When George Whitefield was at Oxford he became part of the Holy Club, along with other students such as John and Charles Wesley. The problem with the Holy Club is that its members knew little or nothing about God's grace through Christ as the means of salvation. Whitefield was one of the first members to recognize it:
"God showed me that I must be born again, or be damned! I learned that a man may go to church, say his prayers, receive the sacrament, and yet not be a Christian. How did my heart rise and shudder, like a poor man that is afraid to look into his account-books, lest he should find himself bankrupt."
Whitefield was reading a book by Henry Scougal called The Life of God in the Soul of Man. Whitefield comments, "Shall I burn this book? Shall I throw it down? Or shall I search it? I did search it; and, holding the book in my hand, thus addressed the God of heaven and earth: 'Lord, if I am not a Christian, or if I am not a real one, for Jesus Christ's sake, show me what Christianity is that I may not be damned at last!' God soon showed me, for in reading a few lines further, that, 'true religion is a union of the soul with God, and Christ formed within us', a ray of Divine light was instantaneously darted in upon my soul, and from that moment, but not till then, did I know that I must become a new creature."
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