Ecclesiastical History of England, Volume 2—The Church of the Commonwealth

by John Stoughton

Wilson—Hall.

Another striking example of devotedness amongst the Presbyterian Clergy of the Commonwealth might be found at Maidstone. Thomas Wilson, the Vicar, was a stricter man, and of severer habits than Richard Baxter. He rose at two or three o'clock on Sunday mornings, called his family together at seven, and read the Scriptures and sang psalms till between eight and nine, "that all might be ready to attend public ordinances." Then he began the service at the parish church by "singing two staves of a psalm," and praying for a blessing, and afterwards he expounded the Scriptures for one hour, according to the "hour-glass in his desk." The same space of time was occupied in preaching. Having spent most of the interval between one service and another in singing hymns and in similar devotional exercises, he reappeared in his pulpit in the afternoon, and did as he had done in the morning, only that he expounded the New Testament instead of the Old. In the evening he called his neighbours together, and asked questions respecting the sermons they had heard, and, after a recapitulation of them, with additional singing, he concluded with prayer. We should have supposed that the religious services of the day were now concluded; but instead of that being the case we are informed that the minister went to his patron's house to supper, where there would be a hundred or more persons assembled, including the principal magistrates of the town, to join with their excellent Vicar "in the conclusion of the day"—when more remarks, questions, and prayers, were added to those already so abundantly offered. Not less than nine or ten hours were thus spent in acts of worship, so that the Sabbath could not be a season of rest; still, at least to Thomas Wilson, it was a day of light and gladness. Every Monday and Tuesday he held theological conferences; every Thursday he preached a market-lecture; and every Friday he expounded the Scriptures at a private meeting. His biographer bears admiring testimony to the change which he wrought by these unremitting labours in the town of Maidstone, and informs us that one of the Judges on the circuit held up the place as a choice and unparalleled example. Those who on Sunday had been wont to frequent the public-house, and to play at cudgell, football, or cricket, and had mocked the godly burgesses and their wives on the way to church,—now attended sermon themselves, and had actually come to believe that it was a sin even to draw water, or to walk in the fields, or to pluck a rose on the Lord's Day.[189]

Pages might be filled with illustrations of like earnestness, with a similar lack of wisdom; but room remains for only one more example of the Presbyterian parish Minister of the Commonwealth. Thomas Hall spent "three apprenticeships at King's Norton—in addition to a lustre of years (rather more than four), at Mosely." His preface to "The Font Guarded," a publication belonging to the year 1651, compliments his parishioners after the following fashion:—"You have been a people very loving and free to the ministry. Many people deal by their ministers as carriers do by their horses, laying great burdens on them, and then hang bells about their necks; but ye have not so learned Christ. Your gratitude hath not been verbal but real, with your purse, as well as with your persons, you have promoted the Gospel for many years together in your town, to the refreshing of many hungry souls about you, in which number I acknowledge myself to have been one."

This individual affords an example of a common trouble in those days, occasioned by the preaching of sectaries who, in the estimation of the Presbyterian pastor, had received no legitimate call to the office which they exercised. He complained, that such persons interrupted him in the midst of his discourses, and rudely challenged him to a public dispute. Yet he could congratulate his parishioners upon the unity of spirit which they enjoyed, although they formed a large body, and were many of them "knowing people." To his great joy, his flock conformed not to the canons of the Bishops but to the canon of Scripture; and there were but few families which had not submitted to examination before approaching the sacrament.

Gataker.

Many clergymen in those days had no fixed opinions on the question of church government, not believing that any particular ecclesiastical system is taught in the New Testament. Any one who held Bishops to be of Divine appointment, or who maintained the Divine right of Congregationalism, were of course chargeable with a dereliction of principle if they adopted the Presbyterian polity; but the case was far otherwise with men who did not believe that there is Divine authority for one kind of church order more than another. Such persons, too, as would have preferred, or would have been satisfied with moderate Episcopacy, and yet believed that Bishops and Presbyters were originally identical, might with good faith submit to the Presbyterianism of the Church of England. Of this class was Thomas Gataker the younger, a man eminently learned in an age of abundant erudition[190]—the friend and correspondent of Archbishop Ussher, and the author of Latin treatises filled with rare and curious knowledge. First Lecturer at Lincoln's Inn, and then Rector of Rotherhithe, he manifested throughout the political and ecclesiastical changes of the times a singular pecuniary disinterestedness; and has, in a very peculiar book, written for his own vindication, given a full account of his preferments—thus throwing much light upon the incomes and upon the cares of Commonwealth clergymen.[191] At Rotherhithe he came to a dwelling-house much mangled and defaced by the late Incumbent's widow, through spite and spleen against some of the parishioners with whom her husband had been in prolonged contention. The wharf by the river opposite to the parsonage-house was ready to drop into ruins, for the repair of which—although two or three persons contributed something—the main expense came out of Gataker's own purse. The fabric of the church, which was supported with "chalky pillars," of such a bulk as filled up no small part of the edifice, being found faulty, and "threatening a fail if not a fall, unless speedily prevented;"—the minister had to contribute largely to remove these incumbrances, and to place strong timber columns in their place. A ship catching fire on the Thames, close by the Rectory, endangered the thatched roof, which the Rector had to exchange for tiles. He also relates in his copious narrative how, in the earlier period of his incumbency, he let out the whole tithe and glebe for one hundred pounds a year, subject to several deductions. At length ten pounds a quarter more was promised, to be assessed upon the wealthier sort of inhabitants—the poorer people being spared—and to be gathered by the churchwardens for the time being, and by them quarterly paid. "Which yet," he says—for we had better leave him to tell the rest of his story in his own way—"the most part came short more or less every quarter, as by my receipts may appear. And I may truly and boldly avow it, that during all the time of mine abode in this place—what in maintenance of my family; in affording a competency to an able assistant for me in the work of the ministry, and to a young scholar to write out divers things for me; in enlarging my house, which was somewhat scanty, for the more convenient lodging of mine assistant and scribe, and a student, one or two, (such of our own country as had left the University, and were fitting themselves for the ministry)—or strangers that from foreign parts came over to learn our language and observe our method of teaching—and gaining a room of more capacity for the bestowing of my library; in reparation of my house and of the wharf before it; in furnishing myself with books; in relief to the poor (wherein I shall spare to speak what I added voluntarily in a constant course unto that I was assessed); in these and the like put together, with what went to the higher powers—I spent, one year with another, all that ever I received in right of my rectory, as by proof sufficient I could make to appear."[192]

Gauden.

Dr. John Gauden—famous as the reputed author of "Icon Basilike"—is also well known as a Royalist and an Episcopalian. He has been made notorious by the charge brought against him of ambition and covetousness; for having eagerly sought preferment; for being dissatisfied with his first bishopric after the Restoration; and for saying "Exeter had a high rack but a low manger."[193] Yet Gauden, at first, was as much a Puritan as a Royalist; he preached "against pictures, images, and other superstitions of Popery," in a sermon before the Long Parliament, for which he was presented with a silver tankard, and in the following year with the Deanery of Bocking. Nominated a member of the Westminster Assembly, he was superseded by the Parliament who chose Thomas Goodwin in preference to him. Gauden is said to have taken the Covenant, a report which he denied; but his name is found in the Presbyterian classis of Hinckford, in Essex. His friendly feeling towards the Puritan party appears from his conduct at the Savoy Conference, after the Restoration. "He was our most constant helper," says Baxter, "and how bitter soever his pen might be, he was the only moderator of all the bishops, except our Bishop Reignolds;" he had "a calm, fluent, rhetorical tongue, and if all had been of his mind, we had been reconciled."[194] Disposed to conciliation, though a known Royalist, and conforming in some degree to Presbyterianism, Gauden was allowed, like others of that class, to continue his public ministrations, and retain his preferment. In 1658 he officiated publicly at the funeral of Robert Rich—heir to the earldom of Warwick, and husband of Cromwell's daughter Frances.[195]

Fuller.