the doctrines of grace.

Such strong and solemn convictions must perforce have their part in Whitfield's public ministry. As long as he had held to these doctrines with lesser understanding of their importance, the policy of 'Silence on both sides,' which he had suggested for John Wesley [who abhorred the doctrines of grace] and himself, seemed advisable, but now that he saw them to be so essential to the whole Christian revelation, he had no choice but to preach them. 'Henceforth, I hope I shall speak boldly and plainly,' he wrote, 'and not fail to declare the whole counsel of God.' This might entail conflict with some of his dearest friends, but he was quick to assert that his part therein would be only on the basis of presenting the Scriptures: 'Election, free grace, free justification...I intend to exalt and contend for more and more; not with carnal weapons -- that be far from me -- but with the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God! No sword like that!'

--Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield Biography: Volume 1, p.407, 409

No sword like that. Amen, brother.