‘Newcastle, Decemb. 13 ‘98.
‘Deare Sr,—Since I writ last to you concerning ye proposed correspondence, I received a lr from you, wherein you give answer to yr two obiections wch I had mentioned to you. Your lr I communicated to ye brethren; but then there arose new mutterings about ye designe of yr late reflections on the circular lre, [and they] have taken hold of ye same advantages against it: so yt at present little is to be expected of any procedure in yt matter till men see what will become of ye publick outcry against it.
‘It hath pleased God to take from me my deare assistant, Mr Pell, by a feaver; we buryed him last weeke. It is a sad stroke upon us all, but it falls at present most heavy upon me. Ever since his sickness, it became necessary for me (such are our circumstances) to preach twice every Lord’s day, and I must continue to do so at least every other Lord’s day for some time, because there are a small party (and but a very small one) who have formed a designe, and are now encouraged upon this sad occasion to open it. This party were ye few remainders of Mr Durant’s congregation, who have kept communion wth ours in all ordinances, wthout making any exceptions, about 15 years; but when old Mr Barnes (their politick engineer) brought home his young son Thomas, from London, they presently shewed their intentions to choose him for their pastor; but as introductory to that they (in my absence) thrust him into ye pulpit, without so much as asking leave. I was silent, and suffered him to preach in ye evenings; but they being weary of that—few people staying to heare him—they thought it more conduceable to their designe to separate from us, and set up at ye Anabaptists’ meeting-house; but no great party would follow them, and now they have chosen him to be their pastor, though before this he had in our pulpit vented some unsound Crispian notions, and at last had ye confidence to contradict what I had preached about preparation to conversion. For this, I thought it necessary to give him a publick rebuke, and to answer his exceptions. That theire designe is to worme us out of or meeting-house, and to breake or congregation, is visible to all: they now openly claime ye meeting-house for their pastor’s use, (when he pleaseth,) and pretend old Mr Hutchinson (upon whose ground ye house is built) promised them so much when they contributed towards ye charge of building; but Mr Jonathan Hutchinson, his son, denyes any such promise, and stands firmly to us, though Mr Barnes (his father-in-law) surprised him wth solicitations; but we offer to repay them all ye money they contributed towards ye building.
‘You see, Sr, how much I need your prayers, and (if it could be) ye nomination of a man of parts, prudence, piety, and authority to assist me at present, and to succeed me when I am gone. Much of ye dissenters’ interest in ye North depends upon ye welfare of or congregation. The Episcopall party have long since made their prognostik, yt token I die, ye congregation will be broken, and then there will be an end of ye dissenters’ interest in Newcastle. I pray give my deare love and respects to all ye brethren wth you, and pardon the trouble given by, Revd. sr, your affectionate brother and servant,
Rich. Gilpin.’
On the 4th page, folio—For the Reverend Mr Richard Stratton, minister of ye gospel, at the house, Hatton Garden, in London.
We have little more to tell of the author of Dæmonologia Sacra. He survived his estimable ‘assistant’ Manlove but a short time. But to the last he was ‘in harness.’ Looking over old Papers he came upon a Sermon which he had preached so far back as ‘1660,’ at the ‘Assize’ in Carlisle, revised and published it; and it bears the same date of ‘1700’ as his own death: so that, like Sibbes, he must have had proof-sheets passing through his hands very near ‘the end.’ The ‘Epistle’ or ‘Preface’ prefixed is as terse and effective as ever; and the ‘Sermon’ itself manly, outspoken, faithful, and truly characteristic of the man. The title-page will be found in our list.[58] This ‘Sermon’ having been preached before Judge Twisselton and Serjeant Bernard and the ‘gentry’ present at the Assize, is specially searching on ‘sins’ in ‘high places,’ for Gilpin acted on the sentiment of Edward Boteler, who, in his own quaint way, says of Earl Mulgrave, ‘He knew what great evils evil great ones are; that they have many followers, go they whither they will, and seldom go to hell alone.’ [As after, p. 48.] I detach a single ‘particular’ from this weighty Sermon:—‘If magistrates advance not the throne of Christ, they commonly prove furious against it, and plagues of God’s people. If this proceed from a careless blockish temper, then judgment of itself will degenerate into gall, and the “fruit of righteousness into hemlock.” Justice, like water, purifies itself by motion, when it “runs down like a stream:” if it be a standing water, it corrupts, and corruptio optimorum pessima. If this neglect proceed from enmity to Christ, then, seeing they have the greatest advantages in their hands to do evil, they may “establish wickedness by a law:” they can “push with the horn, and tread down the pasture with their feet.” [Ezek. xxxiv. 18.] “When the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” [Prov. xxix. 2.] Or if it proceed from apostasy, then “the revolters are profound to make slaughter.” [Hosea v. 27.] And this happens not so much from the churlish and cruel dispositions of men, as from God’s giving them up judicially to rage against His ways, either as a scourge to his people, or in order to their own ruin. Hence it is noted that the cruellest persecutions were set on foot by emperors, sometimes of the best parts, and most civil dispositions, as Antoninus Philosophus, Trajan, Severus, Decius, &c. Magistrates are for the most part like the prophet’s figs, either very good or very bad: they are the heads of the people, and all diseases in the head are dangerous; so when the leprosy appeared in the head deeper than the skin, the party was pronounced utterly unclean,’ (pp. 13, 14.)
Calamy and Mr Thompson of Stockton thus record the ‘good man’s end:’—‘He went,’ says the former, ‘into the pulpit the last time he was in it under a feverish indisposition, and preached from 2 Cor. v. 2, “For in this we groan, earnestly,” &c.; and to the surprise of all, he rather ‘groaned’ than spake this sermon. The lungs being at that time too tender for work, his disease seized that part, and he was brought home in a peripneumonia, which in ten days put a period to his life.’[59] Mr Thompson, in his ‘Diary,’[60] thus writes:—‘Dr Gilpin, yt eminent servant of God, died much lamented by all, on (Tuesday) Feb. 13, 1699/1700, about eight o’clock in ye morning.’[61] He was interred in the churchyard of All Saints, Newcastle. And the following is the ‘entry’ in its Register of Burials:—‘1699 [= 1699-1700] Feb. 16. Rich. Gilpin, doctor of physick.’[62] The ‘scutcheon of the ‘Kentmere’ Gilpins was placed on his coffin. He left a widow, who retired, as her husband had asked, with her family, to Scaleby Castle.
From point to point of our Memoir, it has been our endeavour to bring out the character of Dr Gilpin under his varying circumstances; so that, unless I have failed more than I can suppose, my Readers must by this time—even out of the scanty material which has been left to us—have formed an idea of him, such as will bear me out, I anticipate, in characterising him summarily as a man of no ordinary type, large of soul,—with the spaciousness of genius that has been hallowed,—strong and inevitable in his convictions, quick and sensitive in conscience, intense and full of momentum in whatever he undertook; and, as his ‘Dæmonologia Sacra’ proves, profound, sagacious, keen in his scrutiny of human and celestial-demoniac problems, and one who must have carried sunshine with him wherever he went. His portrait—preserved in Nova Scotia by a descendant, Dr Gilpin of Halifax—as engraved in the earlier edition of Palmer, shews the liquid eye of genius, the mobile lip, the brow compact and packed of brain, a nose somewhat audacious, and a touch of sauciness in the chin, while the long cavalier-like curled ‘locks’ of his wig seem to proclaim the lord of the manor of Scaleby as much as the Preacher; for as Edward Boteler puts it of another, with Fullerian alliteration, ‘Though he was very humble, yet he knew how to be a man and no worm, as well as when to be “a worm and no man.” He knew when to lay his honour in the dust, and when to let no dust be upon his honour.’[63]
I would now bring together several ‘estimates’ of our Worthy by those who knew him well, and thus could form an accurate judgment concerning him. First of all, I am fortunate enough to be able to give, from an old, worn, and weather-stained holograph preserved by Prebendary Gilpin, a quaint ‘Poem,’ which probably represents in portions of it the inscription placed on his ‘monument’—long since mouldered away. Here it is, rude and halting in rhyme and rhythm, but biographically interesting:—
TO THE MEMORY OF YE EXCELLENT DR GILPIN.
In mournfull numbers I did weep of late,
Criton the wise,[64] and sweet Philander’s fate,[65]
And Calvus,[66] to ye learned world well known.
Oppress’d and wth repeated grief borne down,