ABSTRACT
Churchmen such as Whiston, Clarke and Hoadly gave theological expression to the full logic of their Newtonian and Lockean thought, but the late 1730s witnessed the blooming of quite a different religious response to the Enlightened Age. Although associated mainly with the names of George Whitefield and John and Charles Wesley, the evangelical revival was international, affecting parts of continental Europe as well as England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and the American colonies. W.R. Ward traces its origins to the pietism of Silesia, to the Lutheran Pietists Philipp Jakob Spener and Johann Arndt and the school of Halle.1 A direct line of succession can be traced from their influence to Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians, and then to Whitefield and the Wesleys. However, Kenneth HylsonSmith noted that the majority of those recognized as leaders of the evangelical revival in its early phases within the Established Church of England arrived at their opinions quite apart from Whitefield or the Wesleys and their movements, and this seems true also for Wales and parts of Scotland.2 Thomas Haweis said of his mentor, Samuel Walker, that he ‘had received the first Dawn of Truth, not from any Connection with Mr.Wesley’s people, who were then the only methodists in Cornwall, but from passing conversation, on religious matters, with Mr.Connor, which lead [sic] to read the bible with greater attention’.3 Obvious examples here are George Thomson and Samuel Walker of Cornwall. And while Whitefield and the Wesleys took their revivals to America, the evangelical writings of Jonathan Edwards passed from America to influence the English awakening. In the English context other factors were also involved, such as Religious Societies, particularly the Oxford Holy Club; the rediscovery of the writings of some of the seventeenthcentury ‘godly’ divines; and also the influence of the Nonjuror William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. These factors converged to act as a fulcrum from which emerged a movement that transcended denominational boundaries.
