Digging Out the Embedded Church

Her soul was not fulfilled in the round of parties and balls she was expected to enjoy, and so she was fortunate, in a dissolute age, to find a serious-minded, moral and faithful husband in the 9th Earl of Huntingdon of Donington Park, who was 11 years older than herself.

Her sister, Lady Margaret Hastings, to most people’s amazement and the annoyance of some, came under the influence of a ‘methodist’ preacher, Benjamin Ingham, who had been a member of the Wesleys’ ‘Holy Club’ in Oxford. He followed the Wesleys to the colony of Georgia and, like them after his return to England, came into assurance of faith in Christ. Lady Margaret’s conversion spoke to Selina, who came to a similar act of trust in Christ sometime in 1738.

Selina became an aristocrat leader in what was mainly an entrepreneurial and working class revival movement. She was almost completely misunderstood by most of the nobility who knew her, and she became well acquainted with most of the leaders of the Revival, the Wesleys, Howel Harris, the Welsh evangelist, and, in particular, George Whitefield.

From 1768 Harris’s home at Talgarth near Brecon became a centre for the Revival, and a training college for ‘methodist’ preachers was established there, largely financed and regulated by the Countess. It was a para-church body to serve all evangelical fellowships.

The Countess was responsible for founding several chapels, and she tried to keep them within the Church of England, but in 1779 an Ecclesiastical Court ruled against their being anything else but Dissenting places of worship. Her network of chapels, some of which are in existence today, became known as the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion.

Theologically, Selina was of a Calvinist persuasion, but she had an ecumenical spirit, especially in the early days of the Revival, and tried on several occasions to bring together the diverging elements of the Revival.

In August 1749, when the Countess was in Bristol, Howel Harris arrived in the town. As George Whitefield also was in Bristol, and the Wesley brothers were in the area, the Countess thought it too good an opportunity to miss to try to bring together the now openly divided factions of the work of God. She hastily convened a meeting and was able to get the Wesley brothers to attend.

Despite agreeing to ‘give up all we can’, the conference came to nothing Page 115