John Stoughton

“ There is hardly more of poetry than of truth in the picture of a Puritan trooper with his helmet on the ground, and his sword-belt unfastened, sitting by his tent door in the heat of the day, to talk with the angels of God, whom faith in the well-worn book on his knee had enabled him to behold:—or, of another veteran of the same class, the night before a great battle, with clasped hands, looking up to the bright stars, seeking by prayer the help which he needed from the God above them. ”

“ It has not been the peacefulness of death, but the peacefulness of life which has reigned over this spot; not the calmness of the stagnant pool, but the smooth and gentle flow of living waters; not the stillness of the rocky desert, where all is desolate and bare and cold, but the silence of the garden and the grove, where vitality gushes through many a channel, and proves its presence and power by abundance of foliage, flowers, and fruit. ”

“ How, indeed, could disaffection but exist under a Government, which, whilst denouncing plots and plotters, was, by its own intolerance, stirring people up to rebellion? No one can be surprised that old soldiers, who had fought for liberty, felt disposed again to draw the sword, if any chance of success appeared. Where no signs of resistance were made, and very many persons, either from worldly policy, or from Christian patience resolved to be quiet, [327] there throbbed intense indignation at the infliction of so much wrong—a temper with which it is dangerous for any Government to trifle. ”

“ It is not a particular sect or opinion that we contend for, but the very being of a Church and of religion. Whether there shall be any faith that shall oblige to our own hindrance? Whether religion, which ought to add to its sacredness, shall be made a pretence for violating it? Whether our Holy Mother, the Church of England, which hath been famous for her loyalty, shall now be as infamous for her apostacy? Whether there be any understanding men who, in this incredulous age, can find in their hearts to venture the greatest worldly interest for their religion ”

“ In many a military assembly during the civil wars, gathered in town or country church—or under some canvas roof in the midst of a camp—or in the open air by the hill-side—or in the depth of a valley—or upon a village green—or under the shadow of a secluded grove—where some unlettered soldier preached the gospel and prayed with his comrades—though there might be not a little to shock a cultivated taste, there would be very much more which was acceptable to Him who is a Spirit, and who overlooks much which is annoying to us, if men do but worship Him in spirit and in truth. ”

“ When the procession entered the nave, officers of state and foreign ambassadors appeared in rich costume. Diamond-decked coats and rich mantles made a grand show, yet they chiefly served to set off the simple dignity of the queen in her early girlhood, whilst a spell of loyalty touched spectators looking down from lofty galleries. The coronation shout of “God save the Queen” needed to be heard that it might be fully understood. Afterwards, a stream of dignified personages, with mantles and coronets, issued from the choir and covered the nave with a tesselated pattern of rich colours. ”

“ Everywhere was the sight of smoking houses, mutilated limbs, and the earth reeking with blood, nay, maidens expired in wretched agony, after being atrociously violated—even the aged and the sick were burnt with fire, infants were dashed on the rocks, and the brains of others cooked and eaten,—horrible wickedness, and unheard of before cruelty. O good God! such as the heroes of all times and ages, if they were to come to life this very day, would have been ashamed of, seeing that they had never invented aught so inhuman. ”

“ Whereas, on the other side, the Gospel is set forth “as a mighty efflux and emanation of life and spirit, freely issuing forth from an omnipotent source of grace and love, as that true, God-like, vital influence whereby the Divinity derives itself into the souls of men, enlivening and transforming them into its own likeness, and strongly imprinting upon them a copy of its own beauty and goodness; like the spermatical virtue of the heavens, which spreads itself freely upon this lower world, and, subtily insinuating itself into this benumbed, feeble, earthly matter, begets life and motion in it. ”

“ And is it a dangerous error, that dominion is founded in grace when it is held by the Church of Rome, and a sound principle when it is held by the Fifth Monarchy?" "Let it be so carried, that all the people of God, though under different forms, yea, even those whom you count without, may enjoy their birthright and civil liberty, and that no one party may tread upon the neck of another." ”

“ I have a great delight in all genuine Christian union, but my conception of it is by no means confined to the cultivation of love and sympathy with those, who in all, or in most, respects concur with me. There is an admirable passage in Julius Hare’s preface to the third volume of Arnold’s “Rome.” “We are so bound and shackled, by all manner of prejudices, national, party, ecclesiastical, individual, that we can hardly move a limb freely; and we are so fenced and penned in, that few can look over their neighbour’s land, or up to any piece of sky, except to that which is just over their heads.” ”

“ Through lanes under the beech-covered chalk hills of the Chilterns, a detachment of his favourite troops, bare-headed, carried him to his last resting-place—their arms reversed, their drums and ensigns muffled—mournfully chanting, as they slowly marched along, the dirge from the Book of Psalms: "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations;—thou turnest man to destruction;—thou carriest them away as with a flood;—they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up, in the morning it flourisheth and groweth up, in the evening it is cut down and withereth." ”

“ Those who impugn the whole system of evangelical belief as derogatory to the moral character of religion, and who therefore insist upon moral duties as the means of attaining eternal life, do really dethrone Christian righteousness from its Divine supremacy, and turn it into a prudential expedient for promoting one’s own advantage, by making it a series of stepping-stones or a flight of stairs by which men may climb from the borders of perdition to the threshold of heaven. ”

“ His strong religious feelings, the mystic cast of his piety, his enthusiastic faith in prayer and providence, never turned him aside from plain paths of human action, where he could get common people to walk and work beside him. Whatever idea he might have had as to what was best in itself, and under other circumstances than those of England in his own day, then rocking with the throes of revolution, certainly the plan which he adopted was not that of attempting the exclusive establishment of a voluntary system of supporting religion. ”

“ The bells were rung backwards, women shrieked, candles were placed in the windows, armed horsemen rode in the direction where the destroyers were expected; and men with their wives and children, leaving all behind, even money and plate upon the tables, ran for shelter to barns and haystacks. The terror was so great that nothing like it had occurred since the Civil Wars; but the immediate cause of it all turned out to be the shouting of a few drunken people. Again came the cry of “Fire! fire! Horse and arms! for God’s sake!”—simply because beacons were burning over the town of Halifax. ”

“ I should be unworthy of the love I hope to win from you, if I could callously cut those living nerves of loving friendship which, during the past four years, have thrilled again and again at the touch of as tender a sympathy as a pastor could wish to enjoy. I am asked to leave an earnest, warm-hearted, united, and useful congregation, who have laid me under the deepest indebtedness by their sensitiveness to my ministry, by their love in my deep sorrow, by their unbroken harmony, and by their zealous fellowship with me in all service to Christ. ”

“ An opportunity had arisen in the history of the Church of England for healing a wound which had been bleeding ever since the Reformation. A moment had arrived, calling upon the two great parties, into which that Church had been so long divided, to look at their differences in the light of wisdom and charity. But the history of mankind presents so many misimproved conjunctions of circumstances, that students of the past become familiar with lost opportunities, and are almost [108] hardened against the sorrow which they inspire in the bosoms of more benevolent but less experienced persons. ”

“ Easy is it to point out apparent inconsistencies in the career of men so influenced, and plausible too are the charges against them of concealment, treachery, and breach of faith; but an impartial consideration of facts, and honest views of human nature, will lead to conclusions at once more favourable and more just. The truth is, that the members of the Long Parliament were not theorists intent on working out some perfect ideal, but practical men who looked at things as they were, and with upright intentions endeavoured to mend them as best they could. ”

“ The world has witnessed it over and over again. But, in Cromwell's case, there was what in the case of the first Napoleon there was not;—what alas! amongst the masters of mankind has ever been too rare—a deep, strong, invincible faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Not from policy, not as a piece of statecraft, but from a spiritual insight, and as a Christian duty—from love to the souls of men, and with a desire to advance the glory of God—did the Protector watch and foster, protect and promote, the interests of religion. ”

“ Purple rocks rise from depths of massy verdure, sublimity succeeds beauty, and, after reaching a broad mountain-girdled plain, one arrives at a halting place called Laurent du Pont. Thence the road becomes more steep, winding along ledges of rock, whence, through openings, one looks down on pine woods, and sees the stream fighting its way, like our contested passage through this troublesome world. We reached a thick forest at the top of the pass, and came to the monastery—a pile, of buildings sheltered on green uplands. ”

“ His answer to the request for a Parliament, according to the report of the Bishop of Rochester, ran in these words: “What you ask of me, I most passionately desire, and I promise you upon the faith of a king, that I will have a Parliament, and such an one as you ask for, as soon as ever the Prince of Orange has quitted this realm. For how is it possible a Parliament should be free in all its circumstances, as you petition for, whilst an enemy is in the kingdom, and can make return of near a hundred voices?” ”

“ It is they who dishonour—of course unintentionally—the nature and claims of Gospel righteousness, not teachers like Baxter and Howe, who, refusing to look at that righteousness merely or mainly as means to an end, as price paid for a treasure, or as service done for reward, represent it as the goal of all endeavour, the prize of the Christian race, the richest gift of Divine love, and the brightest diamond in the crown of salvation. ”

“ We have not felt the new chains of the Presbyterian tyrants, nor in this Colony have we been consumed by the over zealous fire of the so-called godly Christian magistrates. We have not known what an excise means, we have almost forgotten what tithes are. We have long drunk of the cup of as great liberties as any people, that we can hear of under the whole heaven. When we are gone, our posterity and children after us shall read, in our town records, your loving-kindness to us, and our real endeavour after peace and righteousness." [510]
Barbadoes. ”

“ In the death-blow aimed at popular power, morality and religion, in reference to political life, were blindly smitten. Yet whilst their creed only left scope for patience in suffering, numbers of them did not practice this patience, but were everlastingly plotting a counter-revolution. To them the State appeared as an instrument in the hands of the Church—to be controlled for its use, to afford revenues for its support, to supply means for the enforcement of its laws. ”

“ Baptism not only pardons past sins, but puts us into a state of pardon for time to come. It is a sanctification by the spirit of grace. It is the suppletory of original righteousness. Its effects are illumination, new life, and a holy resurrection. In short, by baptism we are saved. After having thus, in the most unqualified way, exhausted, one might suppose, all which imagination could conceive of the efficacy of the rite, Taylor says, there is less need to descend to temporal blessings, or rare contingencies, or miraculous events, or probable notices of things less certain ”

“ Chillingworth, in his famous work on the "Religion of Protestants," observes in a passage of singular eloquence, that the imposing of the senses of men upon the words of God, and the laying of them upon the conscience under penalty of death and damnation—involving the vain conceit that we can speak of the things of God better than in the words of God—is the only fountain of all the schisms of the Church, and that which makes these schisms immortal. He brands the practice as the common incendiary of Christendom, and that which tears into pieces, not merely the coat, but the members of Christ. ”

“ Our religion, in its best forms, is no doubt essentially a genial social power, healing, constructive, conservative—such we believe it will prove itself to be in the Church of the future—but in the Church of the past, it has shown itself purest and strongest when contending against opposition, when passing through scenes of suffering, when grappling with the evils of society, and when informing and animating individual souls. Persecution has been to piety what the furnace is to the potter's clay ”

“ Is not the time come for uniting evangelical faith and zeal, as decided and fervent as were those of Owen and Good [286] win, with a sympathy for all truth—with a recognition of the relations of Christianity to the entire universe of thought—with a catholic charity in judging other men—and with an estimate of the supremacy of spiritual goodness, in no respect less broad, but in every respect more healthy than that which prevailed in some of the colleges within the University of Cambridge two hundred years ago? ”

“ Hyde, in the course of conversation, asked Fiennes, "what government do you mean to introduce if the existing constitution of the Church were altered?" To this he replied "there will be time enough to think of that;" but he "assured him, and wished him to remember what he said, that if the King resolved to defend the bishops, it would cost the kingdom much blood, and would be the occasion of as sharp a war as had ever been in England; for that there was so great a number of good men who resolved to lose their lives before they would ever submit to that government." ”

“ Inferior to Collier in point of ability, and to Dodwell and Hickes in point of learning, Kettlewell exceeded them in the fervour of his piety and in the force of his character. Eminently spiritual and devout, with his heart fixed upon another world, he threw into his life and ministry a spiritual force, which touched as with an electric spark those who came in contact with him, and made him a centre of power, though he was free from any ambition to become a party leader. ”

“ It is easy for a man of one-sided views to be consistent; but who that loves truth for the truth’s sake, and wishes to see as much of it as is possible in this world of imperfect knowledge, will value consistency of that kind? Baxter was not one-sided, but strove to look at every subject on its many sides, if it has many; and to reconcile aspects of truth which to hasty and prejudiced thinkers seem contradictory. ”

“ Button, who, on his election to a Fellowship at Exeter College, won from Dr. Prideaux the witty compliment, that all who were elected besides him were "not worth a button;" and, amongst the gownsmen, who in those days paced the quadrangle, or loitered in the green meadows of that magnificent foundation, were other men of whom Oxford has since been proud. A pale, delicate young student might have been seen there, who was destined to carry his genius into the regions of metaphysics, and to expound with rare sagacity and power the principles of religious toleration. ”

“ So it came to pass that, under the name of Puritan, all religion was branded, and under a few hard words against Jesuits, all Popery was countenanced; whoever squared his actions by any rule, either divine or human, he was a Puritan; whoever would be governed by the King's laws, he was a Puritan; he that would not do what other men would have him to do, was a Puritan. The masterpiece of the enemy was to make the truly religious suspected of the whole kingdom. ”

“ The Malmesbury philosopher, Hobbes, and, still earlier, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in their free-thinking speculations, long before any great movement took place at Cambridge, not only laid religion open to the inroads of infidelity, but aided and abetted attacks upon its citadel: Herbert, by denying the necessity of a Scripture revelation, Hobbes by representing Christianity as resting on a foundation, which no reasonable man can tolerate for a moment. Thus widely, for good and for evil, free thought was at work in Europe. ”

“ In a nobler and sweeter tone he confessed, when the wings of his spirit were smoothed once more: "For my part I have learned to humble myself, and to adore the inscrutable paths of the Most High. God and truth are still the same, though the foundations of the world be shaken." ”

“ Happily it is no easy thing to change a people's religion by Act of Parliament. Wherever the exercise of reason, and the study of Scripture are neglected, there remain sentiments, perhaps prejudices, which are too deeply sown to be raked out by any legal instrument, however sharp and close-set its teeth may be. Human conscience, whether rude and ill-informed, or disciplined and wise, always hates all tools of state husbandry employed for such ends. ”

“ IV. The method of the covenant is gracious. All its provisions depend entirely upon the grace of Christ. But salvation is not through any Divine predestination of the will of man. God determines not what the moral acts of His creatures shall be in themselves, but only the practical results of them. The soul is free from necessity, though not from bondage; and the doctrine of the predetermination of the human will is not the root but the rooting up of freedom and of Christianity. Nothing formally determines the will of man, but his own act. ”

“ Few saw civil liberty to be a social right, which justice claimed for the whole community, whatever might be the ecclesiastical opinions of individuals. This position of affairs shewed how little dependent is spiritual despotism upon any particular theological system, and how it can graft itself upon one theory as well as upon another; for, while under Elizabeth persecution allied itself to Calvinism, in the first two of the Stuart reigns, Arminianism—at that time in Holland wedded to liberty of conscience—appeared in England embracing a form of merciless oppression. ”

“ And, independently of all foreign culture, mysticism, deeply rooted in humanity, grew freely on Anglo-Saxon soil; not always with quiet grace, as in the Cambridge school under the husbandry of learning, but with twisted roots, gnarled trunks, and oddly-forked branches, bent and torn by those political and theological storms which swept so wildly over the whole country. ”

“ But while men think there is no way of peace but by forcing all to be of the same mind, while they think the civil sword is an ordinance of God to determine all controversies of Divinity, and that it must needs be attended with fines and imprisonment to the disobedient; while they apprehend there is no medium between a strict uniformity and a general confusion of all things;—while these sentiments prevail there must be a base subjection of men's consciences to slavery, a suppression of much truth, and great disturbances in the Christian world. ”

“ Rarely has a man been found so just and true, so virtuous and temperate, so benevolent and pacific; although, withal, so bold, and even severe in rebuking falsehood, hypocrisy, and every kind of sin. His moral indignation, which was sometimes misplaced, made him forgetful of the courtesies of life, and the rudeness which he thus displayed served to increase both the animosity and the number of his enemies. [366]
George Fox.
Mysticism formed his whole character. It penetrated his intellect. It pervaded his spirit. It was the soul of his religion, and the mainspring of his morality. ”

“ She did not believe that religion was intended to minister to fame and reputation, but to pardon of sins, to the pleasure of God, and the salvation of souls. For religion is like the breath of heaven; if it goes abroad into the open air, it scatters and dissolves like camphire ”

“ If it be allowed that the Puritans acted under a sense of mistaken justice; that, standing before the bar of Heaven, they could lay their hands on their breasts, and plead the convictions of conscience and the impulses of patriotism; then, however condemnatory the deed, lenient should be the sentence on the offenders. I am not however prepared to contend for the absence of all vindictiveness in the men who brought Strafford to trial, and then sent him to the scaffold. One cannot but fear that a large amount of alloy was mixed up with the purity of their justice. ”

“ Have ye no regard, all ye that pass by the way, to see a troubled State, a disordered Church moulded into sects, and crumbled into conventicles, religion enslaved and dragged to vile offices, true devotion spit at, and hypocrisy crowned, common honesty almost become a reproach, and the upright moral man condemned to hell. ”

“ What will the Atheists, the Papists, the malignants say? Surely God was not able to save them. Save them, then, for Thy great name's sake!' A second ariseth, and saith: 'England must not be destroyed! Lord, wilt Thou destroy a righteous nation, if there be fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, ten righteous there? Shall not the judge of all the earth do that which is right? There are seven thousand at least that have not bowed their knees to Baal! There are sixty thousand, and more, yea, than sixty hundred thousand, that cannot discern betwixt the right hand and the left! ”

“ No man could be more deeply concerned about the affairs of religion and God's interest in the world; yet his solicitude was tempered with that steadfast trust, that it might be seen the acknowledged verities of God's governing the world, superintending and ordering all human affairs by wise and steady counsel and almighty power—which in most others are but faint notions—were with him turned into, living sense and vital principles which governed his soul! ”

“ He had said, in his oration, that they who had endeavoured to pull down schools were men formed to be enemies of religion, like Julian the Apostate—that all Divinity is swaddled in human learning—that Paul was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel—that if the Spirit taught without means, men might as well be without ordinances as colleges—that knowledge is to be obtained not by inspiration, but study—that arts and tongues are the cups in which God drinks to us. ”