Note this
"It is, of the very essence of historical falsehood," writes Mr. MacOueen, "to declare that the Romanist Oxford Tractarian Movement was the heir of the Evangelical Revival, whereas it was the logical development from the false teaching of the Arminian Methodist John Wesley.""Dr .J.?H. Rigg says concerning John Wesley: 'The resemblance of his practices to those of modern High Anglicans is, in most points, exceedingly striking He inculcated fasting and confession and weekly communion; he refused the Lord's Supper to all who had not been baptized by a minister episcopally ordained; he re-baptized the children of Dissenters; and he refused to bury all who had not received Episcopal baptism' ('Churchmanship of John Wesley' pp.?28-29).The present writer is amazed at Evangelical Calvinists who say that while John Wesley was undoubtedly Arminian in his views, his brother Charles was Calvinistic.After a careful perusal of their lives and the views of both of them, I am thoroughly persuaded that they were both Arminian to the core, Charles' hymns notwithstanding. Their false undermining Arminian teaching and influence weakened the Protestant witness against Popery in England and through-out the British Dominions, while Scotland itself was by no means exempt, and this evil free-willism, as a result, continues rife and rampant in professedly evangelical circles in England and Scotland, and the whole English-speaking world, to this day.
While thus, the eighteenth Century Revival saved England from the 'withering blight of Atheism, masquerading under the euphemistic name of Deism,' it is a great mistake to confound Evangelicalism with Wesleyanism, or to imagine that Wesley and Whitefield both belonged to one Movement and preached the same Gospel.On the contrary, their teaching was diametrically opposed, free grace being Scriptural, while free-will is the illegitimate product of the carnal mind.Whitefield was in the Puritan, Calvinistic, Apostolic succession, while Wesley, and his associates, were Arminian, semi-Pelagian and Sacramentalist.
"One of the strangest, and most persistent inaccuracies in British secular and religious history is that which describes John Wesley.´, as the true author of the Eighteenth Century Evangelical Revival, continues Mr. MacOueen, "whereas anything of permanent value in the Evangelical Movement must be attributed, as God's honoured instrument, to the Rev.George Whitefield, outstandingly.The contrary view could never find favour with any honest, impartial, serious student of history.It is, however, conventional to-day among English and British Dominion Evangelicals generally to give the whole credit for that revival to Rev.John Wesley, and his brother Charles, while Mr. Whitefield is only occasionally and these occasions very rare entioned incidentally. It is a popular error, that needs to be corrected, that the evangelicals were more or less indebted to the teaching and influence of the Wesley brothers. They were certainly not the leaders of the Evangelical Revival.
"The Rev.?Dr. J. C. Ryle, of Liverpool, in his book entitled 'Christian Leaders in the Eighteenth Century,' declares regarding George Whitefield: 'I place him first in order of merit, without any hesitation, of all the spiritual heroes of that dark period (p.?31) and describes him as 'the chief and first among the English Reformers of the Eighteenth Century' (p.?44)."?(Extracts from 'The Eighteenth Century Evangelical Revival' by the Rev. I. P. MacOueen Free Presbyterian Magazine, Vol.?LV. pp.?99-102).