This covenant, however, was not to prevent in after time censure being cast on others who, endeavouring to preserve its spirit, were led to think differently from the majority. For instance, we find in 1656 two persons, who had been members of the Independent church at Beccles, received adult baptism, and in so doing were considered to have given ‘offence’ to the church, and were desired to appear and give an account of their practices.
At one time there was little of what we know as congregational singing. In 1657 it was agreed by the Beccles church ‘that they do put in
practice the ordinance of singing in the publick upon the forenoon and afternoon of the Lord’s daies, and that it be between praier and sermon; and also it was agreed that the New England translation of the Psalmes be made use of by the church at their times of breaking of bread, and it was agreed that the next Lord’s day, seventh night, might be the day to enter upon the work of singing in publick.’ It is interesting to note that one of the pastors of the Beccles church was a Mr. Nokes, who had been trained—where Calamy and many others were trained—at the University of Utrecht, and that in the same year in which Dr. Watts accepted the pastoral office, he addressed to Mr. Nokes a poem on ‘Friendship,’ which is still included in the Doctor’s works. Dissent, when I was a boy, was considered low. We were contemptuously termed ‘pograms,’ a term of reproach the origin of which I have never learnt. The landed gentry, the small squires, the lawyers and the doctors, and the tradespeople who pandered to their prejudices and fattened on their patronage, were slow to say a word in favour of a Dissenter. The poor who went to chapel were excluded from many benefits enjoyed by their fellow-parishioners. It was the fashion to treat them with scorn, yet I
have heard one of the most excellent and finished gentlemen in the district declare that he heard better talk in my father’s parlour than he did anywhere else in the neighbourhood, and I can well believe it, for the Dissenting minister, as a rule, at that time, was a better read man, and a more studious one, than the clergyman of the district, in spite of his University education; and in matters affecting the welfare of the nation, and that came under the denomination of politics, his views were far more rational than those of Churchmen in general, and the clergy in particular. We learn from Milton’s State Papers that the churches of East Anglia petitioned Oliver Cromwell that the three nations might enjoy the blessings of a godly, upright magistracy; that they might have Courts of Judicature in their own country; and that honest men of known fidelity and uprightness might be authorized to determine trivial matters of debt or difference. Assuredly the East Anglian saints—the latter term was, and, strange to say, is still, used as a term of reproach—were wise and right-thinking men where Church government and public policy were concerned. We love to read the story of the Pilgrim Fathers. With what rapture Mrs. Hemans wrote:
‘What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealth of seas? the spoils of war?
They sought a faith’s pure shrine.‘Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They left unstained what there they found—
Freedom to worship God.’
But it seems to me that a greater glory was won by, and a greater honour should be paid to, the men who did not cross the Atlantic; who did not seek an asylum in a foreign land; who remained at home to suffer—to die, if need be, to uphold the rights of conscience, and to fight the good fight of faith. It is not even in our tolerant, and, as we deem it, more enlightened day, that full justice is done to these men. In what calls itself good society you meet men and women whose ancestors were Dissenters, and yet who are ashamed of the fact—a fact of which no one can be ashamed who feels how in East Anglia, at any rate, the religious teaching of Dissent purified the life of the people, enlarged their political views, and helped this great land of ours to sweep into a better and a younger day.
CHAPTER IV.
politics and theology.
Homerton academy—W. Johnson Fox, M.P.—Politics in 1830—Anti-Corn Law speeches—Wonderful oratory.
About 1830 there was, if not a good deal of actual light let into such dark places as our Suffolk village—where it was considered the whole duty of man, as regards the poor, to attend church and make a bow to their betters (a rustic ceremony generally performed by pulling the lock of hair on the forehead with the right hand), and to be grateful for the wretched station of life in which they were placed—at any rate, a great shaking among the dry bones. One summer morning an awe fell on the parish as it ran from one to another that the guard of the Yarmouth and London Royal Mail had left word with the ostler at the Spread Eagle that George the Fourth was dead; then a certain dull sound as of cannon firing afar off had been wafted across the German Ocean, and had
given rise to mysterious speculations on the subject of Continental wars, in which Suffolk lads might have to ‘’list’ as ‘sogers’; and last of all there came that grand excitement when—North and South, East and West—the nation rose as one man to demand political and Parliamentary Reform. It was a delusion, perhaps, that cry, but it was a glorious one, nevertheless; that the millennium could be delayed when we had Parliamentary Reform no one for a moment doubted. The sad but undeniable fact that mostly men are fools with whom beer is omnipotent had not then entered into men’s minds, and thus England and Scotland some sixty years ago wore an aspect of activity and enthusiasm of which the present generation can have no idea, and which, perhaps, can never occur again.