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George Whitefield's ‘Curate’: Gloucestershire Dissent and the Revival

Students of the Evangelical Revival may have noted the grateful reference made by George Whitefield to a minister in Gloucester, Thomas Cole, who encouraged him in his youth when he began preaching, and have wished that we knew more of this ‘most venerable dissenting minister’. A few months after Cole's death in 1742, Whitefield tells how he was brought up to ridicule Cole ‘and (with shame I write it) used, when a boy, to run into his meeting-house, and cry, Old Cole! old Cole! old Cole! Being asked once by one of his congregation, what business I would be of? I said, “a minister, but I would take care never to tell stories in the pulpit, like the old Cole”. About twelve years afterwards the old man heard me preach in one of the churches at Gloucester; and on my telling some story to illustrate the subject I was upon, having been informed what I had before said, made this remark to one of his elders, “I find that young Whitefield can now tell stories, as well as old Cole”. Being affected much with my preaching, he was as it were become young again, and used to say, when coming to and returning from Barn, “These are days of the Son of Man indeed!” nay, he was so animated, and so humbled, that he used to subscribe himself my Curate, and went about preaching after me, from place to place’.