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CHAPTER VII.

ONCONFORMISTS regarded the Revolution with thankfulness. William was, in their eyes, a Heavensent deliverer, and at weekly and monthly fasts they joined in prayer, that God's blessing might rest on his forces,1 which they regarded as being at war with Babylon. It is said that had the London Dissenters been requested to raise a monument to his memory, they would have provided a statue of gold;2 and Calamy paints in bright colours their payment of taxes, and hearty intercession for both King and Queen. He also alludes to their public ordinations, their loving carriage amongst themselves, and their friendly behaviour towards the Established Church. There is truth in what he says, and we can conceive how, with memories of ancestral troubles, he would rise to enthusiastic delight whilst recording the blessings of the Revolution; but truth throws strong shadows amidst these brilliant hues, and, indeed, he himself, in subsequent portions of his narrative, makes an abatement in his demands on our admiration.

Mutual charity would have been exemplified if Howe's advice had prevailed, for he urged Conformists and Non

conformists not to magnify diversities of opinion, but to promote the interests of a common Christianity. "If our rulers," he adds, "shall judge such intercourses conducing to so desirable an end, they may perhaps in due time think it reasonable to put things into that state, that ministers of both sorts may be capable of inviting one another occasionally to the brotherly offices of mutual assistance in each other's congregations. For which, and all things that tend to make us a happy people, we must wait upon Him in whose hands their hearts are." But on many people these sentiments fell as idle words; and if by others they were heard for one moment, the very next they were drowned by the din of old controversies, or the outburst of new passions. Beautiful and blessed ideals of union to most were as destitute of all charm for their affections as of power to work themselves out into facts. Catholic-minded men on opposite sides, if unencumbered by partizanship, would have surmounted difficulties, and reached, if not unity of fellowship, yet freedom of intercourse; but then, as always, prejudices in the many defeated endeavours on the part of a few, and reopened breaches when they seemed on the point of being healed. Death removed some most distinguished Nonconformist Ministers at the era of the Revolution.

John Bunyan, who belongs more to the universal church than to a particular sect, died, as he had lived, in the Baptist communion. He has come before us in a former volume, not as a leader in ecclesiastical affairs, but as a sufferer for conscience' sake, and as an author of works which have won for him an unparalleled renown. He trod the paths of private life, save that when he came to London his preaching attracted enormous multitudes;" and it was

1 Humble Requests, &c., inserted in Calamy's Abridgment, i. 497.

in the city which had witnessed his vast popularity that he breathed his last. A minister of peace, he took a long journey on horseback to extinguish domestic strife, and on his way afterwards to the Metropolis, brought on a fatal fever, through fatigue and exposure to heavy rains. This occurred in the month of August, 1688, when the throne of James was tottering to its fall, and plans which led to the Revolution were being formed; probably whisperings of what was to happen to his country reached Bunyan's ears in his last hours. Illness overtook him in the house of his friend Mr. Strudwick, a grocer on Snow Hill, and just before his death he said to his friends, "Weep not for me, but for yourselves. I go to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will, no doubt, through the mediation of His blessed Son, receive me, though a sinner, where I hope we ere long shall meet to sing the new song and remain everlastingly happy, world without end." "He felt the ground solid under his feet in passing the black river which has no bridge, and followed his pilgrim into the celestial city." He expired before the end of August, and was interred in Bunhill Fields; his church at Bedford lamented with unaffected sorrow his loss at the age of 60; and keep the next month days of humiliation and prayer for the heavy bereavement they had sustained.1

Dr. John Collinges, a Presbyterian, once Vicar of St. Stephen's, Norwich, died in 1690. He had assisted Pool in his Annotations, and written practical as well as controversial works. One of them, entitled The Weaver's Pocket-book, or Weaving Spiritualized, was no doubt suggested to him as he had stood watching the loom in the house of some industrious parishioner in days

Memoir by Offer. Bunyan's Works, iii. lxxiii.

when the city of Norwich enjoyed the zenith of its manufacturing industry. He left behind a good reputation, being, as his brethren testified, "a man of various learning and excelling as a textuary and a critic, and generally esteemed for his great industry, humanity, and exemplary piety."

John Flavel ended his days on the 26th of June, 1691, at Exeter. He had, before his death, left the town of Dartmouth, the scene of his long and zealous ministrations, because the rabble, headed by certain aldermen, in 1685 paraded the town, carrying the good man's effigy to be burnt,-an insult he revenged by praying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." With his lively imagination he combined intense spiritual emotion, and the following story, which he relates of himself in his Pneumatologia is so curious that, though familiar from frequent quotation, it deserves to be inserted here. It exemplifies a phase of spiritual life belonging to an age which has passed away.1

"Being on a journey, he set himself to improve his time by meditation; when his mind grew intent, till at length he had such ravishing tastes of heavenly joys, and such full assurance of his interest therein, that he utterly lost the sight and sense of this world and all its concerns, so that for hours he knew not where he was. At last, perceiving himself faint from a great loss of blood from his nose, he alighted from his horse and sat down at a

1 Mr. Maurice observes that "this story, which is told of Flavel the Nonconformist, is told also, and upon perfectly good evidence, of Francis Xavier the Jesuit. There is almost a curious resemblance in the words of the two narratives." (Kingdom of Christ, ii. 344.) I wish

to resemble Mr. Maurice's ideal historian in his honesty and impartiality. I do not introduce the anecdote of Flavel to prove anything respecting his opinions. I take it as I find it—a remarkable psychological fact.

spring, where he washed and refreshed himself; earnestly desiring, if it were the will of God, that he might there leave the world. His spirits reviving, he finished his journey in the same delightful frame. And all that night passed without a wink of sleep, the joy of the Lord still overflowing him, so that he seemed an inhabitant of the other world. After this, an heavenly serenity and sweet peace continued long with him; and for many years he called that day one of the days of heaven, and professed he understood more of the life of heaven by it, than by all the discourses he had heard or the books he ever read."1

Richard Baxter was an old man at the time of the Revolution, weighed down by suffering; and the Toleration Act came too late to give scope to energies which, had the event happened twenty years earlier, would have been ardently spent in tilling the newly-opened fields of labour. Yet, when the adoption of the Doctrinal Articles of the Church was required as the condition of exercising a Nonconformist ministry, the trembling hand of the veteran theologist could not resist an impulse to write down scholastically the sense in which the Articles were to be subscribed. It was his own sense, yet it was also, as he believed, one in which many of his brethren concurred. Few, it is said, took notice of his explication, and at this we are not surprised, as his explication contains more in the way of suggestive thought than of explicit definition. His metaphysics, warmed by zeal for practical religion, appear distinctly in this farewell effort. He has something abstruse to say as to the glorified body of Christ, and upon some other points; and he lays down a dictum, often repeated since in a wider sense than he specifies, with regard to legislation in Church and State:

1 Palmer, i. 354.