An epitaph on a tomb-stone in the Chapel of Jesus’ College, Cambridge, records his deeds:—“Tobias Rustat, Yeoman of the Robes to King Charles II., whom he served with all duty and faithfulness in his adversity as well as prosperity, both at home and abroad. The greatest part of the estate he gathered by God’s blessing, the King’s favour, and his industry, he disposed in his lifetime in works of charity, and found the more he bestowed upon churches, hospitals, universities, and colleges, and upon poor widows and orphans of orthodox ministers, the more he had at the year’s end. Neither was he unmindful of his kindred and relations in making them provision out of what remained. He died a bachelor the 15th day of March, in the year of our Lord 1693, aged 87.”
Dr. Sutcliffe, in the reign of James I., founded and built a college at Chelsea “principally for the maintenance of the true Catholic, Apostolic, and Christian faith, and next, for the practice, setting forth, and increase of true and sound learning against the pedantry, sophistries and novelties of the Jesuits, and others, the Pope’s factors and followers; and, thirdly, against the treachery of the Pelagians, and Arminians, and others, that draw towards Popery and Babylonian slavery, endeavouring to make a rent in God’s Church, and a peace between heresy and God’s true faith—between Christ and Antichrist.”[356] Although patronized by the King, this indefinite scheme for maintaining truth in a controversial age came to nothing, and Charles II. appropriated the ground occupied by the college to the famous Royal Hospital for superannuated soldiers. Everybody is familiar with the imposing edifice near the banks of the Thames, and with the stories about Nell Gwynn’s influence, in the establishment of the foundation, but it is not generally known, that a number of persons, besides the King, took part in the work, and that it is really a monument of national as well as of Royal munificence.
Tillotson, in one of his sermons, commemorates the benevolence of a London merchant:—
“He (Mr. Gouge) set the poor of St. Sepulchre’s parish (where he was a minister) to work at his own charge. He bought flax and hemp for them to spin; when spun he paid them for their work, and caused it to be wrought into cloth, which he sold as he could, himself bearing the whole loss. This was a very wise and well-chosen way of charity, and in the good effect of it, a much greater charity; than if he had given to those very persons (freely and for nothing) so much as he made them earn by their work, because, by this means, he rescued them from two most dangerous temptations—idleness and poverty. This course, so happily devised and begun by Mr. Gouge, gave, it may be, the first hint to that useful and worthy citizen, Mr. Thos. Firman, of a much larger design, which has been managed by him some years in this city, with that vigour and good success, that many hundreds of poor children, and others, who lived idle before, unprofitable both to themselves and the public, now maintain themselves, and are also some advantage to the community. By the assistance and charity of many excellent and well-disposed persons, Mr. Firman is enabled to bear the unavoidable loss and charge of so vast an undertaking, and by his own forward inclination to charity, and unwearied diligence and activity, is fitted to sustain and go through the incredible pains of it.”[357]
CHARITIES.
Such instances of Christian benevolence are quite as worthy of being recorded in ecclesiastical history as the strifes of controversy, and the changes of government, and it may therefore be added in reference to “the useful and worthy citizen, Mr. Firman,” just mentioned, that, although he was a person of singular and heterodox opinions, he distinguished himself above many who condemned his errors; and left behind him a name for active and unwearied charity, which entitles him to a place in the same honourable list with Howard, Fry, and Peabody. The details of his beneficence are minutely recorded in his interesting life: besides establishing a linen manufactory entirely for the employment and benefit of poor spinners, he visited prisons, and redeemed poor debtors; he was a zealous supporter of Christ’s and St. Thomas’ Hospitals; he largely gave away Bibles, good books, and catechisms; he diligently helped the French Refugees; he evinced a deep interest in the sufferings and relief of the persecuted Irish, and he was an eminent contributor to the wants of the poor.[358]
Nor were missionary efforts altogether neglected. Sir Leoline Jenkins—who, in 1680, succeeded Sir William Coventry as Secretary of State—was touched by the large amount of spiritual destitution amongst the Navy and in the Colonies, and with a view to the supplying of it, he instituted two fellowships in Jesus’ College, Oxford, the holders of which should go out to sea as Chaplains of the Fleet, or proceed to “His Majesty’s foreign plantations, there to take upon them a cure of souls.”
In July, 1649, an ordinance had been passed by the Long Parliament for the propagation of the Gospel in New England. A collection for the object having been made in every parish, a large sum was realized in consequence. With this money certain lands were purchased of Colonel Beddingfield, a Roman Catholic Royalist, the annual proceeds of which were to be devoted to the mission. But after the Restoration, the Colonel seized back the property for his own use, and it was only after legal proceedings,—in which Clarendon, as Lord Chancellor, behaved most equitably,—that it was recovered by the trustees. Charles II. granted the Society a new Charter of Incorporation, of which Robert Boyle became president; and Mr. Ashurst, an influential and pious citizen, and alderman of London, who had been treasurer before, reaccepted that important post. Richard Baxter took an active part in the proceedings at home, and John Eliot, a missionary to the Indians, carried on its operations abroad. Letters are preserved which passed between the illustrious Divine and the illustrious Evangelist, and from one written by the former we learn that, although, from reasons connected with the peculiar character of the times, numbers were unwilling to leave England just then to embark in this new expedition of religious zeal, many would have been glad to have gone amongst “Persians, Tartarians, and Indians,” to preach the Gospel, had they but understood the language. Hints respecting universal language—a dream which occupied the thoughts of Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester, and inspired George Dalgarno’s Ars Signorum—occur in Eliot’s letters, showing that he leaned towards the Hebrew tongue as the all-comprehensive vehicle of instruction—the tongue which, he said, will be spoken in heaven, and which, by its “trigramical foundation,” is “capable of a regular expatiation into millions of words, no language like it.” Baxter was strongly excited by the deplorable destitution of the Gospel, but it inspired more of despair than of hope; it paralyzed rather than stimulated effort. “He that surveyeth the present state of the earth, and considereth, that scarcely a sixth part is Christian, and how small a part of them are reformed, and how small a part of them have much of the power of godliness, will be ready to think that Christ hath called almost all His chosen, and is ready to forsake the earth, rather than that He intendeth us such blessed days below as we desire. We shall have what we would, but not in this world.”[359] There are also several letters from Eliot to Boyle, written with touching simplicity—reports, in fact, of the missionary work in New England—in which the apostle to the Indians addresses the President of the Society as a right honourable, deeply learned, abundantly charitable, and constant, nursing father.[360]
CHARITIES.
Boyle devoted to the New England mission, £300 a year during his life, and, by his will, bequeathed a legacy of £100; and although several persons of distinction were nominally connected with the scheme, he was its moving-spring, its power and life. The meetings for the transaction of its affairs, which he commonly attended, were held at Alderman Ashurst’s residence in London—the first board of foreign missions in Protestant England, and the first mission-house of that kind in its enterprising metropolis. Missionary operations on a much larger scale were commenced after the Revolution.