CHAPTER XIII.
No Sunday in England ever exactly resembled that which fell on the 17th of August, 1662—one week before the feast of St. Bartholomew. There have been "mourning, lamentation, and woe," in particular parish churches when death, persecution, or some other cause has broken pastoral ties, and severed from loving congregations, their spiritual guides; but for many hundreds of ministers on the same day to be uttering farewells is an unparalleled circumstance. In after years, Puritan fathers and mothers related to their children the story of assembled crowds; of aisles, standing-places, and stairs, filled to suffocation; of people clinging to open windows like swarms of bees; of overflowing throngs in churchyards and streets; of deep silence or stifled sobs, as the flock gazed on the shepherd—"sorrowing most of all that they should see his face no more."
1662.
Pepys—who liked to see and hear everything which was going on—walked to old St. Dunstan's Church, at seven o'clock in the morning, but found the doors unopened. He took a turn in the Temple Gardens until eight, when, on coming back to the church, he saw people crowding in at a side door, and found the edifice half-filled, ere the principal entrance had been opened. Dr. Bates, minister of the church, took for his text— "Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect." "He making a very good sermon," reports the Secretary, "and very little reflections in it to anything of the times." After dinner, the gossip went to St. Dunstan's again, to hear a second sermon from the same preacher upon the same text. Arriving at the church, about one o'clock, he found it thronged, and had to stand during the whole of the service. Not until the close of this second homily, did the preacher make any distinct allusion to his ejectment, and then it was in terms the most concise and temporate. "I know you expect I should say something as to my nonconformity. I shall only say thus much—it is neither fancy, faction, nor humour, that makes me not to comply, but merely for fear of offending God. And if after the best means used for my illumination, as prayer to God, discourse, study, I am not able to be satisfied concerning the lawfulness of what is required; if it be my unhappiness to be in error, surely men will have no reason to be angry with me in this world, and I hope God will pardon me in the next."[369]
Dr. Jacomb occupied his pulpit in St. Martin's, Ludgate. It would seem, from his remarks, that he did not expect it to be the last pastoral discourse he would deliver; but I am unable to say whether the hope he had of preaching to his parishioners again, arose from an idea that the law would be mitigated. "Let me," he said, "require this of you, to pass a charitable interpretation upon our laying down the exercise of our ministry." "I censure none that differ from me, as though they displease God: but yet, as to myself, should I do thus and thus, I should certainly violate the peace of my own conscience, and offend God, which I must not do, no, not to secure my ministry; though that either is, or ought to be dearer to me than my very life; and how dear it is, God only knoweth."[370]
THE BARTHOLOMEW EJECTMENT.
In the Cambridge University Library[371] is the copy of A Prayer of a Nonconformist before his Sermon, which was preached to an eminent Congregation, August, 1662. The prayer is long, and consists chiefly of confession of sin and of supplication for spiritual blessings; the only passages which seem to refer to existing circumstances are the two following:—"It is the Spirit that makes ordinances efficacious—although Thou art pleased to tye us to them, when we may purely enjoy them, yet Thou dost not tye Thyself to them." "Bring our hearts to our estates, if not our estates to our hearts. It is the happiness of the saints in heaven to have their estates brought to their hearts; but the happiness of the saints on earth to have their hearts brought to their estates."
1662.
The Fire of London swept away so many of the old City churches that we are unable to picture the localities where the City ministers preached, what they called, their own funeral sermons; but it is otherwise in the provinces. Everyone who has entered the Vale of Taunton, and tarried in the town from which it takes its name, must have lingered under the shadow of the noble Church of St. Mary, and longer still within its spacious nave, sometime since restored with exquisite taste. In 1662 the town had just had its walls razed, as a punishment for what the inhabitants did in the Civil Wars—the bones of their townsman Blake had been dug out of his grave in Westminster Abbey; old Puritan members of the Corporation had been displaced for new ones of Cavalier sympathies; and now, with bitter recollections, the nonconforming parishioners entered the Church on the 17th of August, to listen for the last time to their minister, George Newton—"a noted gospeller," and remarkable for his missionary zeal. "As to the particular Divine providence," he said, "now ending our ministry among you, whatever happeneth on this account, let it be your exercise to cry out for the Holy Spirit of Christ, and He will grant you a greater support than you may expect from any man whatever.... The withdrawing of this present ministry may be to cause you to pray for this Holy Spirit, day and night; and Christ promiseth that the Father will give it to them that ask it.... If I cannot serve God one way, let me not be discouraged, but be more earnest in another."[372]
THE BARTHOLOMEW EJECTMENT.