By Michael A. G. Haykin In recent studies on the Serampore Form of Agreement (1805), drawn up by William Ward and William Carey and signed by number of other missionaries, I came across this statement in the version I was using: “It was these truths [the doctrine of the cross] that filled the sermons of the modern Apostles, Whitefield, Wesley, etc., when the light of the Gospel which had been held up with such glorious effects by the Puritans was almost extinguished in England.” I got this version from “Wholseome Words: Worldwide Missions”
The description of Whitefield and Wesley as “modern Apostles” struck me as odd as did the mention of Wesley. Andrew Fuller, the close friend of both Ward and Carey, regarded Wesley (wrongly, of course) as a crypto-Jesuit!
I decided to check out the original, which appeared in Periodical Accounts Relative to the Baptist Missionary Society 3 (1805):198–211. And sure enough this entire sentence is not there. What is there is this: “It was these truths which filled the sermons of the most useful men in the eighteenth century.” At some point—I suspect it is the 1874 edition that was published at Sermapore—this sentence was changed to the above. Neither Ward nor Carey would have regarded Wesley (rightly or wrongly) as one of “the most useful men in the eighteenth century. Though, interestingly enough, CH Spurgeon would have.