f" LIBRAE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO B* •fij Seabevs of ^Icligion Edited by H. C. Beeching, M. A. JOHN HOWE ^eaoers of "gieligton Edited by H. C. Beeching, M.A., Canon of Westminster With Portraits. Crown 8vo. 2s. net A series of short biographies of the most prominent leaders of religious life and thought of all ages and countries. CARDINAL NEWMAN JOHN WESLEY BISHOP WILBERFORCE CARDINAL MANNING CHARLES SIMEON JOHN KEBLE THOMAS CHALMERS LANCELOT ANDREWES AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY WILLIAM LAUD JOHN KNOX JOHN HOWE BISHOP KEN GEORGE FOX, the Quaker JOHN DONNE THOMAS CRANMER BISHOP LATIMER BISHOP BUTLER R. H. Hutton J. H. Overton, M.A. G. W. Daniell, M.A. A. W. Hutton, M.A. H. C. G. Moule, D.D. Walter Locke, D.D. Mrs Oliphant R. L. Ottley, D.D. E. L. Cutts, D.D. W. H. Hutton, M.A. F. MacCunn R. F. Horton, D.D. F. A. Clarke, M.A. T. Hodgkin, D.C.L. Augustus Jessopp, D.D. A. J. Mason, D.D. R. M. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle, M.A. W. A. Spooner, M.A. JOHN HOWE. Ftmit the Picture in Dr. Williams, Library. JOHN HOWE BY ROBERT F. HORTON, M.A., D.D. NEW AND CHEAPER ISSUE METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON First Published . . . November i8qj New and Cheaper Issue . /goj PEEFACE The authorities for the present book are, 1. The Life of Mr. John Howe, written by his younger contemporary Edmund Calamy, which appeared in 1724, twenty years after Howe's death. Almost all the facts that are known about him are contained in this Memoir, which, though rather loose and heavy in style, would deserve publication as well as most modern books. 2. The Life and Character of John Howe, 31. A., with an Analysis of his Writings by Henry Rogers, which appeared first in 1836, and was republished, with an edition of the Works in six volumes, by the Religious Tract Society in 1863. Rogers discovered several letters which were unknown to Calamy, and collected many interesting notices of Howe from the works of his con- temporaries. But it is odd that Rogers' book is already more antiquated than Howe's own works. The notions of 1836 have largely passed away, while the general burden of Howe's work is as vital to-day as it was two / centuries ago. To Rogers, Cromwell is still the unprin- cipled and bloodstained usurper. And the diffusive comments, interesting for the biography of Henry Rogers, are tiresome in the Life of John Howe. 3. The volume of The Works of the Puritan Divines, edited by Dr. William Urwick in 1846. This contains a pretty plate of Torrington Church, and a rather ' vi PREFACE flowery disquisition on the life of Howe. It is accurate in fixing the dates of the several publications, which Rogers curiously neglected. But it adds no material information. 4. The biographies in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (ix. ed.), and in the Encyclopaedia of National Biography. Working on the basis of Calamy and Rogers, the writers, especially the writer of the latter, have contrived to add a few details which had been overlooked. 5. The works themselves, in Rogers' six volumes, and also in the still completer edition issued by Bohn in 1863. This last contains the interesting sermons which were recovered from shorthand notes taken at the time, and published in 1814. From this source it has been possible to fill a few gaps which Rogers had left empty. Other authorities are referred to in the notes. The biographer of Howe, as Rogers says, has a happy task to perform. There are no dark spots to cover, no apologies to be made. One is called to mark the path of the upright, and to rejoice over a light which shines more and more unto the perfect day. I could wish that the reader of this book might gain some share of the blessing which has come to the writer through long hours spent in close communion with John Howe. The portrait is taken from the picture in Dr. Williams' Library, by kind permission of the Librarian. But it hardly does justice to the finely-chiselled face and the noble bearing of the preacher. Robert F. Horton. ffampstead, March 15, 1895. CONTENTS CHAP. p ACE I. CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON. 1630 — 1655 1 ii. cromwell's chaplain. 1656 — 1659 ... ... 31 III. ejected. 1662... ... ... ... ... 61 IV. THE LIVING TEMPLE. 1669 1675 ... ... 92 V. SILVER STREET, LONDON. 1676 — 1681 ... 124 VI. PERSECUTED, BUT NOT FORSAKEN. 1681 1688 145 VII. THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION. 1689 ... ... 168 VIII. THE STRIFE OF TONGUES. 1690 — 1703 ... 187 IX. " WHERE BEYOND THESE VOICES THERE IS PEACE." 1704—1705 219 JOHN HOWE CHAPTER I. CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON. 1630 — 1655. The reader of a biography, especially if the subject of it is one of those numerous worthies whom the world has agreed not to forget, and yet never to know, may very reasonably ask at the beginning what he is to expect if he studies it. There are so many lives to be written and to be read, none of them without signifi- cance if the writer is competent and the reader attentive, that every one must make a selection. Without any disrespect to the great company of the good and the exemplary, of whom the history can be recovered, each of us is bound to forego the intimacy of a large number, and, as we value our time and strength, we must know beforehand whether it is worth our while to press on to a closer acquaintance with this or that shadowy name. What, then, can a biographer offer to those who are prepared to follow his account of John Howe ? First, they will come into contact with a singularly voluminous author, whose works are well worth read- ing, and yet little likely to be read. If the present pages succeed in presenting to the reader some of the n 2 JOHN HOWE treasures hidden in books which the busy modern mind seldom finds time to investigate, the author will have won the gratitude of the courteous reader. Secondly, in the writings and the short notices of the life a man of lofty, lovely character is discernible. Here is a life of true nobility, a simple unostentatious adherence to truth and principle, a brave endurance of the countless troubles into which the lover of truth is led. There is a purity of motive, a directness of aim, a width of understanding, an inclusive charity in the man. The scandal of an unsympathetic age can find nothing to say against him ; the reverence and love of the friends who knew him cannot say enough in his praise. If it should be possible to draw the portrait with any fidelity, and to present the subject of it, not merely as a writer or a theologian, but as a man, a warm and living heart, a large and enterprising brain, the author would incur the benediction of many people in the present day for introducing them to so attractive a person. Yet, thirdly, the principal service which the reader may demand from this brief biography remains to be mentioned. The life of Howe covers the most mo- mentous period of our national religious history. It is a striking illustration and explanation of facts in our present ecclesiastical condition which must always excite the intelligent curiosity of the historical student. We may not stray into the broad paths of the seventeenth century, follow the vicissitudes of the Civil War, study the remarkable episode of the Commonwealth, dilate on the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, or meddle with State matters at the opening of the eighteenth century. But all these things are the background CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 3 against which the portrait of Howe must be drawn. We shall have more than enough to do in explicating the religious questions in which he was more imme- diately involved. And the specific gain which we may promise ourselves from the study of his life is an understanding of English Nonconformity in its origin, its motives, its ideals, and its probable issues. Some readers may be anxious to maintain and develop this remarkable factor of our national religious life ; other readers may fervently desire to see its final quietus. In either case it is well to understand it. Partisanship should die away in the atmosphere which Howe habi- tually breathes. But the explanation of that which has caused the long and sorrowful schism in the Christianity of our country — the explanation which is essential to the healing of the breach — can nowhere be seen more distinctly or more convincingly than in the story which we are now invited to trace. In_the_year_1630 — the year in which the celebrated Archbishop Tillotson was born, and on the 17th of May — the same month in which Charles II. first saw the light, John Howe was born in the small Leicester- shire town of Loughborough. The father (also a John Howe) was curate of Loughborough, and the uncle was the vicar of Boston ; so that a clerical career was before the boy's eyes as an object of ambition from the begin- ning. But in the middle of his fifth year the father fell under the rigid animadversions of the Laudian regime, and was suspended from his curacy, for praying, it is said, before sermon " that the young prince might not be brought up in popery." It thus chanced that John Howe was the son not only of a clergyman, but of an ejected clergyman, and saw illustrated in his own father 4 JOHN HOWE the course which he himself would have to tread. Leaving Loughborough, the family crossed over to Ireland, and had some taste of the chronic troubles of that unhappy country. Calamy tells us in a vague way that in the rebellion which was raging at the time, the place where the exiles lived was assaulted, and the child had a narrow escape of his life. The country which thirty-five years later was to offer a quiet refuge for the composition of The Living Temple, had well-nigh snapped the thread of life at its commencement. On the outbreak of actual war the child was brought back to England by his parents, who settled in Lancashire. The years of boy- hood were spent in the midst of the long conflict between King Charles and his Parliament. Wherever it was that the family was settled, 1 it is certain that the tides of the Civil War swept over or past it, and the miseries of internal discord, the shocks of change, the fierce animosities of parties, must be counted among the formative influences in the life of this apostle of peace. And if no reference to those stormy clays occurs in the writings which have come down to us from the pen of Howe, 2 yet one who was fifteen when the news of 1 Probably it was at Winwick, near Wigan, see p. 13. 2 Unless perhaps it was an echo of stories he had heard in boyhood of leaguer and defence, when in the treatise on Delighting in God he says of the heart which is not wholly spiritual :— " In a time of war and danger, when a city is beset with a surround- ing enemy, and all the inhabitants are to be intent upon common safety, their case will not admit that they should entirely indulge themselves to ease and pleasure. And surely it is better to bear the inconvenience of watching and guarding themselves, and enjoy the comforts which a rational probability of safety by such means will allow them, than merely, with the mad hope of procuring themselves an opportunity and vacancy for freer delights, to throw open their gates, and permit themselves and all their delectable things to the rapine and spoil of a merciless enemy." — Collected Works (Rogers), ii. 214. CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 5 Naseby was echoing through the country, and in whose undergraduate days fell the tragedy of a King's execution and the establishment of the strongest Government that England ever saw, was likely to be at close quarters with the serious facts of life, and, if a religious man at all, to seek strenuously for the regions of spiritual reconciliation and undisturbed tranquillity which are not to be found in this world of strife and revolution. It was on his seventeenth birthday that the boy was admitted as a sizar to Christ's College, Cambridge, thef college which Milton had entered as a " lesser pen- sioner " twenty-two years before. We are unfortunately without any information about his undergraduate days, beyond the fact that he came into personal contact with Henry More, the " Cambridge Platonist," and received from him influences which lasted through life. More was a resident Fellow of the college, and had by a study of the Thcologia Gcrmanica and the exercise of a rigorous self-discipline come to what he described as " a most joyous and lucid frame of mind." His was the kind of temper and experience which would powerfully affect a sensitive and serious youth ; and not only by occasional reference to More's writings, but also by a Platonic cast of thought which is never absent from Howe's mind, the effect of Christ's, Cambridge, may be traced in the subsequent development of this under- graduate. The famous Cudworth was not appointed to the mastership of Christ's until 1654, but during Howe's residence at Cambridge he was Professor of Hebrew, and a noted preacher before the University and even before Parliament, and it would not be difficult to learn some- thing of that erudition and speculation which years 6 JOHN HOWE after produced Cud worth's great work, A Trice Intel- lectual System of the Universe. It was in some respects the most original and creative period in the historj T of Cambridge, and without claiming for him a title which he did not claim for himself, we may yet rank John Howe amongst the Cambridge Platonists, and recognise the spirit of their teaching in all his principal writings. If, however, he may be claimed by Cambridge as her intellectual offspring, Oxford may put in a plea for a larger share in the shaping of his life. By a practice which, Anthony Wood tells us, was common enough in the seventeenth century, Howe migrated to Oxford in 1648, and took his bachelor's degree in the following year as a Bible Clerk of Brasenose College. The few subsequent years, during which the young graduate remained in Oxford, were disturbing and eventful enough in the history of the University. The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell had begun, and Parliamentary visitors came down to Oxford to root out malignancy, and establish matters on a Puritan basis. Under the new settlement, Magdalen College became a centre of religious life. Thomas Goodwin was the President, and gathered a Congregational Church in his lodging. In 1652, Howe and Theophilus Gale, the author of The Court of the Gentiles, who had taken the M.A. degree at the same time, were elected to Fellowships. Goodwin and Gale were hardly so intellectually distinguished as More and Cudworth, but in genuine piety, and in the application of thought to religious problems, they were not inferior to their Cambridge contemporaries. And it was at Magdalen College, Oxford, strange as it sounds to us to-day, that Howe imbibed those principles of Church life and CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 7 government which led him into Nonconformity, and made him the quiet witness to a larger faith in times of reaction and persecution. We learn nothing about early religious impressions or about any period of definite decision. But Dr. Good- win was evidently full of solicitude for the scholars and Fellows under his charge. Observing that Howe did not unite himself with the Church society in the college, he took occasion to invite him. The young Fellow's reply was characteristic, and gives the clue to his whole subsequent career. He said that his only reason for abstaining from the membership of the Church was that he had an objection to laying stress on distinguishing peculiarities, on which he understood Dr. Goodwin insisted ; but if he might be admitted into their society on catholic terms, he would readily become one of them. At the age of twenty-two he already occupied the position which he vehemently defended up to the end of his life, half a century later. Dr. Goodwin embraced him, and welcomed him into the "gathered Church"; and we are to conceive him for the next two years living in that most gracious and lovely of all Oxford colleges, surrounded by the eloquent records of the past, alive to all the traditions of the great University, leading a religious life of that type which has had no representation in the venerable place from that time until the other day, when Mansfield College was built in the precincts of Oxford by the spiritual posterity of John Howe. Those years of University life were certainly not idle. He subjected himself to a rigorous course of reading in ancient philosophy and patristic theology. We have no student's diary which might furnish the details of those 8 JOHN HOWE toilsome years, but his literary remains tell their own story. His first publication of any size, which may be held to exhibit the results of college studies, the treatise entitled The Blessedness of the Righteous, swarms with quotations from ancient authors. It will give some idea of the variety and catholicity of his reading, and will throw some light on the ministerial education which was demanded under the Puritan regime, to mention the authors to whom reference is made in this single work. Homer is cited. Plato and Aristotle are referred to nine or ten times. Horace and Virgil are quoted ; Cicero and Pliny more than once. Seneca had been read with the greatest care. He is adduced more than twenty times in the course of the argument. Tacitus is a familiar authority for the illustration of moral points. Epicurus is known, to be refuted ; Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, to be honoured and loved. Among less known authors, Diogenes Laertius, Apuleius, Velleius Paterculus, Dionysius Halicarnassius, Q. Curtius, Philostratus, have all been read. Philo, Proclus, Porphyrius, Plotinus, and other neo-Platonists are well known; but the Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius were studied with the greatest care. This Platonic philosopher is cited nearly a dozen times in this one treatise. This gives some notion of the equipment in philo- sophy and literature considered necessary under Dr. Goodwin's guidance for a Congregationalist minister. But the Fathers and early Church writers were not neglected, either in the interest of classical antiquity, or in that of scriptural lore. We find quotations in the treatise from the early Apologist Minucius Felix, from Gregory Nyssoeus, from Augustine, and from CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 9 Boethius. There are, in addition, allusions to Arnobius, to the late Italian Platonist, Marsilio Ficino, to Peter Molina, to Beza, and to Gibioeuf, which suggest that the student had taken for his province the whole field of theology and philosophy. This is certainly a good record of hard reading ; and how sound and lasting his interest in these studies was may be illustrated from a fact which comes at the close of his long life. In addressing a consolatory discourse to some bereaved parents in 1699, the preacher finds his argument as much in the classics as in the sacred writings ; Virgil's line about the young Marcellus is referred to, and the following passage occurs : " Should I transcribe what I find written in way of consolation by Plutarch to Apollonius upon the loss of a son, you would see what would give both instruction and admiration. I shall mention some passages. He praises the young person deceased, for his comeliness, sobriety, piety, dutifulness towards parents, obliging- ness towards friends ; acknowledges that sorrow in the case of such a son hath ((pvuiK^v apxw) a principle in nature, and is of the things that are not in our power (ovk z
via or goodness of natural temper (though the word
1 E.g Works, i. 395,
12 JOHN HOWE
hath also another signification) that is said to carry in
it a sort of seminal probity and virtue ; which, when it
shall be observed how some others have the seeds of
grosser vitiosity and of all imaginable calamities more
plentifully sown in their natures, there is no little
reason to be thankful for."
It speaks well for the spiritual intelligence of the
Puritan period that a body of divinity so broad and
strong and manly as that which Howe shaped for him-
self in his rooms at Magdalen should never have in-
curred the charges which it would meet with to-day.
Modern piety would stigmatise it as worldly wisdom,
and would be shocked at the naked workings of a
human mind so candid and strenuous in the deliverance
of the Divine Message.
We may say, then, that as the question of ordination
and settlement came to occupy the thoughts of the
young Fellow, it found a man fully equipped, a student
widely and deeply read, a scholar nice and sensitive, a
theologian broad and yet distinct. Comparisons are
dangerous, but it is not too much to affirm that very
few young University men to-day at the time of taking
orders, and still fewer Nonconformist ministers issuing
from the Theological Colleges, have anything like the
same extent or depth of erudition. The modern young
man of twenty-four has, of course, a wider acquaintance
with current literature ; it is very remarkable that
Howe seldom alludes to his great contemporaries :
neither Milton nor Bunyan is ever quoted in his
writings, though more than once, with a characteristic
affinity, he cites a line from " our divine Herbert," or
" holy Mr. Herbert " ; but the Puritan minister's mind
was imbued with permanent literature, and the singular
CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 13
strength of his teaching, together with the apparently
inexhaustible stores of thought and illustration, must
be attributed to the patient discipline in the books
which do not come and go, but have come and remain,
amid the ceaseless ebb and flow of contemporary
writings. If Howe's works are worthy of serious study,
it is because serious study produced them.
It must have been during the year 1653, when Ox-
ford was in vacation, that Howe sought and received
ordination at the hands of Charles Herle, the minister
of Winwick in Lancashire. Herle was one of the most
gifted and devoted of the clergy who had established
the Presbyterian system in Lancashire. As rector of
the richest parish in the county — Camden says, even,
it was the richest in England — he occupied a position
which could hardly be understood from the size or im-
portance of the small township between Wigan and
Warrington. The ministers from the chapelries under
the immediate charge of the rector were assembled, and
they joined their hands in laying them upon the head
of the youthful minister. The occasion was one of
great significance to him, an ordination which was
recognised in the secrecy of his own heart. He was
accustomed to say that " few in modern times had so
truly primitive an ordination as he." 1 And as we shall
see, there was so little question to him about its reality
and validity that he felt it a point of conscience in the
critical days of 1662 not to accept a re-ordination from
the hands of bishops. In his own judgment he had
already been, in the sense of the New Testament,
episcopally ordained.
1 Halley, Lancashire, its Puritanism and Nonconformity,
ii. 106.
\
14 JOHN HOWE
The sharp division between Presbyterian and Inde-
pendent had not yet been developed, and even when
the conflict became inevitable it had little or no interest
for Howe. Thus ordained in the centre of a strong
Presbyterian district and by a stout champion of
Presbytery, he was actually called to exercise his
ministry in a place which leaned to the Independent
ideal. In the small Devonshire town of Torrington,
which lies on the banks of the Torridge, five miles
south of Bideford, an Independent named Stukeley had
been perpetual curate. But in 1654 this office became
vacant, and the donative was in the hands of Christ
Church, Oxford, the Dean of which, Dr. Owen, was as
decided an Independent as Thomas Goodwin. But
there was no hesitation in sending Howe to occupy
the post.
In this little place, hidden away as it seemed from
the world, our youthful student of twenty-four began
a ministry which lasted, with an interruption to be
mentioned in the next chapter, for eight years. In
fruitfulness, or at any rate in diligence and devotion,
it is worthy to rank with Richard Baxter's ministry at
Kidderminster. Godfrey Kneller's picture, representing
Howe bewigged in the style of the Restoration, and
John Riley's picture, happily without the wig, belong
to a much later date. But the features remained so
youthful even in 1698 that it is not difficult to conceive
how they appeared in 1654. Tall and graceful, with
an air of dignity and a piercing eye, nose long and
slightly aquiline, mouth firm and compressed, a face
without any line of weakness, a bearing which seemed
rather to command than to entreat, the young minister
was one after whom the hearts of men would inevitably
CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 15
be drawn. Enriched with so rare an erudition, and
trained in the habits of the student, he might seem
almost out of place in a little country town far from the
busy centres of life. But it sheds a remarkable light
on the culture and character of Puritan England that
this remote congregation was capable of receiving and
welcoming the strong meat which was prepared for it.
It might be feared that a man so predominantly in-
tellectual, trained in academic circles, would make
but a poor pastor of a simple flock. But follow-
ing the slight indications of this early ministry which
may be derived from Calamy and from Howe's pub-
lished sermons, we may say with confidence, that here
is an illustration of the truth, that the strongest brain
and the richest culture, if only the Spirit of God be at
work in the man, make the best minister for the poor
and simple as well as for the educated and thoughtful.
Certainly Howe was conscious of no limitation. He
gave the good country folk of his best — and his best,
we may say, was the best which at that time could be
given by any one living, — and this best was none too
good for them. The modern minister who feels his
great powers thrown away on a small country charge
has a salutary lesson to learn from the young curate of
Torrington.
Before attempting to depict the ministry in this
little town, we must notice what Calamy felt to be a
great misfortune. When Howe was dying he solemnly
enjoined his son George to destroy the piles of manu-
script notes which he had accumulated in the course of
his long life. The behest was carried out, and posterity
has lost what would certainly have been some interest-
ing details of the period, and especially of Howe's own
16 JOHN HOWE
work in it. But what is lost may well have been more
fitted to satisfy curiosity than to impart instruction.
And the absence of the gossipy sources of information
compels us to study the Writings which have been
preserved, copious enough, if we would form some
conception of the manner and gist of the man's
work.
In a preface written to Corbet's Self- Employment Howe
throws a side-light on his own motive in destroying his
papers :
" The character of this holy servant of Christ is
already given by an every way suitable hand * in what
part it lay open to the observation of others. His more
interim portraiture which is contained in these papers
was (as it could only be) drawn by himself. Why it is
now exposed to public view there is no need to be
scrupulously careful in giving an account. It must
be acknowledged there is usually with the holiest men
a modest shyness of communicating these privacies of
their own souls. Their inner man doth show its own
face with the more difficulty by how much it is
more beautiful and worthy to be beheld. And so it
was with this excellent person, as his inscriptions on
these papers show — ' The state of my own soul,' and
' Notes for myself,' signifying their intended use was
that of a mirror to represent himself to his own eye, not
to other men's." 2
We have small opportunity of seeing into the pastor's
secret life with God ; nor was it the habit of the time
to give us impressionist pictures which can vividly re-
call the man and his surroundings as he appeared to
his own flock. The parish church was of course the
1 Richard Baxter. 2 Collected Works, v. 437.
CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 17
scene of his labours, and every soul in the parish was
the subject of his charge. Details are lacking. But
speaking broadly we are able to reconstruct the manner
and the effect, as well as the inspiration, of this remark-
able ministry. Calamy has preserved a picture of a
specimen-day in the pastor's life. Many scattered pas-
sages express the ideal of the pastor's work. There are
several distinct allusions to the close ties which bound
the people and their pastor together. And, best of all,
the treatise on Delighting in God, though not published
till twenty years later, consists of sermons delivered to
the Torrington people in the first year of his ministry,
1654. In addition to this it was a volume of the
Torrington sermons, already cited to illustrate the extent
of his college studies, which was published in 1668
under the title of Tlie Blessedness of the Righteous. It is
therefore our own fault if we remain in ignorance of
these eight years, notwithstanding the loss of the
autobiographical notes.
Calamy's little picture is based on a statement which
he received from Howe's own lips. During the serious
and earnest years of the Commonwealth public fasts
were of very frequent occurrence, and the more zealous
ministers threw themselves warmly into the observation
of them. But only a strong and unusually gifted man
could carry out these solemnities in the way that Howe
did at Torrington. The parishioners were gathered in
the church at nine o'clock in the morning. The pastor
opened the proceedings with a brief prayer of a quarter
of an hour, begging for a blessing on the work of the
day, followed by the exposition of a chapter or psalm,
which brought them to ten o'clock. Then business really
began. The pastor girded himself to pray for an hour
18 JOHN HOWE
on end ; then at eleven he began to preach, continuing
till noon, when another half-hour's prayer brought the
service to a temporary pause. By this time he was in
need of a little refreshment, and he would retire for
a quarter of an hour, but the congregation remained
and passed the time in singing. About one o'clock he
again ascended the pulpit, prayed for an hour, preached
for another hour, and finished the engagements of
the day towards four o'clock with another half-hour's
devotion.
It must be remembered that these days were seasons
of penitence and confession, the Puritan method of
penance and affliction for sin. And though frequent,
such days would only be at intervals. But such spiritual
exercises imply on any showing a remarkable spiritual
zeal, a fulness of life, and an overpowering sense of
Divine things, which suggest that not the pastor only,
but the flock, was singularly unlike the pastors and
congregations of to-day. Calamy may well remark :
" He had a strong head, a warm heart, and a good bodily
constitution, and the more he spent himself in his
Master's service, the more was he beloved by the in-
habitants of his parish." That such a tax on attention
and devotion should breed love instead of fatigue and
disgust throws a remarkable light on the young
minister's character and spiritual qualifications. The
nature of the affection between pastor and flock may
be inferred from the dedication in which, after twenty
years, he commended a volume of sermons to " my much-
valued friends, the Magistrates and other inhabitants
of Great Torrington in Devonshire, with the several
worthy and religious persons and families of my ac-
quaintance in those parts." In that dedication he
CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 19
speaks of the purpose which animated his labours
among them, to promote "the serious practice of the
great things of religion, which are known and least
liable to question," and he declares that he did not
repent having been so little engaged in the hot contests
of the age about the things wherein Christians differ.
This large and loving spirit had warmly attached the
people to him. He was not disposed to speak much of
their love, but it was there.
" I do very well understand your affection to me,"
he says, " and could easily be copious in the expression
of mine to you if I would open that sluice ; but I do
herein resolvedly and upon consideration restrain myself,
apprehending that in some cases (and I may suppose it
possible that in our case) a gradual mortification ought
to be endeavoured of such affection as is often between
those so related as you and I have been ; which is no
harder supposition, than that such affection may be
excessive and swell beyond bounds."
When, twelve years after leaving them, a pastor
retains so strong a feeling towards his people, that he
thinks it necessary to curb it, we may confidently affirm
that the tie was of no ordinary kind, and resulted from
a very unusual quality in the mind and the heart of the
pastor.
But there is a passage in one of these Torrington
sermons which admits us into the secret of the preacher's
heart, and enables us to realise how a man working in
such a spirit would win the trust and sympathy and
love of his people. The passage is long, but it is worth
quoting as a specimen of pulpit style in this period of
his life. Speaking of the peculiar discouragements of
ministers, he says :
20 JOHN HOWE
"We cannot forbear to complain: None so labour
in vain as we : of all men none so generally unpros-
perous and unsuccessful. Others are wont to see the
fruit of their labours in proportion to the expense of
strength in them ; but our strength is labour and sorrow
for the most part without the return of a joyful fruit.
The husbandman ploughs in hope and sows in hope
and is commonly partaker of his hope; we are sent to
plough and sow among rocks and thorns, and in the
highway. How seldom fall we on good ground ! Where
have we any increase ? Yea, Lord, how often are men
the harder for all our labours with them, the deader for
all endeavours to quicken them ! Our breath kills
them whom Thou sendest us to speak life to; and we
often become to them a ' deadly savour/ Sometime,
when we think somewhat is done to purpose, our labour
all returns and we are to begin again : and when the
duties we persuade to, come directly to cross men's
interests and carnal inclinations, they revolt and start
back, as if we were urging them upon flames or the
sword's point ; and their own souls and the eternal
glory are regarded as a thing of nought. Then heaven
and hell become with them fancies and dreams; and
all that we have said to them false and fabulous. We
are to the most as men that mock, in our most serious
warnings and counsels ; and the word of the Lord is a
reproach. We sometimes fill our mouths with argu-
ments and our hearts with hope, and think, sure they
will now yield ; but they esteem our strongest reason-
ings as Leviathan doth iron and brass, but as straw
and rotten wood, and laugh at Divine threatenings as
he doth at the shaking of the spear. Yea, and when we
have convinced them yet we have done nothing : though
CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 21
we have got their judgments and consciences on our
side and their own, their lusts only reluctate and carry
all. They will now have their way though they perish.
We see them perishing under our very eye and we cry
to them in thy name, O Lord, to return and live, but
they regard us not. For these things sometimes we
weep in secret; and our eyes trickle down with tears;
yea, we cry to thee, Lord, and thou hearest not ; thy
hand seems shortened that it cannot save ; it puts not
on strength as in the days of old; it hath snatched
souls by thousands as firebrands out of the fire; but
now thou hidest and drawest it back. Who hath
believed our report and to whom is the arm of the
Lord revealed ? Meanwhile even the devil's instru-
ments prosper more than we, aud he that makes it his
business to tempt and entice down souls to hell,
succeeds more than we that would allure them to
heaven.
''But we must speak whether men will hear or
forbear; though it concerns us to do it with fear and
trembling. Oh, how solemn a business is it to treat
with souls, and how much to be dreaded lest they
miscarry through our imprudence or neglect ! I write
with solicitude what shall become of these lines;
with what effect they will be read — if they fall into
such hands — by them whom they most concern; yea
and with some doubt whether it were best to write
on or forbear. Sometimes one would incline to
think it a merciful omission, lest we add to the ac-
count and torment of many at last ; but sense of
duty towards all, and hope of doing good to some,
must oversway." 1
1 Works, i. 259.
22 JOHN HOWE
The maturity of this utterance may be due to the
pen which expanded the pulpit notes many years after
the sermons were delivered. But there is no mistaking
the preacher's gift, the tender, solicitous pleading of
one who is conscious of being sent. Such strenuous
striving for souls, sustained as it is through all the dis-
courses which have come down to us, finds us out still,
and awakens our affection even at this distance of time.
It is not difficult to understand that the fine, strong:
presence, the flashing eye, the tremor of intense feel-
ing, would make such preaching overwhelming, and
weave bands of affection with the hearts of the hearers
which even long years could not weaken.
It would seem from some notices in the introductions
to published sermons that Howe, like Robertson of
Brighton, preached from notes, and trusted to the
moment for the language in which to clothe his
thoughts. " It was indeed impossible to me," he says,
" to give an exact account of what was then discoursed,
from a memory that was so treacherous as to let slip
many things that were prepared and intended to have
been said that day ; and that could much less, being
assisted but by very imperfect memorials, recollect
everything that was said several days after." This
refers to a sermon of 1682, and there is a similar ex-
planation in a sermon a little later, in publishing which
he could not undertake to recollect all that was spoken
" according to that latitude and freedom wherewith it
was fit to inculcate momentous things to a plain country
auditory." But we have every reason to believe, and
indeed a certain clumsiness of expression and redund-
ancy of form confirm the belief, that the method was
the same from the beginning, and even as a young man
CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 23
he addressed these weighty and closely-packed dis-
courses to his people extempore.
We may reasonably suppose that the great effects of
his preaching in his later days could not have been
produced in those years of comparative youth. But we
may quote even thus early the description of his pulpit
manner given by Mr. Spademan after his death, and
conclude that in its degree it applies to the work at
Torrington —
" None had a better skill to set in the best light the
rational evidences which confirm the principles and
duties both of natural and revealed religion, of which
his published writings are a convincing witness ; and
his ordinary discourses, though clothed with familiar
language, were not inferior as to strength of reasoning :
so that it could not be charged on him, that he preached
to the fancy or only aimed to move the affections, for
he always addressed to the judgment and conscience, so
that if the Gospel which was taught by him remains
hid to any who attended his ministry, it is hid to those
who are lost .... because by manifestation of the
truth he commended himself to every man's conscience
in the sight of God. Reflect on the very manner of his
teaching, how earnest, how moving, how pungent, how
persuasive was his language and expression ! It might
plainly be discerned that he spake from his very heart ;
not as pleasing the ear or imagination (which his rare
wit and eloquence enabled him to do), but as seeking the
eternal happiness of souls. What is said concerning the
famed tract of a Stoic philosopher, that it was so moving
and operative/ that if any were not wrought on, he could
only be reformed by tribunals of the other world (the
author speaks according to the Platonic hypothesis), is
24 JOHN HOWE
applicable in this case. It may almost be despaired
that those who refused and rejected the messages
brought by him, but retained hard and obdurate hearts,
should be persuaded to repentance and holiness by any
other ministry." 1
This description is apt enough for the Torrington
sermons. We are not speaking yet of the treatises on
The Blessedness of the Righteous and Delighting in God,
as they were afterwards published and given to the
world, but of the pulpit utterances which form their
substratum and may be easily detected in the subse-
quent elaboration ; and it is clear that, notwithstanding
all faults of structure, and the cumbersomeness of phrase,
those sermons " addressed to a country auditory " were
vital and convincing, the pleadings of a strong intel-
lect, the throbbings of a tender heart, the kind of
preaching which in any age, making allowance for
change of form and sentiment, would always appeal
powerfully to men, and cast a spell over a congregation.
He was all along, as he says of himself, a " well wilier
to the souls of men." He deliberately laid aside
the devices of the orator, what he calls "rhetorical
flourishes, a set of fine words, handsome cadences and
periods, fanciful representations, little tricks, and pieces
of wit; and which cannot pretend so high, pitiful
quibbles and gingles, inversions of sentences, the
pedantic rhyming of words, yea, and an affected
tone, or even a great noise, — things that are neither
capable of gratifying the Christian nor the man."
Many employed these methods; he himself had not
a few qualifications for a " popular preacher " of this
sort. But he was convinced that such fireworks were
1 Works, vi. 405.
CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 25
not only useless but mischievous. " How miserably
do they cheat themselves, who, because they hear with
pleasure a discourse upon some head of religion, thus
garnished according to their idle, trifling humour ; and
because they are taken with the contriving of some
sentences, or affected with the loudness of the voice, or
have their imagination tickled with some fantastical
illustrations, presently conclude themselves to be in a
religious transport ; when the things that have pleased
them have no affinity or alliance with religion, befall
to it but by chance, and are themselves things of
quite another country." *
This practical purpose, this plain severity of style,
this suspicion of any adventitious charms, this constant
insistence on the bare, lofty truths of a spiritual religion,
this refusal even to gratify the natural pleasure which
men take in controversy, by always dealing with the
subjects which are beyond dispute, make the sermons
hard reading to the modern taste ; but possibly this is
the condemnation of our modern taste, rather than of
the sermons. To the earnest spirits of his own day
these stern qualities were evidently an attraction. And
a word like the following may strike even us :
" Dost thou wish for a soul meet for the blessedness
here described ? What is here written is designed for
thy help and furtherance. But if thou art looking on
these pages with a wanton, rolling eye, hunting for
novelties or what may gratify a prurient wit, a coy and
squeamish fancy, go read a romance or some piece of
drollery ; know, here is nothing for thy turn ; and dread
to meddle with matters of everlasting concernment
without a serious spirit. Read not another line till
i Works, ii. 12S.
26 JOHN HOWE
thou have sighed out this request, ' Lord, keep me from
trifling with the things of eternity.' " 1
But enough has been said, or at all events as much as
our materials enable us to say, about the parish work
which was done at Torrington. We are able to extend
our vision a little, and see a somewhat wider association
with the other clergy in the county. Among other
ministerial friends was George Hughes of Plymouth,
with whom he was quickly drawn into a tie closer than
that of friendship. He was a Cambridge man of great
attainments, who suffered under the Laudian regime.
But since the institution of the Commonwealth he had
found a free scope for his energy and zeal. He was a
most faithful pastor to a large flock under his care,
says Neal. He had the greatest interest and influence
of any minister in the west country. He was both
charitable and hospitable when it was in his power.
As Howe had been fortunate in forming a close con-
nection with Herle, who was probably the principal
minister in South Lancashire, so he was immediately
attracted to the most vigorous and successful minister
in Devonshire. In the year following his settlement
at Torrington, on March 1, 1655, he was married to
Katherine, the daughter of George Hughes.
The two men were kindred spirits. Both of them
were to be numbered among the Confessors of 1662,
the elder, after refusing the tempting bait of a bishopric
at the Restoration. We may safely count this brave,
strong, and faithful minister among the most powerful
influences on Howe's spiritual development. It gives us
a pleasant glimpse into the learned habits of the Puritan
clergy to read that the two maintained a weekly corre-
1 Works, i. 168.
CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 27
spondence in Latin, and thus the curate of Torrington
was kept in constant touch with the western capital,
Plymouth, and with the father-in-law who was, in the
evangelical sense, the true bishop of the whole county.
Those Latin letters are not in our possession, but Calamy
has recorded an incident which gives us an idea of their
usual contents. One day the post brought a packet
from Plymouth which concluded with a prayer : Sit ros
coeli super haoitaeulum vcstrum. It was an unusual
prayer, because, though the idea of heavenly blessing
falling as the dew is common enough in Scripture, the
special application, that the dew should fall on the
dwelling, was sufficiently far-fetched. Indeed it would
seem to be a curious mixture of images. But on the
very day on which the letter reached Torrington, the
parsonage took fire, and the resources of the seventeenth
century for extinguishing a conflagration were by no
means equal to the peculiar dangers which were
incident to the general use of timber in house-building.
As far as human help was concerned there was no hope
of saving the house. The notes and fruits of arduous
study were likely to be reduced to ashes at the very
outset of the minister's career. And then the remark-
able petition of Hughes, which was breathed at Ply-
mouth, received a direct answer in Torrington. A
violent rain began to fall, and the flames were extin-
guished. The dew of heaven was on this imperilled
dwelling. The affectionate prayers of these devoted
men for one another were not lost.
We should like to know whether there was between
Howe and his wife the same close tie which existed
between him and her father. But here our curiosity
must remain unsatisfied. It was not the manner of
28 JOHN HOWE
seventeenth-century preachers to make any reference to
their own personal affairs in the pulpit, or to use their
domestic experiences as illustrations of Divine truth.
The severity of style, encouraged by the sense of great
truths and massive doctrines, prohibited it. And, as
we have by now seen, our principal authorities for this
biography are to be found in the published sermons of
its subject. Mrs. Howe secures the fame which in the
opinion of Thucydides is the greatest that can fall to
the lot of woman — she is unmentioned and practically
unknown. 1 But our modern interest in a question like
this may excuse us for making a conjecture. The
inward serenity of Howe's spirit, even in the midst of
persecution and peril, maintained unbroken throughout
his life, is a strong argument that his marriage was a
happy one. And a further testimony to Mrs. Howe's
merits may be found in what we know about the family.
There were five children born in the course of the next
ten years ; and though we do not know when the
mother was taken, but only that there was a second
wife much younger at the time of Howe's own death,
we may assume that the children were brought up
under their mother's care, and their success in life is a
crown of her virtues. About three of the five only the
vaguest details have come down to us. But the two
eldest sons, George and James, attained to considerable
1 The one notice of Calamy is a little ambiguous : " He once
told his wife that though he loved her as well as it was fit for one
creature to love another, yet if it were put to his choice, whether
to die that moment, or to live that night, and the living that night
would secure the continuance of his life for seven years to come,
he declared he would choose to die that moment." — See Bohn,
p. xlviii.
We do not even know whether this refers to the first or to the
second wife.
CAMBRIDGE, OXFORD, AND TORRINGTON 29
distinction, the one as a doctor, the other as a lawyer.
George, who was responsible for the destruction of his
father's papers, already referred to, was laid in the same
tomb as his father, seven years after his father's death,
in Allhallows Church, Bread Street. James died only
four years later, after amassing a good property by his
practice at the bar, leaving a son who married into the
family of Viscount Howe.
We may assure ourselves, then, that this important
step taken by the curate of Torrington soon after his
entrance on his work was a wise and successful one.
We may assume, as we follow him through the troubled
and laborious years, that he had at least the comfort of
a peaceful hearth. We may add to the sum of his
merits that he knew how to order well his own house-
hold, and was not only a good minister and a good
citizen, but also a loyal husband and a dutiful father.
But the peaceful and happy life at Torrington was to
undergo a most unwelcome distraction. The earliest
extant publication from the pen of Howe is entitled
Man's Creation in a Holy hut Mutable State. It appeared
in 1660, and is a somewhat arid little tract, giving no
promise of the powers which were to be manifested in
his later works. But it is a significant title for the
first-fruits of his pen. We have already seen reason to
acknowledge the holiness which was from the beginning
the note of his life ; but mutability was no less constant
a note. Never did a servant of God do a great work
under more unfavourable circumstances of distraction,
interruption, and change. There is every reason to
believe that this was the essential condition of its dis-
charge. If he had been allowed, as he himself would
have chosen, to continue in the quiet and serviceable
30 JOHN HOWE
charge at his beloved Torrington, he would not, we may
be sure, have become the teacher whom we know. He
would have been a boon to Torrington, but he would
have been lost to the world. We can say for him what
he found it difficult to say for himself,
" Welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each spur that says, Nor sit nor stand, but go ! "
CHAPTER II.
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN. 1656 — 1659.
" What man that sees the ever- whirling wheel
Of change, the which all mortal things cloth sway,
But that thereby doth find and plainly feel
How mutability in them doth play
Her cruel sport to many men's decay 1 "
(Faerie Qneene, VII., canto vi. 1.)
The distraction which interrupted the zealous work
at Torrington was a request, amounting almost to a
command, from no less a personage than Oliver
Cromwell, to enter the Court circle at Whitehall in the
capacity of domestic chaplain. It is of a piece with the
irritating want of exactness in the details which have
come down to us about the life of Howe, that we are
unable to say precisely when or in what way this
uncoveted distinction was thrust upon him. The most
probable story is this. The parishioners of St. Saviour's,
Dartmouth, hearing of his fame in the north of the
county, possibly not unprompted by Hughes, were
anxious to obtain the curate of Torrington as their
vicar. It would seem that one Thomas Boon was
induced to make favour with the Protector to get this
appointment made. And when Howe was in London,
in the latter part of 1656, Cromwell signified his wish
32 JOHN HOWE
to hear him at Whitehall, presumably to form some
opinion about his merits. It is said that the imperious
listener adopted a severe test of the young preacher's
power. He gave him a text while the psalm was being
sung, and expected him to extemporise on it immedi-
ately. Howe was not in the least disconcerted, but
proceeded leisurely by the hour-glass to discuss the
subject. He had reached the end of the second hour,
and was turning the glass for a third, when the
Protector indicated to him that he might stop. The
trial sermon was so satisfactory that, instead of the
living of St. Saviour's, Dartmouth, the chaplaincy of
Cromwell's household was offered to the preacher.
We are naturally curious to know what induced the
great Protector to make this proposal to " a raw young
man," as Howe modestly describes himself at the time.
Rogers, Howe's most copious biographer, has some very
interesting pages on the subject. But Rogers wrote
before Carlyle's great work had revolutionised English
opinion about the character and motives of Oliver;
and, liberal and nonconformist as he was, he took the
popular view that the Protectorate was a shameless
usurpation, and the Protector an unscrupulous despot.
The more intimate knowledge that every student now
possesses of Howe's master suggests a very obvious and
simple reason why Cromwell should wish to have such
a man in his service.
We must remember that the appointment was not
to a public, but to a domestic, office. A lectureship at
St. Margaret's was attached to the duties, and Howe is
described accordingly as "preacher at Westminster."
But there is no indication that the chaplain was
required to preach on great occasions; only once, and
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 33
that after the Protector's death, did he deliver a stated
sermon before Parliament. 1 The young man was invited
to be the personal "director," as he would be called
in the Catholic Church, of Oliver himself, and of his
own family. And when this fact is realised, there can
be little difficulty in understanding why the choice was
made.
Cromwell was a man of intense and almost volcanic
piety. Whatever was the external occupation of his
days, there was always an under-current of earnest and
passionate devotion. To understand and to maintain
the covenant with his God was the master-thought of
. . .
his life. In the early part of this very year, writing to
his son Henry in Ireland, he counselled him not to be
severe with some of those fanatics who were the perpetual
thorn in his side. " I have to do with these poor men,"
he says, " and I am not without my exercise. I know
they are weak, because they are so peremptory in judging
others." That is a characteristic utterance of the man
who was intense as Sexby or any Fifth-Monarchy man
in his own religious convictions, but had the extra-
ordinary instinct, so unexampled in the England of that
day, so rare in the England of this, which inclines to a
complete religious toleration. It would be strange
indeed if ordinary historical students, or the tepid
adherents of modern churches, could perfectly under-
stand Cromwell. There is little in the tone and
temper of modern England to throw light on a man,
occupying a position of sovereignty, who in a letter of
counsel to his son, occupying the position of Lord-
1 This sermon of 1659 was his first publication, but it is not
extant. In the advertisement of it occurs the designation
mentioned above.
D
34 JOHN HOWE
Lieutenant of Ireland, could end by saying: "If the
Lord did not sustain me, I were undone : but I live,
and I shall live, to the good pleasure of His grace : I
find mercy at need. The God of all grace keep you.
I rest your loving father, Oliver P." l
Such language sounds like cant, because now no one
would perhaps use it except in cant. It has become
inconceivable that a Secretary of State for War in a
despatch to an admiral commanding a fleet at sea
should begin, " You have, as I verily believe and am
persuaded, a plentiful stock of prayers going for you
daily, sent up by the soberest and most approved
Ministers and Christians in this Nation : and notwith-
standing some discouragements, very much wrestling
of faith for you : which is to us, and I trust will be to
you, matter of great encouragement. But notwith-
standing all this it will be good for you and us to
deliver up ourselves and all our affairs to the disposition
of our all-wise Father," and so on. But this was the
manner of Cromwell's despatches to Blake and Montague;
and when, just about the time of Howe's appearance at
Whitehall, news came that the admirals had obtained
a great victory over the Spanish fleet, and wagon-loads
of silver plundered from Spanish ships were seen
trundling up to London, the journals of the day echoed
the very sentiment of the head of the State. " Never
was there a more terrible visible hand of God in
judgment upon any people, since the time of Sodom
and Gomorrah! Great is the Lord; marvellous are
His doings, and to be had in reverence of all the
nations."
Difficult as it is for the modern mind to realise this
1 Carlyle, iv. 156 ; letter dated Whitehall, April 21, 1656.
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 35
intensity of religious conviction, and specially difficult
as it is for Constitutionalists to do justice to a usurper,
it is the first condition of understanding the period of
history with which we are now concerned to recognise
the sincerity, the fervent integrity, of Cromwell's reli-
gious views. To himself he seemed the poor instrument
of God, carrying out a hard and a distasteful task. His
main trouble was that in so strange and arduous a
life as he had to live, he hardly knew how to maintain
the quietness and simplicity of his communion with
God. It did not disturb him to exercise despotic power,
conscious as he was of a disinterested and beneficent
purpose in it; just at this time his "poor little in-
vention " of the twelve Major-Generals was being
withdrawn. But it was not from any personal scruple.
" Tis against the voice of the nation, there will be nine
in ten against you," had remonstrated Calamy. 1 " Very
well," was the reply, " but what if I should disarm the
nine and put a sword in the tenth man's hand ; would
not that do the business ? " He had no hesitation in
excluding from his Second Parliament, which was then
sitting, the duly-elected members who were likely to
question his authority, or in dismissing the whole Par-
liament itself directly it became troublesome. The
conviction of a heaven-sent commission overrode all
constitutional maxims or claims. But this very con-
viction made him pathetically anxious to maintain the
inward relation with God. We can hear his broken,
passionate speech in the Parliament House a few
weeks before this time : " If I have any peculiar in-
terest which is personal to myself, which is not sub-
1 This of course was Edmund Calamy, the grandfather of
Howe's biographer, the Calamy of Smedymnuus.
36 JOHN HOWE
servient to the public end, — it were not an extravagant
thing for me to curse myself; because I know God will
curse me if I have. I have learned too much of God
to dally with Him, and to be bold with Him in these
things. And I hope I never shall be bold with Him ;
— though I can be bold with men, if Christ be pleased
to assist." 1
To this fact of Cromwell's intense religious sensibility
must be added the remarkable gift, common to all great
rulers of men, which is mentioned by Neal. " If there
was a man in England who excelled in any faculty or
science, the Protector would find him out and reward
him according to his merit." Cromwell had the gift of
discerning excellence in others; so that his choice of
a man is in itself a testimonial of worth. It would
appear also from Thuiioe that Dr. Cudworth at Cam-
bridge had a general commission to report any special
merits or abilities among the students to the Protector,
with a view to public employment : and from this
quarter possibly the name of the Christ's undergraduate
might have reached the ear of Oliver.
In any case here was a man in a high and un-
paralleled position, his hands full of the gravest and
most exacting duties, coercing anti-Christian Spain,
demanding protection for persecuted Protestants in
Savoy, raising his country to a consideration among
European states which it had never enjoyed before;
at home, contending with prelatical malignants and
fanatical sectaries, and at the same time through his
Triers purging the clergy and dismissing scandalous
ministers, reforming the Criminal Law, and making the
first suggestions of a redistribution of political repre-
Carlyle, iv. 217.
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 37
sentation which was not to be realised until 1832 ; a
man engaged with surprising success in a Titanic toil
which demanded time and strength and nerve and
courage almost superhuman ; and yet the constant cry
of his heart was for that kind of preoccupation with
God, and that meditation on Divine things which are
usually possible only in a cloister. We may take it for
granted that what drew him to this young preacher was
the promise in him of spiritual help. The choice already
throws light on the qualities in Howe which were after-
wards to be developed. That Cromwell foresaw them
in the "raw young man "of twenty-six is at once a
testimony to the Protector's discernment, and a testi-
monial to the young minister's qualifications.
Here was a preacher with rare gifts of exposition
and exhortation; a man intense as himself in religious
belief, but far more placid and luminous ; a man large
and tolerant as himself, with a passion for the unity of
Christians, and a tendency to dwell on the truths which
bring men together rather than on those which separate
them ; a man too with a cast of mind which lifted him
above the distraction of political events, a man who
promised a continual refuge of eternal truths for a
Spirit sorely worn and hampered with the things of
time. Youn» as he was he was free from the common
faults of youth, ambition, and the love of pageantry and
state. He was one who could say from inward con-
viction and from personal practice :
" Nothing can indeed so comport with the spirit and
design of one who believes himself made for another
world, as a brave and generous disdain of stooping to
the lure of present emolument, so as thereby to be
drawn into any the least thing which he judges not
38 JOHN HOWE
defensible by the severest rules of reason and religion ;
which were to quit a serene heaven for mire and dirt." x
Such a man would create a strong yearning in Crom-
well's heart. Here was the promise of a constant
retreat from the harassments of his life, an atmosphere
serene and instructive, in which to recover his footing
and preserve a saving contact with his better self and
with God. Or if he was thinking of anything beyond his
personal needs, here was the man whose influence would
tend to soothe the irritable theological temper of the
time, to heal divisions and schisms, and to promote the
policy which in September he had been advocating in
Parliament. " If men will profess — be they those under
Baptism, be they those of the Independent judgment
simply, or of the Presbyterian judgment— in the name
of God encourage them, countenance them ; so long as
they do plainly continue to be thankful to God and to
make use of the liberty given them to enjoy their own
consciences! For as it was said to-day, this is the
peculiar interest all this while contended for." 2
HoAve would certainly seem to be a man after Crom-
well's own heart, and shaped for the moment. Look-
ing back we may say that we can see no one of that
day who was so exactly suitable to the need of that
strong, masterful, tender, enlightened, but sorely exer-
cised soul.
But the very qualities which led to the invitation
were those which would naturally rob it of all attractions
to Howe himself. His whole heart was in his work at
Torrington. The excitement and tumult of a court
had no attraction for him. To fame, to power, to
worldly consequence he was genuinely indifferent. And
1 Works, i. 432. 2 Carlyle, loc. cit.
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 39
we can well believe in the sincerity of his earnest
pleas with Cromwell to be excused from the proffered
post. These pleas were overborne. We gather from
one of his letters to Baxter that in the first instance
there was to be a complete separation from the beloved
parish. The household was transferred bodily to White-
hall. But presently a compromise was effected. The
chaplain was to have permission to spend three months
of the year in Torrington ; and he made arrangements
for a resident locum tenens, — at one time Mr. Increase
Mather occupied the post, — who was to receive all the
emoluments and do the work for the remaining three-
quarters of the year. And thus for a little more than
two years and a half, from the end of 1656, we must
follow Howe to London, and endeavour as far as we can
to realise his life and work at the Court of Cromwell
and Cromwell's son. That the change was reluctantly
made we have already seen. But that there was a good
side to it he incidentally acknowledges in one of his
sermons, where, in illustration of the change which is
wrought in us by a daily and practical intercourse with
God, he says : " Our knowledge of Him must aim at
conformity to Him ; and how powerful a thing is con-
verse in order hereto ! How insensibly is it wont to
transform men, and mould anew their spirits, language,
garb, deportment ! To be removed from the solitude or
rudeness of the country to a city or university, what an
alteration doth it make ! How is such a person divested
by degrees of his rusticity, of his more uncomely and
agrest x manners ! "
1 Lat. agrcstis, rustic, a word obsolete now, but in use even
up to the last century. The reader of Howe's works must be
constantly amazed at the number of difficult words which two
40 JOHN HOWE
It is more than likely that the country parson who
now came to take up a distasteful residence in the
metropolis owes much of his success as a religious
thinker and teacher to the broader outlook, the more
stimulating atmosphere, the keener life of Whitehall.
It would be hard to know from his writings whether
those three eventful years made much impression upon
him, but it is safe to infer that consciously or uncon-
sciously he became a more effective man in every
respect for the closer contact with one of the strongest
men who ever guided the destinies of England.
But the silence of our authentic information during
this period is most provoking. When William of
Orange came into contact with Howe, he was eager
to use the occasion for the purpose of asking him
many questions about his old master Oliver. Unfor-
tunately the answers to those questions are unrecorded.
We get no glimpse of Howe at Cromwell's Court, except
through some letters to Baxter which we must presently
examine, and a few brief notices recorded by Calamy.
All we can do is to conceive as distinctly as we may the
events which were happening during these years, and to
look at them, if that be possible, as they would strike the
mind of the domestic chaplain. The fulness of Howe's
published works happily leaves us in small doubt as to
his general view of things, even where the loss of his
personal notes deprives us of the materials which would
have satisfied our natural curiosity.
Already when Howe came to Court, the question of
hundred years ago could be understood, or at least used, in pulpit
discourses. It argues either an extraordinary intelligence in the
hearers or an iinpardonable pedantry in the preachers ; but it
would be rash to give judgment between these alternatives.
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 41
giving to the Lord Protector the crown and the regal
title was in the air. Waller had published the poem
which advocated the change —
" Let the rich ore be forthwith melted down
And made more rich by making him a crown ;
With ermine clad and purple let him hold
A royal sceptre made of Spanish gold."
Blake's victories over Spain had raised the reputation
of the Protector's government to its highest point
throughout Europe ; and it is fair to suppose that the
strong and incorruptible nature of the man was con-
stantly exercised by the question whether duty or
expediency required him to take this fateful step.
The ferment of excitement and agitation among the
Anabaptists was also at its height. And one of Howe's
first duties was to stand by his new master in the
moment of the attempted assassination of January 8,
1657. On that evening, at the public worship in
Whitehall Chapel — how much we would give to know
whether the new chaplain was taking the service ! — a
discontented Anabaptist named Miles Sindercomb, who
had been a quarter-master in the army, was present
with a partner in an incendiary design. He was seen
loitering " near the Lord Lambert's seat." At half-past
eleven at night the sentinel on guard found a burning
fuse running through a wainscot in connection with
some combustibles " fit almost to burn through stones."
The danger was averted, but suspicion had fallen on
Sindercomb, and his confederate gave information
against him, so that he was arrested and sent to the
Tower. On Friday the 23rd, the Commons came to the
banqueting-hall to congratulate the Protector on his
escape. And in his reply to their congratulations, he
42 JOHN HOWE
said among other things : " You have a gospel ministry
among you. That have you ! Such an one as — without
vanity I shall speak it ; or without caring at all for any
favour or respect from them, save what I have upon an
account above flattery, or good words, — such an one as
hath excelled itself, and I am persuaded — to speak
with confidence before the Lord — is the most growing
blessing (one of the most growing blessings) on the face
of this nation." *
We could hope that this fervent ejaculation was
due to recent memories of Howe's ample and glow-
ing speech. On February 14, the would-be assassin
poisoned himself in the Tower. And next Friday,
Feb. 20, was appointed as Thanksgiving Day. " The
Honourable House, after hearing two sermons at Mar-
garet's, Westminster, partook of a most princely enter-
tainment," by invitation from his Highness, at Whitehall.
" After dinner his Highness withdrew to the Cock-pit ;
and there entertained them with rare music, both of
voices and instruments, till the evening." We are not,
unfortunately, informed whether Howe was the preacher
on this occasion, but the episode gives us a momentary
glimpse into the scenes of excitement, of enthusiasm, of
social hilarity in which he was now expected to bear his
part.
He had to minister, at any rate in private, to one
who had the misery of living in daily dread of assassin-
ation. The pamphlet said to have been written by
Sexby, entitled Killing no Murder, which recommended
every one to make such attempts as that in which
Sindereomb had failed, was in circulation. And it is
1 Carlyle, iv. 235.
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 43
no wonder if solemn thoughts of The Vanity of Man as
Mortal filled the young preacher's mind.
The whole of the year which began with this happy
deliverance was occupied with the deliberations about
the assumption of the crown. On March 25 a motion
was carried in Parliament by one hundred and twenty-
three votes to sixty-three requesting Cromwell to
undertake this new responsibility. And the first
letter of Howe to Baxter is dated from Whitehall a
little less than a fortnight before. Nothing could show
more clearly than this letter the mental detachment of
the Protector's chaplain from the great affairs which
were occupying the Protector's mind. He was not at
all concerned with the proposed change of title, but he
was genuinely auxious to discharge his duty to his
master, whatever title he might bear. He accordingly
asks the advice of his ministerial friend at Kidderminster.
The letter concludes thus :
u If you can think it worth your while, I should be
exceeding desirous to hear from you what you appre-
hend to be the main evils of the nation that you judge
capable of redress by the present Government ? — what
you conceive one in my station obliged to urge upon
them as matter of duty in reference to the present state
of the nation ? — and how far you conceive such a one
obliged to bear a public testimony against their neglects,
in preaching, after private endeavours ? supposing that
either they be not convinced that the things persuaded
to are duties to them, or else, if they be, that it be from
time to time pretended that other affairs of greater
moment are before them for the present ; which being
secret to themselves, as I cannot certainly know that
they are so, so nor can I deny but they may be. Sir,
44 JOHN HOWE
the Lord knows I desire to understand my duty in
matters of this nature ; I hope he will then give me a
heart not to decline it : and if you will please to con-
tribute your help thereto it may possibly be of public
use ; and will certainly (though that signify little) be
exceeding acceptable and obliging to him who must
profess and subscribe himself, Rev. Sir, an affectionate
honourer of you and your labours, John Howe. White-
hall, March 12, '57."
It is not difficult to read here between the lines. A
zealous household chaplain has large notions about
the stated exercises of family worship. A busy Lord
Protector, with all the affairs of the State on his
shoulders, and the anxious question agitating his mind
whether he shall be king or no, finds it impossible to
give the latitude to these devotions that he would
like. We gather that Howe, not content with writing,
managed to visit Baxter at Kidderminster, and Baxter's
reply to this letter, dated a year later, refers to the
visit which has intervened. He gives the chaplain some
excellent advice to be "very tender and cautelous in
publishing any of the neglects of Governors," and he
speaks with admiration of the Lord Protector " as a man
of a catholic spirit, desirous of the unity and peace of
all the servants of Christ." It was perhaps easier for
Baxter at Kidderminster than for Howe at Whitehall to
estimate the singular religious excellences of Cromwell.
The speeches and colloquies that went on almost
ceaselessly during the months of March, April, and May
on the burning subject of the kingship were largely
conducted in secret, and their history was not given to
the world until two years later ; but there were at least
three speeches given to the Parliament and recorded in
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 45
Carlyle's collection, which must, one would have thought,
have been on every one's tongue at least within the
precincts of the Court. It shows perhaps the " tender
and cautelous " temper of the chaplain that no hint
of all that was going on survives in any of his writings.
Nor are we better informed how the issue was received
within the Protector's household when Cromwell had
finally rejected the glittering honour. Howe must
have been present on June 26, when the new In-
vestiture of the Protector was effected in Westminster
Hall, but we have no idea what impression it made on
him. When the purple robe, the Bible, the sword, and
the sceptre had been solemnly presented to his High-
ness, and Mr. Speaker had given him the oath, it fell to
the lot not of Howe but of Mr. Manton to " recommend
by prayer his Highness, the Parliament, the Council,
the Forces by land and sea, and the whole Government
and People of the Three Nations to the blessing and
protection of God."
The whole show would have little significance for
him. He had no more admiration for the pomps of
earthly states than he had for the crude fancies and
prophecies which were constantly on the lips of fanatics
about the Court. It was perhaps with a reference to
both of these inconsiderable phenomena that he once
wrote :
" It is a sad symptom of the declining state of religion
when the powers of the world to come are so over-
mastered by the powers of this present world, and
objects of sense so much outweigh those of faith. And
is not this apparently the case with the Christians of
the present age ? Do not your thoughts run the same
course with theirs that meditated nothing but sitting
46 JOHN HOWE
' on the right and left hand ' of Christ in an earthly
dominion, while they never dreamt of 'drinking of his
cup ' or being ' baptised with his baptism ' ? How many
vain dreamers have we of golden mountains and I know
not what earthly felicity, whose pretended prophecies
about a supposed near approaching prosperity to the
Church on earth, gain easier belief, and are more
savoury and taking with the many, than all that the
sacred oracles discover about its glorious state in
heaven ! " 1
The truth is that however valuable his spiritual help
might be to his master, he was from the first out of
harmony with his surroundings at Whitehall. If the
experience had come to him later in life he would have
been more patient, more tolerant, better able to realise
the importance of the great events which were going
on around him ; he would have felt that to minister
to such a man as Cromwell, to sustain and help that
strong and wearied spirit, was a privilege which might
well be weighed against the discomforts and distastes
of a Court society. But at twenty-seven, a young-
man whose whole soul is given up to spiritual work
is intolerant of the secular, which to his eyes wears
no aspect of the Divine ; the conventionalisms of
life fret and chafe him; the still movements of the
spirit under the cumbrous investiture of life are not
perceptible to him. It all appeared to his eager
spirit a scene of unredeemed worldliness. He pined for
the concentration, the simplicity, the homeliness of
his parochial work. The first letter already quoted
breathes the first suspicion of this discontent. When
we come to quote the letters written next year we
1 Works, i. 353.
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 47
shall find that this discontent had gathered head. The
chaplain was in the Court, but not of it. He has
nothing to tell us of the interesting personalities that
swarmed about him, not even of Milton, who was, one
would have fancied, in some ways a kindred spirit.
Meanwhile, however uncongenial the post might be,
we have some evidence that it was filled with scrupulous
conscientiousness, and with an unselfish consideration
for others. Calamy tells us of two considerable services
which Howe was by his position able to render, the one
to Seth Ward, whom we shall meet later on as Bishop
of Exeter, the other to Thomas Fuller, whom we should
like to meet anywhere and at any time. In this year
the principalship of Jesus College, Oxford, was vacant.
Dr. Seth Ward, the Professor of Astronomy, had the
vote of the Fellows ; but Francis Howell, of Exeter
College, had obtained the interest of the Protector.
Dr. Ward secured by means of Howe an introduction to
Cromwell, and was so warmly supported by the eloquence
of the chaplain, that Cromwell said " he found Mr. Howe
to be very much his friend, and was upon his report of
him disposed to give him some tokens of his regard ;
and thereupon he pleasantly asked him what he thought
the principalship of Jesus College might be worth ? "
The Doctor told him. And then the Protector offered
to him an annual sum equivalent to the stipend. The
incident gives a pleasant insight into Cromwell's gener-
osity and faithfulness to his word, and shows in how
high an estimation he held his chaplain.
The service rendered to Fuller was of a less substantial
kind. The Triers, before whom the clergy had to
approve themselves in order to obtain or retain their
cures, were a formidable tribunal for Koyalists and
48 JOHN HOWE
Episcopalians like Fuller. He came to Howe in his
usual vein of humour, saying, " Sir, you may observe I
am a pretty corpulent man, and I am to go through a
passage which is very strait ; I beg you would be so
kind as to give me a shove, and help me through." In
accordance with Howe's advice, when the question was
put to him whether he had ever had any experience of
a work of grace upon his heart, he answered that he
could appeal to the Searcher of hearts, that he made a
conscience of his very thoughts. It is creditable to the
discernment, if not to the rigour, of the Triers, that this
reply was regarded as satisfactory, and the witty parson
passed successfully through the strait.
Needless to say, whatever favours Howe procured for
others, it was only for others that he sought them, and
Cromwell once asked him when he would move for
anything for himself or his family. But indeed the one
favour which Howe would have desired, permission to
leave the Court and return home, could not be given.
Occasionally Cromwell employed his chaplain for secret
and delicate missions which required despatch and
trustworthiness. Calamy mentions one occasion, which
illustrates the modes of travel in the seventeenth
century, and certainly shows that our hero was a good
horseman. He was sent hurriedly by Oliver to a
meeting of ministers at Oxford, and " though he rode
by St. Giles' Church at twelve o'clock, he arrived at
Oxford by a quarter after five." An average of twelve
miles an hour along a highway of that period would be
creditable even to a rapid rider.
We are, however, unable to collect any further
details of this eventful year. And though it is not
difficult to fill up the canvas of 1658, the year of the
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 49
Protector's death, with a tolerably accurate narrative,
it is surprising how imperfectly we can set Howe in
his due relation with the events. The drama proceeds
to its pathetic close, but he who must have been a
spectator of it all and might have told us much which
we should like to hear, moves through it silent and
unseen. In February the Protector impatiently dissolved
his Parliament, which, what with its Republicans,
Royalists, and Fifth-Monarchists, was an impossible
instrument of government for one who had undertaken
such a task as Cromwell's. The remaining months of
the spring and the summer saw the successful repression
of Hewitt's and Slingsby's disturbance, and the glorious
taking of Dunkirk by the English arms. Whatever
might be said by Constitutionalists, there could be
no question about the vigour and efficiency of the
government both at home and abroad.
Meanwhile such light as we can get upon Howe is
derived from the letters to Baxter which have fortunately
been preserved. In April we find him occupied with that
ever-recurring question, the Reunion of Christendom.
As we have already seen, it was a matter which appealed
strongly to the Protector's sympathies, and no doubt he
had often discussed it with his chaplain. Before making
any definite proposals to his master, Howe wished to
get the counsel of Baxter :
" Whether it may not be a more hopeful course to
attempt first the reconciling only of the two middle
parties, Presbyterian and Congregational ? inasmuch as
the extreme parties would be so much startled at the
mention of an union with one another (as Anabaptists
with Episcopalians, yea, or with Presbyterians), that it
might possibly blast the design in its very beginning;
E
50 JOHN HOWE
but if those two other parties could be brought together
first, endeavours might afterwards be used for drawing
in the rest (probably with more success) ; and therefore
whether accordingly it were not best to present to his
Highness only what might serve that end ? "
It is curious, and a melancholy illustration of the
durability of religious divisions, that even those elemen-
tary steps towards reunion which were proposed by
Howe in 1658 have not been taken at the end of the
nineteenth century.
Another letter dated May 5 refers to the same
subject, but contains nothing of interest to us in the
present day. But on May 25, the day before Milton
penned the noble letter to the French king on behalf
of the sufferers in Piedmont, Howe wrote to Baxter a
letter in which all his discontent with the Court life
broke out. It is certainly very curious to put these
two letters side by side. Milton's of May 26 is written
in Latin, but, translated however simply, it rings with
all the music of Milton, and all the passionate purpose
of Cromwell. Urging Louis to interfere with the
young Duke of Savoy, and rescue the imperilled people
of the valleys, it proceeds : " Everything seems now
again to point towards the extermination of all among
those unhappy People whom the former massacre had
left. Which now, O most Christian King, I beseech
and entreat thee, by thy right hand which pledged a
league and friendship with us, by the sacred honour
of that title of ' Most Christian,' permit not to be done :
nor permit such license of savagery, I say not to any
Prince (for so savage a temper could hardly fall on any
Prince, much less on the tender youth of that Prince,
or on the woman's mind of the mother), but to those
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 51
most accursed assassins : who while they profess them-
selves the servants and imitators of Christ our Saviour,
who came into the world that he might save sinners,
abuse his most merciful name and commandments to
the cruellest slaughters. Snatch, thou who art able,
and who in such an elevation art worthy to be able,
those poor suppliants of thine from the hands of
murderers, who, lately drunk with blood, are again
athirst for it, and think convenient to turn the discredit
of their own cruelty upon their Prince's score." x
It was from a court and government which could
issue such brave, strong, wise, and effectual protests
against wrong and oppression, that Howe, strange as
it seems, wished to be disconnected. On the previous
day he had written to Baxter :
" My time will not serve me long ; for I think I shall
be constrained in conscience (all things considered) to
return ere long to my former station. I left it, I think,
upon very fair terms. For first when I settled there
I expressly reserved to myself a liberty of removing, if
the providence of God should invite me to a condition
of more serviceableness anywhere else, — which liberty I
reckon I could not have parted with if I would, unless
I could have exempted myself from God's dominion.
My call hither was a work I thought very considerable ;
— the setting up of the worship and discipline of Christ
in this family, wherein I was to have joined with
another called upon this account ; I had made as I
supposed a competent provision for the place I left.
But now at once I see the designed work here hope-
lessly laid aside. We affect here to live in so loose a
way that a man cannot fix upon any certain charge to
1 Carlyle, v. 139.
52 JOHN HOWE
carry towards them as a minister of Christ should ; so
that it were as hopeful a course to preach in a market,
or in any assembly met by chance, as here."
" The affected disorderliness of this family as to the
matters of God's worship," to use his expression in the
postscript of this letter, does not point to anything very
scandalous in the Protector's household, but simply indi-
cates the disappointment of a young religious idealist,
bashful, and easily overawed, with preconceived notions
of the religious life, who is not yet able to perceive
that to indite such a letter as was just quoted to a
powerful sovereign in behalf of a suffering people, must
be a more acceptable worship to God than the utmost
regularity of prescribed exercises.
Howe was out of his element. The modesty and
self-depreciation with which he recognises this in his
next letter, dated June 1, '58, cannot but endear him
to us. His was the kind of spirit that ripens to the
end; some immaturity in youth may therefore be
pardoned.
But it would seem that in addition to a natural
distaste which grew upon him as the months passed,
he had the misfortune to fall into the bad graces of the
Protector. There prevailed at the Court a belief, in
which Cromwell shared, that a Christian man might
have in prayer a direct impression of the Spirit, both
suggesting to him what to pray for and assuring him
of an answer. This " notion of a particular faith in
prayer" seemed to Howe a dangerous opening for
fanaticism. And when the position was advocated from
the pulpit by " a person of note," Howe felt it to be
his duty on the next occasion that he had to preach
before Cromwell, to combat it. The notes of this
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 53
discourse from the text, The 'prayer of faith shall save
the sick, have been preserved by Calamy. There are
the usual endless divisions and subdivisions, not worked
out, but sketched in the barest outline. The upshot
however of the argument would seem to be, that special
answers to prayer must be regarded as miraculous and
exceptional, and in the present day we should pray
rather because we are commanded than because we
expect answers. This was to a man of Cromwell's
colossal faith and extraordinary experiences a rank
practical heresy. While he listened his brows ominously
contracted. And when the preacher came down from
the pulpit, a courtier assured him that he had perma-
nently forfeited the Protector's favour. This did not
trouble Howe's serenity — who asked for nothing but
the approval of his own conscience. Evidently, however,
the position was becoming not only distasteful but un-
tenable ; and it is likely that even if Oliver had lived
he would not have sought to retain his chaplain much
longer.
It was however death, and not the Protector's dis-
pleasure, which was to put a term to the unwelcome
life at Court. On August 6 Mrs. Claypole, Oliver's
beloved daughter, died, and in her death he received his
own death-stroke. It is always a temptation to linger
over that impressive scene at Whitehall on September
3, 1658, which Carlyle's power of lurid painting has
made for ever memorable to students of English history.
But we have no justification for yielding to this tempt-
ation, because, strange to say, in all those dark days of
domestic grief, there is no mention made of Howe.
Prayers, public and private, were constantly offered.
Owen, Goodwin, Sterry, with a company of others,
54 JOHN HOWE
poured out their souls in a room adjoining the chamber
of death. But we can only conjecture that the chaplain
was one of that praying company. He had, so far as we
know, no part in the death-bed scene.
And yet it is quite evident that nothing like a rupture
had taken place between Howe and his master, for
when Oliver was gone, and Richard Cromwell for eight
months stepped into the precarious place, the chaplain
continued his work in the family, and seems to have
contracted a stronger bond of attachment with the
son than he ever had clone with the father. In after
years he never would permit any one in his hearing to
speak of Richard as weak, but would defend him with
abundance of arguments drawn from his own observation.
The friendship was maintained to the last, and when
Howe, an old man of seventy-five, lay dying, he was
visited by Richard Cromwell, a man older still, the sur-
vivor of three successive sovereigns. Once for a few
months he had taken up the sceptre of England ; with-
out much regret, at the demand of the army, and in the
rising tide of Royalism, he laid it down. But it would
seem that he always cherished a feeling of respect and
affection for the man who during that stormy period
was his nearest spiritual adviser. Calamy records a
curious reminiscence which Howe retained of that fitful
crisis. Among the bitterest opponents of Richard was
Major-General Berry. Meeting Howe "some time after
the Restoration, when he was but in very mean circum-
stances, he freely told him, with tears running down his
cheeks, that if Richard had but at that time hanged up
him, and nine or ten more, the nation might have been
happy." It was a natural feeling in the license and the
disaster which followed the " glorious restoration " of
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 55
1660, that a continuation of the Protectorate under
Richard would have been preferable. By 1667 even
Pepys could write, " It is strange how everybody do
now-a-days reflect upon Cromwell and commend him,
what brave things he did and made all the neighbour
princes fear him." But it was not in the power of the
son to fill the place of the father. The Restoration was
inevitable. And it lay in the mysterious order of God
for His servant, John Howe, that he should pass througli
a long period of nearly twenty years, ejected, banished,
persecuted, maturing in adversity those great spiritual
gifts which could not perhaps have been adequately
developed in the peace, the prestige, the splendour of
Whitehall.
In May 1659 he returned for a time to his beloved
people at Torrington. Before we accompany him back
to his former charge, we have only to note one final cir-
cumstance of the sojourn in London. This was the
Savoy Conference, which met in October 1658. It
must not be confused with the famous Conference which
met in the same place in 1661 ; but this meeting of
divines at which Howe was present drew up the revised
version of the Westminster Confession, which is known
as the " Savoy Confession." Little as Howe cared for
denominationalism, we may be sure that he would
thoroughly approve of these modifications in the direc-
tion of Congregationalism. His contact with Oliver
would at least have taught him to sympathise with that
avowed opinion of the Protector's, " I would not be
willing to see the day when England shall be in the
power of the Presbytery to impose upon the consciences
of others that profess faith in Christ." x Though he had
1 Carlyle, ix. 205.
56 JOHN HOWE
begun his ministry as a Presbyterian, and never
avowedly changed his denomination, he is indistinguish-
able from a modern Independent or Congregationalist.
And now we may fitly close this chapter in Howe's
life by quoting in full the last of the letters to Baxter,
which was written in May just before his final departure
from London, and just after the resignation of Richard
Cromwell. It is clear from the opening words of the
letter that some substantial slice of the eight months since
Oliver's death had been spent in the west. Indeed we
have a sermon preached on Friday, January 23, 1658,
at Brixham, on the text, The wicked shall he turned into
hell, and all the nations that forget God, which may well be
a sombre reflection of those confused and anarchic days.
The letter is an authentic testimony at first hand of
what was passing in England on the eve of the Restora-
tion, and illustrates how inevitable, if not desirable, the
Restoration was. It also gives us as distinct a picture
as we are now able to obtain of the man who was to be
one of the chief sufferers by the impending political
change. The references to Fleetwood and Lambert and
Ashley Cooper, and all the other unruly spirits that
broke into open revolt when the strong hand of the
Protector was withdrawn, are sufficiently interesting.
But far more interesting to us is the prescience of a
devout and spiritual man looking out into the gloomy
and even ghastly times of reaction and retrogression
which lay just ahead.
"Reverend and dear Brother," writes Howe:
"since my return from the West (where I suppose you
may have heard I spent some months of late), I have
often been putting pen to paper to write to you, but have
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 57
deferred, being still held in expectation of some further
issue, that I might know what to write that might be a
ground of some action or treaty for the Church's good.
Such expectations are now at an end. I know not
to what purpose it will now be to fill a letter with
complaints of man's iniquity, and our present and
approaching miseries. My kinsman Mr. Upton, now
in town, showed me a letter of yours, wherein you
express your wonder at our late turns, as well you may.
He hath made it my task to give what account I can.
" It cannot be new to you that the Council in the old
Protector's time was divided into two parties ; the one
was for a settlement on such terms as might please the
nation, as he himself also was ; those, except one of late,
had no present relation to the army; the other, who
were (the chief of them) army men, were not much
pleased with, nor did study any such thing ; but thought
it their duty, in order to the safety of religion and
liberty of conscience, to keep up the power of the army
as much as they could, and thereby to curb and repress
the spirit of the nation, as they use to phrase it.
" The young Protector, following (in this) his father's
steps, I mean in the study and endeavour of a civil
settlement, whereby a just provision might be made
also for religious liberty by a law without having the
nation under a force, and that things might run in their
natural channel, is looked upon with a jealous eye by
the military part of the Council ; lest he should mingle
interests with the nation and master theirs, and so the
army, wherein their places of power and profit lay, by
degrees become insignificant. To obviate this, after his
entrance into the Government, they attempt to vote
the army independent on him, &c. A Parliament being
58 JOHN HOWE
called, they find his interests to be prevailing there
against the Commonwealth's men (as they are called)
so that the other House is owned and agreed to be
transacted with. They find that this other House will
be no balance to the Commons, as being much of their
temper : for though it be true the old Protector called
several swordsmen into that House to please the army,
yet he wisely contrived it, that they should not be so
many as to hurt the nation : the judges and several
gentlemen of the country, and quite of another temper,
being the major part, and easily perceive [i. e. the
military party easily perceive] that whatever shall be
done by the Commons, in order to the restraining of
religious liberty, and the subjugating of the army to the
Civil Government, is likely to meet with no great
opposition in the other House.
" Therefore they think it necessary to have the Par-
liament gospelled or dissolved ; and because they cannot
secure this by persuasion, they embody and resolve
upon force ; which the Protector perceiving, and under-
standing, if the work must be done by them, they
intended only gospelling, and to leave a remnant that
should do their work, and put a pretext of legality upon
whatever they should have a mind to ; for prevention of
this, choosing rather to dissolve them, not dreaming, as
one would think no man could, of such a thing as this
rag of , &c.
" This action of the army, which procured the Par-
liament's dissolution, occasioned a mighty accession and
confluence to them of wild-headed persons of all sorts,
whom they refuse not as fearing they might have need
of them : these infuse into the inferior officers a dis-
affection to government by a single person ; the stream
CROMWELL'S CHAPLAIN 59
runs so strong this way that the chief officers cannot
withstand it ; and they endeavour faintly enough, some
of them at least ; hence rather than undertake the
modelling of a new government, they think it advisable
rather to work the nation with the price of the . . . ."
[The hiatus prudently left to be filled by Baxter's
knowledge of the conditions is puzzling to us ; but
evidently Howe meant to indicate that a military
despotism of the most unblushing kind would be
established.] " Sir, such persons as are now at the head
of affairs will blast religion, if God prevent not. The
design you writ me of some time since, to introduce
Infidelity or Popery, they have opportunity enough to
effect. I know some leading men are not Christians.
Religion is lost out of England, farther than as it can
creep into corners. Those in power, who are friends to
it, will no more suspect these persons than their own
selves.
" I am returning to my old station, being now at
liberty beyond dispute. I am, sir, your much obliged
"John Howe."
It is to be hoped that the reader has had the patience
to read through this characteristic letter. For fear he
has been deterred by the prolixity, the awkwardness,
and even the obscurity of the style, it is perhaps better
here to make a confession on this subject. Howe's
literary style is on a level with the worst of a bad period.
It has all the faults of Milton's without any of the great
redeeming qualities, the sounding rhetoric, and the
occasional splendid imagery. We are tempted at times
to wish that he had been free from classical learning, that
he might express his ideas in the limpid directness of
60 JOHN HOWE
the vernacular like his contemporary, John Bunyan.
The total absence of grace and charm in writing is the
chief cause of the neglect into which his works have
fallen. The magic of voice and manner gave to his
utterances a power which, forcibly felt by those who
heard, is hardly to be conceived by those who read. It
is as well, therefore, with this letter before us, at once to
warn the reader that it is the matter, not the manner,
which gives value to all Howe's writings. Tiresome as
they are to read consecutively, they repay the toil. As
this letter, duly weighed, gives us one of the most vivid
glimpses we possess into the condition of things which
led up to the recall of Charles II., so all the treatises
and sermons, if only a reader will give them a chance,
become a most startling revelation of those eternal
things with which the writer was so intimately con-
versant. We may hope to give quotations which convey
a more favourable impression than would be obtained
by an exhaustive perusal of the works ; but even in the
choicest passages we must not expect the quaint charm
of the Elizabethan period, or the polished perspicuity of
the eighteenth century ; and we must be content to
recognise that Milton and Bunyan were as exceptional
and wonderful in their own as they would be in any
other asfe.
The man who could rescue Howe from the purgatory
of his own literary style, and enable his message to
come to us with even a tolerable directness and finish,
would confer a lasting benefit on our English relio-ious
life.
CHAPTER III.
EJECTED. 1662.
" To dissent no longer with the heat of a narrow antipathy, but
with the quiet of a large sympathy."
"Religion is lost out of England, farther than as
it can creep into corners ; " such was the melancholy
conviction with which Howe, after two and a half years'
experience of London life, returned to his happy
ministry in the west. We have no means of knowing
in what light he regarded the momentous events of the
twelve months from May 1659 to May 1660, between
the quiet withdrawal of Richard Cromwell and the
tumultuous recall of Charles II. We do not know
whether he sympathised with the part which his friend
Baxter took in bringing back and welcoming the King.
It is one of the charms of Howe's character, but it is
an irritating charm to his biographers, that he was
singularly devoid of that kind of zeal which makes a
strong partisan. It is not even possible to gather from
his writings whether he would have called himself a
Presbyterian or an Independent, still less whether he
inclined to Monarchy or Republicanism.
The year which was so exciting for England was
probably for the restored pastor of Torrington one of
62 JOHN HOWE
the happiest and most peaceful in his life. Released
from the troublesome responsibility of guarding a
Protector's conscience, he could give himself up again
to the congenial themes of The Blessedness of the
Righteous, and Delighting in God.
But events which passed unobserved before his eyes,
we who are trying to form a clear conception of his life
cannot afford to ignore. Each step in the work of the
Restoration had a direct influence on him and on his
development.
We need not even discuss the motives of Monk in
recalling the King. The prospect of a military domin-
ation, the presence of 60,000 trained soldiers in the
country, the absence of any controlling or guiding hand,
left a patriot almost without an alternative. The only
chance of order and peace lay in falling back on the
mass of inherited tradition, the loyalty which gathered
round an ancient throne. Whoever the legitimist
monarch might be, the legitimist idea was alone able
at the moment to save England. This was evident not
only to the staunch adherents of the Royalist cause, the
suppressed bishops and clergy, and the great bulk of
quiet country people, but even to the dominant Presby-
terians, to good Parliamentarians, probably to every one
except the army men like Fleetwood, or the doctrinaire
Republicans like Vane.
The throne must be restored. But it was a dark
and mysterious sorrow for England that its only possible
occupant must be Charles, with the ominous shadow of
his brother James in the background.
The King, it will be remembered, was the same age
as Howe. These two men of thirty stand over against
one another for a moment as the representatives of the
EJECTED 63
two principles which divided England. The Royalist
cause was for the moment the cause of gaiety, de-
bauchery, irreligion, and stood in necessary antagonism
to the cause of sobriety, purity, and godliness, of which
John Howe was an advocate. The King promised at
Breda that he would make all allowance for tender
consciences, and no one should suffer on account of
religion. But he did not know what conscience or
religion was, and there were men about him who,
knowing very well, were prepared to explain the terms
away. Presbyterians like Baxter allowed themselves
to be hoodwinked, and accepted the carefully-arranged
devotions of the King, overheard in the ante-room, as
a guarantee of his piety, not because they could be
satisfied with such evidence, but because they saw
nothing for it but to restore him, and wished to get
such comfort from the arrangement as was possible.
But the very day of his return the King gave himself
up to what Burnet calls a "mad rage of pleasure."
Business was irksome to him, and everything was from
the first in the hands of his ministers, such as Clarendon,
or Sheldon the Bishop of London. Clarendon was a
religious man of the Church of England type. His
sincerity is not open to question. But he had the
English dislike of sectarianism, and his policy was at
once directed to getting rid of all religious persua-
sions other than his own. Speaking of those who held
different opinions, an apparent majority in 1660, he
said, " It is an unhappy policy, and always unhappily
applied, to imagine that that class of men can be
recovered and reconciled by partial concessions or
granting less than they demand. And if all were
granted, they would have more to ask, somewhat as a
64 JOHN HOWE
security for the enjoyment of what is granted, that
shall preserve their power and shake the whole frame
of the government. Their faction is their religion.
Nor are those combinations ever entered into upon real
and substantial motives of conscience, how erroneous
soever, but consist of many glutinous materials of will
and humour, and folly and knavery, and ambition and
malice, which make men cling inseparably together,
till they have satisfaction in all their pretences, or till
they are absolutely broken and subdued, which may
always be more easily done than the other." x
This was the Chancellor's view of the situation.
Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Quakers,
were to him all obstinate sectaries, who had no
conscience to consider, but had simply to be " broken
and subdued." It has been the hap of the English
Church to have in every generation a large number of
her children who take this view. The strength she
has derived from it will be illustrated in the course of
this chapter.
Sheldon, who represented the more spiritual ele-
ments of the restored Episcopal Church, thoroughly
agreed with the Chancellor's policy. He was the most
powerful Churchman of the period, and a note from
Pepys, which refers to a later date when he had been
raised to the see of Canterbury, throws light on the
way in which he would approach the delicate ques-
tion of reconciling the distracted sections of English
Christianity :
" At noon to dine with the Archbishop at Lambeth,"
says that most vivacious voice of the Restoration time ;
" exceeding good cheer, nowhere better or so much :
1 Clarendon's Life, ii. 281.
EJECTED 65
most of the company gone, and I going, I heard by a
gentleman of a sermon to be there ; and so I staid to
hear it thinking it serious ; till by and by, the gentleman
told me it was a mockery, by one cornet Bolton, a very
gentleman-like man, that behind a chair did pray and
preach like a presbyter Scot, with all the possible
imitations, in grimaces and voice. And his text about
their hanging up their harps upon the willows : and a
serious good sermon too, exclaiming against bishops,
and crying up of my good Lord Eglinton, till it made
us all burst : but I did wonder to hear the bishop to
make himself sport with things of this kind — there
were about twenty gentlemen there."
With Clarendon directing the civil, and Sheldon the
ecclesiastical, government, there would evidently be an
evil day in store for men like Howe. It is true that,
for the moment, the Presbyterians were quieted by the
appointment of Baxter and nine others as Royal
chaplains. But the bishops were restored, and all the
clergy who had been sequestered by the late Govern-
ment were recalled to their cures. All classes of
separatists were proscribed, as they had been under the
administration of Laud. The obvious purpose of the
Government was to crush out every form of faith and
religion except that of the Episcopal Church by law
established.
Naturally there were officious persons in most parishes
eager to inform against ministers who might be out of
harmony with the new Government. And within six
months of the Restoration the minister of Torrington
was charged before the mayor of the town by two men
named John Evans and William Morgan with preaching
seditiously from the text, " Be not deceived ; God is not
F
66 JOHN HOWE
mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap. For he that soweth unto his own flesh shall
of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth unto the
Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life eternal," — no doubt a
very seditious theme to speak on in the heyday of Royalist
reaction. But owing to a fortunate quarrel between
the deputy lieutenants of the county and the borough
magistrates, Howe was not only acquitted, but had the
melancholy satisfaction of seeing the mayor, Mr. Welling-
ton, summoned to Exeter and thrown into the Marshalsea
there for acting unwarrantably in the case. Of his two
accusers, the one disappeared from the town, the other,
after cutting his own throat, was buried at a cross-road.
So far as we know he was left unmolested and allowed
to proceed with his parochial duties until the passing
of the Act of Uniformity two years later.
The story of those two years is melancholy reading,
and we may pass quickly over it. The Parliament
which succeeded the Convention Parliament in May
1661 was drunk with reactionary zeal. Pious Pepys
heard with horror " how basely things have been carried
by the young men who did labour to oppose all things
that were proposed by serious men : they are the most
profane swearing fellows, who are likely to spoil all and
bring things into a war again if they can." The Savoy
Conference in 1661, between thirteen bishops and eleven
Presbyterian and Independent divines, came to nothing,
because it was evident that the party now in the ascend-
ant was not anxious to conciliate its opponents. The
greatest issues were in the balance ; the worst men
were entrusted with the decision. The question was
whether the Church of England was to be a large and
comprehensive establishment, in which Episcopalians,
EJECTED 67
Presbyterians, and Independents could live and work
together as Christians, or an exclusive denomination
based on a theory of Episcopal Orders. Was it to be
Christian or simply Episcopalian ? That was the
question. And the decision lay in the hands of
Clarendon and Sheldon, men inspired with a contemp-
tuous dislike of every form of faith but their own, and
at the moment elated and delirious with a great
partisan success.
The^Act of Uniformity, which received the King's
sanction" two days after Howe's thirty-second birthday,
May 19, 1662, was one of the most decisive events in
the history of English religion. Owing to this Act,
passed by the heedless and profane majority to whom
Pepys refers, the English people fall into two sharply-
opposed religious camps. The mighty name of Christ,
that should unite them, is subordinated to the small
name of bishop, which divides them. The wording of
this famous Act is inconceivably cynical and illogical.
It required all clergymen, all residents in the Uni-
versities, school-masters, and even private tutors, to
profess their " unfeigned assent and consent " to all and
everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer ;
to renounce the Solemn League and Covenant, and to
pledge themselves to the doctrine of passive obedience.
Sheldon admitted that the purpose of this Act was " to
compel the Presbyterians to become Nonconformists or
knaves." He did not observe that it compelled the
great mass of the clergy to become knaves and Con-
formists. To renounce the Solemn League and Cove-
nant might be no stain on the conscience of honest
Episcopalians. Even the doctrine of passive obedience
involved nothing insincere for men who believed in the
:: JOHN HOWE
divine right of kings. But no one can accept everv-
thing contained in the Prayer-book. It is necessary
to make a choice, as all good Churchmen to-day can
..y apprehend. The rubrics and services belong not
only to a different, but to a contradictory, interpretation
of Christianity from the Thirty-nine Articles. A High
Churchman who accepts the first must necessarily
explain away the second. An Evangelical who ta"
his stand on the Articles is obliged to accept the
rubrics and services with a certain reservation, a private
interpretation of his own.
This unprincipled Act of Parliament, the outcome
of Restoration morality and intolerance, actually required
all the clergy in England to pledge then. to an
impossibility, an absurdity, an insincerity. It is neces-
sary to recognise that English Nonconformity, histori-
cally considered, has its origin in the self-sacrificing
repudiation of this iniquity in high places. Sheldon's
purpose was to compel the Presbyterians to become
Nonconformists or knaves. With a quiet heroism,
which has few parallels in history, two t housand ofjfr ri em .
chose the first alternative. They went out from their
happy parsonages and rectories, not knowing whither
they went, homeless, penniless, persecuted, many of
them to die of hardships, all of them to live for an
unknown period of years in peril, in ostracism, in the
contempt of their countrymen who conformed. Th
two thousand are the real Fathers of English Inde-
pendency and of English Presbyterianisrn. That after
seven generations English Nonconformity is an unspent
spiritual force, is conscious still of an unfulfilled mission,
and draws from within new springs of power and
advance in each generation, is due partly to the godless
EJECTED 89
folly of the Restoration Parliament, but principally to
the heroism, the sacrifice, the purged faith of the Two
Thousand.
It is as one of the Two Thousand, rather than as
Cromwell's chaplain, that Howe begins to exercise a
strong claim upon our sympathy. Hitherto he has been
at a distance from us ; now he draws near ; we follow
his steps with pity, with admiration, with love.
It was on St. Bartholomew's Day. Angus: '21. that
the Act of Uniformity came into operation. How- ;
course was clear from the first. He consulted with his
conscience, and found, for reasons which we must now
studv, that he could not be satisfied with the terms of
conformity fixed bv law. On that black dav. which
saw the best and saintliest ministers of the Church —
Calamy, Baxter, ^ead. Havel, Philip Henry, Joseph
Alleine, John Owen. Charnock, — and others less known
I fame, silenced, the young minister of Torrington
preached for the last time in his parish church. The
two sermons explained to his people, who were all
moved to tears, that he must leave them.
We have from Calamy 1 at first hand Howe's own
account of the reason which made the step necessary.
It is worth studvinir. No man was ever more clear and
consistent than Howe. Nearly forty years after the
event, in his tract on Occasional Conformity, he sb .: -: s in
the following form what he had felt on that eventful
dav of St Bartholomew :
Should not the latitude of a Christian carry
him to fix his communion with the larger and m
extensive Church ?
•• A. Wna: ! should the latitude of a Christian bind
1 The grandson, Howe's biographer.
70 JOHN HOWE
him to one sort of Christians, with exclusion of all
other? Never was that noble principle of Christian
latitude more perverted or turned even against itself,
than if it be used to train men into a religious bigotry.
. . . They that refuse confinement to the largest Church
may avoid it, not because they should otherwise express
too much latitude, but too little." 1
The fact is that these first Nonconformists, rightly or
wrongly, left the Established Church because it had
been made a sect. They were not prepared to accept
the dogma which now declared that this was the
only form of Christ's Church that was admissible.
It was not that they had any serious objection to
Episcopacy, as such; they revolted only when Epis-
copacy claimed to be an essential and divine element in
Christianity. It was not that they were irreconcilably
opposed to a Liturgy, but that certain points in the
established Liturgv seemed to them wrong ; and the
bishops would make no concession to their scruples. It
was not that they objected on principle to a State
Church, but the particular government then in power
was, in their opinion, intrinsically unchristian and even
godless.
If the English Church of 1662 had been spiritually
Christian instead of merely Episcopal, if it had been
religious merely instead of mainly political, there need
never have been any organised Nonconformity in
England. The English Church missed her opportunity,
and God alone knows when it may come again.
But to return to the account which Calamy had from
Howe's own lips. Meeting Dr. Wilkins, afterwards the
Bishop of Chester, the ejected minister was cross-
1 Works, v. 278.
EJECTED 71
examined by his old friend. Knowing Howe's absolute
freedom from sectarian bigotry, the genial Churchman
naturally wondered why he had been unable to conform.
That there were stiff and rigid sectaries he knew, but
Howe was a man of greater latitude. Howe replied that
" that latitude of his which he was pleased to take notice
of, was so far from inducing him to Conformity, that it
was the very thing that made and kept him a Noncon-
formist." After a few more questions he came to the
root of the matter. " He took the public exercise of his
ministry to be like a habitation or a dwelling, and when
he was put upon consulting about a dwelling, he could
not tell how to reconcile it with common prudence, to
enter into a habitation that he was apprehensive had
so weak a foundation as that it was not likely to stand
very long. I could not," says he, "by any means be
for going into a falling house, for fear of its falling about
my ears."
Dr. Wilkins was well able to sympathise with his
brave friend, and even urged him to stand to his prin-
ciple, and sooner or later he might hope to carry his
point. It is the spirit with which Erasmus always
leaves the actual reformation, which in theory he
desires, to Luther. There were doubtless many men in
the Church of England who disapproved of the Court
and the policy of the day. The Presbyterian Reynolds,
who even accepted a bishopric, was at one with Howe
in censuring the Church and disliking its exclusiveness.
But it was not the clear-headed Conformist seeing and
acknowledging the mischief, it was the brave-hearted
Nonconformist, who at all costs to himself came met, that
took the effectual step towards a higher and better
religious settlement than the Church of the Restoration.
72 JOHN HOWE
Nonconformity was, to a man of Howe's judicious mind
and eager passion for unity, a pain and a sacrifice. It
was no pleasure to him to differ. He had, personally,
nothing to gain and everything to lose, by the step he was
taking. The ground of his decision was so fine, and so
delicate, that no one at the time, and few since, could
adequately appreciate it. The tragedy of the situation
was precisely this, that the action which cost him so
much must appear to even good men unnecessary and
arbitrary. Like all the noblest and best of our species,
he was bound to be misunderstood. In vain did he for
the rest of his life urge with a gentle expostulation :
" One would think it should not be unapprehensible
to any man that allows himself the free use of his
thoughts, that though he should continue of the judg-
ment that such additions were in the matter of them
lawful, yet the making them additional terms of Christian
communion must be highly sinful, as being the intro-
duction of a new Christianity, — Christian communion
being of Christians as such. . . . We cannot unite with
them who insist upon terms of union that we judge
unlawful in those things." 1
Yet it is this which is " unapprehensible " to a large
proportion of Churchmen in the present day. They are
unable to see that Nonconformists separate from them,
not because they think Episcopacy wrong, but because to
make Episcopacy a sine qua non of Christianity, an exclu-
sive principle, which refuses to recognise any Christians
who are not Episcopalian, is not only without authority
in the New Testament, but is the fruitful source of
schism and disunion wherever it is admitted. Chris-
tianity says that we are one in Christ. Episcopacy will
1 Works, iv. 307.
EJECTED 73
have it that we are one in Bishops. It was this
difference which made Howe's renunciation necessary.
Torrington was left behind, and Howe, with his
young wife and family, went out as a vagabond on
the face of the earth. Some houses of the country
gentlemen in Devon were open to him, and in private
assemblies he might yet exercise his gift of preaching.
But his ostensible occupation, and the means of sub-
sistence, were gone. The time had come for him to
give a practical illustration of his own lofty words
addressed to his Torrington flock in happier days.
" You must cast off all other lovers, if you intend
delighting in God. Get up into the higher region,
where you may be out of the danger of having your
spirit engulphed, and, as it were, sucked up of the spirit
of this world, or of being subject to its debasing, stupe-
fying influence. Bear yourself as the inhabitant of
another country. Make this your mark and scope, that
the temper of your spirit may be such, that the secret
of the Divine presence may become to you as your very
element, wherein you can most freely live and breathe
and be most at ease, and out of which you may perceive
you cannot enjoy yourself: and that whatever tends to
withdraw you from Him, any extravagant motion, the
beginnings of the excursion, or the least departing step,
may be sensibly painful and grievous to you. And do
not look on it as a hopeless thing you should ever
come to this." x He had now to " bear himself as the
inhabitant of another country," and to be shaken loose
from all the ties and interests, the national and civic
surroundings, which had hitherto made up his life.
What wins our hearts to him is that be was able in
1 Works, ii. 217.
\
74 JOHN HOWE
adversity to act consistently according to the principles
that he had propounded in prosperity. No word of
complaint escapes his lips. As the inhabitant of another
country, he addresses himself to the work of living in the
spirit, and of preparing to be a better teacher still if
ever the opportunity should come.
On May 16, 1664, a feeble rising of discontented
people in the north was made the occasion of passing
the Conventicle Act. It is probable enough that Charles
had little sympathy with the policy which Clarendon
and the bishops were pursuing, a policy which placed
the violation of his promises at Breda in an odious light.
But his insouciance was incurable, and the tide of
religious bigotry in the Commons and in the Church
was running high. By this Act it became illegal to
hold a religious meeting, even in a private house, at
which five persons, over and above the family, were
present. For the first offence the penalty was to be £5
or three months' imprisonment, for the second £10 or
six, for the third £100 or transportation for seven years.
Baxter tells us that the peculiar calamity of the Act
was that the main matter of it was ambiguous. Accord-
ing to the letter, exercises in accordance with the
doctrine of the Church of England might seem to be
allowed. And at first this defence was frequently
offered. But when it came to the trial these pleas with
the justices were vain ; for if men did but pray, it was
taken for granted that it was an exercise not allowed by
the Church of England, and to jail they went.
The jails were everywhere filling with these pro-
hibited worshippers, especially with the Quakers, who
felt it a point of conscience to disregard this arbitrary
interference of the Government. But men like Howe
EJECTED 75
had little disposition to set the authorities at defiance.
They saw that they had fallen upon evil times, and they
were willing to bow their heads to the storm. It
appears that on one occasion, after spending a few
days preaching in one of these western country-houses,
Howe received notice that a citation from the Bishop's
Court was out against him and his host. Calamy gives
us a vivid picture of what happened. The ejected
minister mounted his horse, rode at once into Exeter,
and there alighted at his inn. Standing at the door,
and pondering what course to take, he is accosted by
" a certain dignified clergvman with whom he was well
acquainted."
" Mr. Howe, what do you do here ? "
"Pray, sir, what have I done that I may not be
here ? "
But there was a process out against him. Well,
what of that ? Would he wait on the Bishop ? Cer-
tainly, if he were invited. Accordingly he goes to his
room in the inn, while the " dignified clergyman " goes
to the episcopal palace to acquaint the Bishop with
Howe's presence in the city. The Bishop, Dr. Seth
Ward, whom Cromwell's chaplain had befriended at
Court a few years before in the matter of Jesus College
and the mastership, was very civil to his young bene-
factor. But why in the world should he be a Non-
conformist ? Well, that were a large matter which
would trespass considerably on his lordship's patience.
Would he name one point which seemed of weight ? for
the worthy Bishop would like to understand this incom-
prehensible fad of relinquishing Church and parsonage,
and going out into the desert, on a doctrinaire notion.
" Well," says Howe, " there is the difficulty of re-
76 JOHN HOWE
ordination. I in my opinion was as truly ordained as
man could be by the Presbytery of Winwick " — and
indeed our Church of England has, in its wisest heads,
fully recognised the validity of such orders without a
bishop. Has not the judicious Hooker said as much ? 1
Field, in his book on the Church, had spoken more
decisively still. And even Laud and Bishop Cosin
would have none of your Episcopal exclusiveness, as if
the Divine gift lay in a visible succession, and not in a
spiritual reality. 2
" Why, pray sir," says the Bishop, " what hurt is there
in being twice ordained ? "
" Hurt, my lord ! the thought is shocking ; it hurts
my understanding ; it is an absurdity, for nothing can
have two beginnings. I am sure I am a minister of
Christ, and am ready to debate that matter with your
lordship, if you please ; and I can't begin to be a minister
again."
Alas for the unfortunate idealists in this world.
" It hurts my understanding ! " Good heavens ! What
is the use of an understanding which is so obdurate,
which stands so fatally in a man's way, which has so
tiresome a hold on eternal things ? " The Bishop then
dropping that matter told Mr. Howe, as he had done
at other times, that if he would come in amongst them,
he might have considerable preferments, and at length
dismissed him in a very friendly manner ! "
That is not the least notable of the scenes which
have occurred in the episcopal palace at Exeter. It
was the parting of the ways for these two men ; and yet
the man who went away that morning, without means,
1 Ecclesiastical Polity, VII. xiv. 11.
2 See Archdeacon Sinclair's Words to the Laity, p. 112.
EJECTED 77
without a sphere, to the darkest of futures, occupies a
permanent place in the company of English worthies.
And his episcopal friend, preferments and all, is but a
name, hardly memorable by now. Yet Dr. Seth Ward
was a good and worthy Christian. He took care that
Howe should hear no more about the process. It is one
of the sweet homely things in the English character, that
even when the wildest reaction is on foot, and in the most
intolerant moments of persecution, kindly souls among
magistrates and bishops stretch the law, and risk their
reputation, to protect the persecuted and save them
from the hard results of their conscientious stiffness.
The English character has no natural liking for per-
secution. Bigotry on our soil is an exotic and cultivated
with difficulty. Most of us share the temper of Pepys,
who enters in his Diary in August 1664 : " I saw several
poor creatures carried by, by constables, for being at
a conventicle. They go like lambs without resistance.
I would to God they would either conform, or be more
wise, and not be catched ! "
The following year, Clarendon and Sheldon did their
worst against the Nonconformists. It was the year of the
Plague, 1665. And some stir had been made by the
fact that many of the ejected ministers had returned
to London, to preach in the pulpits from which the
restored Episcopal clergy had fled, not grudging them
the pre-eminence of danger. Parliament withdrew to
Oxford to escape the epidemic, and there proceeded at
once to pass the Five Mile Act. This was the triumph
of ingenious malignity. It required that every person
in holy orders who had not complied with the Act of
Uniformity should take the oath of passive obedience,
78 JOHN HOWE
and bind himself not to attempt any alteration in the
government of the Church or the State. Any refusing
this oath were forbidden to act as tutors or school-
masters (the only profession open to the ejected clergy),
and might not come within five miles of a town or
borough sending a member to Parliament, or any place
where they had formerly been ministers. Again the
jails begin to fill with these innocent men. Many of
the Nonconformists, like Dr. Bates in London, saw their
way to taking the oath, and to swear " that it was not
lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take arms
against the King." This was not the spirit of Crom-
well and the Ironsides. But it represents the feeling
which has usually actuated the English Nonconformists.
Their interest has always been predominantly religious.
Their most conspicuous ministers have generally kept
studiously aloof from party questions. Men who
scrupled to commit the absurdity of declaring " un-
feigned assent and consent" to all contained in the
Prayer-book, or who felt their understanding hurt by a
proposal for Episcopal re-ordination, could with a clear
conscience bind themselves to the maintenance of the
established order in Church and State.
Howe was among a dozen of the ejected in Devonshire
who consented to appear at the County Sessions and
to take his oath in open court. He acted with some
misgiving, but from a paper in which he justified his
action to himself it is evident that there was no motive
of base compliance, but only a stern sense of duty. But
his wife's brother and father, George and Obadiah
Hughes, apparently were not so compliant, and found
themselves imprisoned in the Isle of St. Nicholas,
EJECTED 79
Plymouth. la a letter to his brother-in-law Obadiah,
Howe used some characteristic expressions which are
worth quoting because they show his temper in this
period of bitter trial. He dwells on "the unkind-
ness and instability of a surly treacherous world," that
" retains its wayward temper and grows more peevish as
it grows older, and more ingenious in inventing ways to
torment whom it disaffects." " Spite is natural to her.
All her kindness is an artificial disguise, . . " but "the
more it goes about to mock and vex us, the more it
teaches and instructs us ; as it is wickeder we are
wiser."
A man in that frame of mind is one over whom the
world has no power.
Owing to his compliance with the Five Mile Act it
would seem that he was allowed to continue in peace at
Torrington, though suspended from all active service in
the parish. There, on January 4, 1666, Philippa, his
first daughter, and fourth child, was baptized. Here
he received the tidings of the terrible fire which devas-
tated London in September, and laid to heart the lesson
which he, twelve years later, delivered to London itself
in the Haberdashers' Hall. " The street shall be built
again, and the wall in troublous times" (Dan. ix. 25),
was the text. " The judgments of God are audible
sermons. They have a voice." He knew something of
London, and report had told him of the wild debauch-
eries with which the city overflowed since 1660. " That
the inhabitants of London should be as it were in a
1 The rumour mentioned by Calamy that Howe himself was
imprisoned there is evidently unsupported — a rumour perhaps
suggested by the letter referred to in the text.
80 JOHN HOWE
conspiracy to destroy London seems very strange. And
yet was not that the case ? " It was useless for the
citizens to be indignant against the supposed authors
of the conflagration. They themselves were the true
authors. Their sins brought the punishment upon their
heads.
Such thoughts were in the man's mind, as he studied
and ruminated and prepared, all unconsciously to him-
self, for a ministry in the great city. Meanwhile, with
a view perhaps to earn the necessary means for himself
and his four children, he was busy in writing out for
publication some of the sermons that he had preached
in the parish church. Baxter, who was living in retire-
ment at Acton, wrote a brotherly introduction to the
volume, saying among other things : " As God hath
endued the worthy author with a more than ordinary
measure of judiciousness, even soundness and accurate-
ness of understanding, with seriousness, spirituality, and
a heavenly mind ; so we have for our common benefit
the effects of all these happy qualifications in this
judicious heavenly discourse. And if my recommend-
ations may in any measure further your acceptance,
improvement, and practising of so edifying a Treatise,
it will answer the ends of him who waiteth with you
in hope for the same salvation."
This is no extravagant eulogy of the work known as
TJie Blessedness of the Righteous, the merits of which, it
would seem, the reading public of the day immediately
recognised. It consists of a characteristic elaboration
of a single text, Ps. xvii. 15, evolved from within by
means of interminable divisions and subdivisions, and
carried out through 380 octavo pages. There is no hope
EJECTED 81
of getting the modern reader to read the discourse. Its
methods of arrangement and of expression are fatal to
it at that tribunal. But even the modern reader would
like to taste the flavour of this "judicious heavenly"
production ; and if no quotations will drive him to read
the whole, perhaps Baxter's praise of the whole will
induce him to consider carefully two quotations. The
writer is speaking of " the ravishing aspects of God's
love when it shall now be open-faced and have laid
aside its veil." One in the position of the Apostle
Paul has come to the understanding of that love :
" He shall now no longer stand amazed spending his
guesses, what manner of love this should be ; and
expecting fuller discoveries, further effects of it, that
did not yet appear, but sees the utmost, all that his soul
can bear or wish to see. He hath now traced home the
rivulets to their fountain, the beams to the very sun of
love. He hath got the prospect, at last, into that heart,
where the great thoughts of love were lodged from
everlasting, where all its counsels and designs were
formed. He sees what made God become a Man ;
what clothed a Deity with human flesh ; what made
Eternity become the birth of time, when come to its
parturient fulness {Gal. iv. 4) ; what moved the heart
of the Son of God to pitch His tabernacle among men ;
what engaged Him to the enterprise of redeeming
sinners; what moved Him so earnestly to contest with
a perishing world, led Him at last to the Cross, made
Him content to become a sacrifice to God, a spectacle
to angels and men, in a bitter reproachful death, inflicted
by the sacrilegious hands of those whom He was all this
while designing to save." x
1 Works, i. 86.
G
82 JOHN HOWE
All the heart of the Puritan theology throbs in that
passage. The other quotation with which the reader
must be troubled is not without its pathos, coming from
the pen of the silenced and persecuted minister :
" What ! because purer and more refined Christianity
in our time and in this part of the world hath had
public favour and countenance, can we therefore not
tell how to frame our minds to the thoughts of suffer-
ings ? Are tribulation and patience antiquated names,
quite out of date and use with us, and more ungrateful
to our ears and hearts than heaven and eternal glory are
acceptable ? And had we rather, if we were in danger
of suffering on the Christian account, run a hazard as
to the latter than adventure as to the former ? . . .
Every sincere Christian is in affection and preparation of
Ids mind a martyr. He that loves not Christ better
than his own life cannot be His disciple." 1
" It is a reproach with us not to be called a Christian,
and a greater reproach to he one. If such and such
doctrines obtain not in our professed belief, we are
heretics or infidels ; if they do in our practice, we are
precisians and fools." This is surprisingly modern, or
rather is the language of true religion in all ages. But
for the antiquated phraseology, the cumbersome arrange-
ment, and the occasional jarring note of a by-gone
theology — as for instance when the sight of damned
souls is supposed to increase the transports of the saved —
The Blessedness of the Righteous, Howe's first serious and
connected publication, would have a noble message to
our own, as to every other, age. There is nothing sour
or morose in it, there is nothing sectarian or exclusive.
But dealing with the eternal principles of all religion,
1 Works, i. 351.
EJECTED 83
he, here as elsewhere, has a wonderful faculty of ex-
patiation on the things which, being invisible, contain
the springs of our peace.
The notice of this passage in Howe's life would be
very incomplete if it did not contain some account of
his relations with the other ministers who shared his
ejection in 1662. It fell to his lot in later days to
preach funeral sermons for several of these who had
been his brothers in adversity. Such of these sermons
as have been preserved contain charming portraits of
the men who made the great renunciation, and they are
well worthy of study. Occasionally too he would refer
in general terms to the spirit of the sufferers; as for
instance where he dwells on their largeness of mind,
and their complete freedom from religious intolerance.
Though they were ejected from the Church of England,
they did not fall into the extravagance of denouncing it
"as no church," but kept in as close and friendly rela-
tions with it as they could. " Most of the considerable
ejected London ministers met, and agreed to hold
occasional communion with the now re-established
Church, — not quitting their own ministry, or declining
the exercise of it as they could have opportunity. And
as far as I could by enquiry learn, I can little doubt
this to have been the judgment of their fellow-sufferers
through the nation in great part ever since." x
It was indeed a triumph of perversity on the part of
the Church, led by Clarendon and Sheldon, to alienate
men of this temper, and it becomes the more amazing
as their portraits are more closely examined.
Take, for instance, the notice of Richard Fairclough,
a Fellow of Emmanuel, Cambridge, who was the minister
1 Works, v. 289.
84 JOHN HOWE
of Mells in Somerset, was ejected by the Act at the age
of forty-one, and lived in the shade of persecution for
twenty years longer. " I never knew any man under
the more constant governing power of religion .... he
was made up of life and love. . . . His reverence of the
Divine Majesty was most profound, his thoughts of God
high and great, that seemed totally to have composed
him to adoration, and even made him live a worshipping
life." Howe speaks of " that rare and happy tempera-
ment with him which I cannot better express than by
a pleasant seriousness. . . . When by surprise he came
among his familiar friends, it seemed as if he had
blessed the room, as if a new soul or some good genius
were come among them. . . . He had a soul, a life, a
name, darkened with no cloud but that of his great
humility, which clouded him only to himself, but beauti-
fied and brightened him in the eyes of all others." The
church at Mells during his ministry attracted people for
miles round, " so that I have wondered to see so throng
an auditory." " His labours were almost incredible ;
beside his usual exercises on the Lord's day, of praying,
reading the Scriptures, preaching, catechising, ad-
ministering the sacraments, he usually five days in
the week, betimes in the morning, appeared in public,
prayed and preached an expository lecture upon some
portion of the Holy Scriptures in course, to such as
could then assemble, — which so many did that he always
had a considerable congregation : nor did he ever pro-
duce in public anything which did not smell of the
lamp. . . . Yet also he found time not only to visit
the sick, but also, in a continual course, all the families
within his charge, and personally and severely to con-
verse with every one that was capable. . . . Every
EJECTED 85
clay, for many years together, he used to be up by three
in the morning, or sooner, and to be with God, which
was his dear delight, when others slept." The preacher
then mentions Fairclough's perfect sweetness to the
ministers who did not come out, but satisfied their con-
science " in the scrupled points," and his unworldly
cheerfulness in living from hand to mouth after his
ejection, helped by " some worthy citizens of London,
whose temper it is to take more pleasure in doing
such good than in having it told the world who they
were."
" It should make us love heaven so much the better
that such as he are gathered thither," concludes Howe. |
..." What a glorious host will arise and spring up
out of subterraneous London ! Is not the grave now
a less gloomy thing? Who would grudge to lie ob-
scurely awhile among them with whom we expect to
rise and ascend so gloriously V' 1
Yet men like this were driven from their labours of
love by the Act of 1662, and forbidden even to teach in
private by that of 1664. We have similar sermons on
William Bates, Richard Adams, and Peter Vink.
The last of these three affords an example of the
learning and capacity which could be found among even
the less known of these first Nonconformists. Such
was his precocity that he was sent up in his fourteenth
year to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he was a
distinguished Fellow, and on taking his degree received
a high compliment from the professor. There was an
examination viva voce, conducted in Latin ; and having
1 See sermon on The Faithful Servant Applauded and Rewarded.
— Works, vi. 232—242.
86 JOHN HOWE
protracted this to an unusual length the examiner said :
" Mr. Vink, I only so long continued my opposition to
you, to give you opportunity to entertain the auditory
with that judgment and eloquence which have appeared
in your answers." This remarkable scholar was the
minister of St. Michael's, Cornhill, but was then moved
to a neighbouring church, " where he continued preach-
ing the words of this life till August 24, 1G62 ; when }
not satisfied with some things in the Act that then
took place, he calmly quitted his station but not his
ministry : which he never refused to exercise, when de-
sired, in distinct assemblies, when they had only the
favour of a connivance. But his more ordinary course
was — after he was deprived of his former public liberty
— to preach for many years as the Apostle Paul did, in his
own hired house ; whither his great abilities and most
lively, vigorous ministry drew an assembly not incon-
siderable." He kept a Latin diary all through his life,
which Howe had perused. " I have observed therein
such strictures of elegancy, both of style and phrase,
as signified it was become impossible to him, if he
writ anything, not to write handsomely, and as might
become both a Christian and a scholar."
Like the rest of these noble men, he had no bigotry,
but maintained an occasional communion with the
Established Church, by which "he incurred the anger
of two sorts of men ; of some that he went no further,
of others that he went so far." The "haughty super-
cilious temper" which has been the Church of Eng-
land's too frequent weapon against Nonconformists was
exhibited to this gentle and refined spirit ; the temper
which was perfectly embodied in Clarendon and Sheldon,
EJECTED 87
who were always ready to " adventure to censure them
as men of no conscience, that abandon not their own to
follow theirs." 1
Richard Adams had been a fellow of B. N. C. Oxford,
became the incumbent of St. Mildred, Bread Street, and
was an intimate friend of Howe's for fifty years. " In
the great city he shone a bright and burning light, till
many such lights were in one day put under a bushel.
I need not tell you what, or how black, that day was."
He undertook, after his ejection, the charge of " a small
and poor people " in South wark, from whom he could
not be tempted away. He bore with meekness " slights
and affronts even from those he had very much obliged."
And if patience under neglect and abuse and scorn is a
virtue to be desired, or a preparation for the kingdom
of heaven, the Nonconformists of this country should
from the first thank God for their unexampled oppor-
tunities of acquiring and perfecting it. Howe adds a
very significant remark about his friend, which is
characteristic of Nonconformity. " Notwithstanding
all temporal discouragements he met with in the course
of his ministry, his mind to the very last was to have
both his sons brought up to it." 2
Dr. William Bates, the last of the ejected ministers
whose portrait we must attempt to delineate from
Howe's pages, was a man who, even though a Noncon-
formist, attracted considerable attention in his day.
" He was frequently visited by persons of higher rank,
and that made no mean figure in the world," such as
the Duke of Bedford, to whom Howe's memorial sermon
is dedicated. Such people, making their way to the
plain sanctuary in Hackney, where he ministered after
1 Works, vi. 375. 2 Ibid., vi. 265.
88 JOHN HOWE
his ejection, " acknowledged that going abroad upon
hazardous employments they have received from him
such wise and pious counsels as have stuck by them,
and they have been the better for afterwards." His
ministrations were acceptable even in higher quarters.
Describing his singularly handsome and dignified ap-
pearance, an earthen vessel, true, but "wrought meliore
luto, of finer or more accurately figured and better
turned clay," Howe says : " He was to stand before
kings ; you know in what relation he stood to one as
long as was convenient for some purposes ; and of how
frequent occasion he had of appearing, never unac-
ceptably, before another." William III. was suffi-
ciently cosmopolitan to escape the insular prejudice,
which prevails in the country of his adoption, against
every form of religion which is not stamped with the
approval of fashion.
Dr. Bates had a wonderful memory, which continued
unimpaired to his death in 1699, at the age of seventy-
four. He preached entirely without notes, and yet
" nothing could be more remote from ramble " than his
sermons. "He had lived a long, studious life, an earnest
gatherer, and (as the phrase is) devourer of books." His
discourses were usually "savoury as seasoned with salt."
But apparently his power did not lie only in the pulpit.
One could not listen to his ordinary conversation, " but
either with great negligence or good advantage." Like
all the best Puritans, and one may add all the most
distinguished Nonconformists from the beginning, he
was full of anecdote and humour. "To place religion
in a morose sourness was remote from his practice, his
judgment, and his temper."
In glancing at these specimen portraits of the men
EJECTED 89
who were driven out of the English Church by the
reaction under Charles II., we can hardly resist raising
the question, whether this fresh budding of English
Nonconformity was more creditable to those who left
or to those who remained in the Church ? Baxter and
Howe have always been the pre-eminent and represent-
ative names. Their enormous industry in publication
and their unquestioned devotion and zeal in spiritual
work have hidden to some extent the modest merits of
the rest. To judge correctly, it must be remembered
that they were not exceptional men, but rather typical.
We shall have occasion later on to mention one painful
instance of an ejected minister who fell away into
habits of vice. But he stands, so far as is known, by
himself. One in Two Thousand. It is no utterance of
a partisan, it is the sober confession of history, that
those Two Thousand were not only the best clergymen
in the English Church of 1662, but on the whole the
noblest, the sincerest, the most self-sacrificing group of
ministers that ever existed in the Church at one time.
They were the chosen and seasoned confessors of a
great religious period. They were expelled from the
Church not for any moral offence or spiritual defect —
their reputation was literally blameless — but simply
because they scrupled to take an illogical and self-
contradictory oath. They agreed rather with the New
Testament than with the Anglican Church on the
importance of Episcopacy ; but they did not go out
on that difference of opinion. For the most part they
had no sympathy with the humiliating principle of
Passive Obedience ; and they viewed with a peculiar
sorrow and shame the degradation to which that prin-
ciple reduced their country for the next quarter of a
90 JOHN HOWE
century. But even that was not the decisive point.
They sacrificed everything for an abstract loyalty to
truth of language, simplicity, and singleness of thought
and purpose.
Before the bar of history they stand absolutely
acquitted. The blame, if there is blame, for the result
must lie with the authorities of the Church by law
established.
But it is well to raise the question whether blame
attaches to any party, or at least whether there is any-
thing to regret in the result ? We are all tempted in
moments of irritation to fret against the facts of history.
We wish we could push back to 1662, arrest the course
of events, and retain the Two Thousand within the
borders of the Church of England. Churchmen would
naturally like to claim Baxter and Howe as of their
communion ; and must be sorely perplexed with a
theory of the Church of Christ which thrusts such
men beyond the borders. But the gain to English
religion, and to the cause of Christ throughout the world,
is greater from the creation of the Free Churches than
from that maintenance of a forced unity under the
Episcopal system which is a matter of principle to the
English Church.
If thought is free, there must always be multitudes
of men who, with the New Testament before them,
and with the early history of the Church becoming
clearer and more indisputable each revolving decade,
could not possibly accept the position that Christianity
is to be identified with anything so external and
accidental, and indeed so ineffectual and liable to
abuse, as a certain order of government known as the
Episcopal. For this large number of Christian people,
EJECTED 91
larger to-day than it ever was, there would have been
no Church at hand, no organised and developed system
of life and thought within the borders of Christianity,
if the first Nonconformists had not made good their
contention, and if these great Confessors had not
sacrificed and suffered in 1662.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LIVING TEMPLE. 1669 — 1675.
" A city of refuge builded pleasantly
Within the quiet places of the heart."
We are approaching the period in Howe's life which
produced his most lasting literary monument, The
Living Temple, and strengthened him by quiet and
meditation for the arduous labours of his closing years
in London. The good hand of his God was on the
ejected minister, and provided a haven and a shelter
just at the time of extremity.
After eight years of painful sequestration under the
full swing of the Royalist reaction, watched and suspected
by every venal myrmidon of the Government, it is no
wonder that he was in some pecuniary straits. The
proceeds of his book, successful as it was, could hardly
afford support for his young family.
But the book, so we gather, had won him a powerful
friend. A Staffordshire baronet, named Skeffington,
had married the daughter, and received the title, of
Lord Massarene of Antrim, a gentleman who, as Sir
John Clotworthy, had taken his full share in the
restoration of the King. The second Lord Massarene
was of different principles from his father-in-law, and
THE LIVING TEMPLE 93
afterwards took his full share in the revolution of 1688.
But for the present he was in favour with the reigning
powers, and was able to afford a secure shelter to a
persecuted minister. He sent Howe a pressing invita-
tion to come over to Antrim, live in his house, and
act as domestic chaplain. Nothing could be more
opportune. And in the early part of 1671 Howe left
Torrington, with his son George, for his new home.
His wife and the rest of his family were to follow
later.
But the journey to Ireland presents us with one of
the most vivid and interesting scenes in the whole of
the life. The travellers had reached the town in
Wales, presumably Holyhead, where they were to
embark. But the wind was not favourable, and they
were detained over Sunday. Among those who were
waiting for the packet, evidently some had heard or
discovered who their fellow-traveller was. Learning'
that in the parish church of the place there would be
no sermon, they set out along the sands to find a place
where Howe might preach to them. Two horsemen
met them riding towards the town. These proved to
be the parson and the clerk of the parish. A few
friendly words passed. Did his reverence mean to
preach to-day ? No, he did not use to preach, but only
to read prayers. If a preaching minister were forth-
coming, might he occupy the pulpit ? Certainly. Thus
after eight years of seclusion Howe found himself again
in the pulpit of a parish church. The sleepy congrega-
tion that Sunday morning was electrified, and in the
afternoon large numbers of people assembled to hear
the living word of the preacher. On the Monday the
wind continued contrary, and all through the ensuing
94 JOHN HOWE
week. The news spread through the country-side that
the vessel could not sail, and the wonderful minister
could not leave. Accordingly on the following Sunday
a great crowd assembled in the town expecting to be
fed with the Word. The parson was in consternation.
He, unfortunate, had no living word for the " hungry
sheep," only a service-book, and such tame convention-
alities. Accordingly the clerk is despatched about
service-time to Howe's inn, with an earnest appeal
from the parish priest to come and preach. He is in
bed with a feverish cold. But clearly this is the call
of God, if ever such a call existed, these eager crowds
clamouring for the word of life. Let the clerk inform
the priest therefore that he will be on the spot
presently.
" He cooled himself with as much speed as he was
able with safety, and cast himself upon God." He
preached with great energy and unction, and said after-
wards, " If my ministry was ever of any use I think it
must be then."
At last the packet sailed, and some time before
April 12, 1671, on which day he wrote a letter to
John Upton which has come down to us, he found
himself settled in the household of Lord Massarene.
Antrim is a little town of not more than 2000
(inhabitants, lying thirteen miles north-west of Belfast
on the shore of Lough Neagh, the largest lake in
Ireland. In 1666 it had been enfranchised by Charles,
and now sent two members to Parliament. It is to
this day a stronghold of Presbyterianism, and even at
that time it afforded a delightful exception to the
prevailing religious animosities. No place could have
been more congenial to an apostle of Christian unity.
THE LIVING TEMPLE 95
There was a Presbyterian meeting-house in Cooke
Street, where the new chaplain of the great house was
welcomed as a regular preacher. But the Episcopal
clergy were equally cordial. The Bishop of the diocese
gave him leave to preach in the parish church every
Sunday afternoon, without exacting any terms of
conformity. And in a full meeting of his clergy the
Archbishop publicly declared that he would like every
pulpit in the province open to him.
In addition to these Sunday opportunities a Friday
Conference was arranged, which became known as the
"Antrim Meeting," and out of it grew the Presbyterian
Organisation of the North of Ireland.
The grounds of Massarene Castle are still the chief
attraction of the neighbourhood. And in this charming
and congenial retreat, surrounded by appreciative
friends, his tongue loosened, and yet his leisure secured,
Howe was able to give himself up to literary work.
He says in a book written towards the end of this quiet
time : " Though the comprehension of our minds be
not infinite, it might be extended much farther than
usually it is, if we would allow ourselves with patient
diligence to consider things at leisure, and so as
gradually to stretch and enlarge our own understandings.
Many things have carried the appearance of contra-
diction and inconsistency to the first view of our
straitened minds, which afterwards we have, upon
repeated consideration and endeavour, found room for,
and been able to make fairly accord and lodge
together." 1
St. Paul had his Arabia, Carlyle had his Craigen-
puttock. And every strong mind, as it reaches maturity
1 Works, v. 7.
I
96 JOHN HOWE
and prepares for its best work, requires a pause, a rest,
an opportunity to look round, and to settle the acquisi-
tions of youth in some ordered and consistent lines of
future progress. This time had by his Master's gracious
provision come to the sorely-troubled servant. And he
made good use of it.
Whether the patronage and sympathy of noblemen
were altogether wholesome for these Fathers of English
Nonconformity may be open to question. Such a
passage, for instance, as this in The Living Temple
would sound strange from the lips of their modern
representatives :
"And will we not acknowledge the most refined
human understanding as incompetent to judge of the
rights of the Divine Government, or measure the
injuriousness of an offence done against it, as the
meanest peasant to make an estimate of these matters
in a human government ? If only the reputation
be wronged of a person of better quality, how strictly
is it insisted on to have the matter tried by peers
or persons of equal rank, such as are capable of
understanding honour and reputation ! How would it
be resented if an affront put upon a nobleman should
be committed to the judgment of smiths and cobblers ! " l
That does not sound promising in the lips of one
whose spiritual descendants were to be the most
strenuous champions of social equality and democratic
freedom. But the sentiment is worth noting. It
reminds us that these seceders, in taking their stand
upon the Bible alone, had no design, and indeed no
expectation, of reaching those inevitable conclusions,
social and political, which are implicit in Biblical
1 Works, iii. 357.
THE LIVING TEMPLE 97
theology. For the present, persecuted Nonconformists
could accept the help, and conscientiously approve the
privileges, of noblemen, and in the days just following
the Protectorate there were noblemen whose sympathies
were warmly with the martyrs of conviction.
We have then to transport ourselves to the prophet's
chamber in Massarene Castle, and to watch the genesis
of the works which issued from it ; first, The Vanity of
Man as Mortal, then the noble collection of sermons
entitled Delighting in God, and finally the two books
which were written there, though they did not appear
until he had moved to London in 1677, The Reconcilaolc-
ness of God's Prescience of the Sins of Men with the Wisdom
and Sincerity of His Counsels, Exhortations, &c, and the
First Part of The Living Temple.
The Second Part of this great work, which is always
considered Howe's chef-d'oeuvre, was not published until
1702, and can only be included in the survey of this
chapter because the seeds of the whole book were j
certainlv sown in Antrim.
It was the work of these quiet years which was to live.
The chaplain of Cromwell was to be so forgotten that
Cromwell's most voluminous biographer does not even
mention him. The popular, persecuted, busy, honoured
minister of the subsequent years would have passed, not
unrecorded in heaven, but hardly remembered among the
crowding generations of earth. The author of The Living
Temple was to live, occupying a permanent, if not the
highest, place among the strong men of a great period.
He was, when he came to Antrim, in the prime of life,
just finishing his forty-first year. The Sturm und Drang
of a disturbed youth and early manhood were over ; the
strain and trial of his most active life had not yet come.
H
98 JOHN HOWE
Those six years were the calm, mellow, productive
period. The events of the later years are far more
exciting. The man as he grows older becomes more
distinct, more personal, more lovable to us. But the
John Howe of this brief period is the Howe that lives
in English history. We must therefore spare no pains
to see him exactly as he was, as he is with sufficient
distinctness presented by his own pen.
The Vanity of Man as Mortal was given to the world
in 1671, and the dedicatory letter to John Upton, dated
April 12, from Antrim, is the first indication we have
that the author had reached his new home. The little
treatise had been composed some time before to comfort,
by lofty thoughts rather than by emotional sympathy,
a wide family circle which was plunged into grief by
a bereavement. The circumstances were unusual.
Anthony, the son of John Upton, was abroad, but had
promised to come home. On the morning of his
expected arrival one of the family was seized with a
singular presentiment in the form of a text, Ps. Ixxxix.
47, 48 : " Remember how short my time is : wherefore
hast Thou made all men in vain ? " which penetrated and
occupied the mind. Later in the day, the vessel arrived,
" clad in mourning attire, which, according to his own
desire in his sickness, brought over the deserted body "
of Anthony Upton "to its native place of Lupton;
that thence it might find a grave, whence it first
received a soul; and obtain a mansion in the earth,
where first it became one to a reasonable spirit."
The text thus strangely given is the theme of
the book, which is a fine argument from the idea
of God to the assurance of a future life, and a
splendid description of the effect which the appre-
THE LIVING TEMPLE 99
hension of the life to come produces on the life that
now is. The writer's mind is incensed by the pre-
vailing levity and sensuality which marked the early
years of the Restoration. We obtain a glimpse of the
rollicking sparks of the day "created to see and to
make sport; to run after hawks or dogs, or spend the
time which their weariness redeems from converse with
brutes, in making themselves such, by drinking away
the little residue of wit and reason they have left ;
mixing with this genteel exercise their impure and
scurrilous drolleries, that they may befriend one another
with the kind occasion of proving themselves to be yet
of human race, by this only demonstration remaining
to them, that they can laugh."
All this was written before the repose of Antrim.
But the dedicatory letter already shows the calming
influence of the new retreat, and contains some notable
passages. His purpose is that his readers "may be
seized with a noble disdain of living beneath them-
selves and the bounty of the Creator." And seldom
was the dignity of human life better expressed than in
the following paragraph :
"If he that amidst the hazards of a dubious war
betrays the interest and honour of his country, be
justly infamous, and thought worthy severest punish-
ments, I see not why a debauched sensualist, that lives
as if he were created only to indulge his appetite, — that
so vilifies the notion of man, as if he were made but to
eat and drink and sport, to please only his sense and
fancy, — that, in this time and state of conflict between
the powers of this present world and those of the world
to come, quits his party, bids open defiance to humanity,
abjures the noble principles and ends, forsakes the laws
100 JOHN HOWE
and society of all that are worthy to be esteemed men,
abandons the common and rational hope of mankind
concerning a future immortality, and herds himself
among brute creatures, — I say I see not why such an
one should not be scorned and abhorred as a traitor to
the whole race and nation of reasonable creatures, as a
fugitive from the tents, and deserter of the common
interest of men ; and that both for the vileness of his
practice and the danger of his example." *
It is difficult to say which speaks the loudest here,
the Patriot, the Puritan, or the Philosopher.
The enlarged and revised Torrington sermons, pub-
lished under the title of Delighting in God, are dated
"Antrim, Sept. 1, 1674." This work illustrates the two
defects of all Howe's writings: first, the practice of taking
a single text for a long treatise, and breaking it up into
innumerable subdivisions from within, until the matter
bulges out on every side and gives an impression of
clumsiness; and second, the predominantly subjective
character of his religious position, which is almost
limited to the personal search for salvation and spiritual
satisfaction. But the faults are superficial and in appear-
ance ; the merits are deep and real. There is a passage
on the joy in the soul when the Idol Self, " that hath
devoured more, and preyed more cruelly upon human
lives than Moloch or Minotaur," has been destroyed and
trodden down, which gives us a glimpse into a spiritual
experience of the author's. And, to mention one other
only, his own idea of preaching is suggested by his
invective already referred to 2 against the besetting vice
of pulpit orators, " rhetorical flourishes, a set of fine
words, handsome cadences and periods, fanciful repre-
1 Works, i. 385. 2 See p. 24.
THE LIVING TEMPLE 101
sentations, little tricks and pieces of wit; and, which
cannot pretend so high, pitiful quibbles and gingles,
inversions of sentences, the pedantic rhyming of words,
yea, and an affected tone, or even a great noise, — things
that are neither capable of gratifying the Christian nor
the man . . . have no affinity or alliance with religion,
befall to it but by chance, and are in themselves things
quite of another country." 1
After such a confessio precantis we may cheerfully
address ourselves to the other discourses, which for all
their disregard of style and illustration, of arrangement
and artistic effect, are never without their reward to the
diligent reader.
On December 5, 1674, " the Right Hon. John, earl
of Kildare, baron of Ophalia, first of his order in the
kingdom of Ireland," was thrown from his horse, and
narrowly escaped death. On one anniversary of this
deliverance Howe preached to the grateful nobleman
from the text, " I beseech you therefore, brethren, by
the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living
sacrifice," &c. Some years later (1682) this discourse,
recalled to memory, and " more varied by enlargement
than by diminution," was given to the world. It is a
remarkable combination of erudition, piety, and affec-
tionate zeal for souls. The self-dedication must be
intelligent, " religion cannot move blindfold," and it
must be " direct, express, and explicit, — not to be hud-
died up in tacit, mute intimations only." Livy, Seneca,
Epictetus, are all laid under contribution. And the
preacher's wide and minute knowledge enabled him to
bring a historical parallel, the Byzantine Emperor,
Cantacuzenus, whose life was once strangely preserved
1 Works, ii. 128.
1
102 JOHN HOWE
in the fall of his horse : " nor was he a mean prince
in his time," says Howe, " who at length abandoning the
pleasures and splendours of his own court (whereof
many like examples might be given), retired and assumed
the name of Christodulos, a servant of Christ, accounting
the glory of that name did outshine, not only that of his
other illustrious titles, but of the imperial diadem too." 1
" To have seriously and with a pious obstinacy dedicated
yourself to God will both direct and fortify you."
Whether the letter to Robert Boyle on God's Prescience
should be reckoned among the Antrim writings is
doubtful. The excuse for its imperfections is its
"having been mostly huddled up in the intervals of
a troublesome long journey " ; but it saw the light just
at the close of this period, in 1677, and may be briefly
noticed now. Though addressed to a well-known name,
Howe published it anonymously, over the initials H. W.
But when he found that it " fell under animadversion,"
he " reckoned it becoming to be no longer concealed,"
and accordingly added a postscript, saying that he was
the author, and that he had undertaken the work at
Boyle's suggestion, "to render our religion less excep-
tionable to some persons of an enquiring disposition." 2
Certainly this object ought to have been attained by
the publication. The great difficulty which underlies
the Calvinistic system of thought is, How, if God
sovereignly knows and ordains everything beforehand,
can there be any reality or sincerity in the offer of a
gospel to the world, or any true freedom in the human
will ? The common sense of Howe's reply is admirable
and permanently valid. He says that our understand-
ing of God is necessarily limited, and we must therefore
1 Works, iv. 43. 2 Ibid., v. 59.
THE LIVING TEMPLE 103
firmly grasp the Divine Attributes of which we are
most assured, leaving the rest to shade off into acknow-
ledged obscurity. Now the Attribute about which we
are most certain is His moral goodness. All can grasp
this. Other points are settled by "metaphysical sub-
tlety, whereof very few are capable." " On this hand
we are hemmed in as by a wall of adamant ; and cannot
have the thought of defending his prescience by intrench-
ing upon his wisdom and truth, without offering the
highest violence both to him and ourselves. . . . The
notion of the goodness and righteousness of God, me-
thinks, should stick so close to our minds and create
such a sense in our souls, as should be infinitely dearer
to us than all our senses and powers." *
This is not the only instance in which this voice from
the seventeenth century seems to utter the truth of the
nineteenth. 2 Nor can we now add anything to the
great contention that we must take a broader view of
God's designs and ends in human life. God does not
only " will man's duty or felicity " ; His purpose is to
produce and educate moral beings in voluntary har-
mony with Himself; for that end Freedom of Choice
was necessary ; in such Freedom lay a certainty of
occasional failure ; a scheme therefore of Redemption
might well be prepared and foretold from the beginning
1 Works, v. 18.
2 Cf. Wordsworth in the Excursion :
" One adequate support
For the calamities of mortal life
Exists — one only ; an assured belief
That the procession of our fate, howe'er
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of Infinite Benevolence and Power ;
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good."
104 JOHN HOWE
of the great moral or spiritual experiment of human
life.
But we must pass on from these interesting minor
works to that which was the great production of the
Antrim life, The Living Temple. As this is the best
known of Howe's writings, and the only one which has
won a permanent and recognised place in English
theological literature, it might seem permissible to
skip lightly over it. But on the other hand, it is so
strictly speaking the main work of Howe's life that it
is impossible to give a true account of him without
allowing due prominence to it. It has been truly said
that this treatise is like the nave of the cathedral, and
all the other writings are its transepts, aisles, and
chapels. But more than this, all Howe's strongest
convictions, all his most characteristic mental habits, all
his personal qualities, appear in it to perfection; so
that he who knows The Living Temple well knows
Howe. Howe is his Living Temple. The work is the
quiet, brooding result of introspection, an analysis of
his own spiritual life, an account of his own mental and
religious development. As we have already seen, it is
the achievement of his life. The present biography owes
its existence to the publication of The Living Temple.
Because of this treatise we wish to know about Howe ;
to know about Howe we must study this treatise.
The work is divided into two parts. The First Part
was composed at Antrim, and presents Howe in the
maturity of his mental powers. The Second Part was
published in 1702, and presents the author in the
maturity of his spiritual experience. We must so far
violate chronological order as to treat the work as a
unity. Distinct as the two parts are, they are indi-
THE LIVING TEMPLE 105
visible. Widely different as the man of 1702 is from
the man of 1676, they are yet essentially the same.
We will therefore devote the rest of this chapter to a
study of The Living Temple as the core, the inward
reality, of Howe's own life.
The book is quaintly described as " A designed im-
provement of that notion that a good man is the temple
of God." The First Part is occupied with a proof of
" God's existence and His conversableness with man."
The Second Part, after a long episode, and a valuable
recapitulation of Part I., proceeds to give " an account
of the destitution and restitution of God's temple
among men." Speaking broadly, the First Part is an
argument from Natural Religion to show that God is,
and that we can enter into living relations with Him ;
and the Second Part is a demonstration of Revealed
Religion, to show how those relations are only possible
through Jesus Christ, God's Son. It thus becomes
unintentionally, as it would seem, a summa theologies ;
it is a fine statement of the Puritan theology at its
best, without the flaws which are emphasised in meaner
minds, and with all its noble confidence in Reason on
the one hand, and its unquestioning acceptance of
Revelation on the other. The First Part was appro-
priately dedicated to the generous host, Lord Massarene,
who had made its composition possible by offering
shelter and maintenance to the writer. The whole
book, retaining this early dedication, was inscribed to
Lord Paget, Baron of Beaudesert, in the county of
Stafford, a living relative of Howe's deceased friend
and host. This later dedicatory letter contains a
sentence which reveals the author's view about the
question of Christian union; a question never absent
106 JOHN HOWE
from the mind of the great Nonconformist, who de-
clined to conform in the interests of a larger Church
than that to which Conformists were limited, and
whose whole life was a protest against the narrowing
view which always sweeps down upon Christendom in
such periods of mental doubt and moral decay as that
of the Restoration. " The belief" he says, " that the
Christian religion shall ever become the religion of the
world, and the Christian Church become the common
universal temple of mankind . . . and an intemperate
contentious zeal for one external, human form of God's
temple on earth, are downright inconsistencies. That
belief and this zeal must destroy one another, especially
(sc. the zeal) that shall make particular temples engines
to batter down each other, because they agree not in
some human additional, though all may be charitably
supposed to have somewhat of Divine life in them." 1
English Nonconformity has from the first been too
anxious for spiritual life and freedom to desire or
believe in Corporate Reunion. Corporate Reunion was
tried for eight centuries, and was shattered by expand-
ing life. The unity of the Western Church was tried
for seven centuries more, and was shattered by the
quickened life of the Reformation. And now for three
centuries, life and spiritual growth have always meant
disintegration on the way to better unities. If the
Two Thousand Confessors were driven reluctantly from
the Established Church, they knew before their gener-
ation passed away that there was an overruling Provi-
dence in it. They had opportunity to return, but they
could not, because they desired another and more
heavenly country, a spiritual Church.
1 Works, iii. 4.
THE LIVING TEMPLE 107
It is to be noted that throughout the book the
implied enemy is always the Epicurean atheist, " that
being the atheism most in fashion." The earnest heart-
searchings of our day, the sad cries of men who
Drop a plummet down the broad
Deep universe and find no God,
were not known in the hilarious and licentious society
of which Charles II. and his mistresses were the leaders.
And even in the Second Part he has before him still
only the rakes and debauchees, not the earnest doubters
with whom this century has made us more familiar.
We are in the atmosphere of Shaftesbury and Boling-
broke. We are to think of men who, tired of the alter-
nations between sinning and repenting, have adopted
a theory of life which makes such vacillations unneces-
sary. " A less interrupted and more progressive course
in their licentious ways looks braver," says Howe, with
grave sarcasm, " and they count it more plausible to
disbelieve this world to have any ruler at all, than to
suppose it to have such an one as they can cheat and
mock with so easy and ludicrous a repentance, or
reconcile to their wickedness by calling themselves
wicked, while they still mean to continue so." *
We should be doing Howe and his argument an
injustice if we were to suppose him speaking to the
unbelief of our own day. The tone of severity and
scorn is distasteful to us until we realise that the
generation to which he had to speak was one of
shameless vice, and unrestrained pleasure-seeking, which
adopted atheistical beliefs to suit its own practices.
Nor must we complain if the argument adopted is one
1 Works, iii. 225.
108 JOHN HOWE
which appeals with weakened force to an age which
is pervaded by the spirit of Positivism and enamoured
of the methods of Physical Science. Howe was quite
unaware of the new epoch in science which Bacon and
Descartes had inaugurated. He belonged to a period
which still dwelt in the cobwebs of scholastic reasoning.
He and they for whom he wrote attached immense
importance to fine-spun metaphysics, and worked with
arguments which have seemed shadowy and unsub-
stantial to the world since the days of Comte.
But making allowance for the time in which he
wrote, we may dwell on the admirable clearness of
the argument from the necessities of Thought to the
existence of " an eternal, uncaused, independent, neces-
sary Being, active, living, and powerful, wise, intelligent,
good, and perfect." The inference from the Idea of
such a Being to His existence will never appear cogent
to those who forsake the metaphysical for the simply
physical standpoint. But it must be considered that
the method which approved itself to Plato, and was
adopted by Kant in the full light of Criticism, may
yet reassert itself against the crushing dogmas of
Materialism. It is not till the limitations of the
objective method are realised after trial that the dis-
appointed spirit of man braces itself for a new attempt
to go inward. And probably in a few years from the
present a new Metaphysic will assert itself, and our
children will perceive in Howe's argument the cogency
which was felt by the scholastic theologians of his own
time.
When he passes to the Argument from Design he
is on ground which is more intelligible to the ordin-
ary reader; and though this argument is caviare to
THE LIVING TEMPLE 109
Comte no less than the one from Ontology, yet it is
an argument which even in the heyday of Materialism
can hold up its head pretty proudly. If it is not
unanswerable it is, as M. Janet has shown, at any rate
unanswered.
The argument from the watch which Paley made
popular is already in Howe. He supposes a person on
first seeing " this little engine " praising the ingenuity
of the first inventor. " But now," he goes on, " if a
bystander, beholding him in this admiration, would
undertake to show a profounder reach and strain of
wit, and should say, ' Sir, you are mistaken concerning
the composition of this so much admired piece ; it was
not made or designed by the hand or skill of any one ;
there were only an innumerable company of little
atoms, or very small bodies, that were busily frisking
and plying to and fro about the place of its nativity ;
and by a strange chance (or a stranger fate, and the
necessary laws of that motion which they were unavoid-
ably put into by a certain boisterous, undesigning
mover) they fell together into this small bulk, so as
to compose it into this very shape and figure, and with
this same number and order of parts which you now
behold ; one squadron of these busy particles (little
thinking what they were about) agreeing to make up
one wheel, and another some other, in that proportion
which you see ; others of them also falling, and
becoming fixed, in so happy a posture and situation as
to describe the several figures by which the little
moving fingers point out the hour of the day and the
day of the month ; and all conspired to fall together
each in its place, in so lucky a juncture as that the
regular motion failed not to ensue, which we see is now .
110 JOHN HOWE
observed in it ' : — what man would believe this piece
of natural history ? . . . . And let but any sober
reason judge, whether we have not unspeakably more
manifest madness to contend against in such as sup-
pose this world, and the bodies of living creatures, to
have fallen into this frame and orderly disposition of
parts wherein they are, without the direction of a wise
and designing cause V 1
Over the absurdities of Materialism or Atomism he
grows so hilarious that he begins to be almost ashamed
of his banter, and pulls himself up sharply. But the
humour is very refreshing, and not altogether mis-
placed. He follows out the lively movements of the
atoms before any rational being has yet been produced.
He ventures to ask whether an atom might be made
rational, or lose its rationality by a little filing or the
friendly rubs of other atoms. Who can tell that the
atoms which form a body, and a rational being, may
not choose to meet elsewhere with a like result ? "If
they be not rational till they be met, they cannot have
wit enough to scruple meeting at least somewhere else
than in the body." They " might ignorantly and think-
ing no harm come together. And having done so why
might they not keep together ? " — and so on.
But if this kind of treatment is not very effective, the
writer rises to a noble theme, and is equal to the theme
himself, when he argues that no Theophany or miracle
like that of Sinai is necessary " to make the world know
there is a God," because the world itself, its order and
beauty, affords a far more convincing proof:
" Let the vast and unknown extent of the whole,
the admirable variety, the elegant shapes, the regular
1 Works, iii. 59.
THE LIVING TEMPLE 111
motions, the excellent faculties and powers of that
inconceivable number of creatures contained in it, be
considered ; and is there any comparison between that
temporary, transient, occasional — and this steady, per-
manent, and universal — discovery of God ? . . . The
intent of miracles was to justify the Divine authority
of him that wrought them, to prove him sent by God ;
and so countenance the doctrine or message delivered
by him : not that they tended, otherwise than on the
bye, to prove God's existence." 1
In a word, God is sufficiently manifest in the works
of nature if not in the being of man to make the atheist
without excuse ; and we may therefore, our author
thinks, adopt a severe tone to those who deny Him.
"In all this harangue of discourse, the design hath
not been to fix upon any true cause of atheism, but
to represent it a strange thing ; and an atheist a
prodigy, a monster amongst mankind : a dreadful
spectacle forsaken of the common aids afforded to other
men; hung up in chains to warn others, and let them
see what a horrid creature man may make himself by
voluntary aversion from God that made him." 2
But scorn is a dangerous weapon ; we do not prove
God to those who deny Him by deriding them ; and
in these passages, which are tolerably frequent in the
First Part, we are reminded that Howe was living in a
very religious community, and the men who were in his
mind, the licentious courtiers, to whom he refers, 3 were
hundreds of miles away. An atheist is a target of
derision in the field of the intellect ; but meet him in
the flesh, and there can be no room for any emotion
but sorrow and pity and love.
1 Works, iii. 155. 2 Ibid., iii. 176. 3 Ibid., iii. 190.
112 JOHN HOWE
Having proved by arguments more or less conclusive
that God exists, we now go on to the demonstration that
He is " conversable with man," or, as we should now
state it, that He enters into living and conscious relations
with men. This demonstration, strange to say, is not
derived from the abundant witnesses of the spiritual
life which, to a man of Howe's reading and experience,
would rise up in an innumerable company, but from an
a priori argument, which seems a little abstract and
intangible. God's power to enter into converse with
men is based on a defence of His Omniscience, His
Omnipotence, His Omnipresence. The weakness of the
argument seems to be that it might prove far more,
— His conversableness, for example, with the lower
animals, or even with inanimate objects, — while the
actual point at issue is not supported by any preifse or
definite proofs. The scholastic method presupposes a
background of scholastic assumptions, and an atmosphere
of scholastic thought. This was not altogether wanting
in the seventeenth century. Thomist and Scotist were
still real if receding figures; to us they are merely
shadows or names. As a reasoning for his own day and
generation, Howe's main thought was valid enough :
" God must enter into living relations with men, because
our notion of God, as living, perfect, holy, loving, includes
the idea of such a conversableness with the creatures
whom He has made."
If we cannot feel the cogency of this method, we
can at least appreciate the vigour of the satire directed
against the Epicurean doctrine of gods who
Lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses girdled with the gleaming world.
THE LIVING TEMPLE 113
These passages of grave derision are among the most
noticeable features of Howe's greatest work. Here, for
instance, is his treatment of that idle Deism which
recognises a God, but not the God to whom in Howe's
opinion the united voices of the Intellect, Nature, and
Revelation bear irrefragable testimony. The Epicureans
of the Court have silenced all the arguments, as they
conceive, for the existence of the real God, and then they
vouchsafe to say of their own accord, There is a God !
" Surely if this have any design at all it must be a
very bad one. And see whither it tends. They have a
God of their own making, and all the being he hath
depends upon their grace and favour. They are not his
creatures, but he is theirs ; a precarious Deity that shall
be as long, and what, and where they please to have
him : and if he displease them they can think him back
into nothing. Here seems the depth of the design ; for
see with what cautions and limitations they admit him
into being. There shall be a God provided he be not
meddlesome, nor concern himself in their affairs to the
crossing of any inclinations or humours which they are
pleased shall command and govern their lives ; being
conscious that if they admit of any at all that shall
have to do with their concernments, he cannot but be
such as the ways they resolve on will displease. Their
very shame will not permit them to call that God,
which, if he take any cognizance at all of their
course, will not dislike it. And herein, that they may
be the more secure, they judge it the most prudent
course not to allow him any part or interest in the
affairs of the world at all."
And again :
" Though they have no reason to believe a Deity,
114 JOHN HOWE
they have a very good one why they should seem to
do so; that they may expiate with the people their
irreligion by a collusive pretending against atheism.
And because they think it less plausible plainly to
deny there is a God, they therefore grant one to please
the vulgar, yet take care it shall be one as good as
none, lest otherwise they should displease themselves:
and so their credit and their liberty are both cared for
together."
And once more :
" Upon the whole, it is manifest they so maim the
notion of God as to make it quite another thing. And
if they think to wipe off anything of the foul and odious
blot wherewith their avowed irreligion hath stained
their name and memory by the acknowledgment of such
a God, they effect the like thing by it, and gain as
much to the reputation of their piety as he should of
his loyalty who, being accused of treason against his
prince, shall think to vindicate himself by professing
solemnly to own the king — provided you only mean by
it the King of Clubs, or any such painted one the
pack affords." *
This is effective in its way, and if satire is ever to be
allowed as a weapon of religion it is surely legitimate
against men who, resting their theory of life on Man-
deville, Hobbes, and Bolingbroke, make their practical
negation of God an excuse for such a life as was render-
ing the Court at Whitehall a scandal to Europe and
to all succeeding generations of Englishmen.
The Second Part of The Living Temple begins with a
polemic against Spinoza, whose posthumous Ethics had
in the meanwhile appeared, and further animadversions
1 Works, iii. 183, 189, 193.
THE LIVING TEMPLE 115
against " a French writer pretending to confute him." l
Over this section of the book one would willingly draw
the veil of oblivion. But candour compels us to admit
that Howe attacks the great thinker, " the god-intoxi-
cated man," with an asperity, an indecency, which
appears the more painful now that Spinoza has taken
his recognised place in the history of European thought.
What increases our pain is that the assault on the
unnamed French writer is equally trenchant. Howe,
whose lifelong purpose was to avoid religious controversy
and to heal the divisions between Christians, seems to
have felt no compunction in assailing those who were
not "of the household of the faith." It is true that
Spinoza and the Frenchman were beyond the reach of
personal injury. It is a Avar against ideas rather than
men. But we could have wished that the suavity, the
elevation of thought, the severe repression of violent
feeling which are among Howe's lasting titles to our
consideration, might have been maintained in this his
most permanent work.
After a clear and valuable summary of the First Part,
which had been published a quarter of a century before,
the Second Part proceeds to lay down the new element of
authority which is now introduced, " The Word of God."
In the First Part the appeal has been not to the Bible,
but to Reason, though always with the implicit convic-
tion that, should argument fail, there is an infallible
Book to fall back on. This authority is henceforth the
source of the whole argument. Its sufficiency we
assume, for practically no one in the seventeenth
century attempts to question it. And it is really, as
1 The work referred to was entitled L'Imirie Convaincu, and
is attributed by Fabricius to Aubert de Verse.
116 JOHN HOWE
now begins to appear, on the truths of the Bible, rather
than on the fine-spun metaphysics of the First Part, that
the author has all along rested his conviction that God
is, and that the mind of man by a divinely-implanted
instinct seeks to come into contact with God, and
" cannot rest until He have such a temple erected in it,
wherein both He and it may cohabit together."
But sin stands in the way of this desirable converse.
The fact of sin Howe characteristically establishes by a
catena of quotations from Plato, and his familiar neo-
Platonists — Iamblichus, Plotinus, Maximus Tyrius — and
by the testimony of all " ethnic philosophers." And in
company with this noble array of thinkers we are led
up to observe man " in his state of apostasy," unfit " to
entertain the Divine presence, or be any longer God's
Temple." The description of the desolated Temple,
the stately ruins that bear in their front, yet extant, this
doleful inscription : $$en (IliOtl Once tofoflt, is among the
masterpieces of our religious literature. The sombre
sentences wind on like a procession accompanied by a
dirge. The music is of the noblest kind, lying not in
any rhetorical combination of words, but in the pathos
and the impressiveness of the ideas. It is too long to
quote, and too good to mutilate by extracts. And
indeed this book will have' failed of its purpose if it
does not induce every reader to glance at the Second
Part of The Living Temple, and to con this wonderful
passage. 1
When this Temple of the Human Soul thus lay ruined
by sin, there was before the Divine mind the alternative,
to destroy or to restore it. To restore it without the
vindication of His inviolable righteousness was intrinsic-
1 Works, iii. 307.
THE LIVING TEMPLE 117
ally impossible. To destroy it would cross His deepest
passion, Love. He would therefore secure the restora-
tion of the human Temple by a way which lay in the
Divine Counsels, and was possible to the Divine Nature.
That way was " Immanuel, an incarnate God among
men, and a man inhabited by all the fulness of God.
This man was therefore a most perfect Temple, the
original one." From the first He was an example.
But to be more than an example, to become a pro-
ductive force in producing the like, " a seminal temple,"
to use Howe's quaint phrase, " this very temple must
become a sacrifice, and by dying multiply." The neces-
sity of this lay in the fact that the wrong which man
had done to the Divine Majesty "should be expiated by
none but man, and could be by none but God." 1
On the ground of that great, voluntary sacrifice of
the Son, "upon just and honourable terms God might
a^ain return to inhabit the souls of men." Then
follows a description of the effect which the Divine
Love produces on men who attend to it ; " this were
enough to vanquish and subdue the world, to mollify
every heart of man."
An Atonement was necessary for pardon, because it
was not a question only of remitting punishment, but
of receiving men into a high and honourable favour;
and the vast difference between the Curse of the Law
and the Blessing of the Gospel is evidence that some
amazing satisfaction has been offered. The inalienable
rights of the Divine Majesty made a vindication indis-
pensable ; the congruity and fitness of things, especially
as it would appear to angels and other unfallen creatures,
demanded that pardon should be granted on the ground
1 Works, iii. 316.
118 JOHN HOWE
of a vindicated Law, and a sufficient expiation for
Sin.
And if such an expiation was necessary, clearly no
man could offer it. It must be a Divine Offering, an
offering of " God with us." It was not an individual
that had to be pardoned, but a race ; not a few speci-
fied delinquents with quantitatively determined sins,
but generations yet unborn who had to come into being,
to sin, and to be saved. Provision for so vast a contin-
gency could not be made by any human sacrifice, nor
by anything short of a Divine Sacrifice. In Immanuel
alone could the twofold purpose of forgiveness to human
sin be served, " that the blessed God might, upon terms
not injurious to himself, give his own consent; and
might in a way not unsuitable to us gain ours." *
But while the necessity, the reality, the efficacy of
the Atonement provided, are maintained, it is freely
admitted that we are not in a position to explain in
detail by any theory we can suggest a fact so trans-
cendent. The nature of the Divine Government, the
offences against it, the remission of the offences, " are
matters of so high a nature, that it becomes us to be
very sparing in making an estimate about them,
especially a more diminishing one than the general
strain Scripture seems to hold forth. Even among
men how sacred things are Majesty and the rights of
Government " 2 — the writer, we remember, was born in
the days of Charles I.
Nor while we dwell upon the mysterious connection
between the sacrifice of the perfect, and the restoration
of the ruined, Temple, are we to overlook the more
intelligible influence of the Great Example.
1 Works, iii. 405. Ibid., iii. 356.
THE LIVING TEMPLE 119
"Mere transient discourses of virtue and goodness
seem cold and unsavoury things to a soul drenched in
sensuality, sunk into deep forgetfulness of God, and
filled with aversion to Holiness ; but the tract and
course of a life evenly transacted in the power of the
Holy Ghost, and that is throughout uniform and con-
stantly agreeable to itself, is apt, by often insinuations —
as drops wear stones — insensibly to recommend itself as
amiable ; and gain a liking even with them that were
most opposite and disaffected. For the nature of man,
in its most degenerate state, is not wholly destitute of
the notions of virtue and goodness, nor of some faint
approbation of them. The names of sincerity, humility,
sobriety, meekness, are of better sound and import,
even with the worst of men, than of deceit, pride, riot,
and wrathfulness.
" Accordingly, when such an example as our Saviour's
is before us even the vulgar exclaim, He doeth all things
well, and every close observer is allured into a real love
both of him and his way." x
But with this Temple, exemplary and seminal, reared
in the sight of fallen men, with this divine and rational
possibility of all the ruined human temples being
restored, and reinhabited by the Holy Spirit whose
indwelling Immanuel meditates, how comes it that all
men are not rebuilt and inhabited ? The answer is
found in the real nature of the Divine Being. " Almighty
Power gives us not an adequate notion of God. He is
every other excellency as well as power ; and can do
nothing but what agrees with every other perfection of
his nature — wisdom, justice, holiness, truth, &c. — as
well as his power." It is not therefore a question
1 Works, iii. 344.
120 JOHN HOWE
whether He can restore all these temples, seeing that
potential restoration lies in the work of Christ ; but
whether He can do so in harmony with the other
principles of His Being ? Brute power might subdue
every rebel, but it cannot save ; a rebel is only saved
when he returns to his allegiance and has exchanged
his antagonism for loyalty. There must therefore
always remain, in the region of human freedom, a
question whether men will expose themselves to the
redemptive power of Christ, whether they will allow
their disposition to be transformed by Him ; in a word,
whether they will avail themselves of the effectual
means which God has provided for their restoration and
rehabitation.
Meanwhile, on the ground of the Cross, the Spirit is
in a manner given to all men, " and may go forth to
make gentle trials upon their spirits." When the pun-
ishment of sin is remitted, the Spirit is de jure given.
When the punishment is taken off, when the sinful
soul accepts the pardon, the Spirit is actually given,
the withholding whereof was the principal punishment
we were liable to in this present state. 1
The mysteries are not solved, but such explanation as
thought, reverence, and piety can give is offered.
And then the great work moves to its conclusion in
the thought which might be called the master- thought
of Howe's life, the terms of Christian Reunion. As
he wrote the closing pages, the new St. Paul's, and the
other great efforts of Sir Christopher Wren's genius,
were shining, as yet white and undefiled, in the rebuilt
city. These were doubtless before his eyes, but another
thought was in his heart.
1 Works, ii. 462,
TEE LIVING TEMPLE 121
" The nearer we approach, on earth, to the heavenly
state, which only a more copious and general pouring
forth of the blessed Spirit will infer, 1 the more capable
we shall be of inward and outward prosperity both
together. Then will our differences vanish of course,
the external pompousness of the Church will be less
studied, the life and spirit of it much more ; and if I
may express my own sense as to this matter it should
be in the words of that worthy ancient (Isidorus of
Pelusium) ; namely, that supposing an option or choice
were left me, I would choose to have lived in a time
when the temples were less adorned with all sorts of
marbles, the Church not being destitute of spiritual
graces."
These closing pages belong, as we have said, to Howe's
closing years, and the mellow note of a perfect tolera-
tion is in them. He has a gentle prayer even for those
bitter Hi