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HEROES OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 A Series of Popular Biographies 
 
 BY 
 
 EMINENT ENGLISH AND AMERICAN AUTHORS. 
 To be issued at brie/ intervals. 
 
 l2mo Vols., bound in cloth. Price, 75c. each. 
 
 A series of short biographies of men eminent in religious his- 
 tory, by writers of recognized ability. Popular in style, trust- 
 worthy, and comprehensive, and dealing with the most interesting 
 characters and events in the story of the Christian Church. The 
 series will condense, in entertaining form, the essential facts of the 
 great body of religious literature, and will have special value for 
 the large class anxious for information touching these great men, 
 but unable, by reason of limited leisure or means, to read more 
 elaborate works. 
 
 HENRY MARTYN. 
 
 By the Rev. 
 CHARLES D. BELL, M.A., D.D., 
 Honorary Canon of Carlisle, and Rector of Cheltenham. 
 
 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 
 
 By the Rev. 
 JOHN S TO UGH TON, D.P., 
 Author of " Homes and Haunts of Luther," " History of Religion in 
 England," etc. 
 
 PHILIP DODDRIDGE. 
 
 By the Rev. 
 CHARLES STANFORD, D.D., 
 Author of " Joseph Alleine," " Homilies on Christian Work." 
 
 STEPHEN GRELLET. 
 
 By the Rev. 
 WILLIAM GUEST. F.G.S., 
 Author of " Fidelia Fiske," "The Young Man's Safeguard in the Perils of 
 the Age," etc. 
 
RICHARD BAXTER. 
 
 Bv the Rev. 
 G. D. BOYLE, M.A., 
 Dean of Salisbury, and late Vicar of Kidderminster. 
 
 JOHN KNOX. 
 
 By the Rev. 
 WILLIAM M. TA YLOR, D.D., 
 Of New York, 
 Author of " The Limitations of Life," etc. 
 
 WILLIAM CAREY. 
 
 By the Rev. 
 JAMES CULROSS, D.D., 
 Author of The Disciple whom Jesus Loved." 
 
 ROBERT HALL. 
 
 By the Rev. 
 £. PAXTON HOOD, 
 Author of " The World of Anecdote," " The Romance of Biography," etc. 
 
 FLETCHER OF MADELEY. 
 
 By the Rev. 
 F. IV. MACDONALD. 
 
 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 
 
 By thb Rev. 
 JAMES FLEMING, B.D., 
 Hon. Chaplain to the Queen, Canon of York, and Vicar of St. Michael's, 
 Chester Square. 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 By the Rev. 
 DONALD ERASER, D.D., 
 Author of "Blending Lights," etc. 
 
 JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 By the Rev. 
 H. SINCLAIR PA PERSON, M.D., 
 Author of " Studies in Life," etc. 
 
 *** Copies sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. 
 
 New York: A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, 714 Broadway. 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE, D.D. 
 
 CHARLES STANFORD, D.D., 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "JOSEPH ALLEINE," U CENTRAL TRUTHS," ETC 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON, 
 
 714 BROADWAY. 
 
 [All rights reserved.} 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THIS essay is the condensed result of much inquiry. 
 The best thanks of the author are due to the Rev. 
 Principal Newth, D.D., by whose kindness he has had 
 access to many curious relics and papers, as well as to 
 the original MSS. of Doddridge's correspondence, left by 
 the late Joshua Wilson, Esq., and now in the library of 
 the New College, London ; to Dr. Risdon Bennett, 
 President of the Royal College of Physicians, who has 
 allowed him to use interesting documents inherited from 
 the Rev. Risdon Darracott, one of Doddridge's pupils ; 
 to John Taylor, Esq., of Northampton, who has helped 
 him greatly, and with untiring courtesy; to the Rev. 
 Thomas Arnold, who now occupies Doddridge's pulpit ; 
 the Rev. J. T. Brown, the Rev. Dr. Clemance, and 
 his successor at Nottingham, the Rev. John Bartlctt, 
 ministers who have entrusted him with the loan of their 
 valuable church books ; to the Rev. Principal Angus, 
 D.D. j Sir Charles Reed, M.P. ; the Rev. Sidney W. 
 Bowser, of Exeter ; the Rev. Walter W. Martin, Rector 
 of Shepperton ; the Rev. A. E. Seymour, Vicar of Barn- 
 staple ; the Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, and 
 Arthur Burrell, Esq., of the same College ; the Rev. E. 
 Hipwood, Kibworth ; the Rev. J. Balshaw, Newport 
 
vi 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Pagnell ; W. Chapman, Esq., Waverley House, Kingston- 
 on-Thames ; J. F. Nichols, Esq., of the Bristol Free 
 Library, and others. 
 
 Many of these gentlemen have furnished him with the 
 knowledge of facts never before printed. From such 
 materials, and from reliable traditions, he originally 
 prepared the manuscript of a much larger work than the 
 present. It seemed to be wanted. Few Christian leaders 
 in the last century were so active, representative, and 
 influential as Dr. Doddridge. " He laboured, and other 
 men have entered into his labours." But although we 
 have Mr. Orton's biography, and Dr. Stoughton's grace- 
 ful centenary memorial of him, he is now too much 
 forgotten. " Who was Dr. Doddridge ? " " Was he 
 really an Unitarian ? " " Did he write anything besides 
 the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' ? " " What did he do ? " These, 
 or similar questions, are sometimes asked, and this book, 
 as at first written with great delight, was intended to 
 supply all the information that could be found. The 
 writer, however, gradually felt a suspicion that busy 
 modern men could not spare time to give it attention, 
 and he has therefore cut it down to what it is, in the hope 
 that by so doing he may gain more readers, and do 
 more good. 
 
 July, 1880. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE FAMILY RECORDS I 
 
 IL 
 
 EARLY DAYS i 13 
 
 III. 
 
 KIBWORTH HARCOURT 21 
 
 IV. 
 
 SETTLEMENT AT NORTHAMPTON .... 37 
 V. 
 
 HIS ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. . 42 
 VI. 
 
 MARRIED LIFE 55 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE ACADEMY 67 
 
 VIII. 
 
 SAYINGS AND DOINGS IN CONNECTION WITH THE 
 
 GREAT REVIVAL 83 
 
VU1 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 IX. 
 
 LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY B . lOJ 
 
 X. 
 
 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE 122 
 
 XI. 
 
 DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, AND THE PRETENDER 1 33 
 
 XII. 
 
 PLANS FOR CHRISTIAN UNION 15 1 
 
 XIII. 
 
 WRITINGS 159 
 
 XIV. 
 
 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : THE OUTER LIFE 
 
 SPENT 171 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 On rage 42, after the motto, for Byron read Byrom. 
 » .» 59. in 9th line, for "high living" read "high thinking." 
 
THE FA MIL Y RECORDS. 
 
 "I have thought that such little records might be useful in fami- 
 lies, whether the subjects of them were good or bad. A lighthouse 
 may strve equally the purpose of leading you into a haven, or de- 
 terring you from a rock." 
 
 William GiLriN, Vicar of Boldre, 1753. 
 
 T N the days of King Edward the Confessor there lived 
 j_ a man named Dodo. According to " Domesday- 
 Look " he owned certain manors in the county of Devon. 
 One of these was near Crcditon, and here, it is said, he 
 fixed his home. In that land of picturesque dells and 
 declivities it was natural that Dodo should build his house 
 upon a ridge ; and having done so, it was natural that 
 Dodoridge should henceforward be the name both of the 
 place and of the people who dwelt there. Tradition tells 
 us that this was the case, and that here the family, though 
 " minished and brought low," had some land left after the 
 Normans had taken all their other lands away. 
 
 The modern Doddridges are supposed to be descen- 
 dants from this ancient Dodo. There is no documentary 
 proof of this, but it looks likely, and the supposition 
 tallies both with their undisputed claim to Saxon origin 
 and with the story of Prince, who, writing about them in 
 1702, says, "the domain of Doderidge, in the hundred 
 of Crcditon, had, long since, lords so called." 
 
 The first person of the name about whom we have any 
 historical certainty was one Richard Doddridge, who, in 
 the time of Queen Elizabeth, left South Moulton, where 
 2 
 
2 
 
 THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 he was a landowner, and where his children were born, 
 to establish himself at Barnstaple, at which place he 
 afterwards became an influential merchant and magistrate. 
 A few notices of him still remain in the locality, like faint 
 footprints on the sand, hardly more than showing that he 
 has been there, and that he was a man of mark. Among 
 these is an entry in an old journal belonging to the Cor- 
 poration, to the effect that in the spring assizes of 1590 
 " Lord Anderson," the judge, lodged at his house; and 
 there are also entries under the various usual capita in 
 the Church Register : for instance, we have the following 
 under the head of Baptisms : — " Grace, a neiger servant 
 of Mr. Richard Doddridge, April 6, 1596." This gentle- 
 man was the grandfather of Dr. Doddridge's grandfather ; 
 to make out which fact we now have something to say in 
 order about three of his sons. 
 
 John, his first son, was born at South Moulton, in the 
 year 1555, and at the age of twenty became "a sojourner" 
 at Exeter College, Oxford ; where, according to Wood, 
 " he obtained the reputation of a severe student and a 
 noted disputant." After a residence of four years he 
 took one degree in arts, and about the same time his 
 name was entered in the admission register of the Middle 
 Temple. In the years 1593 and 1602 he was appointed 
 Lent Lecturer at the New Inn. In 1603 he was made 
 Serjeant-at-law to Prince Henry. In 1604 he was dis- 
 charged from that office by special writ, when he became 
 Solicitor-General to King James the First. In the same 
 year he was returned M.P. for Horsham. In June, 1607, 
 he was constituted one of the King's Serjeants. In the 
 month following he received the honour of knighthood. 
 After an interval of five years he was made one of the 
 Justices of the Common Pleas, and after that, of the 
 King's Bench. On the 25th of November, 1613, "a depu- 
 tation from Oxford University, consisting of the Vice- 
 Chancellor, both Proctors, and five Academicians," came 
 to Serjeants' Inn for the purpose of conferring upon him 
 the degree of Master of Arts, a compliment altogether 
 without precedent. 
 
THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 3 
 
 Sir John was the author of several works on professional 
 subjects, having the following titles : " The Lawyer's 
 Light," "The Compleat Parson," "An Historical Ac- 
 count of the Ancient and Modern Estate of * * Wales, 
 Cornwall, and Chester," "Treatise on the King's Pre- 
 rogative," and "Honor's Pedigree." These books are 
 now mainly interesting as literary antiquities. Each leaf 
 looks dry as an old dry door in a Tudor gatehouse, and 
 is studded with the nails of quaint and learned quotation. 
 They were, however, quoted as oracles by the men of his day, 
 by whom he was distinguished as " that ancient Father of 
 the Law, the Reverend and Learned Sir John Dodoridge." 
 
 The common people generally called him " The Sleep- 
 ing Judge," from his habit of keeping his eyes shut during 
 a trial. If, however, any rogue ever thought that his 
 reverend lordship had melted off into the gentle luxury 
 of sleep, that rogue always found in due time that he had 
 been mistaken. He only shut his eyes while hearing, as 
 Richard Hooker did while preaching, to shut out all 
 sublunary distractions. The eyes of his body might be 
 shut, but it seems that the eyes of his soul were open; 
 for, says Thomas Fuller, " his soul held the scale of justice 
 with so steady a hand that neither love nor lucre, fear 
 nor flattery, could bow him to either side." 
 
 This testimony must be accepted with some reserve. He 
 was not immaculate. " When the practice of privately 
 interrogating the judges was adopted," Lord Bacon in- 
 forms us that he made no objection. Like some of his 
 colleagues on the judicial bench, he was too ready to 
 accommodate his opinions to the royal wishes. This was 
 shown when, in 1627, he and they refused to admit 
 Hampden and others to bail, after they had been com- 
 mitted for not paying a loan demanded by the king 
 without Parliament. On their being called before the 
 House of Lords in the following April, to assign reasons 
 for this arbitrary decision, though he attempted to justify 
 it, he seemed to acknowledge that there had been some 
 mistake, by concluding in this strain of apology : " It is 
 no more fit for a judge to decline to give an account of 
 
4 
 
 THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 his doings than a Christian of his faith. God knoweth 
 I have endeavoured to keep a good conscience, for a 
 troubled one who can bear? I have now sat in this 
 court fifteen years, and I should know something; surely 
 if I had gone in a mill so long, dust would cleave unto 
 my clothes ! I am old, and have one foot in the grave, 
 therefore I will look to the better part as near as I can. 
 But ' Omnia habere in memoria et innullo errare divinum 
 potius est quam humanum.' " 1 
 
 He was one of the founders of the Society of Anti- 
 quaries. 2 In the Cottonian MSS. are two letters of his, 
 miracles of delicate penmanship, written to Sir Robert 
 Cotton on its affairs. 3 From affectionate references to 
 him in correspondence, and in other ways, we find that 
 he was much valued as a friend by such men as Bishop 
 Andrews, Camden, Spelman, Stowe, Sir Philip Sidney, 
 and Sir John Davies. It was no slight honour to be a 
 star in such a constellation. 
 
 Sir John was married three times, but had no children. 
 What he thought about this comes out in the language 
 of one of his dedications : " Among temporal blessings 
 given from God and poured upon men this is not the 
 least — for a man to behold the fruit of his own body, 
 surculum ex radice. An impe, a graffe, the olive branches 
 about his table, the hope of his posterity, the image of 
 himself, and the staff of his old age, the consideration 
 of the want whereof caused that good old patriarch out 
 of the bitterness of his soul to cry and make his complaint 
 to God in these words : ' Lord God, what wilt thou give 
 me, seeing I go childless, and lo, one born in my house 
 is mine heir ? ' " 
 
 He died at Fosters, near Egham, in Surrey, on the 
 13th of September, 1628; and was buried in great 
 state in Exeter Cathedral, on the 14th of October next 
 following. 
 
 In the Lady chapel of that cathedral, under two 
 
 * "Parliamentary History," vol. ii. p. 29I. 
 
 * "Introduction to the Archrwlogia." 
 
 s Cottonian MSS. "Julius C." vol. iii. p. 149. 
 
THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 5 
 
 separate arches in the thick wall, there are monuments 
 to him and his lady. That of the Judge is a rich 
 sarcophagus of black and white marble, on which is 
 placed his recumbent figure, dressed as in life. Much of 
 the scarlet on the robe remains, also much of the colour 
 in the heraldic devices. Only a few specks of gold gleam 
 in the letters. The epitaph closes with the words : 
 
 Nunc obit Doperigvs iudex 
 
 Learning aDieu for Doderidge is gon 
 
 To fix his earthie to the heavenlie throne. 
 
 Like the long Latin inscription over his effigy, the 
 story of his life is now so dim, that few will take pains to 
 decypher it. He is only historical by what appears to 
 have been his obsequious and unwise support of the royal 
 prerogative as exercised against the liberties of England. 
 Still, he was a great man in his day, and verily meant to 
 do right. If you wish to see his picture, it is in the 
 National Portrait Gallery, South Kensington ; to which 
 place it has been removed by order of Government from 
 the Bird Gallery in the British Museum, where it hung 
 for many years just over the Dodo {Didus incpius, Lin.). 
 
 Pentecost, was the second son of Richard, and to 
 him the Judge left all his estates. The son and represent- 
 ative of Pentecost, John Doddridge the second, was born 
 on the nth of November, 1610; 1 was educated at Pem- 
 broke College, Oxford, took his bachelor's degree in 1642 ; 3 
 was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, at some time, 
 now untraceable, and was made Recorder of Barnstaple. 
 Prince assures us that he "was excellently well skilled in 
 all parts of learning, especially in antiquities." His 
 only brothers died shortly after taking his Master's 
 
 1 Barnstaple Parish Register. 
 
 2 M.S. Register in the Bodleian Library. 
 
 3 This was Richard, who, according to the Barnstaple Register, 
 was baptized "Nov. 19, 1615." His name occurs in the lists of 
 Exeter College, Oxford, as having matriculated there in 1634. 
 "Ano Dfii 1634 to Sept 9° Rickiis Doddridge Devon, fil. Pente- 
 costi Doddridge de Barnstable in com prd. Gen. an. nat. 18." lie 
 took B.A. in 1637, and M.A. in 1640. The tombstone of Pentecost 
 is in the chancel of Barnstaple parish chuieh. 
 
6 
 
 THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 degree at Exeter College; and, shortly after the death 
 of this brother, on February 23, 1643, his father died, 
 leaving him everything he had. A vacancy occurring in the 
 representation of Barnstaple, he was chosen to serve it as 
 one of its members in the Long Parliament. It was the 
 passion of his life to fight for the liberties of the people 
 as represented by the House of Commons. This brought 
 him into conflict with the policy of Charles, but he was 
 opposed to all extreme measures in dealing with the 
 king personally. When, on the 5th of December, 1648, 
 the Commons passed a vote tending to accommodation 
 with the king, and the soldiers under Colonel Pride 
 excluded the majority by force, he was one of the ex- 
 cluded ; and his name appears in the list of protesters 
 given in the pamphlet issued on the second day of the 
 following January, and entitled, "Vindication of the 
 Imprisoned Members." When the third parliament of the 
 Protectorate was called in July, 1656, he was returned 
 member for Bristol, of which city he was at that time the 
 Recorder. Being one of those against whose name Crom- 
 well's Council had made a black mark, he was not allowed 
 to enter the House. Against this act of violence he joined 
 in an appeal, which seems to have had effect, for, on 
 February 4, 1657-58, we find him in his place, taking part 
 in an exciting debate. The Commons had to answer a 
 message from Cromwell's newly-created Lords, and the 
 question on which much was thought to hinge was, 
 whether they should be addressed as "the House of 
 Peers," or only as " the other House '' ? We learn from 
 the short and broken notes of his speech that yet survive, 
 that he said : " I am not only against the title, but 
 against the thing." A patrician order is the growth of 
 time ; " but this House of Lords is only an embryo — it 
 is a child of four months old — it wants form and 
 figure." Then he went on with other objections. 
 Serjeant Maynard followed, but as he was speaking, the 
 debate was interrupted by the Usher of the Black Rod, 
 and the members of the "Talking Apparatus" were 
 summoned to meet his awful Highness in the House of 
 
THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 7 
 
 Lords, when he delivered his last public speech, closing 
 it with the memorable sentence, " I do dissolve this 
 Parliament, and God judge between you and me." 
 On December 5, 1657, he edited certain manuscript 
 essays written by eminent jurists, his late uncle being 
 one of them; and published them in a book entitled, 
 " Opinions touching the Antiquity, Power, Order, 
 State, Manner, Persons, and Proceedings of the 
 High Courts of Parliament." To this he prefixed a 
 discourse of his own on "Free Parliaments," in which he 
 says, " It hath been the opinion of our ancestors that 
 to a Parliament rightly constituted, there ought to be a 
 lawful summons, a free election, a true return, liberty of 
 admission into the House, and a quiet session there, 
 with a just freedom of speech and debate, without fear of 
 disturbance ; these they accounted the essentials of a 
 Parliament : if there be an error in any of these, it soon 
 declines and loseth its true vigour and authority. As for 
 privileges of Parliament, they esteemed them of that 
 absolute necessity that, if they were denied or interrupted, 
 it cannot properly be a Parliament any more than the 
 body can be without a soul." 
 
 Along with the old treasures belonging to the Bristol 
 municipalia may be seen two large silver-gilt flagons, 
 richly chased, and bearing the inscription, " Ex dono 
 Johanis Dodridge, Recordatoris Civitatis Eristoll, 1658." 
 A recent examination of his will, which was written in the 
 same year, has opened a further insight into what he was. 
 In connection with many other bequests, we find that lie 
 left to Harvard College, in New England, the yearly sum 
 of ten pounds for ever, issuing from the rectory of Frem- 
 ington, of which he was lay impropriator ; he left a legacy 
 to each of the famous Presbyterians — his "very dear 
 friends" — Edmund Calamy, B.U., Doctor Bates, and^ 
 James Nalton ; also one to his cousin, Mr. John Dode- 
 ridge, minister of Shepperton. A large sum was left to 
 his friend, Mr. Nathaniel Mather, the vicar of Barnstaple, 
 who, after the Act of Uniformity, became Independent 
 minister at Lime Street, and to the memory of whose rare 
 
8 
 
 THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 piety and learning Dr. Watts has inscribed some Latin 
 verses ; he bequeathed a sum of fifty pounds annually to 
 the incumbent of the church at Ilfracombe ; also a similar 
 sum for the endowment of a lecture in the parish church 
 at Fremington, whose minister at that time was Mr. 
 John Bartlet, one of his personal friends, who had also 
 contracted, as it is said, "an intimate and most endearing 
 friendship with the great John Howe." Mr. Doddridge 
 had married three times, but was without family. After 
 suitable provision for his widow, the substance of his 
 property was divided between his two sisters. The parish 
 library at Barnstaple was " finished," so we read in the 
 old catalogue, " by the executors of that worthy and 
 pious benefactor, John Doddridg Esquire ; by whose 
 bounty it was also furnished with many worthy books." 
 He died at Cheshunt on the 22nd of March, 1666, it is 
 supposed, at the house of his father-in-law, Sir Thomas 
 Dacres. 
 
 The next son of the patriarch Richard was the great- 
 grandfather of our divine. In one of the Ilarleian MSS. 
 on Devonshire pedigrees, date about 1630, there is his 
 name, " Philip Dodderidge," under his shield of arms, 
 drawn byRidnrd Munday. 1 No other particulars are 
 given. His only sen was the third John Doddridge. 
 He is thus entered in the matriculation lists of the New 
 Inn Hall, Oxford: " 1638. March 22. John Doddridge, 
 Middlesex, son of Philip Doddridge of Thistleworth in 
 the county aforesaid, of good rank, aged 18." 2 There is 
 no record of his taking M.A. preserved in Anthony 
 Wood's MSS. of the Registers ; probably this was lost in 
 the confusions of the Civil War, just at this time. In 
 1649 he was presented by Sir Henry Reynell to the living 
 of Shcpperton, in his father's neighbourhood. The parish 
 church of St. Nicholas was near the Thames, — so near, 
 
 1 Arms : — "Argent, two Pales wavy, Azure ; between nine Cross 
 Croslets, Gules." 
 
 2 Copy :— " Aula Novi Hospitii. Aiio Dni 1638. Mar. 22. 
 Jones Doddiidge Middlesex, fil. Phillip. Dodd. de Thistleworth in 
 Com. p r d. Gen. an. nat. 18." 
 
THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 9 
 
 that early in the century it had been washed away by an 
 overflow of the river, and the new church had been built 
 in 1614, out of the debris of the old structure. His sphere 
 of pastoral work was no serene Arcadia. Almost every 
 parish was then an epitome of the nation, and consisted 
 of two fighting parties. It was worse here than in most 
 places, for many of the parishioners were burning with 
 the wrong done to their former much-beloved rector, Mr. 
 Lewis Hughes, who had been ejected by Parliament in 
 the close of 1648, for his bold censures of iis proceedings 
 against the king. It was probably assumed that the 
 minister who had been put in his place was one of those 
 who had consented to the king's death. Nothing has 
 been more common than to charge men of his ecclesias- 
 tical principles with this, yet nothing could be more 
 unfair, for it was notoriously a mere military act, against 
 which the Presbyterians protested. Whatever may have 
 been the cause, it is certain that his life at Shepperton 
 was an unsettled one. Nothing can give more affecting 
 proof of this than the state of the parish archives. Dur- 
 ing his fourteen years' tenure of office, we find no 
 marriages recorded until the last year, when there are 
 five. One baptism and two funerals are noted in the 
 last three years, but all is blank before. When, in 
 August, 1662, the Act of Uniformity was passed, Mr. 
 Doddridge seems to have hesitated, for he officiated in the 
 Church so late as February 18, 1663. At length, con- 
 science compelled him to resign, and of course he was 
 a great loser for conscience' sake. In the Parliamentary 
 Survey made in 1650, and the MS. report of which is 
 kept in the Lambeth Library, he is mentioned as pos- 
 sessed of a yearly income of ^130, besides the tithes 
 from certain farms and meadows, and the glebe land of 
 nineteen acres. Taking into account the difference in the 
 value of the currency between that and the present time, 
 he had to resign a large income, and with his family of 
 ten children to provide for, this was a grave sacrific e. 
 Henceforward he had to lead a harassed and restless life, 
 in the course of which he spent all his patrimony. In 
 
10 
 
 THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 his latter days he was the pastor of a small congregation 
 of devoted friends who met near Brentford, and most 
 likely in some private house. According to Calamy, 
 "he was an ingenious man and a scholar; an acceptable 
 preacher, and a very peaceable divine." In September, 
 1 689, he died suddenly. His people might have expressed 
 their sorrow in words that we find in an old church book, 
 and that were written about this time, concerning the 
 sudden removal of another minister : " He was taken 
 away suddenly, when very few of the congregation had 
 any knowledge of his weakness, that they might lift up a 
 prayer for him. . . . His removal was public losse to the 
 Interest of Christ, he being as it were, the Chariots of 
 Israel and the hors-men thereof. . . . He would often 
 will the church to observe solemn days of prayer and 
 humiliation, and was much delighted in such work ; but 
 now he is gone from the Society of Mourners to a com- 
 pany of Harpers harping with their Harps, singing the song 
 of Moses and the Lamb : He had gon in and out 
 before this people, and bin a tender nurse or father to 
 them for severall years past. In wearinesse and painful- 
 nesse, in frequent watchings for them through many straits 
 and temptations that befell him, and was willing to spend 
 and be spent for them. But lo ! now he is gon, he is 
 gon." 
 
 By this time, only two of John Doddridge's children 
 were living. These were his sons, Daniel and Philip. 
 Philip was a solicitor, and held, for many years, the post 
 of Steward to the House of Russell, under William, the 
 fifth Earl, and first Duke of Bedford. Some of his 
 brown-leaved books, in their old black leathern dresses, 
 have been kept together until now. They include curious 
 editions of the Greek and Latin classics, and certain 
 English and French works, now rare or forgotten. If it 
 be true that a man's mind is known by the company it 
 keeps, we may, upon the whole, fairly infer irom the relics 
 of his library, that he was a genial gentleman, well versed 
 in "the humanities," and posted up in the knowledge of 
 his times. 
 
THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 II 
 
 Daniel was evidently not the genius of the family. 
 John Doddridge Humphreys says that " he received a 
 mercantile education, and made some property in Lon- 
 don." " He was an oilman," Job Orton insists on saying, 
 and this phrase is much the best. Perhaps he was com- 
 forted by recollecting the deliverance of Judge Dod- 
 dridge : " For a gentleman, of whatsoever estate he 
 be, though he go to plough, and though he have nothing 
 in his purse, yet he is a gentleman." 
 
 For many years, all the way over in the Austrian 
 Empire — no person would have dreamt it — events were 
 growing, one issue of which was, Daniel's introduction 
 to a good wife. Frederick, the Protestant Elector Pala- 
 tine, who had married the daughter of our King James 
 the First, had been tempted to accept the crown of 
 Bohemia. This gave great delight to the Protestants, 
 but brought down upon himself the angry power of Pope 
 Gregory the Fifteenth and the Emperor Ferdinand. It 
 ended in his own ruin, and that of his co-religionists. 
 The preachers were at once driven out of the country, 
 for the cry was — "Turn out the pipers, and you stop the 
 dance." In 1626, just at the agony of the crisis, one of 
 these poor pipers, a certain Lutheran student, named 
 John Bauman, was forced to disguise himself as a pea- 
 sant, and take flight for England. On his way, he spent 
 some time at Saxe Gotha, and other places. On his 
 arrival, having good certificates from his university and 
 introductions from German scholars, he succeeded in 
 establishing a school at Kingston-on-Thames. Here he 
 married; and here, in 1668, he died, leaving one 
 daughter of very tender age, who eventually became 
 Mistress Daniel Doddridge. 
 
 Sir Charles Reed has an old drawing of the house in 
 London in which this couple lived, but we are uncertain 
 as to its exact whereabouts. Here, on June the 26th, 
 1702, a child was born. It was a small, red, name- 
 less concretion of humanity, and seemed at first to 
 be scarcely worth thinking about, for not the sign of a 
 soul lightened in the pinched, puckered little face ; but 
 
THE FAMILY RECORDS. 
 
 after a while, a servant noticing a sigh, took pains with 
 the slight, rudimentary thing, and by that at length 
 fostered it into life. The infant, who in a few days after 
 received the name of Philip, was the twentieth child of 
 his parents, but only one of them, and that one a girl 
 named Elizabeth, had survived. 
 
 "The sons of God are born, not of ' bloods,'" 1 that is, 
 not of particular races. But though their earthly pedi- 
 gree have nothing to do with their divine life, or their 
 heavenly inheritance, it is a great natural advantage to 
 come of a good stock, and a true help to education to 
 have inspiring family memories. On this account it is 
 hoped that an attempt to recover the lost story of 
 Doddridge's Family Tree will not be without interest. 
 
 1 Oi ovk 1% cujiariav. John i. 13. 
 
ir. 
 
 EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Apart she joins his little hands in prayer, 
 Telling of Him who sees in secret there : 
 And now the volume on her knee has caught 
 His wandering eye ; now, many a written thought 
 Never to die, with many a lisping sweet, 
 His moving, murmuring lips endeavour to repeat. 
 Released, he chases the bright butterfly ; 
 Oh, he would follow — follow through the sky ! 
 Climbs the gaunt mastiff slumbering in his chain 
 And chicles and buffets, clinging to the mane ; 
 Then runs, and kneeling by the fountain side, 
 Sends his brave ship in triumph down the tide, 
 A dangerous voyage ; or, if now he can, 
 If now he wears the habit of a man, 
 Flings off the coat, so much his pride and pleasure, 
 And, like a miser digging for his treasure, 
 His tiny spade in his own garden plies, 
 And in green letters sees his name arise I" 
 
 Samuel Rogers. 
 
 A CHILD'S life generally opens into a scene of 
 pleasant wonders. One of the first wonders 
 that the child Philip Doddridge saw was new St. Paul's, 
 then in its spick and span whiteness. While he was 
 watching the workmen on the dome beginning to 
 build the lantern, Sir Christopher Wren was doing the 
 like as he stood on the leads of his house at Camber- 
 well, looking through his telescope. While the little one 
 was glancing up the street, bannered with signs all 
 swinging in the wind, Addison was writing : "Our streets 
 are filled with Blue Boars, Black Swans, and Red Lyons, 
 
14 
 
 EARLY DAYS. 
 
 not to mention Flying Pigs, and Hogs in Armour, with 
 other Creations more extraordinary than any in Africa." 
 He always kept a happy recollection of this old city, so 
 unlike the London we know, and said not long before 
 he died, "Oh, London! dear city of my youth!" Two 
 memorials of this time may still be seen. One is a pic- 
 ture of himself as a child playing with a dog ; the other 
 is of his sister, representing her as a graceful little lady 
 carrying a basket of flowers. 
 
 In the common room of the family, the fireplace was 
 lined with Dutch tiles, which set forth the chief events of 
 Scripture story. In some old house you may have seen 
 a duplicate of this Pictorial Bible with its glistering blue 
 and white illuminations, to wit : The apple tree with a 
 serpent in it ; Noah looking out from the window of an 
 ark smaller than himself ; Eli falling back from the top of 
 a five-barred gate; a very great Jonah coming out of a 
 very little whale ; Peter sailing over the Sea of Galilee in 
 a Dutch three-decker ; a Prodigal Son in a periwig ; and 
 so on. But the child was not old enough to be critical ; 
 these tiles were doubtless full of wisdom and of wonder 
 to him, and were glorious with suggestions out of which 
 his mind made its own pictures and lighted its own 
 poetry. Before he could read, his mother used to teach 
 him delightful lessons out of this book, and these never 
 faded. Thus he took his first degree, and here began 
 the biblical scholarship that found final development in 
 the " Family Expositor." 
 
 Sometimes she would hold out to him a certain 
 strange-looking book in two volumes, bound in black, 
 stamped leather, plated with silver, and with a quaint 
 inscrutable-looking title page. It was a copy of Doctor 
 Martin Luther's Bible, dated "Strassburg, mdxxvi." 
 
 She would often tell the story of this book, which 
 seemed to him to be all the newer for the much telling. 
 When his grandfather was driven out of his Bohemian 
 home on account of his faith, the property he took with 
 him consisted of a hundred gold pieces and this volume, 
 which he valued above all the gold in the world After 
 
 / 
 
EARLY DAYS. 
 
 15 
 
 sleeping in a country inn on one of the first nights of his 
 journey, when he set out in the morning, the fugitive for- 
 got to buckle on his belt, into the seams of which he had 
 stitched all his money. It was not until he had reached 
 the next stopping place, after a weary tramp all day, that 
 he missed it ; he then hurried back, and found that the 
 servant, not thinking that such an old frayed band could 
 be of any value, had flung it into an angle under the 
 staircase, used as a kind of museum of worthless things, 
 kept there until they had been duly studied, or had 
 crumbled away by the chemistry of nature, or were carted 
 off by the dustman. He searched for his belt, found it, 
 and went on his way thanking the Lord. The point was, 
 that, though he once forgot his gold, he never forgot his 
 Bible. 
 
 We may say anticipatively that, in 1724, Doddridge 
 wrote his own name in the first volume, and under it this 
 inscription : 
 
 "These Bibles, my Honoured Grandfather, Mr. John Bauman, 
 brought with him from Germany, his native Country, when he fled 
 on foot from the Persecution there on account of the Protestant Re- 
 ligion. 
 
 "'For he had Respect to the Recompence of Reward' (Ileb. 
 xi. 26). 
 
 " 'The Law of Thy mouth is better to me than Thousands of 
 Gold and Silver' (I'salm c.xix. 72). 
 
 " ' Be ye Followers of them who through Faith and Patience 
 inherit the Promises' (Heb. vi. 12)." 
 
 The fine, strong sensibilities of this delicate child were 
 very receptive of impressions from a family legend like 
 this, and also of a thousand tender touches of the creed 
 of creeds that were sung or shone into his heart by his 
 mother. 
 
 He received his first lessons in "grammaticals " at 
 home, with a Mr. Stott for his tutor. When about ten 
 years old, he was sent away to a school at Kingston-on- 
 Thames. We have always been told that it was the Free 
 School, over which we have also been told that his 
 grandfather Bauman had once presided, who had by this 
 time been succeeded by Mr. Mayo. This is an error. 
 
i6 
 
 EARLY DAYS. 
 
 The Free School was founded in the days of Queen 
 Elizabeth. It has no traditions of our Philip, and 
 recently, all its documents having been searched through, 
 a complete list of twenty-seven successive masters has 
 been made out from the year 1566, until now, and every 
 year has been accounted for, but no trace has been found 
 of Bauman or of Mayo. The school we are looking for 
 must have been a private one. 
 
 Daniel Mayo, M.A., was the son of the good old Vicar 
 of Kingston, who had been ejected for Nonconformity. 
 Since 1698, he had himself been minister of a Noncon- 
 formist congregation in the same place, and also master 
 of a school. Before that, he studied at Utrecht under 
 Witsius. While there he printed a Latin thesis on 
 Miracles, which was much commended. Seventeen 
 treatises and single sermons of his, once alive with spiritual 
 fire, now dead as fossils, are to be seen in our old libraries. 
 As a preacher, he proclaimed the Deity of Jesus, and 
 gloried in the cross. In 1714, when Matthew Henry died, 
 exactly half the votes of the church were in favour of 
 electing him as successor, and the result was an amicable 
 arrangement by which an additional congregation was 
 formed, which assembled in the Gravel Pit Meeting with 
 Mr. Mayo for the pastor. The family of Mr. Henry, 
 regarding him as a true and trusty friend, secured his 
 help in finishing the Commentary, which he gave by 
 writing the articles on 2 Corinthians and 1 Thessalo- 
 nians. Our small alumnus gained great good from Mr. 
 Mayo's teaching, to which, when he became a man, he 
 made graceful reference in a printed sermon on the Educa- 
 tion of Children. 1 
 
 Pliilly, for that was his name for many years, had always 
 been used to spend his holidays at his uncle's. At such 
 times he was kindly noticed by the Duchess of Bedford, 
 when he was hailed as a sprightly playfellow by the chil- 
 dren of the Russell family, and some of them became his 
 fast friends for life. 
 
 " Works," vol. ii. p. 56. 
 
EARLY DAYS. 
 
 17 
 
 While he was at this first school, he learned the mean- 
 ing of the word sorrow. First, his uncle died ; then, his 
 mother, the gentle Monica, to whom all the churches 
 owe a large debt of gratitude; and last, on the 17th of 
 July, 1 715, he was called to part with his father. Forty 
 years after, it was found that he had written in his secret 
 journal when this blow fell, "God is an immortal Father, 
 my soul rejoiceth in Him ; He hath hitherto helped me 
 and provided for me ; may it be my study to approve 
 myself a more affectionate, grateful, and dutiful child." 
 
 A prosperous looking gentleman, named Downes, now 
 assumed the office of guardian to the orphan, no one asking 
 him. In that capacity he removed the lad to a school at 
 St. Albans, where he himself lived. The principal was 
 Doctor Nathaniel Wood, the Nonconformist minister of 
 a small congregation in a village close by. He appears 
 to have been a thorough and careful scholar; a true 
 " magister ; " and in his humble sphere was proud as 
 Colet once was in his own august one of the school- 
 master's high vocation. By him, the word "school" cer- 
 tainly would not, in the softer sense of the meaning, 
 have been interpreted °x°^'i, "leisure ; " and if the end of 
 school discipline is to show the way to work — that is, if 
 one object is to strengthen the memory, to furnish the 
 mind with rules, dates, names, strings of vocables, and 
 formulas of mathematics ; if another is to compel boys 
 to a distinct mastery of that which they do not wish to 
 learn ; and if the highest of all is to educate Christian 
 conscience and love — then there was no reason to regret 
 the change of schools. Philly began to acquire the habit, 
 which so distinguished him in after life, of working me- 
 thodically, exactly, and instantly, at whatever he aimed 
 to do ; and of finding, as he said, " that the best recrea- 
 tion is in the change from one work to another." 
 
 The light-hearted, popular lad was already known to 
 be a Christian. Although he never could tell when he 
 first lighted on the gospel secret, he might have said, like 
 his contemporary, Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe : " My intant 
 hands were early lifted up to Thee, and I soon learned 
 3 
 
IS 
 
 EARLY DAYS. 
 
 to acknowledge the God of my fathers." The firm will 
 and wise love of his pastor, Mr. Clark, greatly helped his 
 spiritual life at this stage, and one consequence was that 
 he became openly decided, and joined the Church on the 
 i st of January, 17 18. 
 
 This solemn happiness was suddenly followed by a 
 calamity. Mr. Dovvnes, his self-constituted guardian, was 
 full of kind feeling ; he was impulsive, effusive, persuasive, 
 and was marked by lively alacrity of benevolence : but for 
 all that, he was never considered in the city to be "a safe 
 man." All at once there was a collapse in his affairs ; he lost 
 the property of his wards as well as his own in some un- 
 successful venture, and was thrown into prison for debt. 
 To get him out of prison, Philly sold his own family 
 plate. Then, in better spirits than ever, the emancipated 
 man busied himself in various speculations, one of which, 
 called " his water-works," was a plan for superseding the 
 New Company by supplying London with water from St. 
 Albans. The only effect of this enthusiasm that we now 
 know was the total wreck of what little had been left of 
 the Doddridge inheritance. 
 
 Philip Doddridge at once left school and went to 
 see his sister, lately married to the Reverend Mr. John 
 Nettleton, who seems then to have been keeping school 
 at a house "near the Windmill " on Hampstead Heath. 
 From her and from his new brother he had a warm wel- 
 come, and it was agreed that he should stay at their house 
 until it became clear what was to be done. His own 
 heart was set on becoming a minister. The Duchess of 
 Bedford hearing of this, and also of the change in his 
 worldly circumstances, made him the generous offer that 
 if he would become a Conformist, she would support the 
 cost of his education at either of the Universities, and 
 that, if she should live until he had taken orders, would 
 provide for him in the Church. It would have been 
 glorious to go to Exeter College, sacred to the memory of 
 his fathers, and doubtless there was a moment of waver- 
 ing. But of course, as his Nonconformity grew out of 
 his interpretation of God's revealed will, and not out of 
 
EARLY DAYS. 
 
 19 
 
 his own natural preferences, there was no room for a 
 question, and he was obliged gratefully but sadly to de- 
 cline. 
 
 He then waited on Dr. Calamy, then regarded as " a 
 kind of Chief Rabbi among the Dissenters," who gave 
 him no encouragement, but advised him to turn his 
 thoughts to something else. Doddridge writes : " It was 
 with great concern that I received such advice, but I 
 desire to follow Providence, and not force it. The Lord 
 give me grace to glorify Him in whatever station He sets 
 me ! Then, here am I, let Him do what seemeth good in 
 His sight." This advice by Dr. Calamy has sometimes 
 been cited as a remarkable illustration of the mistakes in 
 judgment that are sometimes made by the wisest men; 
 but it really seems likely that the doctor, seeing the Non- 
 conformist interest to be in a decline, and that its next 
 ministers would have to plough in a rough and thorny 
 field, thought that the slender youth before him was not 
 strong enough for such a life. About three weeks after this 
 discouragement, Mr. Humphreys informs us that "the 
 celebrated conveyancer of the day, Mr. Horseman, who 
 had long been intimate with the family, interested him- 
 self warmly in his favour, and deeming the talents of his 
 young friend likely to lead to eminence at the bar, intro- 
 duced him to a counsellor named Eyre, who made him 
 a handsome proposal." The case was full of perplexity. 
 It seemed impossible to put his heart into any vocation 
 but that of the Christian ministry. He was in a mist of 
 trouble ; trouble made him pray more earnestly, and one 
 day, when he was in prayer, the news-man's knock startled 
 him, and there was a letter from his old pastor, the sub- 
 stance of which was, that if he continued in his strong 
 resolution to be a minister, he was heartily welcome to 
 come and live in his manse at St. Albans, where he 
 would do his best to help him until he had an introduc- 
 tion to some academy. " This," said he, " I looked upon 
 almost as an answer from heaven ; and while I live shall 
 adore so seasonable an interposition of Divine Providence. 
 I have sought God's direction in this matter, and I hope 
 
20 
 
 EARLY DAYS. 
 
 I have had it. My only view in my choice hath been that 
 of more extensive service ; and I beg God to make me 
 an instrument of doing much good in the world." He 
 continued for several months with his kind friend, Mr. 
 Clark, who in October, 17 19, procured his admission to 
 the academy at Kibworth Harcourt, and was responsible 
 for the cost of his studies. 
 
III. 
 
 KIBU'ORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 "A husbandman within Thy Church by grace, 
 I am, O Lord ! anil labour at the plough ; 
 My hand holds fast, ne will I turn my (ace 
 From following Thee, although the soile be rough." 
 
 Henry Lok, Gentleman U593" I 597)- 
 
 PERHAPS we sometimes speak of "Nonconformists" 
 and " Dissenters " without recollecting what these 
 words exactly mean ; and this is the fitting place for a 
 brief explanation. The term " Nonconformist " has a 
 different tint of meaning from the term " Dissenter." It 
 does not of necessity imply objection to the State establish- 
 ment of a Church, but only to the form or forms of the 
 Church actually established. It was not a distinctive 
 term for "Dissenters" before the year 1662, when, 
 ousted by the Act of Uniformity, two thousand Non- 
 conformist clergymen left the Church of England 
 and joined the ranks of Dissent. Dr. Winter Hamilton 
 has justly said, "We deem it a most unhappy mis- 
 conception of history that Independents and Baptists 
 should have recorded that day as their memorable 
 day." It was not their trial. It was not, at any rate, 
 the assertion of anti-state-churchism that was made then, 
 lor those who joined in the illustrious exodus were 
 not anti state-churchmen. They would have gladly stayed 
 in the State Church if they could. They only went out of 
 it because they held a theology which they felt to be incon- 
 sistent with the sacerdotal and sacramental theories of the 
 
22 
 
 KIB WORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 Prayer Book, theories which had been brought out by 
 the revisers with sharp distinctness and logical order on 
 purpose to keep men of their faith outside the ecclesias- 
 tical pale. So it came to pass that two thousand clerical 
 Nonconformists, holding the principle of establishments, 
 joined the ancient body of Dissenters, who did not hold 
 it. One result of this fusion was that the temper of both 
 parties was softened. Another result was, that the Non- 
 conformists, forced to be Dissenters in practice, generally 
 and gradually became so in principle. Another result 
 was, that Nonconformists being both as to status and 
 cultus the most influential of the separatists, their name, 
 at first only sectional, commonly became the descriptive 
 name of the body to which they had become united. As 
 time went on other changes were brought about. Presby- 
 terians and Congregationalists, under which second head 
 we may include Baptists, were not parted by hard and fast 
 lines ; there was very little practical unlikeness between 
 their methods of order and worship, and there was a 
 growing disposition to merge smaller distinctions in the 
 comprehensive title of Nonconformist or of Protestant 
 Dissenter. 
 
 Persons of this religious persuasion, being excluded 
 from the Universities, depended for the higher education 
 on what they called the Academies. At first, these were 
 by no means for ministers only, but for all those who 
 would, if permitted by law, have gone to Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge. How many such academies were in existence at 
 the time of which we are writing is doubtful, but a few years 
 before, twenty had been counted. They were undertaken 
 on the responsibility of the tutors, without any guarantee 
 of help or share of directive authority on the part of the 
 public. Simple and unostentatious as these institutions 
 were, the education they secured was often of the very 
 best. In proof of this we may read the high praise given 
 to them by Nelson in the life of Bishop Bull ; 1 also, the 
 well-known letter of Dr. Seeker, afterwards Archbishop of 
 
 "Life,"p /. 
 
KID WORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 23 
 
 Canterbury, describing the curriculum of one of them at 
 which he studied in his youth ; also, the evil importance 
 ascribed to them by those who tried to get them put 
 down by law. In a letter addressed to " The Grand 
 Committee of Parliament for Religion," it was asserted 
 that "they endangered the National Universities," — - 
 reference was made to the numbers of the nobility and 
 gentry who would have sought their education at one or 
 other of the great seats of learning — " had they not been 
 intercepted by these sucking academies," and the writer 
 adds that " there must have been some thousands in this 
 way educated." 1 
 
 The head of the Kibworth academy was the Reverend 
 Mr. John Jennings, an Independent minister of rare 
 attainments and delicate culture. What he was in the 
 supreme qualifications for his post we may infer from a 
 book of his, entitled " Two Discourses : the First of 
 Preaching Christ, the Second of Particular and Experi- 
 mental Preaching ; with a Preface by the Revd. Mr. Isaac 
 Watts, 1723." At the time of its first issue it was recom- 
 mended by two bishops at visitation services ; and it was 
 translated into German by Dr. Frank, Divinity Professor 
 at Halle. A volume containing outlines of his Academic 
 Lectures, written by Doddridge in Latin, and with almost 
 microscopic delicacy of hand, is preserved in the New 
 College Library, London. An interesting account of the 
 course and method of teaching has been published in his 
 " Correspondence." 2 
 
 Memoranda written at this time, still surviving, show 
 that, like a true student, it was his habit to work with 
 patience, yet with perpetual eagerness, and with a kind of 
 methodical enthusiasm, reminding us as we read that time 
 is elastic, and that none know how much they can put 
 into it until they try. 
 
 Several persons who were influential in various ways 
 used in later years to speak with proud affection of what 
 he was when they were his class-mates at Kibworth. One 
 
 " A Letter from a Country Divine " (Samuel Wesley), 1 703. 
 *' Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 462. 
 
2\ KID WORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 of these was Sir John Cope, the conspicuous yet the in- 
 glorious ; another was John Mason, M.A., author of a 
 book on Self-knowledge, that was once a power in the 
 world ; another was Doctor Obadiah Hughes ; another 
 was the Baptist, James Burroughs, minister of a church in 
 Paul's Alley, London, " furnished," it was said, "with a 
 considerable stock of learning and eloquence, as well as 
 piety," 1 but he died as early as May 16, 1728, in the 
 twenty-eighth year of his age. A volume of his sermons 
 was published, and on the fly-leaf of a copy in the New Col- 
 lege is a long and loving inscription in the handwriting 
 of Doddridge. 
 
 Early in 1722, the academy was removed to Hinckley 
 in the same county. Almost immediately after this, a 
 new meeting-house was commenced in this place, but 
 while the congregation still met under the old rafters, 
 Doddridge preached his first sermon, taking for the text: 
 " If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be 
 Anathema Maranatha." Two persons ascribed their 
 conversion to its instrumentality. A man in his novitiate 
 was never allowed to preach beyond the academy chapel 
 until his fitnesses were finally tested in an examination by 
 certain local ministers; who, if they approved, signed a 
 certificate of recommendation, after which he was con- 
 sidered eligible to be invited to a vacant pastorate. In 
 the case of Doddridge all this took place at a meeting 
 of ministers held at Leicester, January 5, 1723. On 
 July 8th, following, good Mr. Jennings died. The 
 smallpox, that terror of our ancestors, struck him down 
 in his prime, after three days' illness. Doddridge, his 
 favourite pupil, had only in the month before succeeded 
 to his old charge over the little church at Kibworth. 
 The people had invited him on the expressed under- 
 standing that he should be free to accept a call to any 
 larger sphere. There must have been an ordination 
 service, but all written references to it, including his 
 "confession of faith," have mysteriously vanished. 
 
 * "Correspondence," vol. i. p. 381. 
 
RIBWORT H HARCOURT. 
 
 25 
 
 Practically, this ministerial engagement was little more 
 than a lectureship, and was preferred to others because it 
 allowed him opportunity to continue his studies. 
 
 Kibworth, dozing round its old church in the serene 
 hush of a June day, was a soothing sight. In and out, 
 all up the long, straggling street, you saw — here, a thatched 
 cottage ; there, standing back in a flagged court, an old 
 house with a rookery behind it ; further on, stacks of 
 twisted chimneys looked over the trees ; then a row of 
 irregular wigwams, and all the sunny scene was so still 
 that you might have almost thought the buzz of a blue- 
 bottle would startle the town. It was not at all a place 
 looking like the chosen sphere of a man born to make a 
 noise in the world. On the site of the present Crown 
 Inn there once stood the parsonage of Mr. Jennings, and 
 the meeting-house in which Doddridge opened his minis- 
 try is still in part standing as one of the buildings in the 
 yard. " The ten commandments " were lettered on the 
 wall behind the pulpit ; the Lord's Prayer used to be 
 repeated, and the clerk, on all proper occasions, used to 
 say "amen ;" for all which, critics were inclined to indict 
 the minister "for ritualistic practices." About forty per- 
 sons made the morning congregation ; never more than 
 a hundred and fifty came in the evening. Each one 
 slowly stumbled in, sleeking down his hair, tempting the 
 light-hearted youth to write : " My congregation is the 
 most impolite I ever knew, consisting of shepherds, far- 
 mers, graziers, and their subalterns. - ' The income 
 amounted to thirty-five pounds a year; " but," he said, 
 "as provisions are cheap I might manage to live upon 
 ten." As to marriage he was of opinion that it was not 
 to be thought of in a hurry, for, as he justly remarked, 
 even an annual stipend of forty pounds " is abundantly 
 little to carry double." 
 
 " The prophet's chamber " at this time was at Strctton, 
 two or three miles away, in a hall that had once been 
 lived in by an old Nonconformist family called "the 
 Strettons of Stretton," but which, much altered, had come 
 to be used as a farm-house. The focus of life had been 
 
26 
 
 KIBWORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 shifted from the statelier rooms to the great house place. 
 We can almost see this, with its long settle, its press of 
 carved black oak, with a date on it ; a broad sheet of 
 " Holy Mr. Dod's sayings " pasted on the wall, and over 
 the mantelpiece a matchlock that had seen Naseby fight, 
 also a crossbow that had been in the wars of the Roses. 
 The handsome stone staircase is still there ; so are the 
 fish-ponds, brook, and large garden thus described by 
 Doddridge in July 15, 1723, in a letter to Mrs. Clark : — 
 " You know I love a country life, and here we have it 
 in perfection. We have a mighty pleasant garden and 
 orchard, and a fine arbour under some tall, shady limes, 
 that form a kind of lofty dome, of which, as a native of 
 a great city, you may perhaps catch a glimmering idea if 
 I name the cupola of St. Paul's. And then, on the other 
 side of the house, there is a large space which we call a 
 wilderness, and which I fancy would please you ex- 
 tremely. The ground is a dainty green sward ; a brook 
 runs sparkling through the middle, and there are two 
 large fish-ponds at one end ; both the ponds and the brook 
 are surrounded with willows, and there are several shady 
 walks under the trees, besides little knots of young willows 
 interspersed at convenient distances. This is the nursery 
 of our lambs and calves, with whom I have the honour 
 to be intimately acquainted." The friendliness of the 
 pigs and of the sleek cart horses, of the speckled hens 
 pecking about, and of the pigeons fluttering down, so 
 nattered him, and he gleaned so much agricultural know- 
 ledge in other ways, that he was fast getting qualified, so 
 he boasted, to write a work in continuation of " Flavel's 
 Husbandry Spiritualised." As to his health, in one letter 
 he speaks of himself as " skin and bone in another, he 
 says that he "is getting purely well, and already weighs 
 part of a ton," from which we may infer that he had been 
 but poorly, and that country air agreed with him. He 
 turned this life of peaceful sameness to the best account 
 as a student, rising at five in the morning, as was his en- 
 deavour all through life, and when no higher duty claimed 
 him working twelve hours a day. In this way, besides 
 
KIBWORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 2 7 
 
 gaining a mastery of the languages and sciences wanted 
 as instruments of biblical interpretation, he became deep 
 in the Fathers of the first four centuries ; and tried to read 
 everything that had been written on Church history and on 
 the history of doctrines and controversies. The classic his- 
 torians he read with a child's eagerness ; the old Greek 
 poets were to him fountains of beauty and delight ; and he 
 became acquainted with the philosophers and orators of 
 antiquity. A knowledge of the German language had 
 not yet come to be thought essential to complete scholar- 
 ship, and he never acquired it. In a letter written only a 
 few years before his death we find him saying, " I passed 
 the morning most agreeably in the company of four 
 German divines. We co?iversed in Latin very intelligibly, 
 different as was the accent." 1 Evidently he was never 
 able to converse in German, but he already recreated him- 
 self in French dramatic and other literature. All through 
 these obscure years he was unconsciously piling upon the 
 altar materials afterwards to be divinely kindled — large fuel 
 for large flame. 
 
 After a while he went to lodge at Burton Overy, then 
 went back to Stretton, and in October, 1725, made his 
 home at Harborough, he having agreed to unite his own 
 little pastorate with the larger one of Mr. Some at that 
 place, to whom he became assistant minister, the two 
 ministers dividing their services between the two con- 
 gregations. 
 
 When he was living at Stretton he said, " I have not 
 so much as a tea-table in my whole diocese, although 
 eight miles in extent. ... I am confident that there 
 never was one drop of tea consumed in this house since 
 it was built, unless it was camomile." This was a playful 
 over-statement ; there were several centres of pleasant so- 
 ciety within reach, at which he would have been more than 
 welcome. One of these was Maidwell, the seat of Lady 
 Russell. This lady was the widow of Lord James Rus- 
 sell, sixth son of John, Duke of Bedford. She afterwards 
 
 ' Wilson MSS. 
 
28 
 
 RIBWORT H HARCOURT. 
 
 married Sir Henry Houghton, of Houghton Tower, Lan- 
 cashire. Her daughter, the Hon. Mrs. Seawen, of Car- 
 shalton, was often with her. Both ladies were members 
 of a dissenting church in London, but were in the habit 
 of spending most of the year in the country, when they 
 were great friends to the ministers. The elder lady had 
 known the young Kibworth pastor nearly all his life, and, 
 when he waited upon her just after coming into Leices- 
 tershire, "gave him to understand that he must be no 
 stranger." He would sometimes ride along the old green 
 lanes and bridle paths as far as Maidwell, finding on the 
 way many illustrations of the maxim in ethics, that " the 
 softest road is not always the best." As his steed walked 
 circumspectly back — he on the top of it — the deep holes 
 were sometimes only doubtfully revealed by the moon- 
 light ; and there is a letter to her ladyship from her "very 
 humble servant and chaplain," to tell her that he got 
 safe home at about four o'clock, and that the horse, "a 
 sedate and obsequious" beast, had behaved himself with 
 "singular gravity and discretion." Some of his letters 
 to this lady on serious subjects are deeply interesting, 
 and all are in a style that implies confidential friend- 
 ship. 
 
 The house of his old tutor was also at all times like 
 home to him. Mrs. Jennings was grandchild of the Earl 
 of Anglesea, Lord Privy Seal under Charles the Second. 
 Her father was Sir Francis Wingate, of Harlington Grange, 
 near Bedford. He was the magistrate who committed 
 John Bunyan to Bedford jail — the only remarkable thing 
 he ever did in his life. After his death it mysteriously 
 came to pass that two of his three portionless daughters 
 (served him right) married Independent ministers — one 
 being this Mr. Jennings, the other Mr. Norris, of Welford 
 — and Mistress Rachel, who died unmarried, became a 
 member of the Independent Church at Northampton. 
 There was, as there ought to have been in this home, 
 an atmosphere of education and refinement. Of Mrs. 
 Jennings he said, " I think myself exceedingly happy in 
 such a friend. Her daily conversation is one of the most 
 
KIDWORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 2Q 
 
 delightful entertainments of my life. In her I see a most 
 amiable and instructive example of all the branches of 
 the Christian temper which can be visible to the eyes 
 of our fellow creatures, and combined with these are 
 uncommon sprightliness of wit, solidity of judgment, and 
 delicacy of taste." 1 
 
 Some of the old county families, who, in 1662, had 
 cast in their lot with the ejected ministers, still had 
 representatives keeping to the conventicle. Several of 
 these were within his radius. Of course, the young 
 people would meet occasionally and he with them, for 
 social recreation, when there would be talk about new 
 books and live questions. At certain dates, there would 
 be something to say about Mr. Thomson's "magnificent 
 piece called ' Winter,' " just out ; or about Mr. Young's 
 " Paraphrase on the Book of Job," not much liked ; or 
 about a new poem by " the ingenious Mr. Dyer." There 
 would be a cheerful remark made about "an answer by one 
 John Giles or Gill," 2 to some incautious statements pub- 
 lished on the baptismal controversy by their good neigh- 
 bour, Mr. Morris, of Rothwell ; not from any great 
 interest in the polemics, but from the pleasure of seeing 
 "an Antinomian " in difficulties. "Antinomian" and 
 "High Calvinist " were names they were apt to apply 
 vaguely to any earnest Evangelical Christian, and there 
 was too great a readiness to say smart things or to 
 believe droll stories at the expense of " the Orthodox." 
 The phrases just quoted and the inferences expressed 
 are drawn from printed and unprinted letters. The 
 present writer has also formed from other materials 
 some idea of what the spirit of these " evenings at 
 home" used to be. In early life, he has seen taken 
 out now and then from broken old lavender and rose- 
 leaves, papers and note-books, certain of which were 
 written by Doddridge's young friends belonging to this 
 circle, though some were of a little later date. Some 
 
 1 " Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 190. 
 
 • This was the first work written by Dr. John Gill. 
 
30 
 
 KIBWORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 were in Rich's shorthand ; 1 some were receipts, medical 
 or culinary, but most of them were large extracts, in 
 different hands, and not in faultless spelling, from Mr. 
 Hughes' " Siege of Damascus," Mr. Pomfret's " Choice," 
 " Mr. Green on the Spleen," and the like. Some were 
 original compositions, clean gone from memory now, 
 except in fragments. There was " a song" attempted by 
 a muse, "the meanest of the tuneful throng," about "the 
 sequestered bower, where fair Melodia spends the thought- 
 ful hour." Young Englishmen were called " British 
 Swains," and the Midland counties were "Tripontian 
 plains." All was in the style of the day when poets would 
 call " a shoe " " the shining leather that encased the 
 limb ;" when for " coffee " they would say, " the fragrant 
 juice of Mocha's berry brown ;" and when " saponaceous " 
 was poetical for " soapy." Such poetry was in keeping 
 with the curious formality then ruling all social inter- 
 course. To behave with good manners seemed to be 
 looked upon as a kind of performance. With step grace- 
 ful as a wave, the young women rose, sank, and pointed 
 their satin toes most formally ; the young men advanced 
 and retreated, swaying to the ground; and even their 
 letters seem to have been written in the spirit of the 
 same fashion. As part of the same fashion, they used 
 to drop their proper names and assume classical ones : 
 Doddridge was " Hortensius ; " Mr. Hughes, " Atticus; " 
 Mr. Joseph Nutt, the Hinckley doctor, was "Nuceus;" 
 and there are other samples. Among the ladies we find 
 such names as Clio, Camilla, Theodosia (Jenny Jennings), 
 and Philomela (Betty Clark), "a lady of incomparable 
 sagacity." 
 
 John Bunyan, whose name some in those meetings 
 had such good reason to remember with reverence, 
 " admired the wisdom of God in making him shy of the 
 sisterhood," boasting that " it was a rare thing for him to 
 carry it pleasant towards a woman." " The common 
 
 1 " Pen's Dexterity ; or, the Readiest Way to the Art of Short 
 Writing." By Jeremiah Rich. Trice 6d. Sold by John Marshall 
 at the Bible, in Gracechurch-street, 1699. 
 
KIBWORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 31 
 
 salutation of women," saith he, " I abhor, their company 
 alone I cannot away with." Philip Doddridge never 
 could say the same. He was too much in the society 
 of these mischievous creatures with the romantic names. 
 Although the young objects of affection sometimes took 
 too much snuff, and everything that wire and whalebone, 
 starch and powder, could do was done to lessen the danger 
 of their spells, they seem somehow to have had a myste- 
 rious power of captivation over him. He wrote to some 
 of them words of very glowing sentiment, but perhaps he 
 did not mean anything. No doubt his open and lively 
 nature betrayed him into imprudencies. There was one 
 Clarinda, whose earthly name was Kitty Freeman, said by 
 him to have been "a notorious man slayer," for whom he 
 got to feel a foolish worship. It was of no use giving 
 advice. When his sister wrote to caution him, he said, 
 " Did you ever know me to marry foolishly in all your 
 life ? " However, after playing with it off and on, Clarinda 
 tossed the poor mouse away. 
 
 We would not take for our model " Sombrius, who 
 looks upon a sudden fit of laughter as a breach of his 
 baptismal vow." 1 We know that a man may be devout 
 without always speaking in a certain conventional dialect 
 supposed to be devotional ; and, with Dr. John Brown, 
 we nauseate " the religiosity which is at once as like and 
 unlike the real thing, as hemlock is to parsley;" but 
 for all that, we are forced to the conclusion that Dod- 
 dridge was not yet a spiritual hero. His mind was 
 getting frivolized by the air in which it lived, and the 
 salt of grace seemed to be losing its savour. When we 
 look first at him with his merry nonsense, yet with his 
 unhappy captivations ; then read a page of his journal, 
 with its stern rules and its histories of sharp, agonizing 
 introspection, we may be reminded of what was said about 
 a great Italian, " that whoever considered his levity and li is 
 gravity might think that there were two distinct persons 
 in him." But though as yet he had no apostolic passion, 
 
 " Spectator." 
 
33 
 
 KIB WORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 and no "noble rage" for winning souls, there was always 
 earnest purity of motive, and "a strong desire to " make 
 full proof of his ministry. Let us read the evidence of 
 the high estimate in which he was held by the church, as 
 shown in the invitations to various important stations of 
 service, received by him while in his little village pas- 
 torate. 
 
 In April, 1723, just when his mind was balancing as to 
 the question of settlement at Kibworth, he was urgently 
 requested to become assistant minister to Mr. Warren, 
 the Presbyterian minister at Coventry, where he would 
 have had a congregation of twelve hundred persons. 
 
 In August the same year, he was invited by about a 
 thousand Independents and Baptists to settle at Pershore 
 in Worcestershire. Preserved in the Doddridge MSS. is 
 a charming letter supporting this request by one who 
 writes: "The love I bear to the good people here, with 
 whom I have walked in the fellowship of the gospel twenty- 
 six years, constrains me earnestly to desire their comfortable 
 settlement ; and being the widow of their honoured pas- 
 tor, perhaps my testimony on their behalf may be a little 
 regarded. I can assure you that dear Mr. Thomas had 
 as comfortable a life amongst them for near twenty years 
 while he was, for the sake of Christ, their servant, I be- 
 lieve, as ever minister had amongst a people ; and when 
 he was on his death-bed, speaking of his ministry, he called 
 it his pleasant work amongst his pleasant people. . . . 
 Blessed be God, the peace of this church is still continued, 
 notwithstanding their being so long unsettled ; and though 
 there is some difference in the judgment of some as to 
 baptism, yet it causes none in their affection. . . . The 
 Lord grant that you may be an instrument in His hand 
 to revive His work here, and to be a gatherer of many 
 souls to Christ ! " 
 
 In November of the same year, he was urgently in- 
 treated to succeed Mr. Foxon in presiding over the Inde- 
 pendent Church at Haberdashers' Hall, where since 1650 
 the ministers had nearly all been remarkable for their 
 sanctified power and scholarship. 
 
KIBWORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 3J 
 
 In February, 1724, he had a requisition from Coventry, 
 signed by many leading men of the town, including "the 
 mayor and several of the aldermen," inviting him to be- 
 come the minister of a new congregation in a new build- 
 ing. Here his stipend would have been nearly six times 
 larger than the subscription at Kibworth. 
 
 In November, 1728, he was invited to become assistant 
 to the Reverend Mr. Bateson, of the Castle Gate Indepen- 
 dent Church, Nottingham. The minute book of this 
 church, a rare and precious relic, is a noble folio, in 
 massive morocco binding, dating from the time of Charles 
 the Second, and on its pages are entered in clear order 
 all the particulars of the church history from its formation 
 in about 1655, until 1875. 1 ne following entry in rela- 
 tion to our present subject occurs in its right place : — 
 
 " Mr. Bateson being often under disorder and indis- 
 position as to his state of health, it was judged needful 
 for to provide him an assistant. In order thereunto a 
 day of prayer was kept, Nov. 20, 1728, to ask counsel 
 and direction of God about giving Mr. Phil. Doderidge 
 (a call to assist Mr. Bateson), on whom the eyes and 
 hearts of the whole congregation seemed to be fixed. 
 
 "At the call and desire of the congregation, he, the said 
 Mr. Doderidge, did come and preach amongst us with 
 general approbation, and gave encouragement that he 
 would come to us." 
 
 After this there is the record of a report, which of 
 course proved to be quite unfounded, that he had at the 
 same time been endeavouring to get a settlement at the 
 other dissenting church at Nottingham. Then we have 
 this further entry: "January, 1729. The beginning of 
 January following, another day of prayer was kept to seek 
 to God for direction. Mr. Doderidge being disappointed 
 of his expectation of getting in at the High Pavement 
 Meeting, and we having had some encouragement to 
 think that upon further application to him we might 
 obtain him; in February, 1729, the congregation was 
 called together on this affaire and unanimously voted to 
 4 
 
34 
 
 KIBWORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 give him a second call, and messengers were sent forth- 
 with with a letter of invitation from the church, which 
 was by him received very kindly; in answer to which he 
 told us he would go to London to consult his friends there, 
 and upon his return would come to a determination. At 
 his retuine he came again over to Nottingham, and 
 preached with us, and gave us all the encouragement we 
 could expect, . . . but declined to give a final answer till 
 he had been again to his friends at Harbrow, and Kibboth ; 
 and then would send it ... in a post or two, which 
 accordingly he did, and therein was contained a positive 
 Denyall to our Repeated Invitations, and his full determin- 
 ation not to come to us, which was indeed very surprising." 
 
 The good scribe wrote this with much hot thought and 
 sore feeling. About a hundred years after, the explanation 
 came out in the published correspondence of Doddridge. 
 Letters to his friend Dr. Clark about the matter — showing 
 what a maze of delicate perplexities he had been in with 
 reference to these two churches, and how he had tried to 
 thread his way out of them honourably and kindly- — have 
 been copied out, and inserted over against this ancient 
 minute. While he was on a visit to the one place there had 
 been an offer secretly made to him from the other, in 
 which he had many warm friends; but he writes, "It is now 
 strongly suspected by some who are my very good friends, 
 that the overture from the other congregation was made 
 with a politic design of preventing my fixing with Mr. 
 Bateson, which would probably have drawn off some con- 
 siderable persons from them." Besides these, he declined 
 calls from Lincoln's Inn Fields, from Bradfield, from 
 Brockfield, and other places. 
 
 The late Mr. Jennings had hoped that Doddridge 
 would succeed him as the head of the academy. Mr. 
 Some, his fatherly colleague in the pastorate, knew this, 
 and set his heart on trying to bring together again this 
 scattered " school of the prophets," and then to get him 
 placed over it. He borrowed from Mr. Saunders of 
 Kettering, a long and elaborate paper sent to him by 
 Doddridge, giving an account of Mr. Jennings' scheme 
 
KIBWORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 35 
 
 of academic education. This paper he took up to town 
 for Dr. Watts to examine, at the same time asking his 
 opinion as to the most suitable tutor. When the Doctor 
 returned it with annotations, his judgment as to the tutor- 
 ship was thus expressed : — 
 
 " The diversity of genius, the variety of studies, the 
 several intellectual, moral, and pious accomplishments, 
 the constant daily and hourly labours necessary to fill 
 such a post can hardly be expected from any one person 
 living ! 
 
 " Yet if there be one person capable of such a post, 
 perhaps it is the man who has so admirably described 
 this scheme of education ; and as he seems to have sur- 
 veyed and engrossed the whole comprehensive view and 
 design, together with its constant difficulties and acci- 
 dental embarrassments, and yet supposed it to be practi- 
 cable, I am sure I can never think of any person more 
 likely to execute it than himself, although, if an elder 
 person joined with him, for the reputation of the matter 
 at least, it would be well." 
 
 On the ioth of April, 1729, the dissenting ministers 
 of the neighbourhood met at Lutterworth to spend a day 
 in humiliation and prayer for the revival of religion. On 
 that occasion Mr. Some preached an admirable sermon 
 on the words, " Be watchful, and strengthen the things 
 that remain, that are ready to die : for I have not found 
 thy works perfect before God " (Rev. iii. 2). In connec- 
 tion with this appeal, he advised the representatives of 
 the churches to attempt the revival of the lapsed academy, 
 and to place it under the care of Mr. Doddridge. Those 
 who, thanks to our friend Mr. Humphreys, only know 
 what he was at this time from his youthful letters, maybe 
 surprised to find that he, above all others, should have 
 been thought of as such a rex atque sacerJos, still more 
 surprised that this appointment was sanctioned with 
 earnest unanimity by his brother ministers; but such was 
 undoubtedly the case, and the fact must be regarded as a 
 high testimony to his worth. 
 
3*3 
 
 KIBWORTH HARCOURT. 
 
 At Midsummer, in obedience to the wish thus recorded, 
 he set up his academy at Harborough. Mrs. Jennings, 
 with her kind motherliness, her notable faculty of manage- 
 ment, and her remarkable gift of utterance, came to take 
 charge of the key-basket. The waggon brought her 
 furniture and her family. Students arrived, more were 
 coming, and everything seemed full of promise, when 
 in a few months, to the surprise of everybody, he had to 
 leave Harborough for Northampton. 
 
IV. 
 
 SETTLEMENT AT NORTHAMPTON. 
 
 " Oh the wonderfull goodnesse of the Lord to a poor unworthy 
 People ; though he cast them down, yet he hath not cast them away ; 
 Though he hath sorely Rebuk'd them, yet he hath not Destroy'd 
 them ; Though he hath written Bitter things against them, yet he 
 hath not written a Lo-ammi vpon them ; Though he hath put out a 
 Burning, shining Light, yet he hath not Remov'd the Candlestick. 
 . . . He hath return'd again to a poor Desolate Congregation, & 
 after some time provided another shining Light to be set vp in this 
 Candlestick. As may further be recorded in its place. Admired be 
 free grace." — The Axminster Ecci.esiastica. 
 
 THE Independent Church at Northampton had 
 quietly grown into existence out of peculiar circum- 
 stances. It has been said that it was founded by Mr. 
 Jeremiah Lewis, the ejected vicar of St. Giles, in the 
 same town, 1 a clergyman " greatly followed and univer- 
 sally respected, except by some Quakers." 2 But he 
 never preached after his ejection, and died at the end of 
 the same year. Probably the truth amounts to no more 
 than this : that when he was deprived of his benefice, 
 some of his old parishioners used to meet him after the 
 pattern of the conventicle spoken of in Holy Writ: "Then 
 
 1 There was a Mr. Jeremiah Lewis, vicar of All Saints, North- 
 ampton, in 1618. A sermon of his, preached in that year, is to be 
 found in the British Museum Library, press mark, 3! 8? - — - The 
 title is " The Doctrine of Thank fulnesse." The language in the 
 Preface shows that he had not been recently settled. Was this the 
 father of the vicar mentioned above ? 
 
 2 Old quotation made in a pamphlet on "The Parish Registers ot 
 Northampton," by the Rev. H. C. Elliot, curate of St. Giles, 1862. 
 
38 SETTLEMENT AT NORTHAMPTON. 
 
 they that feared the Lord spake often one to another : 
 and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of 
 remembrance was written before him for them that 
 feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name." 
 After his death this informal meeting of friends increased 
 into a congregation, and, without much thought about 
 church order, this became practically an Independent 
 church. The first recognised minister was Mr. Samuel 
 Blower, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, who had 
 been ejected from the living of Woodstock. After his 
 departure in 1694, Mr. Thomas Shepherd, M.A., formerly 
 a clergyman in Buckinghamshire, was elected to succeed 
 him. He remained but a short time, and was succeeded 
 by Mr. Hunt, son of the ejected rector of Sutton, in 
 Cambridgeshire. In 1709, on his removal to Newport 
 Pagnell, Mr. Tingey became the minister. Each of these 
 ministers was a man of great grace and educated power, 
 but the most remarkable man in the succession was 
 Thomas Shepherd, who was the writer of several works 
 worthy of remembrance, in one of which, entitled " Peni- 
 tential Cries," is a hymn so exquisite in its beautiful 
 spirituality, and which so fitly introduces a new era in the 
 life of Doddridge, that it shall here be given. The 
 subject is " Communion with God." 
 
 "Alas, my God, that we should be 
 Such strangers to each other I 
 Oh that as friends we might agree, 
 And walk and talk together ! 
 
 Thou knowest my soul does dearly love 
 
 The place of Thine abode : 
 No music drops so sweet a sound, 
 
 As these two words — ' My God.' 
 
 May I taste that communion, Lord, 
 
 Thy people have with Thee 1 
 Thy Spirit daily talks with them, 
 
 Oh let it talk with me ! 
 
 When wilt Thou come unto me, Lord? 
 
 Oh come, my Lord, most dear ! 
 Come near, come nearer, nearer still, 
 
 I'm well when Thou art near. 
 
SETTLEMENT AT NORTHAMPTON. 
 
 59 
 
 When wilt Thou come unto me, Lord ? 
 
 For till Thou dost appear, 
 I count each moment for a day, 
 
 Each minute for a year. 
 
 There's no such thing as pleasure here, 
 
 For Jesus is my all : 
 As Thou dost shine or disappear, 
 
 My pleasures rise or fall. 
 
 Come, spread Thy savour through my frame, 
 
 No sweetness is so sweet ; 
 Till I get up to sing Thy name 
 
 Where all Thy singers meet." 
 
 Though the singer had been gone for twenty years, the 
 influence of the life that sang to the Lord this noble song 
 seemed still to linger and breathe like an atmosphere in 
 the church at Northampton. 
 
 Mr. Doddridge appears to have taken turn with the 
 neighbouring ministers in preaching to supply the 
 vacancy caused by the removal of Mr. Tingey to Lon- 
 don. The consequence was a letter, dated September 28, 
 1729, conveying an application from the church for 
 a month's visit. This appears to have been declined. 
 Then there were repeated appeals to him, in which all 
 joined, asking him to become their minister. They would 
 do anything to win him ; would secure a house fit for his 
 academy, would largely furnish it, would handsomely 
 reimburse Mrs. Jennings for any consequent loss ; and 
 visits were paid to ministers " far and near " to secure 
 their sanction. Mr. Some, however, was so set against 
 the movement that he first got from Doddridge a pro- 
 mise to spend four years more at Harborough, if required ; 
 and next rode to Northampton for a conference with the 
 people, in the hope of getting them to waive their appli- 
 cation. But the good old man, when he knew the whole 
 case, took their side, and wrote to Doddridge : " The 
 hearts of the people are moved altogether as the trees of 
 a wood when bent by the wind. . . . The mention of 
 your name difluseih life and spirit through the whole 
 body. ... I find myself in the utmost perplexity, and 
 know not what to say or do. ... I apprehend that you 
 
40 SETTLEMENT AT NORTHAMPTON. 
 
 will wonder at what I write, and think I am like Saul 
 amongst the propliets, and that the same spirit which is 
 in the people begins to seize me also." His mind was in 
 a balancing state. Yet, upon the whole, it seemed right 
 to stay at Harborough, and right to visit his friends at 
 Northampton just once more to say so in the gentlest 
 way possible. With this view he went to them on the 
 first Sunday in November, and preached from the words, 
 " And when he would not be persuaded, they ceased, 
 saying, The will of the Lord be done." After the service, 
 when he had reached his lodging, 1 and was on the way to 
 his room, his thoughts were still "tumbled up and down." 
 He was sorry to say " No," yet felt convinced that he had 
 not strength for such a great charge, and therefore was 
 afraid to say " Yes." Just then the words fell upon his 
 ear, "As thy days, so thy strength shall be." They 
 sounded through an open door by which he was passing, 
 and were the words of a child just then reading to his 
 mother. Yet he felt inclined to think they were meant 
 by God especially for him. When, after that, unexpected 
 events seemed to clear his way to accepting the call to 
 Northampton, he did accept it, and notified his decision 
 in a letter to the church, dated December 6, 1729. 
 Mrs. Jennings was to have handsome compensation, was 
 invited to keep on in the new establishment the post she 
 had held in the old ; it was proposed that the academy- 
 house should still be the home of her family, and in all 
 things, as far as she was concerned, Mr. Doddridge acted 
 with delicate honour and kindness. However, for reasons 
 which we are not able clearly to make out, she refused 
 the proposal with fearful eloquence. At first, all his old 
 friends spoke about the step he had taken in terms of 
 bitter blame. In a few weeks the ministers, disappointed 
 as they had been by this change of charge so soon after 
 his academic settlement at Harborough, all came round 
 and joined in approval of it, and their leaders took part 
 in the solemnities of a recognition service held March 19, 
 1729-30. 
 
 1 At Mr. Shepherd's, Gold Street. 
 
SETTLEMENT AT NORTHAMPTON. 41 
 
 Two months after this he, for a wise man, did a 
 foolish thing. That is, on the 31st day of May, he made 
 an offer of marriage to Theodosia, this being the poetic 
 name for Jenny Jennings. " He was not so very old— 
 hardly thirty — would she have him?" The merry little 
 gentlewoman, then hardly sixteen, rather thought she 
 would not. He did not know, as we do, that she was 
 destined to be the mother of good old Dr. Aiken and 
 the venerable Mrs. Barbauld. The thought that he had 
 grieved the family, the wish to make up for this, the old 
 fond friendship for them all, mistaken for the moment, in 
 this instance, for the exquisite sentiment that first flowered 
 in Paradise — all these things together led to the crisis ; 
 but no heart was broken and no harm was done. 
 
 There is nothing more of this kind to tell. His settle- 
 ment at Northampton marked a new era in the life of 
 Doddridge. About this time his soul came of age. All 
 that was especially exalted or memorable in his ministry 
 now began. He devoted himself to the service of the 
 Saviour with such startled energy and intense concentra- 
 tion, was such a wonderful and manifold worker, and 
 seemed to live so many lives at a time, that from this 
 point, instead of telling one consecutive story, we can 
 only try to show what he was and what he did at the 
 same periods in different departments. 1 
 
 ' The accounts of the settlement at Northampton, given in long 
 passages from diaries and letters in Orion's " Life," have been so 
 often quoted and are of such easy reference, that it would be mere' 
 book-making to repeat them here. 
 
V. 
 
 HIS ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 
 
 " Stones towards the earth descend ; 
 Rivers to the ocean roll ; 
 Every motion has some end — 
 What is thine, beloved soul ? 
 
 ' Mine is, where my Saviour is ; 
 
 There with Him I hope to dwell; 
 Jesu is the central bliss ; 
 
 Love the force that doth impel.' 
 
 Truly thou hast answer'd right : 
 Now may heaven's attractive grace 
 
 Towards the source of thy delight 
 Speed along thy quickening pace." 
 
 John Lyron, F.R.S., 1723. 
 
 Ttf E question of the day, considered as a question 
 of theological science, was this : "What think ye 
 of Christ — whose son is He?" It was not only whis- 
 pered with reverence or thought of with prayer in the 
 hush of the holiest place; but, carried out of the proper 
 courts, was wrangled over in coffee-houses and other 
 places of popular resort. Waterland, writing on it in 
 1723, says, "It was spread abroad among all ranks and 
 degrees of men, and the Athanasian Creed became the 
 subject of common and ordinary conversation." The 
 answers to it had endless subtleties of difference, but all 
 ranged under three heads. The first was that of the 
 Trinitarian, who understood Christ's famous title, " the 
 Son of God," to mean, in the fullest sense of the word, 
 " God the Son." The second was that of the Arian, 
 
ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 43 
 
 whose distinctive tenet is sufficiently explained in Dr. J. 
 H. Newman's description of the doctrine held by the 
 ancient Arians — " the doctrine that our Lord, although 
 rightly called God, as being the God of the mediatorial 
 system and of the New Testament, is not the God of the 
 universe — that He is a Being separate from God, and, 
 although the sublimest of creatures, is a creature only " 
 The third answer was that of the Socinian, who declared 
 Christ to be only a man. As the century went on there 
 was a growing tendency to adopt this last, or the Soci- 
 nian hypothesis ; and this, not in the body of Dissenters 
 mainly, but equally in the Church of England, manifold 
 evidence of which may be seen in the controversies 
 occasioned by the Athanasian Creed, and in such letters 
 as those in Archdeacon Blackburne's papers preserved 
 in the Williams Library. Doddridge was such a repre- 
 sentative man that if we would fairly estimate his lifd we 
 must take this fact into account, and in some degree trace 
 out the history of the thought which led to it. What, 
 then, was the outline of this history? 
 
 One of the first causes of the power gained by Soci- 
 nianism was the habit, on the part of the later Puritan 
 divines, of over-definition when speaking about the unre- 
 vealed connections of gospel truth. Archbishop Usher 
 said as to the creation of the world, " The world was 
 finished on the third of September, on a Wednesday." 
 With similar precise explanation and unhesitating confi- 
 dence would some leaders pronounce upon " the deep 
 tilings of God," lay down the law about the Trinity, and 
 go on arguing until, if they proved anything, they proved 
 the existence of three Gods. By a natural reaction this 
 tempted many of the rising generation to slight the im- 
 portance of a definite Christian (kith. 
 
 Another thing, occasioning the growth of that which 
 for the sake of convenience we will now call Unitarianism, 
 was the denunciatory spirit of its opponents. The ex- 
 treme of this was seen in 1698, when, principally through 
 the zeal of the dissenting ministers and congregations, 
 an Act was passed prohibiting all books containing 
 
44 ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 
 
 assaults on the doctrine of the Trinity, or any other funda- 
 mental article of faith. "Any person found guilty of 
 writing, printing, publishing, or circulating such books, 
 or of preaching such sentiments, was condemned to lose 
 nearly all the privileges of citizenship : he could neither 
 sue nor be sued, and neither bequeath nor receive pro- 
 perty." It is no wonder that those who are the succes- 
 sors of these ministers and congregations lineally, should 
 have ceased to be so doctrinally. The like temper of 
 intolerance, though without the arm of civil force to help 
 it, was also shown in certain memorable conferences held 
 within the Nonconformist body. The churches at 
 Exeter, alarmed by the spread of false doctrine, sent to 
 their brethren in London for advice as to the best way 
 to check it. There was a meeting of about a hun- 
 dred and fifty ministers at Salters' Hall, on February 
 19, 1 7 18-19, to consider this message, when it was 
 ruled by a majority of four that each minister should 
 then and there subscribe to a statement of belief in the 
 doctrine of the Trinity. Those who dissented did so 
 strongly 5 some of them being persons whose loyalty to 
 Christ was unquestionable, but who, out of that very 
 loyalty, as they thought, refused to take orders respecting 
 Divine things from any human throne, or to submit to any 
 terms of subscription as to their faith in Christ which 
 were not prescribed by Christ Himself. Two assemblies 
 now met. There was a long storm of anger. A contro- 
 versy began, which was so conducted that zeal for truth 
 was made to look like tyranny over opinion, and faith 
 seemed to be at war with love. Non-subscribers were 
 bitterly denounced, and placed in outlawry. Looking at 
 surfaces, not knowing much about the question beneath, 
 many of the truest Nonconformist ladies and gentlemen 
 took their side, only meaning by this to take the side of 
 liberty and charity ; when these things were talked over 
 in the family circle it is easy to see what side the younger 
 people would be likely to take, and how, through all these 
 graceless violences, what is called Unitarianism became a 
 more pronounced and influential theory. 
 
ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 45 
 
 Another cause of this ascendency was the rise of a 
 principle, the prevalence of which, at the beginning of 
 the eighteenth century, got for it the title of " Saeculum 
 Rationalisticum " — the age of reasonableness. Very much 
 from the influence of writings like those of Locke and 
 Clarke, it gradually became the fashion to think that no 
 doctrine should be accepted as true unless its reasonable- 
 ness could be made clear by our own independent re- 
 search, or by the exercise of a verifying faculty within us ; 
 and that, however apparently supported by historical 
 proof, no writings should be held as divine without such 
 internal credibility. Let this principle rule : insist that 
 internal evidence, consisting in what appears to us to be 
 the internal reasonableness of that which claims credence, 
 should be looked at first, and that this should determine 
 the value of external evidence; then in this world of 
 souls disordered by the fall, the result will probably be 
 the rejection, one by one, of all the doctrines of revela- 
 tion, beginning with the doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 It is likely that Unitarianism made all the more way 
 with those who were just forming their opinions through 
 fixing the stigma of irrationality upon the orthodox. 
 This was a little unfair. For unbelievers in the Bible to 
 brand believers in it as irrati >nal would not have been so 
 very strange ; but in the days we speak of, both parties 
 in the controversy agreed to make the Bible their common 
 standard of appeal. Indeed, there could be no argu- 
 ment about this question with persons who rejected the 
 Bible, any more than there could be an argument about 
 a question of arithmetic with a person who rejected the 
 multiplication table. The strange thing was that hetero- 
 dox biblicists called the orthodox biblicists irrational. 
 My friend there, who owns a Creator, yet believes in the 
 development theory of creation, and who thinks that the 
 Book of Genesis gives a poetical account of it, should be 
 the last person in the world to call me a lunatic because 
 I think that the oneness of life at its highest is not 
 modally the same as the oneness of life at its lowest, and 
 because I go on to accept without surprise, as a doctrine of 
 
46 ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 
 
 pure revelation, the doctrine that what is called the Trinity 
 is but the highest mode of that oneness. Beginning at a 
 point of life so small that no magnifying glass can show it, 
 as I go up the scale of being, I find that the individual, 
 though still one, is more and more complex in the mode 
 of its oneness, until I reach as far as man ; then, in the 
 one man, there is a certain threeness, called body, soul, 
 and spirit Beyond this I know nothing but what is told 
 me. There is an infinity upwards ; and when from the 
 One who dwells " in the light which no man can approach 
 unto, whom no man can see," a well-authenticated mes- 
 sage comes telling me of the "Three that bear record 
 in heaven," — in this I rest and make no further inquiry. 
 What can there be irrational in this ? It seems to me 
 that, although I could not have found out this doctrine 
 by myself, it is in perfect keeping with all I knew before. 
 True, it is mysterious, but it would be irrational to expect 
 the nature of God to be otherwise. If, as Professor Tyndall 
 tells me, there are things even in my own nature that are 
 absolutely unthinkable — " the passage from mind to 
 matter," for instance — surely it would be foolish to reject 
 a thing told me by God about God because it is unthink- 
 able ! A person who lived in the age of Doddridge, at 
 any rate a Dissenter, who thought in this way, found that 
 his brethren who thought otherwise called themselves in 
 distinction from him, "rational Dissenters;" and that, 
 whether directly expressed or not, this was the distinction 
 always made. With whatever air of candour, or grace of 
 courtesy, any indefinite young man is assured that con- 
 tempt is felt for his understanding because he still holds 
 certain tenets held by the old-fashioned folks with whom 
 he has been brought up, he will try not to hold them any 
 longer, and will think it not worth while to be a martyr 
 without absolute necessity. In the midst of all these co- 
 incident influences working towards Unitarian conclu- 
 sions, and with a nature peculiarly sensible to them all, 
 what was the answer of Doddridge to the question of the 
 day ? Mr. Humphreys assures us that of the three 
 answers his would probably have been the intermediate 
 
ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. AJ 
 
 one. From his letters, selected and annotated by that 
 worthy gentleman, many persons have been disposed to 
 accept that assurance. 1 What does Doddridge himself 
 say ? To know this, of course the first thing is to ascer- 
 tain what he says in his two declarations of faith given — 
 one when he settled at Kibworth, the other when he 
 setded at Northampton — and given for the very purpose 
 of furnishing information on this and kindred particulars. 
 It is remarkable that both Mr. Orton and Mr. Humphreys 
 are absolutely silent about these, and our knowledge of 
 them is from other sources. 
 
 The Kibworth declaration, made in 1722, was found 
 and transcribed from Doddridge's shorthand in 1874 by 
 the Rev. Josiah Bull, M.A. Although it bears no indi- 
 cation of date or place of use, there can be no doubt that 
 it was used on the occasion stated. His only other pas- 
 toral charge was the one he afterwards accepted at 
 Northampton, and the corresponding statement then 
 made was altogether different in plan and style. From 
 the earlier one we extract and publish, for the first time, 
 the following outline of his faith in the Trinity : 
 
 " Though the light of nature and the express declara- 
 tions of Scripture join in assuring me that there is but one 
 God, I read in the Sacred Oracles that there are Three 
 that bear record in heaven — the Father, the Word, and 
 the Holy Spirit. The Father is universally described as 
 the object of our worship. Of the Son it is said, ' Thy 
 throne, O God, is for ever and ever,' ' Let all the angels 
 of God worship him ;' and it is appointed, 1 that all men 
 should honour the Son even as they honour the Father.' 
 Those who attempt to impose upon the Spirit are said 
 1 to lie unto God ; ' and yet our Lord has taught us to 
 conceive of Him as distinguished from the Father and 
 Himself, when He teaches the disciples to baptize in the 
 name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I 
 cannot, therefore, but conceive of them as in some 
 respects distinct from each other ; and yet, though there 
 1 " Correspondence," vol. v. p. 14. 
 
48 ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 
 
 are Three that bear record in heaven, I am constrained to 
 believe that they are but one God. I must own that this 
 appears to me a great mystery, but thus the Word of God 
 seems to me to teach us of Himself; and in all my con- 
 ceptions and converse about it I would keep as close as 
 possible to the words of Scripture, being very suspicious 
 of any others man can invent, lest they should convey 
 some other idea than they ought, and than the words of 
 Scripture support. God best knows His own nature, and 
 I would be thankful for what He has told me of it, con- 
 tenting myself with it, nor going with a further curiosity 
 into what He sees proper to conceal, or than He hints in 
 general, without a particular explanation." 1 
 
 The Northampton confession, made in 1730, records 
 his return to the same standard after a certain wavering, 
 which he says was sometimes felt in the course of his life 
 in Leicestershire. In this, just after he had been speaking 
 of Christ's human nature, he says : 
 
 " I believe that He is possessed, not only of this 
 human and created nature in which He conversed 
 amongst the children of men, but that He is also, in a 
 sense common to no other, the brightness of the Father's 
 glory, and the express image of His Person; and so par- 
 takes of all Divine attributes and perfections as to be 
 really one with the Father, and, Himself, God over all, 
 blessed for evermore. 
 
 " I believe that the sacred Spirit, who is the grand 
 agent in the Redeemer's kingdom, is a Divine Person, 
 united with the Father and the Son in adorable and 
 incomprehensible manner ; and thus I learn and firmly 
 believe the great doctrine of a Trinity of Persons in the 
 unity of the Godhead : an awful mystery, which, being 
 matter of pure revelation, I apprehend I should only 
 obscure by attempting to explain it." * 
 
 ' MS. in possession of the Rev. Dr. Newth. 
 
 2 Confession in Doddridge's handwriting, transcribed by Mr. 
 Taylor from the original copy in possession of Mr. Wilkins, llamp- 
 stead. It is given in extettsohy Dr. VVaddington in " History, 1700- 
 1S00," p. 294. 
 
ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 49 
 
 Turn to the "Expositor," which is specially the printed 
 manifesto of his faith. We find that in his remarks on 
 the opening paragraph of St. John's Gospel, after having 
 elaborately refuted the Arian interpretation of it, he adds, 
 " I am deeply sensible of the sublime and mysterious 
 nature of the doctrine of Christ's deity as here declared, 
 but it would be quite foreign to my purpose to enter into 
 a large discussion of that great foundation of our faith. 
 ... It was, however, matter of conscience with me, on 
 the one hand, thus strongly to declare my belief of it; and 
 on the other, to leave it as far as I could in the simplicity 
 of scriptural expressions." After a critical examination 
 of the Greek words in Rom. ix. 5, " Of whom as con- 
 cerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God 
 blessed for ever," he says, " I must paraphrase and im- 
 prove this memorable text as a proof" of Christ's proper 
 deity, which I think the opposers of that doctrine have 
 never been able, nor will ever be able, to answer." On 
 the words in Col. ii. 9, "In him dwellcth all the ful- 
 ness of the Godhead bodily," he says, " It is plain that 
 'the Godhead' is an anglicism equivalent to Deity. 
 I cannot think that these wonderful words are intended 
 merely to signify that God hath lodged in the hands of 
 Christ a fulness of gifts to be conferred upon men, as 
 if the passage were merely parallel to Ephes. iii. 19, and 
 John i. 16, 17, as Mr. Pierce explains it ; while Socinus 
 sinks it yet lower, as if it only referred to His complete 
 knowledge of the Divine will. I assuredly believe that, 
 as it contains an evident allusion to the Shekinah in 
 which God dwelt, so it ultimately refers to the adorable 
 mystery of the union of the Divine and human natures in 
 the Person of the glorious Emmanuel, w hich makes Him 
 such an object of our love and confidence, as the most 
 exalted creature with the most glorious endowments 
 could never be." On 1 John v. 20, " This is the true 
 God, and eternal life," he says, "It is an argument for the 
 Deity of Christ, which almost all those who have wrote 
 in its defence have urged ; and which, I think, none who 
 have opposed it have so much as appeared to answer." 
 5 
 
50 ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 
 
 Unless language is to be regarded as an instrument for 
 the concealment of thought, the language of Doddridge 
 now quoted expresses his entire acceptance of all we 
 mean by the doctrine of the Trinity; but unhappily, when 
 he came to discuss the subject in his lectures, he con- 
 sidered himself bound to put his thoughts upon it in the 
 scholastic and technical form into which he had cast his 
 thoughts on other Christian doctrines. He therefore 
 suggested a definition which we must regard as utterly 
 unsatisfactory. While a man may trust his very life to 
 a certain fact, he may break down in attempting to give 
 the philosophy of it. He may live and thrive on food, 
 yet not be able to define its chemical constituents. So 
 Doddridge, as we have seen, held the doctrine that is 
 now in our thoughts; but contrary to his own wise dictum 
 just read, he tried to explain it, and in Lecture clxi., 
 definition 79, he says: "The word ' person ' commonly 
 signifies one intelligent, voluntary agent, or conscious 
 being, and this we choose to call the philosophical sense 
 of the word ; but, in a political sense, it may express the 
 different relations supported by the same philosophical 
 person — i.e., the same man may be father, husband, 
 son, etc., or the same prince, King of Great Britain, 
 Duke of Brunswick, and Treasurer of the Empire." 
 " Corollary : one philosophical person may sustain a 
 great number of persons in the political, or, as some 
 call it, the modal sense of the word." Proposition 128 : 
 " God is so united to the derived nature of Christ, and does 
 so dwell in it, that, by virtue of that union, Christ may 
 properly be called God ; and such regards may become 
 due to Him as are not due to any created nature, be it in 
 itself ever so excellent." 1 
 
 Let the wisest man try to draw a circle round infinite 
 space — try to define the indefinable, and to make the 
 Infinite definite ; let him try to put "the unthinkable" 
 into words ; let him try to explain the cause of the eternal 
 Cause ; let him take pen and ink, and try to cypher out 
 
 1 "Miscellaneous Works," p. 427. 
 
ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 5 1 
 
 the great problem of the universe, treating the mystery of 
 the Godhead as a question of mathematics — and he is 
 sure to fail. All definitions come short of the glory of 
 God. One is as good as another, and, we are almost 
 ready to say, one is as bad as another. We have no 
 biblical sanction for that offered by Doddridge, nor for 
 any other; but we know that, practically, all that he 
 meant by it amounts to this, that while he accepted in 
 good faith all that the Bible has said — worshipping the 
 Father as God, also the Son, also the Holy Ghost — he, 
 like the rest of us, held that what are called the Three 
 Persons of the Godhead are not Three Individuals, and 
 that the thought of the Three should never confuse the 
 steady presence of the recollection that "the Lord our 
 God is one Lord." 
 
 Readers of his earlier letters who wish to know his 
 true sentiments on the present question must not be 
 misled by his many playful flings at a party called " the 
 Orthodox." There has been a change in the conventional 
 meaning of this word in the course of its history. At 
 that period it had no exclusive reference to any particular 
 creed as to the Person of our Lord, but was the name 
 commonly given to the good people who thought they 
 had adopted such views as Dr. Grisp advocated, the recent 
 re-publication of which had made a great stir in their 
 little world. They held a certain fatalism, meaning it for 
 Calvinism, took alarm at the very whisper of the phrase 
 "good works," and insisted that the gospel should be 
 preached in such a cautious and guarded way that no 
 improper persons would be likely to be admitted into 
 heaven by mistake. These doctrinists were such 
 " troublers of Israel," were so condemnatory of all other 
 Christians, and were so hard and dogmatic, that no one 
 can wonder at the resentment they provoked. Mr. Hunt, 
 already mentioned, in his tractate called "Infant's Faith," 
 said : " Since the providence of God hath cast my lot at 
 Northampton, it hath no little concerned me to see how 
 generally the country is infected, not only with Anabap- 
 tism, but also with those many and gross errors which 
 
52 ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 
 
 commonly that doctrine is an inlet into ; and especially 
 with that soul-damning doctrine of Free-will." This was 
 what would be considered an orthodox speech A few 
 members of the church would still speak in the same 
 style. Writing before he accepted the pastorate, he said, 
 " I have lately preached twice at Northampton, and have 
 the character of a very orthodox divine ; but to my great 
 mortification I hear from another quarter that my sermons 
 are all— Do, do, do." Some years later, writing from 
 Northampton to his w'ife, then from home, he said, " I 
 had several orthodox spies to hear me this morning, and 
 they observed with great amazement that I urged my 
 hearers to get an interest in Christ. This, it seems, is 
 Arminianism." These, out of many similar passages that 
 might be cited, will help to show that he by the term 
 orthodox did not mean Trinitarian. 
 
 If we would be fair to him, we must also reject the old 
 slander that many of his students became Arian or Uni- 
 tarian owing to his influence. They were only carried 
 away by a mighty tidal wave of opinion, and he was 
 grieved as he saw them go. " I was last night," said he 
 on one occasion, " expounding the First of John in the 
 family, and insisting on the importance of remembering 
 and maintaining the Deity and satisfaction of Christ, 
 when some of our good preaching seniors were pleased 
 to express their contempt of what they heard by laughing 
 and almost making mouths. You will probably guess at 
 the persons, yet they are those whom some of our wise 
 people would contrive to fix where Mr. Some and Mr. 
 Norris were." 1 
 
 No doubt there was an impression on some of his 
 contemporaries who belonged to the new school of theo- 
 logy, that he was more in sympathy with them than he 
 cared to avow. This impression was partly caused by 
 the dark sayings just now quoted from his Divinity 
 Lectures, and which were supposed to hold certain 
 esoteric thoughts at variance with the common creed. 
 
 1 Unpublished letter quoted by Dr. Stoughton. 
 
ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 53 
 
 It was partly caused by his well-known objection to the 
 demand of subscription to human formularies of faith, 
 like the demand made at the Salters' Hall conference ; 
 which objection some unbelievers in the Deity of Jesus 
 supposed in some degree to spring, as their own did, 
 from a doctrinal root. It was further deepened by the 
 knowledge of his unquestionable candour, which, as all 
 the Unitarian literature of the last century will show, was 
 understood to be only another name for Unitarianism. 
 Speaking of this fancy on the part of these friends, he 
 says : " Perhaps three causes have concurred to lead 
 them into that apprehension. A general conceit that 
 their notions are so self-evident that none but an ex- 
 tremely weak or ignorant man (which they pay me the 
 compliment of supposing that I am not, though they 
 afterwards fully balance the account) can possibly be ofc 
 a different opinion. Some hints which I may perhaps 
 have dropped between the years 1723 and 1730, or there- 
 abouts, when I was really more inclined to some of their 
 sentiments than I am now; and — my since hearing them 
 assert some of them in a mixed company, when I have 
 not been in a humour to dispute." 1 
 
 Doddridge, in his early days, was not always free from 
 the chill that comes from the near presence of a spiritual 
 iceberg. He was not naturally disposed to dwell on the 
 mysteries of the Godhead. As a divine, he had not 
 " completed his creed." He would always speak to con- 
 troversial opponents what he deemed to be the truth, 
 but he was disposed to speak the very pleasantest truth 
 he could, and this made him sometimes seem politely 
 indecisive. But when we have collected his many 
 scattered sentences on the subject in dispute, we have no 
 hesitation in saying that his own faith answered to that 
 which has been thus summed up in the declaration of a 
 modern writer : — 
 
 " My heart demands the Trinity as much as my reason. 
 I want to be sure that God cares for us, that God is our 
 
 1 " Life," by Orton, p. 155. Leeds edit. 
 
54 ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF THE DAY. 
 
 Father, that God has interfered, stooped, sacrificed Him- 
 self for us. I do not want merely to love Christ— a 
 Christ, some creation or emanation of God's, whose will 
 and character, for aught I know, may be different from 
 God's. I want to love and honour the abysmal God 
 Himself, and none other will satisfy me. No puzzling 
 texts shall rob me of this rest to my heart, that Christ is 
 the exact counterpart of Him in whom we live and move 
 and have our being. I say boldly, if the doctrine of the 
 Trinity be not in the Bible it ought to be, for the whole 
 spiritual naticre of man cries out for it." 1 
 
 He was strong in the faith that cries at the feet of 
 Jesus, " My Lord and my God " — not the less strong 
 because he expressed his opinion with spiritual temper- 
 ance and courtly gentleness ; not the less so because he 
 would take no part, on one side or the other, in the 
 wrangle between flippant critics of the great " I Am ; " 
 not the less so because of his joyful readiness to think 
 that some persons who ranked as humanitarians were so 
 in theory only; that there was a misunderstanding ot 
 terms ; that they were trusting in the right Saviour, and 
 that in His sight what they called admiration was adora- 
 tion. It was stronger and bolder every year he lived ; 
 and when a deadly frost had fallen on the spirit of the 
 ministers, old and young, his spirit was kept alive, and 
 the fire within him made more glorious, by perpetual 
 communion with God ; and if no controversialist on the 
 subject, as perhaps with such surroundings he ought to 
 have been, his life was a practical protest against the 
 Arianism of the day, and a constant prayer for the 
 shedding down of a Divine unction on all churches. 
 
 * Charles Kingsley, "Letters, and Memories of his Life." 
 
VI. 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 " They are together in the church of God, and in the Supper of 
 the Lord ; they share with one another their grievances, their per- 
 secutions, and their joys ; neither hides anything from the other ; 
 neither avoids the other ; the sick are visited by them with pleasure, 
 and the needy supported ; psalms and hymns resound between them, 
 and they mutually strive who shall best praise their God. Christ is 
 delighted to see and hear things like these ; He sends His peace on 
 such as these ; where two are, there is He, and where He is, evil 
 comes not."— Tertullian, "Ad Uxorem" lib. xi. 17. 
 
 AT last he really did meet with the lady of his dreams, 
 and there was a marriage made in heaven. When 
 visiting at Worcester in the summer of 1730, he was intro- 
 duced to " Cordelia," that is, to Mistress Mercy Maris. 
 The fancy name was soon dropped, for there was nothing 
 so musical as Mercy. She was of gentle genealogy, an 
 orphan, and twenty-two. In describing her, Mr. Hum- 
 phreys puts on his spectacles, and writes out a careful 
 inventory of properties, in which we find the following 
 items : — stature, " rather tall ; " outline, " free and flow- 
 ing;" eyes, "black;" hair, the same; complexion, 
 " with the ardent tint, which so often mantles in the 
 cheeks of a brunette." As to education, she knew very 
 little about the " ologies ; " had read but very little 
 "profane literature ;" was not always quite certain of her 
 English, and, as we can bear witness, often had to try 
 such spellings as " pierce and peirce, believe and beleive," 
 on the back of an old letter, to see which looked safest, 
 before beginning her answers to Mr. Doddridge. We 
 
56 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 have even yet more interesting information than this. 
 " The Lord hath gifted and graced many women above 
 men, especially in the holy affections." 1 It was so in 
 this instance. The two persons became mutually de- 
 voted. They had "like precious faith;" were "heirs 
 together of the grace of life ; " between their spit its there 
 was now a most happy coalescence, and one life was a 
 blessing to the other until the stroke fell that dissolves 
 all human ties. They were married on the 22nd 
 of December, from the house of the lady's uncle and 
 guardian, Ebenezer Hankin, Esq., Upton-on-Severn. 
 
 The wedding being over, we must be indulged in a few 
 remarks, prosaic and prudential, which, perhaps, ought 
 to have been thought of before. The husband only had 
 jQ"]o for his income ; the wife brought only ^400 for the 
 capital of her dowry. It is true that he had certain per- 
 quisites in addition, but they made only a small and 
 fluctuating annual amount. He was to inherit certain 
 modest estates, but not yet. There were certain pay- 
 ments from each of the students, such as ^16 per annum 
 board, and £4 for teaching, 2 but there could have been 
 only a dim prospect of wealth from that quarter. " Tatters 
 for two," Douglas Jerrold informs us, may easily be found, 
 but competency for a married lady and gentleman is 
 quite another affair. The question arises, how did the 
 young couple mean to live ? 
 
 In studying the social history of England in the first 
 half of the last century, we are struck with the smallness 
 of most clerical stipends. It would be easy to multiply 
 instances. When Goldsmith made the vicar of Wake- 
 field tell us that the profits of his living in his golden 
 days " amounted to about thirty-five pounds a year," 
 
 1 Mr. Timothy Rogers, author of a work on " Melancholy," 1706. 
 
 2 "Ki| ■pirn's Register," vol. iv.p. 904. " Letter from Dr. Doddridge 
 on the terms of his Academy in 1 739." He adds to the above, 
 "they wash their linen abroad, and find candles." They also had 
 to pay one guinea for a study, and another guinea for sheets, etc.; in 
 the second year they began to pay an annual guinea to the Library, 
 and another towards the apparatus, these two things being the pro- 
 perty of the public. 
 
MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 57 
 
 and that he afterwards accepted "a small cure of fifteen 
 pounds a year," he only held the mirror up to life, and 
 no one thought it an unlikely story. Near Hinckley, and 
 doubtless well known to Mr. Jennings, lived Mr. John Bold, 
 curate of Stoney Stanton, in every respect a learned 
 Christian gentleman, who had thirty pounds a year for 
 his curacy, and ten for being master of a school, out of 
 which pittance he always saved ten pounds for charity. 
 Doddridge, writing to Lady Russell in 1727, said, "Mr. 
 Hardy, the celebrated dissenting minister of Nottingham, 
 has conformed ! It is, indeed, the most considerable 
 conquest the Establishment has made for several years." 
 Mr. Hardy was presented to Amerley in Leicestershire, 
 a living of about thirty pounds a year. Multitudes would 
 have regarded a living of fifty pounds as valuable church 
 preferment. Swift assures us that there were at that 
 time ten Bishoprics in England whose incomes did not 
 average six hundred a year. 1 
 
 Most likely the ministers who were outside the Estab- 
 lishment were worse off than their brethren inside it. The 
 yearly salary of even Dr. Watts never rose to more than 
 one hundred pounds. Surely these good men had need 
 of consolations like those suggested by Master Trapp. 
 "Shall the great Housekeeper of the world water His 
 flowers, prune His plants, fodder His cattle, and not feed 
 His children? Never think it." 2 Straitened, however, as 
 they sometimes were, when we understand the difference 
 between their time and ours in the value of money and 
 the cost of life, we find that they were not so poor as they 
 seemed to be. They got much out of little. " Our sub- 
 scriptions alone cannot amount to above twenty-six 
 pounds a year, and though a single man may subsist 
 tolerably well upon that, if he manage with prudence and 
 frugality, yet you must be aware, sir, that he can afford to 
 lay out but little in books or in the relief of the poor of 
 
 1 See for an account of the incomes of the clergy, Dean Swift's 
 "Considerations upon two Hills sent down from the House of Lords 
 to the House of Commons of Ireland, 1732." 
 
 2 Trapp on Matthew v. 26. 
 
5S 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 the congregation." So wrote Doddridge from Kibworth 
 to a friend in London, in 1726. " It should be remem- 
 bered," a right reverend essayist reminds us, " that 
 luxury is a relative word ; that, since the days of Berridge 
 and Walker " — we might insert, still more so in the days of 
 Doddridge— "the entire level of our English way of living 
 has been very materially raised ; and that with the increased 
 wealth of the whole nation the incomes of the clergy, both 
 from public and private sources, have increased in like 
 ratio." 1 
 
 By some strange chance, as it seems, the housekeeping 
 books of Mr. and Mrs. Doddridge have been preserved, 
 affording curious illustrations of what has now been said. 
 In the first year of their married life, we find entries like 
 these: " One quarter's rental, £2 10s.; for two bedsteads, 
 14s. ; easy chair, 6s." From March, 1731, to December, 
 1732, they paid £16 for rent and taxes; for servants' 
 wages, £6 10s. 6d. ; and for furniture, £11 5s. 7d. 
 Further on, Mrs. Doddridge spent in one year for " pin 
 money," the sum of 6s. id. ; for one quarter's schooling 
 for her child, 3s. 6d. About the year 1740 they had to 
 remove to a large house which has since been divided 
 into four tenements, and for this they paid £40 rent. 
 In 1742 they kept seven servants, whose wages sepa- 
 rately set down amounted altogether to ^20. The 
 average price of mutton was 2^d. a pound ; beef 
 cost a fraction more. In these faithful pages we find, 
 inter alia, mention made of " pipes and tobacco." If an 
 angel had been found out in such indulgence, some good 
 people would have hardly thought it more surprising; 
 but without entering into controversy about things beyond 
 us, we have only to say that the annual cost of this 
 etherialism was not excessive. Altogether, life did not 
 seem to be so very difficult. There were as yet no " sea- 
 side places" discovered, tempting to a costly visit every 
 year. The furniture was not gorgeous. There were no 
 
 '"Contemporary," vol. ii. p. 569. Paper signed "Anthony 
 Thorold," now Bishop of Rochester. 
 
MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 50 
 
 ornaments in the room save six or seven family portraits 
 on the panelled wall, and the framed family arms with the 
 motto, " Dum vivimus vivamus." There were no carpets, 
 for even in the houses of the nobility, these were only laid 
 down on state occasions. There was next to no know- 
 ledge of that which makes the primary embarrassment of 
 modern times — the strain to keep up appearances. In 
 the manse at Northampton there was all the happiness 
 that comes of " plain living and high living ; of many 
 cheap and simple graces — means of much cheerful 
 hospitality, and power to reserve a certain proportion of 
 income, ultimately fixed at " one-tenth of what was 
 ordinary" and "one-eighth of what was extra-ordinary," 
 for the purpose of giving away. 
 
 One morning in October, 1733, Mr. and Mrs. Nettle- 
 ton — the latter, it will be remembered, was Doddridge's 
 sister — were startled by the receipt of a letter, which, un- 
 less forged, was written to them by an infant only six 
 weeks old. The design of the writer was to notify the 
 event of her arrival into this planet, and to tell her expe- 
 rience of life. This she illustrated by quotations from 
 Plutarch " L)e Tranquillitate Animae,'' and a fragment of 
 Menander preserved by that writer, also by a reference 
 to Juvenal, and a criticism on some of Tully's words in 
 his " De Senectute." She boasted of " knowing Greek 
 and Latin quite as well as English." This was " Tetsey 
 Doddridge." It seems, that from the very first, she was 
 not like any ordinary infant, without character or prin- 
 ciples, and day by day the little one grew into a more 
 beautiful wonder. How, when asked why everybody 
 loved her, she would say "because she loved every- 
 body ; " how she tried to teach the little dog his cate- 
 chism ; how she failed j how he had not a word to say for 
 himself in answer to her withering words, " You, Dr. 
 Doddridge's dog, and not know who made you ! " — all 
 these are nursery stories now, and unbelieving pilgrims, 
 in confirmation of their faith, are still shown the brass 
 collar once worn by Tetsey's dog. In the middle of 
 June, 1736, the child so much beloved began to sicken, 
 
Go 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 and early in the following October, a little grave had to 
 be dug out in the rain : 
 
 "The tender nest for tiny head 
 With every softness furnished " 
 
 had to be exchanged for the cold, hard coffin; and 
 placing his paper on the coffin lid, the father wrote an 
 incomparable discourse on the words, " Is it well with 
 thee? is it well with thine husband? is it well with the 
 child?" (2 Kings iv. 25, 26). It would be difficult to 
 find in all the literature of sanctified sorrow, sentences 
 more pathetic and inspiring than those called forth by 
 this affliction, and written in his diary. 
 
 It has been well said that in some devotional writers 
 we trace but little communion with the joy, sorrow, and 
 beauty of this earth — "glad, sad, and sweet " — so that we 
 sometimes wonder if they have known any enjoyments, 
 pangs, or conflicts, but such as belong to the life that is 
 in God. We long for a touch of nature making them 
 our kin. "There is something deeply consoling in a 
 betrayal of personal feeling, as when Doddridge laments 
 for his little daughter. ' This day my heart hath been 
 almost torn in pieces by sorrow, yet sorrow so softened and 
 sweetened, that I number it among the best days of my 
 life. Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd ? God 
 knows I am not angry, but sorrmvful He surely al/oics vie 
 to be. Lord give unto me a holy acquiescence of soul 
 in Thee, and now my gourd is withered shelter me under 
 the shadow of Thy wings.' Here we see the man 
 (most a saint in being most a man) agonized like his 
 Master, and like Him strengthened from on high, but by 
 one greater than the angel.'' 1 Hi§ wife shared the same 
 supports. "She bore the affliction," he said, "in the most 
 glorious manner, and discovered more wisdom, piety, and 
 strength of spirit than I had ever in six years had an 
 opportunity of observing before." 
 
 Before his eldest born was taken two other daughters 
 
 ' "The Tatience of Hope," p. 116. 
 
MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 Gi 
 
 made their appearance, Polly and Mercy. " Mercy," wrote 
 Lord Lyttleton to him, some years after, " Mercy, indeed ! 
 Mercy on us ! It is a barbarous thing for you Dissenters 
 to impose such names on your innocent babes ! . . . Fie 
 upon you ! I am ashamed that a man of your classical 
 taste should be such a Goth. If there were no other 
 reasons for your quitting the Dissenters and coming over 
 to our church, but to save any future child from the 
 horrible danger of being so christened, I would have you 
 to do it without delay." After Mercy came a son, and 
 Anna Cecilia was born in the following July. As they 
 got older, the diminutive damsels in mob-caps and tip- 
 pets were the delight of his soul, and were the most 
 remarkable children in the world, the only exception 
 being his son Philly. The way that child repeated some 
 of Dr. ^ atts's verses was wonderful. " He will be a 
 fine scholar," said he, and even the great Dr. Warburton 
 addressed him as " my learned friend." His letters to 
 the children, and words about them in his diary, show 
 how constantly and tenderly they were prayed for. He 
 would also pray with them at certain set times, and at 
 other times, when he could be caught, was ready for a 
 frolic, and might even be coaxed into grinding a little 
 poetry for their edification. Sometimes, and especially 
 when the small-pox was raging in the town, they and their 
 mother often found a happy retreat a mile away, at 
 Delapre, a stately old mansion once an abbey. There 
 King Edward the First passed a night when on his way 
 to bury his dear queen, who had died through sucking 
 out the poison that had been shot into him by an arrow. 
 You could see through an opening in the trees, at the 
 corner of the park, her Gothic monument, raised over 
 the spot where her coffin had rested, and since called 
 "Queen's Cross." The rooks made a cheerful caw in 
 the air, groups and files of massive oaks made tents of 
 shade on the sunny grass, fallow deer came up in twos 
 and threes, peeped at them shyly, then scampered away 
 lightly as live shadows ; and they always thought the 
 place was a little heaven below. " My country seat " was 
 
62 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 the name given to it by Doddridge. It was in reality the 
 seat of the Collyer family, about whom he wrote, " I seem, 
 indeed, to have found a tender mother and four of the 
 most affectionate sisters a man could have." 
 
 There was one month in the year — one in the two of 
 the academic recesses — when the busy man himself 
 indulged in a holiday. He would in some years ride to 
 London in that month, sending to Mercy the story of 
 his adventures, stage by stage of the way. Arrived at the 
 great city he would write, sometimes "while the post- 
 man waited," to tell her from time to time how 
 "pure well" he was, and what interesting things he 
 heard and saw ; would tell her about meeting Mr. Savage, 
 the poet, at Mr. Calamy's house ; would tell her about 
 his horse falling down Mr. Coward's well ; about having 
 seen " a thousand curiosities yesterday, indeed mor"e, for 
 he had " the favour of seeing Sir Hans Sloane's museum ; " 
 about fine pictures in his chamber at Mrs. Sca\ven"s, which 
 reminded him, " as all beautiful things did, of his own 
 wife." Also he had postal consultations with her about 
 fans, crockery, and patterns for damask. London had a 
 population, he was credibly informed, of nearly five hun- 
 dred thousand ! No wonder that the smoke from all the 
 needful fires was bad for ruffles and bands. It was 
 pleasant just to visit such a place, but the whirl soon got 
 intolerable. Sometimes he had the rare bliss of a day in 
 the country. Whether he then distinguished himself at 
 the covert side is not known, but in a letter from Ongar 
 we find this brief record of his piscatory prowess : " I went 
 a-fishing yesterday, and with extraordinary success, for I 
 pulled a minnow out of the water, though it made shift 
 to get away." He warms into gay vanity in telling her 
 of the honours paid him everywhere, and how lovingly the 
 provincial ministers welcomed him. In June, 1742, he 
 travelled from place to place in Devonshire. 
 
 Being now the last man of the Doddridge family, he 
 was thought to be the true heir to the ancestral estates 
 in that county, but, unwilling to encounter the costly 
 trouble and risk of putting his claim to the proof, just 
 
MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 63 
 
 about this time they ail passed away to strangers. This 
 gives a charming colour of interest to the following 
 passage in a letter to Mrs. Doddridge, dated Exeter, 
 June 25, 1742: " Entertainments are daily provided for me 
 by the principal families, and I have seen that noble 
 palace which once belonged to my family ; my arms arc 
 there curiously carved over the great mantel place in the 
 dining-room, which is quite a room of state ; and in 
 several other places, particularly in a great upper room, 
 one hundred and twenty feet long, which is surrounded 
 with the arms of all the nobility and gentry in these parts. 
 1 assure you, my dear, I saw this without regret ; and I 
 hope I have a much nobler mansion reserved for me in 
 my Father's house above ; and in the meantime am in- 
 comparably happier with you in my present circumstances, 
 than such a seat and all the estate about Mount Radford 
 could make me without you, or without my dear charge 
 at Northampton." 
 
 Radford House is still standing, the same but not the 
 same. During the occupancy of Sir Thomas Baring, 
 grandfather of the present Earl of Northbrook, it went 
 through great alterations, in the course of which the 
 crumbling old stone shields vanished, and what was 
 once a banqueting-room in the rear of the mansion was 
 turned into a stable, divided into various compartments. 
 
 Both husband and wife had much physical delicacy, 
 and one was often afraid of losing the other. In Sep- 
 tember, 1742, it was necessary for Mrs. Doddridge to 
 visit the "Western Bethesda," for so they called Bath, 
 for the sake of her health, and to remain there for a long, 
 long time. Many letters of his of this date have been 
 preserved, written in forms of exquisite old-fashioned 
 courtesy, but alive with the first romance of love. \\ ith 
 all this they are full of homespun common-places, for he 
 wants to amuse the sufferer, also to make her see how 
 beautifully well the household was going on without her. 
 He therefore reports the interesting words and ways of 
 the children, and gossips about all kinds of things, even 
 condescending to tell the last news about the cat " Gritty 
 
64 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 and her kittens." In the same letter, perhaps, are 
 passages of lofty spirituality. Here is one, written 
 October 3 1, 1742 : "It may seem strange to say it, but 
 really so it is, I hardly feel that I want anything. I often 
 think of you and pray for you, and bless God on your 
 account, and please myself with the hope of many com- 
 fortable days with you ; yet I am not at all anxious about 
 your return, nor indeed about anything else. And the 
 reason, the great and sufficient reason is, that I have more 
 of the presence of God with me than I remember ever to 
 have enjoyed in any one month of my life. He enables 
 me to live for Him, and to live with Him. When I awake 
 in the morning, which is always before it is light, I address 
 myself to Him, and converse with Him ; speak to Him 
 when I am lighting my candle and putting on my clothes; 
 and have often more delight in coming out of my 
 chamber, though it be hardly a quarter of an hour after 
 my awakening, than I have enjoyed for whole days, or 
 perhaps weeks, of my life. He meets me in my study, 
 in secret, in family devotions. It is pleasant to read, 
 pleasant to compose, pleasant to converse with my 
 friends at home, pleasant to visit those abroad — the 
 poor, the sick ; pleasant to write letters of necessary 
 business, by which any good can be done; pleasant to 
 go out and preach the gospel to poor souls who are 
 thirsting for it, and others dying without it ; pleasant in 
 the week-day to think how near Sabbath is; — but oh ! 
 much, much more pleasant to think how near eternity is, 
 and how short the journey through this wilderness, and 
 that it is but a step from earth to heaven." 1 Other 
 letters contain similar passages, and one effect of them 
 on Mrs. Doddridge seems to have been fear that her hus- 
 band was not long for this world ; she therefore sent him 
 many prudent admonitions about care for his health, and 
 restriction of his labours, in answer to which he writes, 
 on the 22nd of December, a letter with such sentences 
 as these in it: " Everybody wonders at my stoutness." 
 
 1 "Correspondence," vol iv. p. 125. 
 
MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 65 
 
 "Sir John Robinson the other night rallied me on my 
 unusual cheerfulness as the effect of your absence, how 
 justly you may easily judge." "If I continue to improve 
 in the vigour of my constitution for the next twelve years, 
 I shall be almost a Hercules in 1754, and on the same 
 principles a perfect Atlas in 1766." He work beyond his 
 strength, he neglect prudent care ! What next? Christmas 
 was cold, but he meant to go about in a bear skin. There 
 was much mystification about this article; and he goes on 
 to say, " I have purchased a bear-skin of your good friend 
 Mr. Haworth, in consequence of which I hope I shall 
 both be sheltered from cold winds and from all reflec- 
 tions of being a wolf in sheep's clothing, which possibly 
 some of the shepherds, through whose folds I may prowl, 
 might otherwise throw upon me." After all his vain 
 glory he really does fall ill, but of course is very soon 
 better than he was before. A long rhyming epistle written 
 late at night, the next January 26th, is woundup thus : — 
 
 " But you're long since prepared to say, 
 ' Since you escaped your nurses, pray, 
 How have you fared this blustenng day?' 
 Exceeding well— for I took care 
 To wrap myself in skin of bear ; 
 While each hand, warm in furry glove, 
 Glowed with the token of your love. 
 Thus at a distance you inspire 
 My blood with warmth, my muse with fire ; 
 And yet the flame so gently burns, 
 1 sigh, anil write, and nod by turns. 
 
 I therefore join with Mr. Wright 
 To wis'.i myself and you good night." 
 
 Mercy was mystified ; therefore, on February the 8th, 
 he thus wrote to explain : — " A bear-skin is a rough gar- 
 ment, something like that of Elijah's, only made of wool 
 instead of camel's hair, and in the form not of a Jewish 
 mantle, but of an English great-coat, with two capes and 
 a hood, which in the coldest weather, put over another 
 great-coat keeps one as warm as if one were in bed. I 
 am not the only prophet so clothed" 
 6 
 
66 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 After an illness of nearly seven months Dr. Oliver 
 said that his patient was now sufficiently recovered to go 
 home. So at last, in high delight, Dr. Doddridge was 
 within sound of the Abbey bells, and sent a note to her 
 late at night, dated "Bear Inn, Bath, April 13, 1743," 
 just to notify thqt " he had arrived at the city," and that 
 " before he left perhaps he might give her a call." We 
 have no time for more than these glimpses of his happy 
 married life, and must hasten to another department of 
 the story. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE ACADEMY. 
 
 " I will confound all those that lies do teach ; 
 No more, my people, do you hear such preach ; 
 But seek the Word at their mouths who are well 
 Train'd up at feet of learn'd Gamaliel, 
 Elisha's double portion will inherit, 
 Being call'd both by the Church and by the Spirit." 
 Thomas Washbourne, 
 
 Batchelour in Divinity. 1 654. 
 
 THE academy, transplanted from Harborough in 
 1730, 1 was beginning to thrive, when an attempt 
 was made to destroy it. The primary instrument of this 
 attempt was the Reverend Mr. Wills, vicar of Kings- 
 thorp, a village in the neighbourhood. There would 
 have been little in common between this clergyman and 
 any one of his order now living. The type is extinct, it 
 is hoped, and can only be found by digging into old 
 formations. Like many of the village clergy of those 
 days, when sure of his company, he was given to talk dis- 
 respectfully about a certain great personage as " The Duke 
 of Brunswick, commonly called King George the Second." 
 It is said that his " trophies in the alehouses " were well 
 known, and that he there had great influence as an 
 implacable foe to the meetingers, not simply as such, but 
 
 1 From a MS. diary kept by one of the students we read that, in 
 travelling from London, after a visit to relations at this time, Mr. John 
 Jennings indulged in the luxury of a ride in the waggon ; but that 
 his companion, Mr. Aiken, said, " I did not choose it, for it would 
 have cost me half-a-guinea ! " Therefore, he walked by the side. 
 This we consider to be a glimpse uf the good old times worth getting. 
 
68 
 
 THE ACADEMY. 
 
 as also being Hanoverians. The frequenters of such 
 places considered that, although they had not much 
 religion themselves, what little they had was good of its 
 kind, and therefore the sight of men like Doddridge 
 was sometimes too much for their feelings, but they 
 looked upon this vicar with much respect. One morn- 
 ing in April, 1732, Doddridge received from this gentle- 
 man a letter, in which he asserted himself to be the only 
 person responsible for the religious instruction given in 
 his own parish ; complained that one of the academy 
 youths had been found holding forth in a barn there ; 
 requested that this should not be repeated; opened an 
 argument on the Divine right of Diocesan Episcopacy ; 
 and finished by advising him to read Clemens Romanus 
 and Lactantius, of course not in the originals, but in 
 certain English translations which he specified — which 
 advice was likely to shoot into any classical tutor a 
 delicate sting. The tutor replied on the subject of the 
 argument. The vicar found fault with his spelling. 
 There was another reply, which was a pity. It might 
 have seemed an easy thing to foil such an antagonist. 
 In theory it may be easy to reason with a bull while you 
 shake a red flag in his face, but in practice the bull is 
 apt to have the best of it. "Good Mr. Wills " was 
 angry ; he succeeded in making the village clergy angry, 
 the effect of which came out in a few weeks at a visitation 
 of All Saints parish, in which Doddridge lived, when 
 Dr. Reynolds, the Diocesan Chancellor, in the course of 
 an harangue to the churchwardens, said " that he was 
 informed that there was a fellow in their parish who 
 taught a grammar school, which he had the assurance to 
 call ' my academy,' as he supposed, without any licence 
 from the bishop," and ordered them, therefore, to examine 
 whether he had such a licence, and, if not, to present 
 him, that he might be prosecuted according to law ! 
 
 It appears that since 1603 it had been ecclesiastical 
 law that no man should be master of a grammar school 
 without first obtaining a licence, with a certificate of his 
 competency, both literary and religious, signed by the 
 
THE ACADEMY. 
 
 (9 
 
 Bishop of the Diocese or his representative. An efibit 
 was now made to wake up this sleeping law and bring it 
 into lively action against the academies for the education 
 of Nonconformist ministers. That which excludes the 
 members or ministers of any community from educational 
 advantages must, in the measure of its effect, work their 
 social extinction. This was the meaning of the Emperor 
 Julian's decree, disallowing Christians to be taught the 
 classics ; and this was the attempted policy of the 
 Jacobites against the Dissenters. In the present case, to 
 all appearance, not only would the faculty have been 
 refused if asked for, on the pretext that " the master was 
 incompetent to teach the boys," but there was liability to 
 fine and imprisonment for every instance of teaching 
 without such faculty. It was resolved that this power of 
 the court should now be tested. The Northampton 
 College, as a representative, was to be the subject of the 
 first experiment, and the fate of all the others in England 
 would be decided in the fate of this one. 
 
 Shortly after the visitation, therefore, Doddridge 
 received a formal citation to appear before the Con- 
 sistory Court, and here follows a copy of the original 
 document, a curiosity, now in the possession of the Rev. 
 Fuller Russell, F.S.A. : 
 
 " To Philip Dotteridge of the Parish of All Saints in 
 the Town of Northampton in the County of Northampton 
 Gentl. 
 
 " By virtue of a Citation under seal herewith shown unto 
 you I Cite you to appear personally before the Reverend 
 George Reynolds Doctor of laws Vicar General Com- 
 missary General and Official Principal in Spiritual Matters 
 of the Right Reverend ffather in God Robert by Divine 
 Permission Lord Bishop of Peterborough and also 
 Official of the Reverend the Archdeacon of the Arch- 
 deaconry of Northampton or his lawfull surrogate or 
 some other Competent Judge in this behalfe in the Con- 
 sistory Court adjoyning to the Parish Church of all Saints 
 in the said town of Northampton on Tuesday the Sixth 
 
7 o 
 
 THE ACADEMY. 
 
 day of November 1733 at the usual time of hearing 
 Causes there then and there to answer to certain Articles 
 or Interrogatories to be objected and administered to 
 You concerning your Soul's health and the Reformation 
 and Correction of Your manners and excess And espe- 
 cially Your teaching and instructing Youth in the Liberal 
 Arts and Sciences not being Licensed thereto by the 
 Ordinary of the Diocese touching either Your Learning 
 and Dexterity in teaching or Your right understanding of 
 God's true religion or Your honest and sober Conver- 
 sation at the promotion of and pursuant to a certain 
 Detection or presentment exhibited against you by 
 Thomas Rand and Benjamin Chapman Churchwardens 
 of the said parish of All Saints in the said town of 
 Northampton And farther to do and receive according to 
 Law and Justice Will Spencer." 
 
 So the first shot was fired, and there was alarm in the 
 camp of the Nonconformists, but no louder expressions of 
 indignant surprise were spoken than by some of the most 
 loyal churchmen. The churchwarden in whose name the 
 measure was carried on, expressed his abhorrence of it, 
 and before its commencement asked Mr. Doddridge " if 
 he could with safety to himself refuse to sign the pre- 
 sentment, or do anything else to make the matter easier?" 
 The Chancellor assured him that he had instituted the 
 prosecution purely to vindicate the authority of his court, 
 and that even now, if he would apply to him for a licence, 
 he would grant it, still asserting the rights he had claimed, 
 but waiving the exercise of them as a matter of personal 
 courtesy. Doddridge, however, saw that this would be 
 a dangerous precedent; refused to recognise the right of 
 ecclesiastical inspection of seminaries for training minis- 
 ters for churches outside the Establishment ; and declined 
 accepting a licence on any terms until the matter had 
 been brought before a civil court. His letter to the 
 Committee of Dissenting Deputies, containing the report 
 of this proposal and his reply, was shown by those 
 gentlemen to Sir Robert Walpolc, who was " very much 
 
THE ACADEMY. 
 
 7* 
 
 pleased" with it. They undertook the entire management 
 and expense of the cause at Westminster Hall ; through 
 Lord Halifax engaged the services of the Solicitor- 
 General ; and resolved that, if the decision should prove 
 unfavourable, they would next try their strength in 
 Parliament. On January 30, 1734, the judges ordered 
 a prohibition. Doddridge and his friends were then 
 advised to make a certain declaration, and on the follow- 
 ing June the Chancellor put in a reply to it, the purport 
 of which was that the prohibition had been illegally 
 granted. The process was going on indefinitely, when 
 King George the Second, conformably to his maxim, 
 " That in his reign there should be no persecutions for 
 conscience' sake," sent a message which brought it to a 
 close. 
 
 In September, 1733, at the beginning of this litigation, 
 a riotous attack was made on the academy house by a 
 Jacobite rabble, which the Mayor seemed to think was 
 only natural, and therefore declined to interfere. The 
 file of the Northampton Mercury of that period has been 
 searched in vain for an account of the outrage. Mr. 
 Hankin, writing to the doctor, remarked, " We had a 
 pulpit and some of the pews in a meeting house in this 
 county pulled out and demolished, and not a paper 
 durst speak a word of it." 
 
 While he thus " dwelt in the midst of alarm," there was 
 a church living, worth ^"400 a year, waiting for li is 
 acceptance, as soon as he was ready to conform. He 
 was also urgently asked to succeed the famous Doctor 
 Edmund Calamy at Westminster, and had various other 
 distracting invitations. The one hardest to negative was 
 from Mr. Coward, a rich London merchant, who pro- 
 posed to build and endow an Independent college at 
 Walthamstow, with Sir Isaac Newton's learned friend, Mr. 
 John Eames, as one of the tutors, and Mr. Doddridge as 
 Principal. This project was not to be carried out in his 
 lifetime, which lie was warned would not be for long, and 
 it was his wish that meanwhile Doddridge should come 
 up to his neighbourhood and take charge of the little 
 
72 
 
 THE ACADEMY. 
 
 Presbyterian church in the village. He was a kind but 
 eccentric gentleman, who had royal generosity in his 
 heart, the cramp in his legs, and a " bee in his bonnet." 1 
 Having to do w ith him was like having to step softly over 
 a galvanic pavement, not knowing when the next shock 
 would come off. He was always altering his will, and re- 
 quired watchful and tender management. Doctors Watts 
 and Jenningswere afraid that, if thwartedinhis educational 
 scheme, the twenty thousand pounds set apart lor it 
 would be spent in some other direction ; therefore, know- 
 ing the special fitness of Doddridge for the principalship, 
 they urged him to accept it. His post was precarious at 
 Northampton ; he was also harassed by certain merciless 
 ci itics of character, who assumed that he would of course 
 accept one or other advantageous offer of a change, 
 and that if he did so, it would of course be from a mean 
 motive; and altogether he knew not which way to take. 
 
 The following passages, slightly abridged, are in a 
 letter written to him at this perplexing juncture by the 
 Rev. Charles Rogers, then the Baptist minister of College 
 Lane Meeting, in the same town : 
 
 " Dear and Honoured Father in Christ and Beloved 
 of God,- — ... I am fully persuaded in my own mind that 
 . . . you will hear a voice behind you in a little time, saying, 
 'this is the way, walk thou in it' This text was given 
 me to clear my way to this town when I lay under heart- 
 pressing troubles from Christian friends, who charged me 
 with love to the world, on the principle I acted upon in 
 leaving, but God was my witness to the contrary. Dear 
 father, if I may drop a word of advice to you with 
 reverence, and from my own experience, I will remind 
 you of these texts: 'Give yourself to prayer' (Psa. 
 cix. 4); ' He shall direct thy path ' (I'rov. iii. 6). If a 
 faithful minister should break through the affectionate 
 prayers and tears of his dear brethren, only that he might 
 do the will of God, as Paul did, though it went near to 
 break his heart (Acts xxi. 12, 13, 19), I think his friends 
 
 1 Mr. Barker's expression. 
 
THE ACADEMY. 
 
 73 
 
 should not let earthly passions move them. For my part, 
 your removal will be no small trouble to me and mine, 
 but excess in this would be high rebellion against God. 
 . . . The Wonderful Counsellor will be your advocate, 
 mercy will compass you about, and what is obtained by 
 prayer will be sweet in enjoyment both to you and yours. 
 I have found at times the blessed benefit of ceasing from 
 man and of putting my trust in God — both for obtaining 
 the mind of God in point of duty, and strength to be 
 found in it. Though I remain weak as water when 
 left of God, I hope He has given me a spirit of prayer for 
 you and yours, that He may give you counsel, and that the 
 light of His word might shine upon the particular path He 
 would have you to walk in, according to that glorious 
 promise which He has made good even to me, a feeble 
 David. 'I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way 
 which thou shalt go ; I will guide thee with mine eye' 
 (Psa. xxxii. 8).'' 
 
 There is no doubt that " trials gave new life to prayer," 
 and that it was by the light thus received he saw his 
 way to stay at Northampton. The attacks on his academy 
 brought it into notice and repute. In 1736 the two 
 colleges of Aberdeen University recognised his services as 
 a teacher, by presenting him in separate diplomas with 
 the degree of Doctor of Divinity. From the time of 
 good Mr. Coward's death in 1738, his trustees carried 
 out his known wishes, though not expressed in a will, by 
 supporting young men in his academy, and in no way 
 interfering with its management during his lifetime, but 
 afterwards assuming the entire control of the endow- 
 ment. The academic interest grew and prospered. 
 
 During the twenty-one years of its history, the number 
 of pupils in a year ranged from thirteen to forty-six. YVe 
 have no complete list of the sum total. The ordinary 
 term of study was five years. Among other ministers 
 of mark who passed through this, we find the following. 
 Dr. Aiken, afterwards Principal of the Academy at War- 
 rington. Dr. Samuel Merivale, tutor at Exeter. Dr. 
 
74 
 
 THE ACADEMY. 
 
 Kippis, editor of the " Biographia Britannica," and of 
 whom Robert Hall said, " he laid so many books upon 
 his head that his brain could not move." Mr. John 
 Jennings, son of the Kibvvorth tutor, the darling of his 
 family, " the wit of the academy ; " many of whose droll 
 sayings have been preserved in the diary of his fellow 
 student, Merivale. Mr. Job Orton, called by Doddridge 
 " the unparalleled." Dr. Stephen Addington, first tutor 
 of what was afterwards known as " Hoxton Academy." 
 The two sons of the Rev. Mr. Steffe, vicar of Wrexham — 
 one of whom took orders like his father ; and the other, 
 dying early, as the Independent minister of Taunton, 
 left a memorial volume of sermons, to which the Doctor 
 prefixed a charming biographical sketch. Mr. James 
 Sheppard, who died just as he had entered upon 
 his pastoral work, and who also left a volume of 
 sermons which had a tutorial introduction. Dr. 
 Caleb Ashworth, tutor of the Daventry academy. Dr. 
 John Stafford. Mr. Hugh Farmer, who wrote with much 
 originality and learning on " Miracles," on " Demoniacs," 
 and on other difficult subjects, his treatises being once held 
 in high consideration. Mr. Thomas Strange, an apostolic 
 man, about whose death Messrs. Bogue and Bennett say in 
 their " History of Dissenters :" " The tears and groans of 
 his flock attested the greatness of their love ; it would be 
 indeed a less difficult task to find a suitable successor to 
 the see of Canterbury than to the pastorate in the village 
 of Kilsby." Mr. Joseph Sowden, of Rotterdam, spoken 
 of by Harmer the Orientalist as " a learned and very 
 ingenious man." 1 Mr. Benjamin Fawcett, who was one of 
 Baxter's successors at Kidderminster, and who attained 
 "a goodly measure of the Baxterian importunity and 
 pathos in preaching." 2 Mr. Risdon Darracott,3 a gen- 
 tleman of old Devonshire family, between which and 
 
 1 " Manner's Observations," vol. i. pref. xxx. 
 
 2 Dr. Hamilton. 
 
 3 In the register of the marriages of Richard Doddridge's children 
 kept in Barnstaple Parish Church, there is the following : "John 
 Darracott and Dorothie Doddridge, May 24, 1596." 
 
THE ACADEMY. 
 
 75 
 
 that of Doddridge there had anciently been some con- 
 nection, and portraits of several of whose ancestors may 
 still be seen on the walls of Barnstaple Guildhall. More 
 than any of the others, he seems to have caught the 
 mantle of his master : there will be more to say of him 
 presently. The last survivor of the brotherhood was Mr. 
 Thomas Taylor, who in 1828 erected a marble monu- 
 ment over the grave of Doddridge at Lisbon, and who 
 died in 1831, in his ninety-seventh year, having chosen 
 for the text of his funeral sermon, "Christ in you, the 
 hope of glory." 
 
 Taking leave to borrow a convenient phrase, we would 
 call attention to the "lay" as well as the clerical stu- 
 dents. In the list of these, we find the Earl of Dunmore; 
 Lord William Manners, who was a brother of the Duke 
 of Rutland ; Sir Henry Houghton ; one young man who 
 was a son of Lord Kilkerran; another who was maternal 
 grandson of the Earl of Buchan; Professor Gilbert Robert- 
 son ; also Dr. James Robertson, Professor of Oriental 
 Literature in the University of Edinburgh ; young men 
 related, one to the Earl of Leven, another to Sir Robert 
 Monro; men who were afterwards merchants, doctors of 
 medicine, barristers-at-law, members of Parliament, or 
 officers in the army; also a few strangers from Holland. 
 You may think it surprising that some of these gentlemen 
 did not as a matter of course rather choose Oxford or 
 Cambridge as the place of their final education. It must 
 be remembered that, at that time, the universities were 
 not at their best as teaching institutions; that in this re- 
 spect they suffered a decadence in the days of the two 
 first Georges; and that, although the greatest living 
 scholars were still holding highest office there, they com- 
 monly did so as reposing in their dignity, not as active 
 in their trust. Adam Smith, who had graduated at 
 Oxford, said, "The greater part of the public profession 
 have for these many years given up altogether the prac- 
 tice of teaching." Gibbon tells us that, in his time, 
 "public exercises and examinations were utterly unknown." 
 Lord Chesterfield speaks of the "rust" of Cambridge as 
 
76 
 
 THE ACADEMY. 
 
 something of which a polished man should promptly rid 
 himself. Gray, the poet, insists that Isaiah had Cam- 
 bridge equally with Babylon in view when he said, "Their 
 houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls 
 shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there." West 
 speaks in the same strain. Whatever reluctance we feel 
 to receive the statement, it really was a time when there 
 was some colour of truth in the satirical stanza in which 
 the forms requisite for graduation were described as often 
 being thus : 
 
 . . . " which Balaam's ass 
 As well as Balaam's self might pass ; 
 And with his master take degrees, 
 Could he contrive to pay the fees." 
 
 As to the " birth-tongue of the people," there is no doubt 
 that the men generally knew how to spell most words one 
 way or another; but a knowledge of the English language 
 was hardly reckoned as a scholastic accomplishment, and 
 there was nothing that tended to promote it. 
 
 If we measure the value of the education given at North- 
 ampton by the average educational standard of the times, 
 we shall find, that perhaps these gentlemen were not such 
 serious losers as might have been expected. Being, as 
 most of them were, kept out of the universities by the 
 bar of their Nonconformity, they had to be "content with 
 science in a humble shed," and might congratulate them- 
 selves that after all they were tolerably well off. It 
 would be simply comic to think of any comparison be- 
 tween any small private seminary, however excellent, and 
 a college belonging to one of those ancient and stately 
 seats of learning, of which all Englishmen have a right to 
 feel so proud; but we are now about to show that it was 
 a great thing in the circumstances, for young men to have 
 the training as well as to be under the watchful Christian 
 care of a man like Doddridge. 
 
 Of course the academy was Christian from the very 
 root — that, or nothing. True, membership of a Christian 
 church, in the ordinary sense of the term, was not one of 
 
THE ACADEMY. 
 
 77 
 
 the conditions of admission ; and as the main design was 
 to train persons for the gospel ministry, this looks like a 
 radical defect; but most of the alumni had already made 
 such a profession of faith, and seventy-eight did so while 
 under the doctor's ministry. Many things show how 
 earnestly he watched for their souls. Here is an illustra- 
 tion. In the Wilson MSS. we find many small papers 
 folded in narrow slips — brown, brittle, marked with short- 
 hand cyphers, and altogether looking a little like "Papyri 
 of the Exodus." Each paper has a student's signature 
 on it, and evidently contains his answer to some simple 
 question of practical religion. The papers are packed in 
 sheaves according to the subject, which are such as these: 
 " What are those sins and temptations which a child of 
 God, who serves Him in the sincerity of his heart, hath 
 the greatest struggle with, and finds the hardest to subdue?" 
 " How may we most profitably attend on Divine ordin- 
 ances?" "What are the first symptoms of religious 
 decay?" "What discouragements are those which most 
 frequently prevent young persons from attending the 
 Lord's Table?" "What is the difference between 
 natural and revealed religion?" "How far may a man 
 go towards heaven, and yet fall short? " " What are the 
 evidences of love to God ? " Various notes have been 
 found, written by householders in the town with whom 
 some of the pupils lodged, and prove to be the required 
 certificates as to the conduct of their lodgers. 
 
 It was understood that candidates for admission to the 
 academy had already finished their studies at a grammar 
 school. 1 Youths who seemed to have gifts for the 
 ministry, but who had not been to such schools, were 
 sent to them until they were qualified to be students at 
 the college. Sometimes there were several going through 
 this preparation, often at his own expense. Occasionally, 
 and exceptionally, young men of three or four and twenty, 
 seeming to have a Divine call to pastoral service, but 
 who had received no early training, were received into 
 
 1 Letter to Lord Halifax: " Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 109; 
 "Works," vol. iii. p. 335. 
 
78 
 
 THE ACADEMY. 
 
 the house without it, and without requiring them to 
 attempt touching classical studies, which in such cases 
 would probably have been a waste of time. " He 
 thought," says Dr. Kippis, " that they might be useful 
 in plain country congregations, which was undoubtedly 
 the case." As a rule, his pupils were fair Latinists to 
 begin with, but he often complained that Greek had been 
 much neglected. An assistant relieved him of the 
 elementary teaching they might still require in the first 
 two years, and after that they attended his own lectures 
 on the classics. Rich's " System of Shorthand " was one 
 of the first things they had to learn, in order to take 
 down lectures and make references with facility. All who 
 were preparing for the ministry had, as a matter of course, 
 to learn Hebrew. "This," said he, " is so very necessary 
 that I wonder it should ever be omitted ; or that any 
 young gentleman in an age like ours should be judged 
 competently qualified for the pulpit, who lies as much at 
 the mercy of translators in studying the larger half of the 
 Bible, as any of the people he has to teach." 1 
 
 In the morning, at six in the summer, at seven in the 
 winter, a bell sounded, and shortly after, they all assembled 
 in the lecture-room, when a prayer was offered up, after 
 which they dispersed to their several studies. They met 
 again at family worship, which the doctor opened by a 
 short prayer; after which a chapter of the Old Testament 
 was read in Hebrew by the senior, which he expounded 
 critically and practically ; a psalm was then sung, and 
 there was a closing prayer. There was the same order in 
 the evening service, the only difference being that verses 
 in a chapter of the New Testament were then read in 
 rotation, sometimes in Greek, sometimes in French. 
 Each student had the Old Testament and Wetstein's 
 Greek Testament, in quarto, interleaved, in order to take 
 down the expositions. The doctor's notes of these in 
 shorthand are still to be seen. Shortly after breakfast he 
 lectured to each class in order, his assistant at the same 
 
 1 " Memoirs of the Rev. W. Thomas Steflfe ; " " Works," vol. iv. 
 p. 251. 
 
THE ACADEMY. 
 
 79 
 
 time being engaged in like manner. The main staple of 
 the curriculum was a series of 250 lectures on " The 
 principal subjects in Pneumatology, Ethics, and Divinity." 
 These lectures have several times been published in two 
 octavo volumes, with the outside of which many are 
 familiar, but most persons have been frightened away 
 from the inside by the grim structure seen there of 
 Axioms, Definitions, Scholia, Corollaries, Lemmas, 
 Solutions, and Demonstrations. The lectures look dry 
 as diagrams. We are, however, unfair judges while we 
 only think of them as the contents of a printed book. 
 We ought to realise them while in use by the lecturer. 
 Then, out of these dead stems and branches grew living 
 questions and answers, and over this hard frame-work 
 flowered illustrations fresh from his full mind and vast 
 reading. We only see the skeletons of trees that were 
 then alive with spring foliage. A graver objection than 
 any on the grounds of mere taste, is that, in accordance 
 with the fashion of that generation, they attempt to cast 
 theological instruction into a mathematical form, and 
 appear to deal with the doctrines of revelation, the truth 
 of which is determined by " the evidence of things not 
 seen," as if they were susceptible of the same kind of 
 proof as subjects in mathematics. As a professor of 
 Divinity, we should still more seriously question the 
 wisdom of his method, if we are to accept without 
 qualification the opinion of Dr. Kippis — "that he repre- 
 sented the arguments and referred to the authorities on 
 both sides, the students being left to judge for themselves : 
 and they did judge for themselves with his perfect con- 
 currence and approbation, though no doubt it was natural 
 for him to be pleased when their sentiments coincided 
 witli his own." There is nothing like this in his printed 
 lectures. There might possibly be something like it when 
 presiding over certain oral disputations on the doctrines 
 of the Bible. Sometimes his excessive candour might 
 then have kept him from pronouncing so strongly as he 
 should have done the conclusions to which he himself 
 saw his way ; or he might have thought that, even in 
 
 \ 
 
So 
 
 THE ACADEMY. 
 
 such a case, it was the duty of chairmanship to take no 
 sides. If so, we think it was a mistake, and the occasion 
 of mistakes. We have a right to know what side a 
 Divinity tutor takes, and why he takes it. But if mis- 
 taken in judgment, he was noble in aim. He was training 
 teachers ; and he knew that what some men call their 
 own opinions are only the opinions of others taken with- 
 out examination, and that such men will never make 
 teachers. By making his men think, by quickening the 
 sense of difficulty, and by showing what can be said on 
 the other side, he wished to strengthen the spirit of 
 charity and fairness, while at the same time he got his 
 pupils more thoroughly "rooted and grounded " in vital 
 truth. 
 
 Besides the lectures in this syllabus, he taught Algebra, 
 Geometry, Natural Philosophy, Civil Law, and Jewish 
 Antiquities. Sometimes he would indulge in Lectures 
 on Rhetoric, on the Microscope, and on Astronomy. 
 " Lampe's Epitome of Ecclesiastical History" was the 
 ground- work of a series of lectures on that subject; as 
 was " Buddaei Compendium Historic Philosophical " of 
 another on the doctrines of the ancient philosophers. 
 Sometimes he would give a course of lectures on the 
 Library, going through case after case, and row after row 
 of books, pouring out streams of delightful talk, rich 
 with critical information and sparkling with anecdote. 
 
 " I have not the Chancellor's encyclopaedic mind," 
 said Macaulay of Brougham. " He is indeed a kind of 
 semi-Solomon. He half knows everything, from the 
 cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall.'' ' It seems 
 like irreverence to make such a quotation just now ; our 
 pen ought not to have run away with us so far. Dodd- 
 ridge was almost unrivalled in his power of rapidly 
 acquiring knowledge, in his clearness of apprehension, 
 in his mental orderliness enabling him to store it away, 
 and in the delight he felt in impartation. Still, we are 
 unable to conceive how one man could efficiently under- 
 
 * "Macvey Napier's Correspondence." 
 
THE ACADEMY. 
 
 Si 
 
 take so many branches of instruction, and we only hope 
 that none of his pupils mistook for real knowledge what 
 was only a poetical acquaintance with Euclid, and a mere 
 mental scamper all round the Cyclopaedia. 
 
 It was required that all who were preparing for the 
 Christian ministry should, as far as all fair criteria could 
 show, be true men of God, and when he afterwards had 
 reason to think that any one of them lacked this essen- 
 tial, that one was advised to leave the academy and seek 
 some other vocation. Ministerial students, in addition 
 to the regular work, had lectures and exercises special to 
 themselves. By much personal communication, and by 
 inviting their attendance with him in various departments 
 of pastoral work, he helped them to an insight into the 
 requirements of a pastorate. With equal concern would 
 he labour to train them for the preacher's vocation. 
 " The old, absurd method, first send young men into the 
 pulpit, then train them for it," 1 got no sympathy from 
 him. He never sent his young men into the pulpit 
 without endeavouring by foregoing discipline of exact 
 writing and free debate to educate the power of fit, ready, 
 and effective expression. He criticised their elocution, 
 and in this, as in other things, his advice was in the 
 spirit of that once given by Vittorino, " unlearn, at once, 
 what by misfortune you have wi/xlearned elsewhere." 
 He referred to his own somewhat violent style of speak- 
 ing as a "caution." One of his methods of teaching 
 them to preach was this : lie never allowed them, when 
 they supplied pulpits in their earlier academic life, to 
 preach their own sermons, but only to " repeat " certain 
 selected sermons of others. This excellent habit is, we 
 are told, adopted to some extent by young preachers 
 even now, but perhaps with a difference — for the "re- 
 petitions " by Doddridge's young men were called "repeti- 
 tions." Everybody understood them to be simply such. 
 Dr. Warburton said : " The other day I was particularly 
 vindicating and commending two things in your academy: 
 one was the method of introducing students into the 
 1 Rev. Josiah Thomson, Clapham, 1770. 
 
 7 
 
S2 
 
 THE ACADEMY. 
 
 pulpit, by repeating sermons for a few months before 
 they begin to preach, which can only be done well in the 
 country.'' 1 That the plan was perfect we are not quite 
 prepared to say, but it certainly had some advantages, 
 and suggests some important considerations. Doddridge 
 knew that " the Lord's foolish people " frequently seem 
 to expect from beginners a kind of instantaneous maturity. 
 Without a thought about what they are as students, they 
 seem to think, only of what they already are as preachers, 
 and are given most to extol young preachers who preach 
 with most unction about heavy crosses, sweet consolations, 
 and deep experiences — experiences which for the pre- 
 sent are to them impossibilities. This plan of having 
 " repetitions " secured good sound teaching to the con- 
 gregations, yet saved the youthful dispensers of it from 
 an awful temptation to untruth and unreality ; it saved 
 them from much severe mental taxation, the effect of which 
 would have been to draw them away from the studies that 
 were fitting them for their life-work, and so helped them 
 to get the most good out of their precious college time 
 —the time of serving the needful apprenticeship in the 
 use of their tools. 
 
 The funds which Mr. Coward's trustees used for the 
 support of certain students in Doddridge's academy 
 were, after his time, devoted to the support of a separate 
 institution, known in later days as Coward College. 
 Tin's, with two other colleges, have since 1850 been 
 united in one noble establishment ; and we endorse the 
 late Dr. James Hamilton's opinion, that New College 
 " should contain a statue of Doddridge, as the man who 
 gave the mightiest impulse to the work of rearing an 
 educated Nonconformist ministry in England." 
 
 1 Letter written Feb. 24, 1743. 
 
VIII. 
 
 SA YINGS AND DOINGS IN CONNECTION WITH 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 " Ye mountains and vales, 
 
 In praises abound ; 
 Ye hills and ye dales, 
 
 Continue the sound ; 
 Break forth into singing, 
 
 Ye trees of the wood, 
 For Jesus is bringing 
 
 Lost sinners to God." 
 
 Sung in 1748 by a vast congregation, at one of 
 Wesley's Open-air Services. 
 
 THE earlier Hanoverian period was a seed-time of 
 great things, but a seed-time only. From the 
 Peace of Utrecht in 17 14, England had enjoyed growing 
 material prosperity. Perhaps never were so few persons 
 in distress about the questions, " What shall we eat, 
 what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be 
 clothed ? " But, sad to. say, perhaps never were so many 
 who regarded these as the only questions worth asking. 
 The ruling classes seemed to live the life of the senses, 
 and it would soil our souls to depict the coarse animal- 
 ism of the poor untaught multitudes. Pastors were 
 asleep. There were many ab'e defenders of the faith, 
 and the Church of England never had more eminent 
 bishops ; but, as Leslie Stephen says, " Dull, duller, 
 dullest," make a sufficiently critical vocabulary to describe 
 the merits of ordinary sermons. Spiritual doctors marked 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 the malady, but gave the wrong prescription. Episcopal 
 charges suggested the study of Juvenal, as likely to 
 make preachers more lively. Shenstone said, " I should 
 think the clergy might distinguish themselves by preach- 
 ing on the ordinary virtues extolled by the classics, in- 
 troducing the ornamental flourishes of Horace, &c." 
 We, who have no party bias, may be disposed to reject 
 indignantly, as mere satirical extravagances, pictures of 
 clerical life that we find in the pages of Fielding and 
 other writers of the time ; but " satire never creates the 
 sentiment to which it appeals," and, if there had been no 
 likeness in these sketches, they would never have been 
 recognised. Their truth to life becomes more certain 
 with increased inquiry. From a letter written by Mrs. 
 Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Delany, we learn that peers 
 were known to sell their chaplaincies at prices varying 
 from twelve to twenty guineas. In a letter lately sent 
 with the Winchelsea MSS. to the British Museum, dated 
 "3rd Nov. 1729," a clergyman who had been promised 
 a certain presentation by the late Earl, being " the first 
 person picked upon," thus complains : " A wife was 
 never whispered to me until a day after my lord's death ; 
 then indeed my lady herself told me that her maid 
 Morfee was always intended to go along with the living, 
 and that, if I intended to make her ladyship my friend, I 
 must not refuse the offer." 1 Perhaps the depreciated 
 condition of the universities just then may help to 
 account for such shameful disrespect to the clergy ; but, 
 whatever the cause, one effect of their lowered influence 
 was their utter inadequacy to meet the spiritual needs of 
 the day. It would be easy to fill a chapter with quota- 
 tions from such men as Joseph Stennett, Watts, Wallin, 
 and Guyse, to prove that the spiritual life of the Dissenters 
 was just as low. Exceptions of course there were ; but 
 very often, at the best, the dissenting minister was a 
 respectable and scholarly man, who, in language clear, 
 neat, and reasonable, discoursed about prosperity, adver- 
 
 ' Uncalendare 1 MS. in the Winchelsea Tapers. 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 85 
 
 sity, and Deity; who wrote books now sapless as the 
 shelves they stand on, who preached pamphlets that 
 might have been preached from the steps of a synagogue 
 or the floor of a mosque ; who could have said — 
 
 M With sacred Dulness ever in my view, 
 Sleep, at my bidding, creeps from pew to pew," 
 
 and whose voice would rumble dismally through the 
 chill, half empty, misty meeting-house, but was never 
 heard crying in the wilderness outside. 
 
 All this while two men — men made for the times — even 
 without knowing it themselves, were being divinely raised 
 up and trained to be God's two great revivalists; each one 
 to fill an office which no church had ready prepared for 
 him, and to do a work which was after no known type. 
 Outside the churches then existing, Wesley was to found 
 Methodism, in its way the most splendid miracle of the 
 Holy Ghost wrought through one man since the day of 
 Pentecost. Inside the Churches, and in quite another 
 way, Whitefield was the instrument of a work scarcely 
 less wonderful, foi though he organised no society, and 
 left his name on nothing structural, his preaching was 
 made mighty through God to strike new life into old systems, 
 and to make what is called Calvinism more evangelical ; 
 so that more or less, directly or indirectly most Protestant 
 communities are this day the better because he has lived. 
 
 Before these good men entered upon their memorable 
 mission, Doddridge was engaged in his own department 
 of the same work. As he had no call, he had no qualifi- 
 cation to be like one of them, a gospel propagandist, 
 hurrying from place to place, and setting the nation in a 
 blaze; but much true gospel service must always be 
 residentiary ; much must even be sedentary. Much 
 of his own work was settled within such limits as these. 
 But though stationed in the town, he seemed to diffuse 
 his presence through the country. He did so personally, 
 sometimes by addressing two or three rustic assemblies 
 in a week, and devoting half his annual holiday to evan- 
 
S6 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 gelical excursions; he did so by appointing members of 
 his church, who were influential from social standing as 
 well as from character, to read sermons in cottages licensed 
 for the purpose, and in a letter to the Bishop of London, 
 he said, " There are few villages round Northampton in 
 which we have not some place licensed ; " he did so 
 mainly through his young representatives. The seniors 
 preached, and the juniors did good service by their "re- 
 petitions." "They keep up," said he in 1737, "four or 
 five weekly 'repetitions' in the neighbouring towns, and 
 crowds of people constantly attend at each." Under his 
 own superintendence the more fervid of these youths 
 carried on in some of the villages a system of house to 
 house visitation, and where they found persons who could 
 read, left them good books or leaflets. 
 
 In a recent biographical sketch of the Rev. James 
 Hervey, it is said that "he made friends with a Mr. 
 Darracott, a student of Dr. Doddridge's, and aided him 
 by advice and otherwise in establishing a society similar 
 to that of the Methodists at Oxford. This made him 
 known to Dr. Doddridge." We have the original cor- 
 respondence lying here before us, showing the facts in 
 their real order. 
 
 One May day, in 1736, Risdon Darracott called on a 
 poor member of Doddridge's church, who lived at Har- 
 dingstone, a village two miles from the town, when he 
 found another visitor already in the cottage. This was 
 James Hervey, a young Oxford man who was spending 
 his vacation at his father's parsonage. Although, accor- 
 ding to his own account of himself given late in his life, 
 this was five years before his real conversion, he was 
 already an enthusiast, bent on doing good to souls, and 
 would have been glad to sit up all night to pray and talk 
 with any one who could tell him more than he knew about 
 the "New Birth." Each found in the other a kindred 
 spirit. Shortly after this interview, Darracott sent him a 
 present of small books for giving away, and wrote an ac- 
 count of a society which he and some of his fellow students 
 were forming, the object of which appears to have been 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 8? 
 
 a conference about spiritual life, the Bible, and Christian 
 usefulness, and asked for his opinion. 
 
 Hcrvey, writing June 3, said, "This cool morning, I 
 took a walk with a design to consider the scheme which 
 you are going to set on foot. My thoughts were all 
 along attended with abasement and admiration to per- 
 ceive you having recourse to and consulting me, when 
 you daily converse with gentlemen who are far my 
 superiors in wisdom and knowledge, but especially since 
 you have the happiness of living under the same roof 
 with the judicious and devout doctor. Yet, sir, I fear I 
 am one of those who, as the inspired apostle says, are 
 'blind and cannot see afar off.'" Then followed a long 
 and loving letter to encourage the project. Dated, "Lin- 
 coln College, Oxford, Sept. 1," we find another communi- 
 cation from him to his new friend, in which he thanks 
 him for a further instalment of tracts for distribution, and 
 for "an animating and instructive letter," which seems 
 to have been on the subject of evangelism; for he says, 
 f You have many valuable opportunities of getting what 
 I find to be very necessary for a promoter of piety — the 
 wisdom of the serpent. The worthy doctor, who is so 
 well acquainted with books and men, can tell you what 
 are the most likely baits to catch souls; what pious 
 and affectionate fraud the apostle meant when he said, 'I 
 have caught you with guile.'" Further on he says, " I 
 employ every day an hour or more (which I think is as 
 much time as I can spare from my studies) with some 
 well-inclined people of the poorer sort. We read Mr. 
 Henry on the Holy Scriptures, and pray together. There 
 is one set in one part of the city, and another in another. 
 I meet at a neighbour's house. Oh that I could open my 
 mouth as he did, so boldly and so powerfully ! who will 
 give me a little portion of that knowledge which he had in 
 the mysteries of the gospel ! that I may djclare them 
 to the people, clearly and convincingly. Above all, who 
 will give me some of that humble zeal, that sacred and 
 illustrious fervour which animated him who laboured 
 more abundantly than all the apostles ! I am pre- 
 
ss 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 paring to enter into holy orders, and to take upon me 
 the work of the ministry, that great, wonderful, and 
 important work. So that I have the utmost reason to 
 cry out as the distressed fishermen did to their partners, 
 ' Come and help us.' Help me with your prayers to the 
 Lord God my Saviour, that I 'may receive the Holy 
 Ghost not many days hence,' by the laying on of hands; 
 even ' the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit 
 of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of 
 the Lord ; ' that He may be in me, rest upon me, and 
 abide with me for ever, making me fit, every way qualified, 
 and thoroughly furnished for this sacred function. . . . 
 Dear sir, pray give my humble service and best thanks to 
 the Doctor, and beg of him, when he is in the acceptable 
 time, to remember me who am in the time of need. If 
 he has any word of exhortation, but especially any trea- 
 sures of instruction proper to a candidate for the minis- 
 terial office, how glad should I be if he would please to 
 impart them, and how gratefully should such a favour be 
 always acknowledged by his and your affectionate servant 
 and brother in Jesus Christ, J. Hervey." 
 
 The work, which in this letter he speaks of assisting, 
 was that of the Oxford Methodists — the society in the for- 
 mation of which Wesley had begun his marvellous career. 
 He, his brother Charles, and Benjamin Ingham, were at 
 this time in Georgia. George Whitefield, another leader, 
 had just been ordained, and most of the original leaders 
 had left the place ; but the society still existed, and did 
 its work with spirit. Its members were young men of 
 the university, who bound themselves by rules strict as 
 those of a monastic brotherhood, respecting with severe 
 precision the canons and decretals of mediaeval antiquity, 
 keeping all the fasts, communing every week, and being 
 careful that the wine should be mixed with water. They 
 lived on next to nothing, that they might have the more 
 to consecrate. With cloudy views of the gospel, but 
 with motives pure as fire, they taught neglected children, 
 visited the prisons and the poorest of the poor, to give 
 relief, to read, pray, and distribute good books, which we 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 So 
 
 should not be at all surprised to find were in some degree 
 supplied to these young ritualists by our young Puritans, 
 neither party being perfect in knowledge. 
 
 On the 21st of October in the same year, Risdon Dar- 
 racott went to Brixworth, a village a few miles from 
 Northampton, to deliver a " repetition," and hold a 
 meeting for prayer in the cottage of a poor man named 
 William Beck, who had earnestly desired it. Just before 
 the service began, the house was surrounded by tipsy 
 clowns, some of whom, being "gentlemen by Act of Par- 
 liament," were much respected. They hammered at the 
 door, smashed the windows, and begged to be intro- 
 duced to the preacher. When Beck stepped outside to 
 quiet them, they presented a gun to his breast, and 
 forced him back again. However, hearing that the con- 
 stables were at the George Inn at " a leet court," they 
 both ventured out and ran to them for help, being pelted 
 with mud, sticks, and stones, all the way. Help was 
 refused ; they were hustled into the road again, and were 
 again pelted. The preacher took refuge in a house, and 
 while the rioters were clamouring for him on one side of 
 it, he was lowered out of a window on the other, as it 
 was afterwards said, " like St. Paul let down in a basket 
 from the wall of Damascus." While Darracott was get- 
 ting safely away, Beck was seized, his coat was rent from 
 his back, and he was nearly smothered in slime by being 
 dragged through a horse-pond. Next day the parties 
 came over to Doddridge, who obtained a warrant, by 
 virtue of which four of the ringleaders were carried before 
 a neighbouring justice. We give the conclusion in the 
 words of Doddridge's account to Dr. Clark : " He treated 
 Beck as if he had been a felon ; laid all the blame on 
 him ; declared it was impudence to call these things an 
 assault ; and forced him, by threats of imprisonment, to 
 subscribe to a very defective information, against many 
 articles of which he protested — and at last allowed him 
 two shillings damages to mend his windows, and two for 
 the warrant. On this, sir, 1 wrote to Sir Thomas Abney, 
 who immediately roused the Court of King's Bench, and 
 
go 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 by proper steps procured rules of court on full affidavits 
 
 against nine of the rioters, with Mr. W , and they are 
 
 now preparing for a defence. All the Tory gentlemen 1 
 join in this scandalous cause, and, trusting to a Tory 
 sheriff, conclude that, against the strongest evidence, they 
 shall obtain a verdict from a Tory jury, as the cause is to be 
 tried in the county, and I much fear they will succeed." 2 
 
 This case continued for a long time to be a source of 
 vexation ; however, in the end, through the interest of the 
 Duke of Montague and Sir Robert Walpole, together 
 with the action of Sir John Robinson, the new High 
 Sheriff, some justice was done ; but the particulars are 
 not now at hand, and our present object is only to call 
 attention to the part of Doddridge and his students in 
 evangelistic works and trials in the time of movements 
 that ended in the great revival. Just at this time Darra- 
 cott and Hervey were in the most constant fraternal 
 correspondence. Through the latter, who has been called 
 " the Isocrates of Methodism," the Oxford Methodists 
 heard of the Brixworth adventure. We are sure that 
 there was at least a sympathetic thread of connection 
 between them and the academy. 
 
 We find another instance of contact with Oxford 
 Methodism thus given in Doddridge's Journal, September 
 10, 1737: "I had this day the great pleasure of 
 beginning an acquaintance with Mr. , a clergy- 
 man of the Church of England, in whom I think I saw 
 as much of God as in any person that in the whole period 
 of my life I have ever known. He was one of those 
 who went over into Georgia to propagate the gospel there. 
 . . . He told me that God was beginning His work, not 
 only at Oxford, where it was much advanced, but likewise 
 in many other parts ; and, indeed, expressed such a sense 
 of Divine things in his own heart, such dependence upon 
 the Spirit, such deep and experimental religion, that it was 
 almost unparalleled. We both prayed with our friends 
 
 1 Tory was then the name of the party disaffected to the House of 
 Hanover. 
 
 1 Doddridge's "Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 220. 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 91 
 
 before we parted ; and I must say, that I hardly know 
 any conversation or any occurrence that has brought my 
 soul nearer to God, or has made me more fit for my ever- 
 lasting rest." There is a long report of what this " dear 
 brother in Christ " reported of the great work of God 
 done through the Moravians ; and the statement ends 
 thus : " He added some remarkable circumstances of his 
 own story of the wonderful manner in which God had 
 inclined his heart to undertake that work among the 
 Americans, in which I verily believe God will make him 
 an apostle ; and may the blessing of God go along with 
 him." 
 
 The editor of the "Diary and Correspondence" says, 
 in a note, " A blank is left in place of the name here, 
 but the reader will readily discover that the clergyman 
 in question could be no other than the celebrated John 
 Wesley." No ; Mr. Wesley was still in Georgia. It was 
 Mr. Benjamin Ingham. He had been Mr. Wesley's com- 
 panion in spiritual work first in Oxford, next in Georgia. 
 In 1737 it was agreed by the company that he should go 
 to England to obtain more help. We should have hardly 
 expected to find this "Churchman" of strictest type, for 
 such he was, seeking fellowship with a " Separatist " — 
 being his guest, or even knowing of his existence ; but 
 the Missioners had correspondence with or about James 
 Hervey during the previous year, and through him they 
 probably had some information about the sympathy of 
 the Northampton tutor. 
 
 At last the hour came, and the men. Whitefield was 
 the first to strike a great sensation. In May, 1739, two 
 of Doddridge's correspondents heard him on Kennington 
 Common. Such preaching was a new thing under the 
 sun. You crossed the water in a boat from Westminster, 
 just glancing at the workmen driving the piles for the 
 new bridge. You walked through a mile of market 
 gardens until you reached a great green waste — this was 
 the common. It had been for ages a scene for the exe- 
 cution of London criminals. It was shunned by night, as 
 haunted ; and by day, certain terrible things that swung 
 
92 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 in chains seemed to make a silence and to kill the sun- 
 shine. Yet this dismal solitude was one of Whitefield's 
 favourite " open-air cathedrals," and here, during the first 
 fortnight of that particular month, he preached many 
 times to ten, twenty, tiiirty thousand people, who stood 
 in the rain spell-bound, the wet wind blowing his words 
 this way and that way. He once computed the congre- 
 gation at fifty thousand. The ghastly accessories of the 
 scene were all turned to account, and made to enhance 
 the power of his message. Pointing to a gallows where 
 three men were hanging in chains, he said, " If you want 
 to know what wages the devil gives his servants, you need 
 not stir from this place where you now are. Look yonder !" 
 His thunder was heard for nearly a mile. This year 
 Wesley was stirred up by Whitefield to begin open-air 
 preaching. " I could scarce reconcile myself at first," 
 said he, " to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of 
 which he set me an example on Sunday, having been all 
 my lifetime (till very lately) so tenacious of every point 
 relating to decency and order, that I should have thought 
 the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done 
 in a church." A grand faith made men, feeling all the re- 
 finement of scholars and gentlemen, habitually ready and 
 willing to mount a waggon, give out a psalm, gather a 
 mob, and then preach Christ. A grand work of God in 
 the land honoured this grand faith. 
 
 Knowing what we do of our friend, we should have 
 expected him to hail these servants of God with great en- 
 thusiasm ; instead of this, however, he for a time seems 
 to have shown them only courteous respect. He spoke 
 of Mr. Whitefield with qualified admiration, and even so 
 late as June, 1743, of Mr. Wesley as if his visit to the 
 neighbourhood of Mr. Witton, his late pupil, might be 
 looked upon as a trial of his faith. Why was this? 
 
 Perhaps one reason for this hesitation was the high 
 churchmanship of these revivalists at that early period. 
 It is not certain that Wesley would then have accepted 
 his ministerial assistance as such, even if it had been 
 proferred. While in Georgia he held the doctrines of 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 93 
 
 Apostolic Succession, believed that no one could ad- 
 minister the Sacraments who was not episcopally ordained, 
 had excluded Dissenters from the Holy Communion 
 because they not been properly baptized ; and by this 
 date he had not announced any change in his beliefs. His 
 brother Charles was even more rigid in this respect than 
 himself. Mr. Roffey, writing to Doddridge in 1749, 
 complains of him for calling dissenting ministers "a 
 tribe of priests, unholy and unsent." Whitefield soon 
 grew out of his ecclesiastical difficulties ; but even he, 
 in the year before he began this open-air evangelism, 
 had refused to officiate at the funeral of a person who 
 in his opinion had not been baptized, yet had made no 
 objection to read the office over a baptized soldier who 
 had killed himself by drinking; and, though he worshipped 
 much with Dissenters, was wont to plead that this was 
 no violation of the canons and the Act of Uniformity, 
 which referred to public worship only ; and that when 
 " the societies " met, it was not for public worship, but 
 only an imitation of the primitive Christians, who continued 
 with one accord " in the temple," and yet " in every house 
 they ceased not to preach and teach Jesus Christ." 1 Per- 
 haps our Dissenter hardly liked such ecclesiastical refine- 
 ments. Other things may have also disposed him to hold 
 himself in some reserve, such as the remarkable nervous 
 phenomena which generally attended the preaching of Mr. 
 Wesley, all the more inexplicable because that preaching 
 was marked by an earnest calmness by no means appeal- 
 ing to the nerves. Joseph Hughes of Battersea, when 
 he heard him preach many years later, was reminded, by 
 his good sense and pithy language, of Benjamin Franklin. 2 
 Yet, while he was making his plain statements of truth, 
 robust, insensitive men would often fall down in an 
 instant, as if thunderstruck, upon the ground, where they 
 would roll, plunge, kick, and shout ; and after hours of 
 agony, enter into exquisite peace. There were also many 
 things in Whitefield that hurt his sensitive respect for 
 
 * Acts ii. 46, v. 42. 
 
 * " Life of Joseph Hughes, M.A.," p. 82. 
 
94 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 the legislation of decorum. He thought that sometimes 
 he was crude, rash, injudicious, and, to use his own 
 phrase, chargeable with "saucy familiarities with the 
 blessed God." Added to all, there was the apprehension 
 which he felt in common with other quiet workers, of 
 interruption to his own good work. Whatever the good 
 of Methodism in the long run, there was often a certain 
 ' evil from it just at first. It was always found that just 
 after its appearance at any place, the weak and excitable 
 Christians there, who of course thought themselves more 
 spiritual than their brethren, though in fact they were 
 immeasurably less so, would be sure to feel a craving for 
 stimulants, a disrespect for order, and an impatience of 
 instruction. James Watt once said of his new steam-horse, 
 " the velocity, violence, magnitude, and horrible noise of 
 the engine give unusual satisfaction to all beholders." 
 Mr. Boulton continued, " By-the-bye, the noise seems to 
 convey great ideas of power to the ignorant, who seem 
 to be no more taken with modest merit in an engine 
 than in a man." 1 So, in the machinery of religious use- 
 fulness, many good people fancy that nothing is doing 
 but when the steam is hissing at every rivet, and never do 
 they feel so hopeful about the train as when it is off the 
 line. This Doddridge afterwards found to his sorrow. 
 Upon the whole, he was at first inclined to be cautious, 
 but although always disliking certain merely human 
 accidents of the mission, he saw that the mission itself was 
 gloriously Divine, and rejoiced to be identified with its 
 agency. 
 
 At five o'clock in the evening of May 21, 1739, that is, 
 in the very month of this preaching already mentioned at 
 Kennington Common, Whitefield reached Northampton, 
 where, according to his own journal, he "was most cour- 
 teously received by Dr. Doddridge, master of the academy 
 there, and at seven o'clock preached on a common to about 
 3,000 hearers." Later in the year, the day of the month 
 omitted, we find a letter of his supposed to be addressed 
 
 * " Quarterly Review," vol. civ. p. 442, Art. James Watt. 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 95 
 
 to the students, 5 in which the following words occur : 
 "Though you are not of the Church of England, yet, 
 if you are persuaded in your own minds of the truth of 
 the way in which you walk, I leave it. Whether Confor- 
 mists or Nonconformists, our main concern should be to 
 be assured that we are called and taught of God, for none 
 but such are fitted to minister in holy things. It rejoiced 
 me much to see such dawnings of grace in your souls, 
 only I thought that most of you bowed down too much 
 with a servile fear of man ; but as the love of the 
 Creator increases, the fear of the creature will decrease. 
 Unless your hearts are freed from worldly hopes and 
 worldly fears, you will never speak boldly as you ought to 
 speak. The good old Puritans, I believe, never preached 
 better than when they were in danger of being taken to 
 prison as soon as they had finished their sermons ; and, I 
 am persuaded, unless you go forth with the same temper, 
 you will never preach with the same demonstration of 
 the Spirit and power. Study your hearts as well as 
 your books ; ask yourselves again and again, if you 
 would preach Christ if you were sure to lay down your 
 lives for so doing." 
 
 Whitefield's visit seemed to have a quickening effect 
 on Doddridge. His sympathy with the evangelist grew 
 rapidly. Most of us are familiar with a hymn of his 
 beginning thus : 
 
 " Arise, my tenderest thoughts, arise, 
 To torrents melt my streaming eyes ! 
 And thou, my heart, with anguish feel 
 Those evils which thou canst not heal ! " 
 
 Many hymns have more charms in the thought, and more 
 melodious liquids in the language, but this was not so 
 much a poem as a cry. Perhaps he was unconscious of 
 the words. There was a vivid moment when, like a seer, 
 he saw mad millions of sinners — was in an agony to save 
 them, felt desperate with a sense of helplessness, anil 
 cried out thus. Who could criticise a wail over lost souls, 
 
 1 This is Mr. Tyerman's opinion, and there seems to be no doubt. 
 
9 6 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 and where have we heard one more piercing than this ? 
 It was heard for the first time on June 13, 1739, at what 
 is now the Unitarian Chapel at Leicester, after a sermon 
 on the text, " I beheld the transgressors and was grieved 
 because they kept not thy law " The preaching must 
 have been tremendous when such a hymn was made to 
 match it, thrown off, as his custom was, when he had 
 finished his study for the sermon, to be sung at the close. 
 Colonel Gardiner was in the congregation, and, service 
 being over, he went into the vestry and " embraced " the 
 preacher, and the two men, who had never met before, 
 never in spirit parted afterwards. 
 
 Sure as law, healthy interest in missionary work at 
 home will grow into a passion for foreign missions. 
 The second is but an extension of the first. With richest 
 tinge and warmest glow, light strikes the near object, but 
 only on its way to the remote. We are not surprised, 
 therefore, to find that as soon as the idea was presented 
 to him he was charmed with it. On December 22nd, of 
 the year in which he wrote the hymn just noticed, Sir 
 John Thorold, having received a Latin letter from Count 
 Zinzendorf, giving the story of the Moravian mission, 
 then recent, sent it on to him, introducing himself with 
 fraternal words, ending thus : " I will not any longer 
 detain you from the pleasure I am persuaded you will 
 receive by reading the joyful account that holy, laborious 
 servant gives of the course of the glorious gospel in divers 
 parts of the earth, than to desire an interest in your 
 prayers, and to be esteemed, reverend sir, your affectionate 
 friend." 1 His soul was now fired with new enthusiasm. 
 Shortly after this we find him in Latin correspondence 
 with the Count, who, on his next visit to England, was 
 his much-honoured visitor. In 1741 the Rev. Benjamin 
 Ingham 2 wrote to inform Doddridge that he had been 
 
 « Wilson MSS. 
 
 2 I take this opportunity of stating that a letter written May 8, 
 1742, in which Mr Ingham's pritstism is strongly denounced, was 
 not written l>y Doddridge, as supposed by the esteemed Mr. Teiy- 
 man, but by the Kev. F. YVadsworth. 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 97 
 
 chosen a " Corresponding Member of the Society for the 
 Furtherance of the Gospel." In the reply to this he 
 said, " Glory be to Him who causes His gospel to 
 triumph, and magnifies the riches of His grace in getting 
 Himself the victory, by soldiers who out of weakness are 
 made strong. If Christ raise to Himself a seed among 
 the Negroes and the Hottentots, I will honour them 
 above all the politest nations upon earth that obey not 
 His glorious gospel." 1 He was accustomed to report the 
 Moravian missionary work at his church meetings. 
 
 Still in the same year, that is, first on June 30, i74r, 
 at a meeting of ministers at Denton in Norfolk, next on 
 October 1 5th, at a similar meeting at Kettering, he delivered 
 a rousing sermon on li The Evil and Danger of Neglect- 
 ing Souls." It was a rush of thoughts 
 
 " fierily furnaced 
 In the blast of a life that had struggled in earnest." 
 
 The effect was great. In reference to the first occasion 
 a minister who was present says : " A remarkable day 
 indeed, when the presence of God filled our assembly ; 
 and not myself only, but many others have with pleasure 
 owned it was one of the best days of our lives. Though 
 the season was hot, the auditory very much crowded, and 
 between four and five hours spent in the public worship, 
 none thought the hours tedious and wished for a dismis- 
 sion." 2 The sermon was in each instance followed by a 
 ministerial conference on the best means for the advance- 
 ment of Christ's kingdom. His suggestions are given in 
 the dedication to the printed sermon, and include the 
 following plan for aiding missions : 
 
 " That pious people unite as members of a society ; 
 that they daily offer up some earnest prayer for the pro- 
 pagation of the gospel in the world, especially among the 
 heathen nations ; that they attend four times a year for 
 solemn prayer ; that some time be then spent in review- 
 
 1 "Memoirs of James Ilutton," p. 60. 
 9 Frost's Funeral Sermon lor Doddridge. 
 
 8 
 
9 8 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 ing the promises relating to the establishment of the 
 Redeemer's kingdom in the world ; that any important 
 information of the progress of the gospel from foreign 
 lands be communicated at these quarterly meetings ; that 
 each member contribute something towards supporting 
 the expense of sending missionaries abroad, printing 
 Bibles and other useful books in foreign languages ; 
 establishing schools for the instruction of the ignorant, 
 and the like." 1 
 
 In this scheme of an auxiliary for the foreign spread of 
 the gospel, began our modern mode of carrying out the 
 Saviour's great missionary law. Each Missionary Society 
 is but an aggregate of auxiliaries like the one here sug- 
 gested. Our societies, whose united labours have been 
 crowned with a measure of success, not the less wonderful 
 because it is sometimes ungratefully denied, seem to have 
 sprung from this germ. 
 
 All this time he betrayed such an increase of love to 
 the Methodists, that his friends at length ventured upon 
 a gentle remonstrance, and in a letter dated July 27, 1743, 
 Dr. Jennings said to him, " Would it be right befoi-e God 
 for Mr. Coward's trustees not to be solicitous to have 
 their pupils trained up in the words of truth and sober- 
 ness ? and would it be right and friendly to stand by 
 unconcerned and see our friend and tutor's credit, and 
 consequently his usefulness, so greatly impaired, and not 
 offer the best advice we can to remedy an evil that gives 
 us so deep a concern ? . . . I pray God that prudence 
 may guide you." These wise words were wasted. On 
 July 28 he actually took part in services at Whitefield's 
 Tabernacle ! 2 Then good Dr. Watts was constrained to 
 write : "lam sorry that since your departure I have had 
 many questions asked me about your preaching and 
 praying at the Tabernacle, and of sinking the character 
 of a minister, and especially of a tutor, among the Dis- 
 senters so low thereby. I find many of your friends 
 entertain this idea ; but I can give no answer, as not 
 1 "Works," vol. iii. p. 229. 
 
 a Tyerinan's " Life of Whitefield," vol. ii. p. 72. 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 99 
 
 knowing how much you have been engaged there. I 
 pray God to guard us from every temptation." 1 
 
 Early in October the infatuated man went so far as to 
 allow Whitefield to preach in his pulpit! This raised a 
 hurricane. Reproaches from London, Bristol, Exeter, 
 and other places, came storming in upon him. The 
 trustees were anxious. Mr. Nathaniel Neale, who appears 
 to have been somewhat " rational " in his proclivities, 
 seemed to be much tortured in his mind between great 
 respect for the offender and burning indignation at the 
 offence. In this spirit he wrote two letters of remon- 
 strance as long as pamphlets. In one of them he said : 
 "There are letters shown about town from several 
 ministers in the work, which make heavy complaints of 
 the disorder occasioned by Whitefield and Wesley in 
 those parts. One of them, speaking of Mr. Whitefield, 
 calls him honest, crazy, confident Whitefield ! These 
 letters likewise mention that some ministers there, who 
 were your pupils, have given them countenance ; and you 
 can hardly conceive the disrespect this has occasioned 
 several ministers and other persons in town to speak of 
 you with. Whether you are aware of this, I know not ; 
 and I am sure if I did not esteem it a mark of sincere 
 friendship, I would not give you the uneasiness of hear- 
 ing it." 2 
 
 We are inclined to wish that his answer to such animad- 
 versions had not been so much in the strain of apology ; 
 but, in truth, he was not quite sure of his ground, and was 
 not yet prepared to be " out and out" in his advocacy of 
 Whitefield. Many of his sayings and doings were 
 contrary to his judgment and taste, but he thought him 
 to be after all, as he said, " a flaming servant of Jesus 
 Christ," and had therefore felt it right to stand by him, 
 though somewhat timidly. However, there was no 
 timidity in his stand for the Methodists after this. " Not 
 long after his reproof, Lady Huntingdon, Lady Frances 
 Gardiner, Doddridge, and Mr. Price, were dining with 
 
 1 " Diary and Correspondence," vol. iv. p. 270. 
 
 3 Ibid. vol. iv. p. 289. . 
 
100 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 Lady Abney. The conversation turned upon the remark- 
 able religious movements of the day, and all, from their 
 separate points ot observation, told of the ' wonderful 
 works of God ' which they had seen and heard. ' Such 
 are the fruits,' said the Doctor, his face brightening with 
 intensity of interest, ' that will ever follow the faithful 
 proclamation of Divine mercy. The Lord our God will 
 crown His message with success, and give it an abundant 
 entrance into the hearts of men. It is a blessing that 
 such men have been raised up.' " 1 
 
 From the year 1741 Whitefield and Wesley had been 
 parted, and for doctrinal reasons were working in different 
 spheres. For a brief interval there was anger between 
 them, then a tender and life-long affection. Doddridge 
 had become the warm friend of both, but his knowledge 
 of Wesley began latest. In 1745 we find Wesley on a 
 visit to the academy and addressing the students. At 
 his request he sent, on June 28, 1746, a very long and 
 elaborate letter of advice as to books suitable to the young 
 Methodist preachers. In his acknowledgment of this MS. 
 Wesleyappears to have meekly invited his hank expression 
 of opinion as to anything in his own temper and conduct 
 that might lessen his usefulness. Doddridge said, " I 
 have always esteemed it to be the truest act of friendship 
 to use our mutual endeavours to render the characters of 
 each other as blameless and as valuable as possible ; and 
 I have never felt a more affectionate sense of my obliga- 
 tions than when those worthy persons who have honoured 
 me with their correspondence have freely told me what 
 they thought amiss in me. . . . This, therefore, dear sir, 
 is an office you might reasonably expect from me, if I had 
 for some time enjoyed an intimate knowledge of you. 
 But it has always been a maxim with me never to believe 
 any flying story to the prejudice of those whom I had 
 apparent reason to esteem, and consequently . . . you 
 must be contented to wait longer before you receive that 
 office of fraternal love which you ask from, reverend and 
 
 '■' Lady Huntingdon and her Friends," p. 35. 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 101 
 
 dear sir, your obliged and affectionate brother and ser- 
 vant." Wesley had made some comment on the phrase, 
 " faithful humble servant," with which he had last sub- 
 scribed himself. He therefore says in a postscript : 
 " Your caution has suggested a thought to me — whether 
 it be modest to call ourselves humble? If the expression 
 means a real readiness to serve in love in anything low, 
 as in washing the feet of another, I hope I can say, ' I 
 am your humble servant ; ' but if it mean one who is in 
 all respects as humble as he could wish, God forbid that 
 I should arrogate so proud a title. In what can I say I 
 have already attained ? Only in that I love my Divine 
 Master. I would not have a thought in my heart that He 
 should disapprove. I feel a sweetness in being assuredly 
 in His gracious hand, which all the world cannot possibly 
 afford ; and which I really think would make me happier 
 in a dark dungeon than ten thousand worlds could render 
 me without it ; and therefore I love every creature in the 
 earth that bears His image; and I do not except those 
 who through ignorance, rashness, or prejudice, have 
 greatly injured me." 1 
 
 Much harm had been done to Whitefield's good fame 
 by a kind of " spiritual lusciousness " in the style of his 
 journal, and by other sins against refinement. Bishop 
 Gibson's charges against him in his pastoral letter of 
 1739 were founded on quotations of this kind. On 
 August 22, 1748, Whitefield asked Doddridge, Stonehouse, 
 and Hervey to revise his pages with a view to another 
 edition. Doddridge accepted this responsibility, and a 
 truer act of friendship could hardly have been shown. 
 He also wrote some faithful words to him, which drew 
 forth on December 21st, the following reply: 
 
 " Reverend and very dear Sir, — I am glad, very glad 
 to receive your letter dated November 7th, though it did 
 not reach me until last night I thank you for it a 
 thousand times : it has led me to the throne of grace, 
 where I have been crying ' Lord, counsel my counsellors, 
 • " Diary and Correspondence," vol. iv. p. 503. 
 
102 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 and show them what Thou wouldst have me to do ! ' Was, 
 alas ! how can I be too severe against myself, who, Peter- 
 like, have cut off so many ears, and by imprudence 
 mixed with my zeal, have dishonoured the cause of Jesus ! 
 I can only look up to Him who healed the high-priest's 
 servant's ear, and say, ' Lord, heal all the wounds my 
 unguarded soul has given ! ' Assure yourself, dear sir, 
 everything I print shall be revised. I have always sub- 
 mitted my performances to my friends' corrections. Time 
 and experience ripen men's judgment, and make them 
 more solid, rational, and consistent. Oh that this may be 
 my case ! I thank you, dear sir, for your solemn charge 
 with respect to my health. ... I trust that, by observing 
 the rules you prescribe, I shall live to declare the works of 
 the Lord." 
 
 In Mr. Neale's letter already quoted, and which was 
 written when the outcry against Doddridge for his 
 sympathy with Methodism began, there was a reference 
 to the complaints made by his reverend friends in 
 Somersetshire about " two ministers there, formerly his 
 pupils," who had caught the same infection. It will be 
 interesting at this point, and will come fairly into our 
 plan, to inquire who these ministers were, and what the 
 Methodistic insanity was like, which had so excited this 
 anger. One of the culprits was Mr. Fawcett, of Taunton, 
 who had been eminently successful there, but who, for 
 the sake of greater service, was then on the point of 
 removal to Kidderminster ; the other was our old friend 
 Mr. Darracott. We have glimpses of them both in the 
 following letter to the latter written by the Doctor, March 
 3°, !747 : 
 
 " I thank you, and, above all, I thank God, for the 
 charming contents of your letter, which I have this 
 evening received, and which was a most reviving cordial 
 to me after I came out of the pulpit. ... I have been 
 bowing my knees to the Father of all mercies to return 
 Him my most unfeigned thanks for the signal honour He 
 is pleased to confer upon you for the, I think almost 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 I03 
 
 unparalleled, encouragement He is giving to your ministry, 
 very far beyond what I can pretend to. But when I 
 consider how very little I deserve, I rather wonder that 
 I am not left totally destitute of all success, than that all 
 my wishes are not answered. I rejoice to observe the 
 humility with which you express yourself in the midst of 
 all. It is by the grace of God you are what you are, 
 both with respect to ability and success. It is my hearty 
 prayer that all the gifts, graces, and blessings of God's 
 Holy Spirit may more and more be made to abound 
 towards you. I am particularly pleased with the account 
 you give of writing letters to some of your people with 
 such good success. Perhaps it may put me upon doing 
 the like. God has made use of your letters to quicken 
 as well as to comfort me, and will thus, I doubt not, 
 quicken my prayers for you. Let yours for me, I beseech 
 you, be continued. 
 
 " Since I saw you, I have made a visit to dear Mr. 
 Fawcett, at Kidderminster, where, I think, our Lord 
 Jesus Christ reigns in the most glorious manner that I 
 have anywhere seen in so large a congregation. God 
 crowns his labours in an amazing degree. He has 316 
 catechumens of one age and another. Old and young are 
 converted. Crowds flock to hear the Word of God with 
 eager appetite, and Christians pray as if they would draw 
 down Heaven to earth by holy violence. He prayed 
 himself like a man inspired, when I heard him in his 
 family; and, upon the whole, has such wisdom, such 
 courage, such zeal given him, and is so ' enriched in all 
 knowledge and in all utterance,' that I seem to myself in 
 many respects but a little child when compared with 
 him. I bless God for his superior abilities and much 
 greater success. Would to God that all the Lord's 
 people were such, and that I, being what I am, were the 
 least and lowest of all the ministers of Christ of every 
 denomination ; and I cannot say that I wish to sink 
 lower, unless God may thereby be glorified." 1 
 
 Darracott MSS. 
 
104 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 Whitefield, writing to Lady Huntingdon, February 25, 
 1750, thus refers to the other "scandalous ministers :" 
 " At Wellington I lay at the house of one Mr. Darracott, 
 a flaming successful preacher of the gospel, and who may 
 justly be called 'The Star of the West.' 1 He has suffered 
 much reproach, and in the space of three months has lost 
 three lovely children. Two of them died the Saturday 
 before the Sacrament was to be administered ; but 
 weeping did not hinder sowing. . . . He preached next 
 day and administered as usual, and for his three natural, 
 the Lord has given him above thirty spiritual, children. 
 He has ventured his little all for Christ, and last week a 
 saint died who left him £,200 in land. At his place I 
 began to take the field for the spring ; at a very short 
 warning, a multitude assembled." 
 
 Mr. Darracott had fulfilled the promise of his life at 
 college. So animated was he, that it was said he looked 
 " like one who lived on live things." 
 
 " Grant some of knowledge greater store, 
 More learned some in teaching ; 
 Yet few in life did lighten more, 
 Or thunder more in preaching." 
 
 "His hearers so increased as constantly to overflow 
 the place of worship," even after its enlargement. He 
 set up charity schools, and opened houses for worship in 
 most of the adjacent villages, where he preached weekly. 
 About a mile from the town there was one village where 
 drunkenness, rioting, and sin of every description 
 formerly seemed to be the only business of its inhabi- 
 tants; and in this place, which was called Rogue's Green, 
 such a change was effected as produced a change of the 
 name, and it is now known as Roe Green. Wellington 
 was changed by his ministry as Kidderminster had been 
 by that of Baxter. 2 The high estimation in which he was 
 held by the excellent of the earth appears from many an 
 
 1 The Rev. Dr. Bennett has adopted this phrase as the title of 
 his " Life of Darracott " (181 5). 
 8 "Star of the West," p. 55. 
 
THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 105 
 
 unpublished letter to him now before us, written by Mr. 
 Rawlings of St. Columb, Dr. Haweis, the Earl of Dart- 
 mouth, Mr. Penrose, vicar of Penrhyn, and Mr. Walker, 
 vicar of Truro, who says in one of his letters, " I have 
 not your warm heart; Doddridge was not my tutor. 
 Dear man ! I love him more, since I have known you." 
 
 A few weeks after Whitefield's visit, Darracott was 
 thrown into an illness, and was supposed to be dying. 
 When the sad news came to his old tutor, he wrote : 
 " Oh what a wound was it to my heart, to mine which 
 loves you as a tender parent, and more than a parent, if 
 that can be possible, to me who look upon you as 
 eminently my joy and my crown. Must the residue 
 of your days, my dear friend, be cut short in the 
 midst ? Must the world and the Church lose you ? 
 Alas l it is almost like a sword in my heart. 'Tis what 
 I hardly know how to bring my mind to submit to, 
 and acquiesce in with that humble deference which we 
 owe to that Infinite Wisdom which is to determine the 
 affair. But I would fain say, ' Thy will be done.' I 
 would give you up to Him, whose claims to you are so 
 much greater than ours ; not without a secret hope that 
 He would give you back again to our humble prayer, and 
 will make your life the sweeter, and your labour yet, if 
 possible, more acceptable and useful in consequence of 
 this threatening illness. Of this, at least, I am sure, He 
 has stirred up my spirit, and that of several others, to 
 pray earnestly for you, and to plead almost as for our 
 own soul. And I cannot but think that the consequence 
 is, He will spare you a little to recover strength." 1 Mr. 
 Darracott's valuable life was continued to the 14th of 
 March, 1759. 
 
 On May 6, 1750, about the time when this letter was 
 written, Mr. Whitefield had ridden from Olney to North- 
 ampton, where, his journal informs us, he "had a practical 
 interview with Dr. Stonehouse, Rev. James Hervey, and 
 Rev. Mr. Hartley, rector of Winwick." Next day he 
 
 Darracott MSS. 
 
io6 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 preached in the morning "to Dr. Doddridge's family;" in 
 the afternoon to above 2,000 persons in a field, his 
 friends with whom he had the private interview " walking 
 with him along the street." Doddridge was the holy 
 representative of the vanishing dispensation, rather than 
 the beginner of the new one ; yet the scanty memoranda 
 to which we have been limited are sufficient to show that 
 he welcomed the new one, if we may so call the great 
 evangelic era of which we have been speaking, and that he 
 was the first of the Nonconformists who held out the hand 
 of fellowship to its great evangelists. 
 
IX. 
 
 LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 
 
 " As thou hast proved it by their practice, 
 No argument like matter of fact is, 
 And we are best of all led to 
 Men's principles by what they do." 
 
 Hudibras, Part II. canto iii. 1. 191. 
 
 BERKELEY has been called the " Philip Sidney of 
 Theology." We shall not presume to claim a 
 similar title for our divine. He was, however, one of 
 those on whom the nameless gift of charm is bestowed. 
 His loving kindness, flowing courtesy, and the serene 
 sunshine of his presence, made you quite understand why 
 Lord Halifax said of him, "There goes a true Christian 
 gentleman." At the same time, it must be allowed that 
 his emotional quickness to take impression, his fairness 
 almost to the extreme of unfairness to persons of all 
 creeds ; 1 his invariable deference to the person with whom 
 he happened to be speaking, his readiness to think the 
 best of everybody, and his nervous fear of giving pain, 
 sometimes led him into temptation, and gave some colour 
 to the charge that " he tried to please all the world." 
 Yet on a needful occasion he could utter a strong contrary 
 opinion, and administer a bold rebuke. Job (Jrton says 
 that " he was noted for his skill in reproving sins in 
 persons of quality." Sir John Robinson, like many 
 country gentlemen of the day, was given to mistake 
 
 ' " It was so dry, that you niight call it wet." 
 
 — Aruutiinot. 
 
108 LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 
 
 profanities for flowers of speech. One night he used bad 
 words, when Doddridge was in the company. Next 
 morning he received a letter from him which is a model 
 of earnest and delicate Christian appeal. 
 
 Good talkers are rare. Persons of great mental wealth 
 are apt to have no small change handy. But this capitalist 
 in book knowledge was such a man of business, had such 
 public spirit, and was so alive and sympathetic with the 
 small, familiar interests of life, that in whatever company 
 he found himself he was never at a loss. He enjoyed the 
 company of scientific men, in witness of which we find 
 three papers of his in the Transactions of the Royal 
 Society; and only lately the secretary, Professor Huxley, 
 placed in the archives a letter written by him to Dr. 
 Canton about a question ol science disputed in his day. 
 He was also an active member of the Northampton Philo- 
 sophical Society, consisting of medical and other gentle- 
 men in town and country, who met for inquiry and 
 experiment in relation to things which this name indicates. 
 In the year 1744 he read two papers in the course of their 
 meetings — one on " The Doctrine of Pendulums," the 
 other on " The Laws of the Communication of Motion 
 as well in elastic as in non-elastic bodies." We very 
 much fear that it was at one of those meetings a youthful 
 philosopher unfolded a scheme for flying to the moon, 
 provoking even the gentle Doddridge to make this 
 impromptu : 
 
 if And will Volatio leave this world so soon, 
 To fly to his own native seat, the moon ? 
 'Twill stand, however, in some little stead, 
 That he sets out with such an empty head." 
 
 He was sure of a welcome at Cambridge. When 
 on a visit there in 1741 he was "most courteously 
 entertained by Dr. Newcombe, Master of St John's." 
 Dr. Conyers Middleton invited him to his house, and 
 our friend says, writing to Mrs. Doddridge, " Dr. Mid- 
 dleton showed me several very fine curiosities, and I, on 
 the other hand, had the pleasure of informing him of 
 
LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. log 
 
 several very curious and valuable manuscripts in the 
 library of which he has the charge, of which neither 
 the doctor himself nor any of the gentlemen of the 
 university that I saw had even so much as heard, 
 though they are the oldest monuments relating to the 
 churches of Italy which continued uncorrupted in the 
 great darkness of Popery, i.e., between six and seven 
 hundred years ago, and it is most astonishing to me 
 that the university should know nothing about them ; 
 perhaps it is because Cromwell lodged them there." 
 Mr. Caryl, Master of Jesus College, referring to this 
 visit in a letter to Warburton, said, "Dr. Doddridge 
 spent a couple of days here last week. . . . He favoured 
 me with much curious information, and, if I judge right, 
 is a man of great parts and learning, and of a candid, 
 communicative temper. I new reckon him amongst my 
 acquaintance, and thank you for him." At Oxford he 
 was still more at home. Mr. Merrick of Trinity, Mr. 
 Costard, Fellow and Tutor of Wadham, Dr. Hunt, Canon 
 of Christ Church and Regius Professor of Hebrew, had 
 been his cordial hosts, and were friends with whom he 
 kept up a learned correspondence. "Sir," said Johnson 
 to Boswell, " it is a great thing to dine with the canons 
 of Christ Church." However that might have been, and 
 however remiss these doctors and others had been in the 
 discharge of public functions, they were scholars of high 
 repute, and no doubt it was an honour to be reckoned 
 as one of their fraternity. Perhaps his intercourse was 
 most frequent with Dr. Richard Newton. This gentle- 
 man, having been for thirty years Principal of Hart Hall, 
 obtained a charter in 1740 to merge it into a new institu- 
 tion called Hertford College, which he effected at great 
 personal expense, and became himself the first Principal. 
 In framing the first statutes of this new college, he con- 
 sulted Dr. Doddridge and Sir John Thorold, sending 
 copies to them for notes of their advice before publication. 
 
 " His discourse," says Kippis, "sometimes rose to the 
 splendid;" yet perhaps it was never more valued than in 
 a quiet room with some Christian sufferer. So, writing 
 
110 LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 
 
 to him September 13, 1744, Dr. Watts, referring to a 
 recent visit, said, " Such converse as I have lately enjoyed 
 with you gives a fair emblem of the social pleasures of 
 the heavenly state, where the communication of our ideas 
 on the most sublime and glorious subjects, and confirming 
 our souls with Divine truth, must needs have a consider- 
 able share. God grant that we may here escape error in 
 our pursuit of the best knowledge." 
 
 Of course his correspondence was large. In those days, 
 letters were not despatches shot off in burning moments of 
 hurry, like flakes and scintillations from a furnace, but 
 were treatises. When a letter cost ninepence, the writer 
 tried to make it worth ninepence. As Charles Lamb 
 says, " We write no letters now." Knowing this, we 
 sigh with the weary man as we read his line — " 1 have 
 now on this table above a hundred unanswered letters." 
 Some of them were doubtless on matters connected with 
 the academy; some on matters connected with his 
 various offices of trustee or guardian ; some about the 
 business of the county churches, or about arrangements 
 for ministerial settlement ; some were from foreign pro- 
 fessors or divines, who corresponded in French or Latin ; 
 others were on subjects of literature, or biblical exegesis. 
 In the list of correspondents we find learned men of his 
 own communion, such as Lardner, Leland, Miles, and 
 Fordyce ; and many distinguished Anglicans, such as 
 Dean Tucker; the Bishop of Rochester ; Bishop Sherlock, 
 of London ; Seeker, of Oxford, afterwards Primate ; 
 Maddox, of Worcester ; Benson, of Gloucester ; and 
 Dr. Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury. If some morn- 
 ing you had taken out the contents of the postman's bag 
 for him, you might have seen one letter from the Duchess 
 of Somerset; another from the Countess of Hardwicke ; 
 another from Blair, the poet ; another from Baker, the 
 naturalist, describing a five-legged lamb, and similar 
 prodigies ; another from an orientalist, amending certain 
 translations of the Hebrew Bible, and asking his opinion; 
 and another from one of our ancestors, then only six 
 years old (poor little ancestors !) as follows : 
 
LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. Ill 
 
 " Honoured Sir, — The many favours you have been 
 pleased to show my mama, which she gratefully acknow- 
 ledges to you, and for your repeated favours, takes 
 Liberty to present to you a few lines of my own writing, 
 the sight of which she hopes will bring me to your 
 Remembrance, when before the Lord, since the distance 
 is so great you might possibly never think of me in 
 perticuler; but by these lines you may know the Lord 
 hath been pleased to give me understanding to read the 
 Scriptures, and a desire to know the meaning of what I 
 doo read ; he hath also given me a capacity to begin to 
 write, which my parents owns to be his gift. He hath 
 been pleased to work in me a very great love to my papa 
 and mama, and all that love them, they hope these lines 
 will be an inducement to you to pray to the Lord for me 
 that I may have saving grace wrought in me whereby I 
 may be enabled to improve any gift the Lord hath or 
 may bestow on me to the glory of God, and that I may 
 both glorifie him here and enjoy him forever. Honoured 
 Sir, I conclude with due respects from your little servant 
 at six year old till July, James Rodgers. 
 
 " Rumsey, March 5, 1742. 
 
 " To the Reverend Doctor doddridge." 1 
 
 One day the post brought him the interesting story of 
 another child, a child who afterwards became King 
 George the Third. He had written a booklet on " The 
 Principles of Christianity, in verses, for the use of Little 
 Children." "I am not ashamed," said he, "of those 
 little services, for I had rather feed the lambs of Christ's 
 flock, than rule a kingdom." The Princess of Wales had 
 allowed her children each to have a copy ; and in a letter 
 dated February 16, 1745, Dr. Ayscough, their tutor, 
 wrote — 
 
 " I shall always be glad to receive any advice or 
 instruction from you, which I desire you to give me 
 freely, and I promise you it shall be received in the most 
 
 • Wilson MSS. 
 
112 LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 
 
 friendly way. ... I must tell you that Prince George, to 
 his honour and my shame, had learned several pages in 
 your little book of verses without any directions from me, 
 and I must say of all the children, that they are as con- 
 formable and as capable of necessary instruction as any 
 children I have met with." 1 
 
 Some of these letter-writers were also his visitors and 
 faithful friends. In this list we find Dr. Warburton, after- 
 wards Bishop of Gloucester. People generally kept at a 
 respectful distance from this mighty man of books, being 
 made nervous by his formidable individuality and nimble 
 energy of invective. He was not much disposed to be 
 civil at any time, and not at all to simulate civility, even 
 to some friends of his friend. For instance : " I think," 
 said he, " that you do not set a just value on yourself 
 when you lend your name or countenance to such weak 
 but well-meaning rhapsodies as ' Hervey's Meditations.' 
 This may do well enough for the people, but the learned 
 claim you ; . . . your charity and love of goodness suffer 
 you to let yourself down in the opinion of those you 
 most value, and whose high opinion you have fairly 
 gained by works of learning and reasoning inferior to 
 none." 2 Dr. Stoughton remarks : " When one thinks of 
 the turbulent controversialist coming under the spell of 
 Doddridge's spirit, it almost reminds us of the contrast 
 and association between the Lion and Una, in the ' Faerie 
 Queen.' " 3 
 
 Another welcome visitor was Colonel Gardiner. Dr. 
 Kippis says that of course the Doctor loved him, be- 
 cause he said so ; but, at the same time, he assures us that 
 his virtues were of the awful kind, and speaks of him as 
 a hard man, having great austerity of aspect.* Children 
 are excellent judges in such a case, and we know that 
 little Polly Doddridge, to whom he used to send " twenty 
 kisses," had a high opinion of him. Under the reticence 
 of the proud old soldier there was much shy kindness, 
 
 1 Wilson MSS. 2 Letter of Warburton, June 10, 1749. 
 
 3 Stoughton, " Religion in England," vol. i. p. 342. 
 * Kippis, "Biographia Britannica." 
 
LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 113 
 
 and a hidden life ready to spring into tender and pas- 
 sionate friendship. Doddridge found it, and the two 
 friends were like David and Jonathan. 
 
 Another gentleman who was often seen at the North- 
 ampton manse was Doctor, afterwards Sir James, Stone- 
 house. When a very young man he left Oxford, after 
 a short stay at Coventry, to practise as a physician at 
 Northampton. He then lived a gay and random life, 
 professed the fashionable unbelief of the day, and had 
 given the world his thoughts on the subject, such as they 
 were, in a pamphlet which passed through three editions. 
 In the course of philanthropic enterprise he was thrown 
 much in the company of Doddridge, for whom he felt a 
 great admiration. This disposed him to read his work 
 on the Evidences, and the letters under the title of 
 "Christianity Founded on Argument." These led him 
 to adopt the theories of Christian faith, though no change 
 of heart was wrought. While he was in an agony of 
 tenderness from the death of his young wife, " The Rise 
 and Progress " came from the press ; and to this he gave 
 serious heed, marking his copy "in hundreds of places." 
 At the same time Doddridge and Hervey together had 
 many talks with, and prayers for him, after which, by 
 the sovereign grace of God, he became a decidedly 
 Christian man ; but although his life was now fired with 
 a new spirit, and was turned in a new direction, he was 
 still James Stonehouse, keeping his old marked idiosyn- 
 crasies. He was open, impulsive, given to say what 
 came uppermost, apt to get into hot water, and de- 
 serving the character he had from Doddridge, who would 
 call him " our wise doctor," or, what meant the same 
 thing, " that most imprudent of men." As he had used 
 his pen against the good cause, he now wrote for it, 
 furnishing a few small, useful tracts for the afflicted. In 
 these, many of his words are in capitals, many in italics ; 
 the style of his writing answering to the style of his speech. 
 At Whitefield's advice he ultimately took orders as a 
 clergyman, and became rector of Little Cheveril, near 
 Devizes. It was not his nature to be calm ; and once 
 9 
 
114 LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 
 
 after he had conducted the service in a London church 
 with characteristic faults of manner, Garrick, who had 
 been there, made a criticism which is worth considering. 
 The actor said to the preacher— 
 
 " What particular business had you to do when the 
 duty was over ? " 
 
 " None," said the other. 
 
 " I thought you had," said Garrick, " on seeing you 
 enter the reading-desk in such a hurry. No thing can be 
 more indecent than to see a clergyman set about sacred 
 business as if he were a tradesman, and go into church 
 as if he wanted to get out of it as soon as possible. What 
 books were those which you had before you?" 
 
 "Only the Bible and the Prayer-book." 
 
 " Only the Bible and Prayer-book ! Why you tossed 
 them backwards and forwards and turned the leaves as 
 carelessly as if they were those of a day-book and ledger." 1 
 
 By this reproof of the British Roscius it is said that 
 the Doctor greatly profited ; for even among the Bath 
 exquisites he was admired for his grace and propriety in 
 the pulpit. "Perhaps," remarks Dr. James Hamilton, 
 " he studied ' his pulpit manner ' too carefully ; at least, 
 he studied it till he became aware of it, and talked too 
 much about it. His old age was rather egotistical. He 
 had become a rich man and a baronet, and as he was a 
 little vain he had many flatterers ; but, as the friend of 
 Hannah More, he has received a sort of literary apothe- 
 osis, and as long as her "Life and Letters" have readers, Sir 
 James will shine as a star in the constellation ' Virgo.'" 2 
 
 Some of us, when in company with the late venerable 
 Mr. Jay of Bath, have heard him speak in substance as 
 follows : 
 
 " At Mrs. More's I frequently met Sir James Stone- 
 house. He was formerly a physician of note at North- 
 ampton. At that time he was a hearer, and the intimate 
 friend of Dr. Doddridge, in speaking of whom I recollect 
 his observing the amazing affluence and readiness of his 
 
 1 " Lruly Huntingdon and her Friends," p. 8o. New York. 
 
 2 Hamilton, " Our Christian Classics," vol. iii. p. 387. 
 
LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 115 
 
 mind. 'We sometimes,' said he, 'for a little excursion 
 and recreation, left home together for a week or a fort- 
 night (during the academic recess) ; and after exploring 
 the sceneries and curiosities of places in the course of the 
 day, he frequently preached at some meeting in the even- 
 ing to a crowded assembly, without time for retirement, 
 without notes, without fatigue ; with an ease, an order, an 
 accuracy, and a fervour truly astonishing.' But religion 
 lives, moves, and has its being in various degrees. He 
 was a good man, with too little spirituality, and too keen 
 an appetite for human praise ; therefore Mr. Hervey, 
 whom he attended as a physician, said to him when 
 dying : ' Dr. Stonehouse, beware of the world ! beware 
 of the world ! ' His sentiments were the skirn-milk of 
 the gospel ; but he must be classed as belonging to the 
 evangelical clergy, though very near the border that 
 separates them from others." 1 
 
 Sir James outlived his friend nearly forty-five years, and 
 many unpublished letters show that he was to the last the 
 faithful friend of his family. 
 
 We could fill a long chapter with introductions such as 
 these, showing the kind of life with which the life of Dod- 
 dridge was associated. With such friends, such a kind 
 heart, and with power to touch so many springs of influ- 
 ence, he naturally did much social service outside the 
 pale of his church work. We might tell many-chaptered 
 stories of such service, of his labours for the good of pri- 
 soners in the county gaol; of his success in establishing, 
 in 1738, a charity school, with a foundation for clothing 
 and instructing twenty boys ; of his friendship to the poor, 
 especially to the widows and orphans of ministers ; of his 
 spirited help in time of need to other congregations, 
 one fine instance of which was briefly this : " The meet- 
 ing-house of the church at Newport Pagnell having been 
 erected on an estate which belonged to one of the con- 
 gregation, no conveyance of the ground on which it stood 
 had ever been made to proper trustees, and the owner 
 
 1 "Autobiography of Rev. William Jay," p. 342. 
 
Il6 LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 
 
 becoming a bankrupt, it was seized by the creditors. Dr. 
 Doddridge purchased the meeting-house of them, con- 
 veyed it to proper trustees, and soon raised the needful 
 money." 1 
 
 His most memorable secular work was that connected 
 with the foundation of the County Infirmary, supported 
 by voluntary contributions. Northampton claims the 
 honour of being the place where, some years before this, 
 the idea of county infirmaries first found expression. It 
 was suggested by John Rushworth, a resident medical 
 gentleman, who in a pamphlet published in 1731, ad- 
 dressed to the Surgeons' Company, on the use, first dis- 
 covered by himself, of Peruvian bark in mortification, 
 made in the postscript some urgent remarks on the desir- 
 ableness of getting Parliament to assist in the erection of 
 an infirmary in the centre of every county. There were 
 then no foundations of the kind out of London and West- 
 minster. He offered £50 towards the support of such a 
 project as soon as it was started. It will be seen that his 
 proposal had reference to England in general, not to 
 Northampton in particular, and that his subscription 
 waited for the launch of a great national enterprise; but 
 he initiated nothing, and the question dropped. 
 
 The great local institution of which we are about to 
 speak began in the determined and spirited action of 
 Doddridge and Stonehouse unitedly. No one can say 
 which of them thought of it first ; but, most likely, if either 
 of them had withdrawn from the project at an early stage, 
 it would have come to nothing. After a while they were 
 joined by Joseph Jekyll, Esq., of Dallington, Ambrose 
 Isted, Esq., of Ecton, and other neighbours; then the 
 Earl of Halifax was brought into their counsels, and the 
 good work was formally proposed at the Summer Assizes 
 in July, 1743, when it received the substantial approba- 
 tion of the High Sheriff and gentlemen of the grand jury. 
 On the 4th of the following September Dr. Doddridge 
 called renewed attention to it by a sermon, taking for his 
 1 *' Brief Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Independent 
 Church at Newport Pagnell." London, 181 1. 
 
LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 117 
 
 text, " Blessed is he that considereth the poor : the Lord 
 will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will strengthen 
 him upon the bed of languishing : thou wilt make all his 
 bed in his sickness" (Psa. xli. 1, 3). A large edition 
 was printed ; the Princess of Wales and many persons of 
 influence read it, and it helped to create an atmosphere 
 of opinion favourable to the growth of the enterprise. On 
 September 20th, " at a General and Very Great Meeting of 
 the Nobility, Gentry, and Clergy," so the first report 
 runs, " it was resolved to Establish the Hospital, and by 
 their liberal Subscriptions and Benefactions a Sum was 
 raised sufficient to begin with. . . . A large House (capable 
 of containing 80 Beds) with spacious Gardens was imme- 
 diately taken at Northampton, the Situation of which for 
 Air, as well as for all Sorts of Requisites for an IN- 
 FIRMARY, is preferable to almost any other in England." 
 His Grace the Duke of Montague accepted the office of 
 Grand Visitor, and the Earl of Halifax that of Perpetual 
 President. By Lady-day following the house was to be 
 ready ; forty-five beds were to be erected, and the Infir- 
 mary opened for the reception of patients. The total cost 
 of building, alterations, and furniture was to be .£750. 1 
 
 Nine days after, a letter was written to him by a good 
 bishop, whose last printed sermon he had praised in too 
 complimentary a strain. After a little lecture on this, 
 his lordship went on to say : 
 
 " Let us all endeavour to do what good we can, and 
 give those who seem to endeavour it faithfully, the 
 comfort of knowing that we think they do ; but let us 
 never tempt one another to forget that we are unprofit- 
 able servants. I am in no danger of transgressing this 
 rule, when I say that I have read your works with 
 great satisfaction and some benefit, and both rejoice and 
 wonder that in the midst of your other occupations you 
 continue able, as I pray God you long may, to oblige 
 
 1 "Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the In- 
 firmary at Northampton." 1 743. See also "Gentleman's Magazine," 
 p. 422. 1744. 
 
Il8 LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 
 
 your fellow Christians so often and so highly from the 
 press. ... I congtatulate you heartily on the prospect 
 of success you have in your hospital, and as I am very 
 sensible of what peculiar advantage it would be to have 
 one at Oxford, so I have not only taken all oppor- 
 tunities of expressing and inculcating my opinion j but 
 should long before now have made some trial of what 
 could be done in the matter, if hopes had not been 
 given me that Dr. Radcliffe's trustees, when his library 
 is finished, may employ some part of the residue of his 
 money in this excellent work. You were much to blame 
 in not letting me see you at Gloucester ; and the Bishop, 
 when he knows it, will be as sorry as I am, that you 
 passed by us in the manner you did. The time of my 
 being in town and that of your coming hither, I am 
 afraid are different ; but if any occasion should bring 
 you near me, either there or here, I beg you will not 
 think you need any introduction, for I am with great 
 esteem and regard, sir, your very humble servant, 
 
 "Thos. Oxford." 1 
 
 The great meeting, the account of which had called 
 forth this congratulation, was not followed by immediate 
 results. It is an easy thing to pass generous resolutions 
 for which no one is responsible. The real work had yet 
 to be done, and the first stages of this were painful and 
 slow. Questions like these were asked: "What next? 
 Who ever heard of such a thing? Suppose it succeeds, 
 what good will it be to places miles out of town ? Merely 
 a house for it will cost nearly eight hundred pounds ! 
 Who is to find all this money?" Doddridge himself 
 seems to have had some misgivings ; witness his words 
 in a letter to Dr. Clark, dated Dec 15, 1743 : "I wish 
 I could tell you some better news of our hospital. We 
 have taken a house for it. Our subscriptions amount 
 to more than j£boo, but I fear the distant parts of the 
 county will do nothing considerable. We shall hardly 
 
 ' "Diary and Correspondence," vol. iv. p. 271. 
 
LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. Iig 
 
 open till Lady-day." 1 Writing to the same gentleman, 
 January 23, 1744, he says: 
 
 " Rev. and Dear Sir, — The care of attending the affairs 
 of our hospital, which to this day press hard on me (as Dr. 
 Stonehouse will hardly do anything without me), visiting 
 the sick, who at present are numerous, and the illness of 
 my secretary, which obliges me to write most of my very 
 many letters with mine own hand, added to my usual 
 business and the labour of despatching as fast as I can, 
 which is very slowly, my manuscript on the Rise and 
 Progress of Religion, have concurred to occasion a delay 
 of my answer to your last very obliging letter. ... I 
 am very glad, sir, that you liked my hospital sermon 
 and its dedication. I have hardly ever published any- 
 thing which has been at the same time so commended 
 and neglected ; and were not Lord Halifax and Mr. 
 Jekyll so hearty in the cause, / should still expect the 
 design of the hospital would drop. But I hope it will 
 be open by Easter week, and will, I doubt not, stand, 
 though I fear it will scarcely flourish, unless God put 
 more generosity into men's hearts. The clergy are 
 strangely backward on the occasion, and I fear that my 
 sermon here rather alienated than conciliated their re- 
 gard ; for with some men even charity grows odious 
 when recommended by a Dissenter. I wish Mr. Brad- 
 bury did not show too much of the like spirit in the 
 zeal and fury with which he opposes the Moravians and 
 Methodists, and all who will not go his length in putting 
 them down." 
 
 The Infirmary was formally opened on the 25th 
 of March, 1744, "when the Earl of Northampton, the 
 Earl of Halifax, Perpetual President, etc, went in pro- 
 cession, attended by the Mayor and Corporat on in 
 their formalities, to the church of All Saints, where was 
 preached a sermon by Dr. Grey, rector of Hinton. The 
 
 * "Diary and Correspondence," vol. iv. p. 298. 
 
120 LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 
 
 collection was ^54 16s. n^d." 1 Dr. Richard Newton, 
 to whom in the name of the committee Dr. Doddridge 
 had in the first instance applied for the opening sermon, 
 had been obliged to decline, but had sent him ^50 
 towards the purchase of the premises, this being charity- 
 money at his disposal. Altogether, the sum promised 
 had by this time reached ^,'1,014 18s. 6d., and of this 
 ^948 had been paid. 
 
 Our Doctor was chairman of the " Week Committee " 
 in the meeting following the opening day, and often 
 occupied that post on subsequent occasions. The earlier 
 minutes show the continued value and activity of his 
 services : for example, in presenting benefactions from 
 Mrs. Doddridge ; in leading an inquiry into certain mis- 
 understandings between the medical officers; in drawing 
 up reports ; in inspecting the wards, in conjunction with 
 the Rev. Mr. Rushworth, at the request of the committee, 
 and in reporting several irregularities, which were rectified; 
 in making, on a similar request, a calculation of the 
 expense of the patients; and in obtaining from the dissent- 
 ing churches in the county, promises of contributing to 
 collections " in concurrence with their neighbours in the 
 several parishes in which they live." His own annual 
 subscription was five guineas until his death, which 
 seems large, when we remember the words of a Puritan 
 Father : " The Lord regardeth not so much what is 
 given, as what is left." 
 
 The Bishop of Worcester, writing to him, March 15, 
 1746, says, "I am much assisted and greatly obliged by 
 the accounts that I have been favoured with in rela- 
 tion to the Infirmary at Northampton. . . . We have 
 made a beginning, and admitted some patients into our 
 Infirmary at Worcester, and with God's blessing, I trust 
 we shall make further progress this summer. . . . We 
 have not yet engaged in building, but have hired a 
 house, in which we can make up about twenty-five beds. 
 If there be any prudential rules that occur to you in the 
 progress of this work, I should be truly thankful for 
 * "Gentleman's Magazine," April, 1744. 
 
LIFE AND WORK IN GENERAL SOCIETY. 121 
 
 them. I am, sir, with much regard and esteem, your 
 obliged humble servant." 
 
 The first Infirmary in George Row, was twice enlarged. 
 The present building was erected at a cost of ^15,000, 
 and opened Oct. 12, 1793. This has also been en- 
 larged more than once, and a new building was added 
 in 1878. From first to last, at a rough estimate, there 
 cannot have been less than ^£2 7,000 spent for structural 
 purposes. In 1879, the " ordinary income" was reported 
 as ,£5,047, and the whole income, including, in ad- 
 dition to this, collections, and "extraordinary receipts," 
 amounted to ^8,032. The patriarchs, who thought the 
 first sum of ^£750 too large to be raised, would have 
 been "astonied" if a prophet had foreshown this financial 
 wonder. The in-patients under treatment last year (1879) 
 numbered 1,589; the out-patients in the same time were 
 7,120. Since 1744, 83,294 persons have been admitted 
 without recommendation, upon sudden accidents or cases 
 that would admit of no delay. Ever since that time, by 
 liberal arrangements, by the splendid apparatus of bene- 
 ficence and knowledge, and by the wealth that comes 
 out of sacrifice, this institution has been doing good in 
 a large and catholic way; in its school of medicine 
 many generations of students have acquired by scientific 
 trial the cunning eye, the sure hand, and the art which 
 never can be wholly taught by books, or by dint of 
 attending lectures ; and here, through constant spiritual 
 ministrations, many souls have been saved or comforted. 
 The little slip that Doddridge helped to plant and water, 
 has now become a noble tree, and is destined to grow 
 still further. It was a good thought that quickened in 
 his mind as well as in that of the friend who was one 
 with him, and it is in the nature of such thoughts to 
 spring and germinate in some beautiful, practical way 
 for ever. 1 
 
 1 I have been favoured with much information about the In- 
 firmary from W. Adkins, Esq., J. P., Arthur Jones, Esq., M.B., 
 house surgeon, and other gentlemen. 
 
X. 
 
 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 
 
 "The church is larger than before ; 
 You reach it by a carriage entry ; 
 It holds three hundred people more, 
 And pews are fitted up for gentry." 
 
 WlNTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. 
 
 CASTLE HILL Meeting-house, the venerable place 
 in which he exercised his ministry, partly derives its 
 name from the Castle Hill. On that hill, close by, an 
 old castle once reared its stately towers in the air. Par- 
 liaments have been held in it. There, chivalry put forth 
 its flower. Thomas Becket's train of winding splendour 
 has passed through its gates. In the reign of King John, 
 a dark deed was done on the spot, which is still dark, 
 but alive in the pages of Shakespeare. 1 Even by the 
 time of Doddridge, however, nothing was left of this 
 famous castle, but a ridge of ruddy grey wall, scarcely 
 higher than the nettles and mallows that skirted it. The 
 only bit of complete masonry left was a low, arched 
 recess, that lasted till nearly fifty years ago, and which 
 certain children were accustomed to regard as the opening 
 to the identical dungeon in which " Christian and Hope- 
 ful " were once shut up. On the hill, inside the great 
 crumbling ring of ruins, was a field where, as Doddridge 
 saw, Master Palmer had a cluster of cattle-sheds and 
 haystacks ; nothing giving out a sign of the many ancient 
 secrets that were under the grass. Outside this ring 
 
 * "King John," act iv. scene I. 
 
THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 1 23 
 
 was a deep green hollow, once the moat. On the 
 country side of this, and anciently used in the service of 
 the moat, the river Nene wound in and out through rushes 
 and feather grass; and away beyond swept the Dallington 
 Moors, where alarmists expected some day to see the 
 Pretender. On the town side, yet in advance of the 
 town, was the solitary meeting - house, said to have been 
 built of stones fetched from the shattered fortifications, 
 which act brings to mind the text about " beating swords 
 into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks." Close 
 to the meeting-house were two small hills, now long ago 
 levelled, which were mounds of rubble from fires as well 
 as from ruins made by war, grown over with a tangle of 
 rank weeds. 
 
 The writer of this once knew a man who knew a man 
 who knew Doddridge. Seventy years ago, when one of 
 these was very young and the other— Master Love of 
 Harpole— was very old, the two used to stand near the 
 old building and think of the words : " Thy servants take 
 pleasure in the stones, and favour the dust thereof." 
 Using the reminiscences furnished by these humble men, 
 let us try to see the place as it looked at the time touched 
 by this biography. Beautiful as it was in their eyes, it 
 certainly had a look of quiet, respectable ugliness that 
 might have defied competition; for it seemed to have 
 been reared by a believer in the rule, " He who was born 
 in a manger should be preached in a barn." It stood in 
 the midst of green graves and sculptured stones, which 
 time had powdered with orange and silver. Elms and 
 Scotch firs shadowed it. On the walls were sepulchral 
 tablets, a little pent roof shelved over each door, all the 
 windows above and below were shuttered outside — a 
 precaution which ancient mobs made needful, — and in 
 front, over one of them, was a sundial, with the motto, 
 "Post est Occasio calva. 1695." Once, Dr. Doddridge's 
 clerk being late, that clerk, dicitur dixisse, is said to have 
 said, " By ine it wants five minutes — the dial must be a 
 little too fast." 
 
 Now note the interior. Space for about seven hundred 
 
124 THE 0LD MEETING-HOUSE. 
 
 persons. Roof propped by two great white wooden pillars, 
 one a little bandy — the " Jachin " and " Boaz " of the 
 temple. White galleries, clumsy white pulpit, a great 
 sounding-board over it. Right and left of it, glazed 
 with small, gray-green panes, two tall windows of the 
 lattice kind, which Master Love remembered to have 
 been taken out when Whitefield preached, that he might 
 be heard by the crowd outside. Straight before the 
 pulpit, a long, massive communion-table, at each side of 
 which the students sat ; and over this table, on a chain 
 that dangled from the rafters, a mighty brass-branched 
 candlestick. All the pews near the walls were deep 
 and square, of the kind which suggested Milton's com- 
 parison of the people in them to sheep in the pens at 
 Smithfield. 1 There were no lobbies. You went up the 
 gallery steps in the sight of all Israel ; and the doors 
 opened right into the graveyard, grassy, still, and peace- 
 ful. Within and without, everything was marked by stark 
 plainness — partly because the founders had no wealth to 
 spare, but also from their sense of reverence. The 
 thought was, " How dreadful is this place ; this is none 
 other than the house of God ! " Who will presume to 
 decorate it ! 
 
 " For so Divine and pure a Guest, 
 The emptiest rooms are furnished the best ! " 
 
 If you had been there on some Sunday morning 
 during the gathering of the people, you might have seen 
 the dragoons of Lord Cadogan's regiment crowded all 
 round on the back seats of the galleries ; into the 
 square pew next the vestry, you might have seen stalk 
 the stately Colonel Gardiner, very awful to young 
 imaginations ; you might have seen Oliver Cromwell, the 
 Protector's great grandson, and grandson of Henry, 
 Lord Deputy of Ireland — for this gentleman was often a 
 visitor in the town, and had made his arrangements to 
 
 * "Touching Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church." 
 — "Works," vol. iii. p. 366. 
 
THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 125 
 
 settle in this congregation, when his purposes were broken 
 off by death ; you might have seen persons of an order 
 not now always represented in a country conventicle — 
 such as ladies of the house of Russell, or from Delapre 
 Abbey ; you might possibly have seen the shock made by 
 the entrance of some vain young woman in "a bonnet ! " 
 Ladies, with hair dressed elaborately as that of Fejee 
 Islanders, were scandalised at the sight of worldliness so 
 desperate as this, and once a senior sister thus expressed 
 her feelings : " The uncouth taste of being hatted and 
 bonneted prevails now in almost all the churches in 
 town and country. Even matrons of sixty emulate the 
 thoughtless whim of girls in their teens, each trying to 
 countenance the other in this idle transgression of the 
 laws of decency and decorum." 1 
 
 The place would be full. You would see that a large 
 proportion of the congregation came from the country, 
 consisting of small gentry, farmers, and their labourers. 
 Many shopkeepers, thoughtful and reasoning persons, 
 came from the town, and there were many of the very 
 poor class. Many of this class especially were persons of 
 high rank, according to the doctrine of Dyer, who, in his 
 work on " Christ's Famous Titles," says, " He is nobly 
 descended who is born from above." You might have 
 seen good old Malory Weston, whose name appears first 
 on the list of signers appended to Doddridge's call, still 
 framed over the vestry fireplace. From the year 1736 
 he had been designated the "Father of the Church," being 
 the oldest member. There would be Thomas Porter, the 
 doctor's man, another spiritual nobleman, who, though he 
 was so illiterate as not to be able to distinguish one letter 
 from another, had, merely by attention to his minister's 
 teaching, got an immense number of texts in his memory, 
 with the register of the chapter and verse, and had "an 
 unaccountable talent of fixing on such as to suit every 
 imaginable case." " Many hundreds of people have had 
 a curiosity to see this odd phenomenon," says the Doctor, 
 
 » "The World," 1753. 
 
126 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 
 
 " and when Colonel Gardiner said farewell to him on the 
 eve of his last departure he quoted twenty passages with 
 admirable suitableness to the case, finishing the catalogue 
 with the charge, ' Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give 
 thee a crown of life.' " 1 You might also have seen Master 
 Clayton, the old ploughman of Dallington, of whom this 
 story is told: — Mr. James Hervey, shortly after he had 
 become his father's curate, was ordered by the physician 
 for the benefit of his health to follow the plough and 
 smell the fresh earth. In obedience to this he frequently 
 accompanied Clayton. Finding that he was a serious 
 man, he said to him one morning — when stopping to rest 
 on the root of an oak — " What do you think the hardest 
 thing in religion ? " " Sir," said he, " I am a poor man, 
 and you are a minister. I beg to return the question." 
 " Then," said Mr. Hervey, " I think the hardest thing is 
 to deny sinful self ; " grounding his opinion on our Lord's 
 admonition, "If any man will follow me, let him deny 
 himself." . . . The ploughman quietly replied, " Sir, there 
 is another instance of self-denial to which the injunction 
 of Christ equally extends, which is the hardest thing in 
 religion, and that is, to deny rigfiteous self. You know 
 I do not come to hear you preach, but go every Sunday 
 with my family to hear Dr. Doddridge at Northampton. 
 We rise early in the morning, we have prayer before we 
 set out, in which I find pleasure ; under the sermon I 
 find pleasure ; when at the Lord's Table I find pleasure : 
 but yet to this moment I find it the hardest thing to deny 
 righteous self — I mean, to renounce my own strength 
 and righteousness, and not to lean on that for holiness, 
 or to rely on this for justification." Mr. Hervey, in re- 
 peating this to a friend several years after, said, " I looked 
 upon the old man with astonishment and disdain, and 
 thought him an old fool. . . . Since that I have seen 
 clearly who was the fool : not the old ploughman, but 
 the proud James Hervey." 2 Another person who was 
 
 1 Remarkable Passages in the Life of Colonel Gardiner. — 
 "Works." 
 " Mr. Kyland's account. 
 
THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 
 
 127 
 
 also much reverenced in the little community was Mary 
 Wills, a poor woman of singular piety, and of such insight 
 and foresight in connection with spiritual things that you 
 would think, from a long chapter written about her in 
 one of Doddridge's journals, 1 that he thought her en- 
 dowed with the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit. Her 
 sayings were much quoted. Famous persons went long 
 distances to see her. Colonel Gardiner would write, 
 " Pray remember me to all those with you who love the 
 Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, and particularly to Mary 
 Wills." The Earl of Leven and Melville, writing Feb. 25, 
 1747, says, "Pray let me know how poor Mary Wills 
 does. What you wrote of her fears about me is very 
 extraordinary, for at that very time I was in great distress ! 
 I want much to know her notions of the present times, 
 and shall have a long conversation with her when I come 
 to your part of the world." 2 You might have seen in 
 the assembling company many other persons whose names 
 we find in the pastor's private memoranda, and who 
 doubtless made some stir in their day, but about whom 
 history is silent ; for example, " Nurse Fairy, Goody 
 Honour, Betty Walker, Tubalcain Mellowes." This last- 
 named worthy reminds us of Jeremy Taylor's lament — 
 " How few have heard of the name of Vencatapadino 
 Ragium ! " 3 
 
 When the hour of worship struck, punctual to the 
 moment, the Doctor, in rolling white wig and dark blue 
 Geneva gown, would step into the pulpit and hang his 
 triangular hat on a peg behind him. There would be 
 a solemn hush, and a short, solemn prayer ; then he 
 would read — oh, how reverently ! — a short psalm. In early 
 days the impressiveness of this must have been much 
 impaired by the style of the following " service of song." 
 There was no organ, for organs are not mentioned in the 
 New Testament, but instead of this there was, so tra- 
 dition tells us, what has been called " a large population 
 
 * " Diary and Correspondence," vol. v. p. 367. 
 ' Ibid. vol. iv. p. 526. 
 
 3 "Taylor's Works," vol. iv. p. 314. Hughes's Edition. 
 
128 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 
 
 of flute, fiddles, and fiddles' fathers." This was an old 
 fashion. Thomas Mace, addressing his book on Psalmody 
 " To all Divine readers, especially to those of the dissent- 
 ing ministry and clergy, who want not only skill, but 
 goodwill to this most excelling part of Divine service," 
 says, " I shall not need to blazon it abroad in print how 
 miserably the Prophet David's psalms are (as 1 may say) 
 tortured and tormented, and the service of God dis- 
 honoured, made coarse, or ridiculous thereby. ... It is 
 sad to hear what whining, toting, yelling, and screeching 
 there is in many country congregations." 1 By the time 
 we are thinking of, the congregation had changed its 
 musical fashion, and the singing was led by the clerk, 
 without a choir. John Ryland says, " I once had the 
 honour to preach for the Doctor, who himself gave out 
 the hymns on that occasion, but could not set the tunes, 
 for he could never change two notes." 2 A repetition of 
 reading, praying, and singing followed; then came the 
 sermon. Master Love, already quoted, used to speak of 
 the Doctor's " loud voice ; " others have spoken of bis 
 earnest tenderness and nervous violence of gesticulation. 
 It was his ordinary custom in preparing for the pulpit 
 simply to write out the scheme of his sermons, with a few 
 key-words and a few illustrative texts, then to use the 
 language that sprang at the time. Sometimes, owing to 
 the abundance of his occupations, he left too much to the 
 moment of delivery, so at least the young pulpiteers 
 under his care ventured to think, and once a deputation 
 waited on him to say that, " though their revered tutor's 
 academical lectures were admirable, they had not in him 
 a sufficiently correct model of pulpit composition ; " 
 whereupon the meek and candid man thanked them 
 kindly and was more careful for the future. Dr. Kippis, 
 who tells this anecdote, also speaks of his remarkable 
 power in extemporaneous speaking, and cites an illustra- 
 tion of it which once occurred when he was a hearer. It 
 appears that he and Dr. Akenside had for two or three 
 
 • "Muses' Monument," 1676. 
 
 ■ Dr. Newman's " Rylandiana," p. 9. 
 
THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. I2g 
 
 previous evenings been carrying on a debate on the 
 question, " How far the ancient heathen philosophers 
 were acquainted with, and had inculcated, the doctrine of 
 immortality?''" One Sunday mornirg, the poet, with two 
 or three of his friends, came unexpectedly into the meet- 
 ing. Kippis remarks, " The subject he preached upon 
 was a common orthodox topic, for which he had scarcely 
 made any preparation. But he roused his faculties on 
 the occasion, and spoke with such energy, variety, and 
 eloquence as excited my warmest admiration, and must 
 have impressed Dr. Akenside with a high opinion of his 
 abilities." 1 "I have often thought," says the same remi- 
 niscent, "that, in certain points, he had a resemblance 
 to Cicero. He resembled him ... in the copiousness, 
 diffusion, and pathos of his eloquence." However, thought 
 of from the merely human side, perhaps his sermons were 
 never very great. They had in them no spoken picture, 
 no sparkling spray, no crushing burst of power, no search- 
 ing flash of light ; certainly no impertinence of the kind 
 that so often goes under the name of fine preaching. They 
 were clear, orderly, practical, affectionate presentations 
 of saving truth, in accordance with his motto : " May 
 I remember that I am not to compose an harangue to 
 acquire to myself the reputation of an eloquent orator, 
 but that I am preparing food for precious and immortal 
 souls, and dispensing the sacred gospel which my Re- 
 deemer brought from heaven, and sealed with His blood." 
 After the sermon the hymn sung was generally one com- 
 posed by him for the occasion, and the precentor used to 
 give it out and lead it line by line. This was not merely 
 a Nonconformist practice. We find, for instance, from 
 the note made by a visitor, that it was the custom at the 
 neighbouring Collingtree Parish Church. 2 Bishop Gibson 
 specially instructed the clerks to do this, first in his 
 charge of 1721, and again in that of 1744. 
 
 There would be a full place again in the afternoon, but 
 before public worship the children were catechised. On 
 
 1 " Biographia Britannica." 
 
 2 " Life and Times of Countess of Huntingdon," vol. i. p. 192. 
 
 IO 
 
130 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 
 
 this and other occasions the catechism was made the 
 basis of affectionate, conversational teaching ; parents 
 and other members of families being present. Thomas 
 Fuller saith, " A good pastor carefully catechiseth his 
 people in the elements of religion, except he hath (a rare 
 thing !) a flock without lambs, and all of old sheep ; yet 
 even Luther did not scorn to profess himself discipulum 
 catechismi, 'a scholar of the catechism.'" Doddridge 
 subscribed to such sentiments. In one of his letters to 
 Mr. Darracott he says, " I have begun another visitation 
 to all the parents in the congregation, in which I solemnly 
 charge and beseech them, in the name of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, that they take a tender care of the children com- 
 mitted to their charge, to bring them up for God, and 
 I have engaged to meet them and all their children to- 
 gether, and solemnly commit them all to the Divine 
 blessing. The children attend catechising in consider- 
 able numbers. . . . Family prayer is erected in some 
 families where it had been unknown." 1 After the cate- 
 chising, when the general congregation assembled, perhaps 
 one of the students would officiate. 
 
 Originally, there was no evening service, excepting 
 once a month to celebrate the Lord's Supper, the proper 
 time for which was considered to be evening. Then, for 
 the sake of the majority, who came from the villages, the 
 calendar was consulted, so as to secure the moonlight 
 nights. On other occasions the meeting seems to have 
 been open in the evening only after special notice. The 
 course of lectures on " Regeneration," afterwards pub- 
 lished, and one on "The Parables," were given at this 
 hour, the towns-folk having the special benefit. The 
 presence of the country-folk was out of the question, 
 owing to the evil state of the roads, which were then only 
 the old waggon tracks, worn deep by the tread and rain 
 of centuries. On a summer morning it might have been 
 a poetical delight to ride to meeting along the grassy and 
 elm-shadowed bridle-paths, between straggling, unpruned 
 
 1 Darracott MSS., Jan. 6, 1748; March 26, 1750. 
 
THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 
 
 fringes, where the bramble and "he dog-rose threw their 
 long garlands abroad, and the honeysuckle twined 
 round the thorn ; but it was a prosaic thing when the 
 banks were ragged with dead grasses, black with fallen 
 leaves, when the centre was mashed into a quagmire, and 
 when, in the language of Milton, the traveller 
 
 "O'er bog or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare, 
 With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursued his way, 
 And swam or sank, or waded, or crept, or fled." 1 
 
 You would have supposed that the passing of the Turn- 
 pike Act in 1752 would have been hailed by all congre- 
 gational pilgrims with thankfulness; but, no ! it offended 
 their rigid perpendicularity of principle, they railed at it as 
 a worldly novelty ; some brethren preached against it, and 
 one of the texts was this (Jeremiah vi. 16) : "Stand ye in 
 the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, which is the 
 good way, and walk thereon." 
 
 Various meetings were held between the Sundays. 
 From 1739 to about 1748, one of these was a Thursday 
 evening lecture at College Lane Baptist Chapel, which 
 used to be crowded. 
 
 Dr. Samuel Clark, in the preface to a small volume of 
 sermons preached at Castle Hill, probably in a vacation, 
 and then printed at the request of his hearers, remarks, 
 " It was with great pleasure that I observed among you 
 such a lively sense of religion and its great truths, appear- 
 ing in your diligent and pious attendance upon the 
 public worship of God; your frequent meetings in private 
 for prayer and mutual edification ; the religious order of 
 your families ; your regular and exemplary conversation, 
 and pious zeal for promoting the interests of religion ; and 
 the flourishing state of your church, and the improvement 
 
 1 Even in kingly Kensington it could be said, Nov. 37, 1738, 
 "The road between this place and, London is so infamously bad, 
 that we live here in the same solitude as we should do if cast on a 
 rock in the midst of the ocean. All ttie Londoners tell us there is 
 between them and us a great impassable gulf of m\id." — Lot<jL 
 Mervejfs Met;(oirs, vol. ii. p. 189. 
 
132 THE OLD MEETING-HOUSE. 
 
 of the great advantage you enjoy under the ministry of 
 your pious and learned pastor." This was the character 
 given of the good folks by a visitor not long after Dodd- 
 ridge's settlement, and by God's grace it was sustained 
 for many years. 
 
 The magic wand has been waved, and the scene is 
 gone. We might almost say that every vestige has 
 vanished of the castle and the hill. A railway station 
 stands on the spot where feudal ruins used to be ; old 
 mounds have been levelled, old hollows filled up, and the 
 old green spaces are now covered with forests of brick 
 and mortar. The old meeting-house is now " Doddridge 
 Chapel." The Rev. Thomas Arnold, the present hon- 
 oured minister, has been obliged to make an enlargement 
 to meet the necessities of a new population, and to find 
 space for the blessing that has been poured out on his 
 labours ; but he has done so by leaving as far as pos- 
 sible untouched the old square meeting-house, simply 
 taking down the pulpit wall, and from that line adding 
 a second square. To some simple people the old place 
 was so dear that when these absolutely needful changes 
 were wrought, all the touches of the process seemed to 
 thrill through their own life. Deep doorways, graceful 
 shafts, shadowy depths, windows like sheets of richly- 
 pictured light, spires that soar amid the sailing birds and 
 the silent air, are all charming ; but something may be 
 said for the old homely meeting-houses. They were in 
 agreement with the opinion of Sir Christopher Wren, 
 that "a church could not sq be built as that more than a 
 thousand in it could hear well and distinctly." They 
 were adapted for auditories, if not for spectacles and 
 processions; they were places in which average voices 
 could be effective in all their natural inflections, and where 
 the poorest people felt at home ; they hint of a way 
 to build churches easily and without debt, so as to mee| 
 the wants of our increasing population, — and now thejr- 
 memories and associations have a poetry of their own, 
 moving many hearts with spells of solemn tenderness, 
 which no new palaces of faith can claim. 
 
XI. 
 
 DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, AND THE 
 PRETENDER. 
 
 " Let all that loue thy testament 
 With harts unfayned praie, 
 That neuer more in England here 
 The pope haue golden daie. 
 
 Our realme and queen defend, dere God, 
 
 With hart and minde I praie ; 
 That all our foes may learne and know 
 
 We haue a golden daie. 
 
 Send preachers true, good Lord, 
 
 Thy gospell to displaie, 
 That by their trauell they may let, 
 
 The papists' golden daie." 
 
 Lines from " A Frendly Latum, or faythfull warnynge to 
 the true-hearted suhiectes of England. Discoueryng the 
 actes and malicious myndes of those obstinate and re- 
 bellious Papists that hope (as they terme it) to haue 
 theyr golden daie."— John Phillip, 1570. 
 
 WHEN the first King George was crowned king of 
 England, Philip Doddridge was a schoolboy, 
 twelve years old. He remembered the glee of the holi- 
 day. All the elders were then in high delight with a new 
 story about their eccentric minister, Mr. Bradbury, but 
 which he himself understood in after years better than he 
 did at the time. On Sunday morning, August 1, 17 14, 
 the day when the infamous Schism Bill was to come into 
 operation, Mr. Bradbury was crossing Smithfield on his 
 way to meeting. His old friend, Bishop Burnet, was 
 driving past him, but, struck with a look of deep trouble 
 
134 
 
 DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, 
 
 in his face, he stopped the carriage, and asked what he 
 was thinking about ? " I am thinking," said he, " whether 
 I shall have the constancy and resolution of the noble 
 army of martyrs, whose ashes are in this place; for most 
 assuredly I expect to see similar times of violence our- 
 selves, and that I shall be called to suffer in the like 
 cause." "Cheer up,'' said the Bishop; "the queen is 
 very ill ; the doctors expect every hour to be her last, 
 and I am now going to court to learn particulars." He 
 further promised to send him the very earliest intelligence 
 of the queen's death, and that if he should happen to be 
 in the pulpit when the despatch arrived, the messenger 
 should drop a handkerchief from the gallery as a sign. 
 While he was preaching, a handkerchief Buttered from the 
 gallery. The queen was gone, and the persecuting act 
 was now a dead letter I He finished the sermon, returned 
 thanks to Almighty God for deliverance, and implored a 
 blessing on King George the First and the House of 
 Hanover ; the congregation then sang the eighty-ninth 
 Psalm. So it came to pass that the first public prayer 
 offered in England for the present royal family, was 
 offered in a dissenting meeting-house. 1 
 
 The Dissenters, one and all, were Hanoverians to the 
 backbone. Put yourself in their place, and you will not 
 wonder. They were thrilling with the wrongs inflicted 
 by the Stuarts. Fire was still in their wounds The 
 memories of fines, prisons, and civil disabilities for con- 
 science' sake were in their first sharpness. Almost every 
 family had its own story of hero or confessor, most dear 
 and reverend, a story to make the blood boil. Besides 
 the historical reasons for the stand they took, these Stuarts 
 had now become the poor tools of France ; and by a law 
 of continuity, development, or evolution, their arrogant 
 ritualism had turned into Popery. The determination 
 of the Nonconformists was unutterably intense and reso- 
 lute not to have this intolerable tyranny back again, and 
 not to think for a moment of taking orders from a king 
 
 1 Wilson's "Dissenting Churches," vol. iii. p. 513. 
 
AND THE PRETENDER. 
 
 135 
 
 who had another king's orders in his pocket and a swarm 
 of Jesuits in his train. 
 
 They were not strong numerically. At the time of the 
 revolution, " the whole body constituted about the one 
 hundredth portion of the inhabitants of England and 
 Wales, or a little more than a hundred and ten thousand 
 persons." 1 From a list of dissenting churches drawn up 
 in 17 16, it appears that they were still declining. Mosheim, 
 writing in 1740, says, "Those who are best acquainted 
 with the state of the nation, tell us that the dissenting 
 interest declines from day to day." 2 All through the 
 fifty years of Doddridge's life it was steadily diminish- 
 ing in numbers, and when he died, there could not have 
 been in connection with it, more than one thousand con- 
 gregations over an area where there are many thousands 
 now. 3 Doubtless the good fathers derived what comfort 
 they could from the thought that, in this bad world, those 
 who have the best of the argument have often the worst 
 of the vote ; still, it was a stubborn fact that if they had 
 any power in the commonwealth, it was not the power 
 of numbers. They had, however, the power of character, 
 resulting from their own pecuiiar heredity and religious 
 education ; the power of industrial enterprise, the power 
 of earnestness and unity in the cause of political and 
 religious freedom — power all the more marked by the 
 prevalent indifference to these questions : so, all things 
 considered, they were regarded as staunch helpers of the 
 Walpole ministry and strong defenders of the throne. 
 
 Their enthusiasm was all the more valued from its 
 contrast with the prevalent indifference. While enemies 
 were lively, and plotters were plotting at home and abroad, 
 friends were dull. During all the earlier years of the 
 Hanoverian dynasty, it seemed quite as likely as not that 
 the Stuarts would be restored. Many High Churchmen 
 who were reckoned loyal, simply acquiesced in the rule 
 
 * Skeate's " History of the Free Churches in England," p. 151. 
 
 2 Moshcim's " Ecclesiastical History," vol. vi. p. 33. 
 
 3 The appendices to Mr. Barclay's work, entitled " Public Worship 
 in England," furnish very full and trustworthy historical statistics. 
 
136 DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, 
 
 of George as king de facto, but would have been quite as 
 well pleased to transfer it to one whom they thought king 
 de jure. Many Low Churchmen only cared to keep him 
 in that they might keep Popery out The second king 
 in the line was not much more firmly enthroned than 
 the first : there was always a secret spirit working against 
 him at the universities ; lovers of literature and of the 
 fine arts were not charmed into fealty by his blunt words 
 in disfavour of " boetry and bainting ; " the court immor- 
 alities, if not more outrageous than in the Carolrst period, 
 were perhaps less refined. The king knew little of our 
 language, nothing of our ways ; he might be served from 
 expediency, or from necessity, or from conscience, but 
 never from king-worship. What was left in the land of the 
 old, violent, unreasonable, dangerous romance of Cavalier 
 loyalty, was all on the side of the Stuarts. Pindaric odes 
 would sometimes be given in the Northampton Mercury 
 and other papers to celebrate the praise of " Caroline, and 
 the god-like George ; " but there was always a false ring 
 in their music. When he took his constitutional in St. 
 James's Park, no muse quite sober would think of saying 
 about it, as about the ride of any other king, " When his 
 majesty and his staff rode along the avenue, the quivering 
 trees bent down, the sunbeams trembled curiously fearful 
 through the green foliage, and in the blue heaven above 
 him floated visibly a golden star." 1 Clearly, his influence 
 did not lie in his personality ; but too much has been said 
 about this, — he had, and deserved to have, influence of 
 another kind ; for his throne was the symbol of safety, 
 liberty of religion, and the independence of the nation. 
 Whatever he was as a man, he was faithful, honest, and 
 true as a constitutional monarch, never forgetting that his 
 reign was established on the basis of a compact with the 
 people, instead of on the basis of the Divine right of kings; 
 and when he died, his official merits were thus fairly 
 summed up by President Davies of Princeton : " Can 
 the British annals, in the compass of seventeen hundred 
 years, produce a period more favourable to liberty, peace, 
 prosperity, commerce, and religion ? In this happy reign, 
 1 Heine. 
 
AND THE PRETENDER. 
 
 137 
 
 the prerogative meditated no invasion of the rights of the 
 people, nor attempted to exalt itself above the law. He 
 never usurped the prerogative of heaven by assuming the 
 sovereignty of conscience, or the conduct of the human 
 understanding in matters of faith and religious speculation. 
 He had deeply imbibed the principles of liberty, and could 
 well distinguish between the civil rights of society, and the 
 sacred rights of religion. He knew the nature of man and 
 of Christianity too well to imagine that the determina- 
 tions of human authority, or the sanctions of penal law, 
 could convince the mind of any one of Divine truth and 
 duty ; or that the imposition of uniformity in minute 
 points of faith, or in the forms of worship and ecclesias- 
 tical government, was consistent with free inquiry and the 
 rights of private judgment, without which genuine Chris- 
 tianity cannot thrive, though the external grandeur of the 
 Church may flourish." We are not given to heat ourselves 
 nervously about abstractions. These principles were 
 then regarded by most Englishmen as mere abstractions 
 quite out of their world. Persons are more influential 
 than principles; personally, the king was not popular; at 
 times, therefore, his government was not strong. 
 
 When the Kingston schoolboy became a man, he did 
 a man's work for the cause. There was plenty for him 
 to do. His Kibworth rustics might not have been behind 
 their polite brethren in zeal, but we find that in the 
 case of one of them, at least, the zeal was not according 
 to knowledge. When, in 1724, Pope Benedict XIII. 
 died, the news came to this brother, coupled with the 
 alarming information that the Pretender had been unani- 
 mously elected by the bishops to be the new Pope. He lost 
 no time in communicating this to his pastor, who of course 
 had to act accordingly. We are told that on the death 
 of King George the First, in 1727, he preached a sermon 
 in which he expressed his attachment to the House of 
 Brunswick, and took occasion with " great warmth and 
 eloquence," to indoctrinate his flock in "the principles 
 which seated them on the throne." 1 The rage of the 
 1 " Correspondence," note i. p. 327. 
 
I38 DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, 
 
 Jacobites, more than once spent upon him in the earlier 
 years of his life at Northampton, is an indication not 
 only of his prominence, but of his influence in the cause 
 of Protestantism and loyalty, the interests of which in 
 England, just then, were looked upon by all parties as 
 practically identical. His sentiments as to the con- 
 nection between the hopes of Popery in the land and the 
 hopes of the Pretender are given in a sermon on " The 
 Iniquity of Persecution," which sermon was the last of a 
 course on this topic, delivered early in the year 1736. 1 
 
 As years went on, there were from time to time 
 whispers of intrigues in favour of the Pretender, and a 
 suspicion of dangerous machinery working behind the 
 scenes. Christian patriots had a deepening sense of the 
 national insecurity from the growing audacity of irreligion. 
 Doddridge's opinions on this subject were impressively 
 given in a sermon published in 1740, entitled "Refor- 
 mation necessary to success in War." 
 
 In June, 1 743, Colonel Gardiner passed several pleasant 
 days with his friend at Northampton, who said in review : 
 " While he was with us, he appeared deeply affected 
 with the sad state of tilings as to religion and morals ; 
 and seemed to apprehend that the rod of God was 
 hanging over so sinful a nation. He observed a great 
 deal of disaffection, which the enemies of the Government 
 had, by a variety of artifices, been raising in Scotland for 
 some years ; and the number of Jacobites there, together 
 with the defenceless state in which our island then was, 
 with respect to the number of its forces at home (of 
 which he spoke at once with great concern and astonish- 
 ment), led him to expect an invasion from France and 
 an attempt in favour of the Pretender, much sooner than 
 it happened. I have heard him say many years before it 
 came so near being accomplished, 'that a few thousands 
 might have a fair chance of marching from Edinburgh to 
 Eondon uncontrolled, and throw the whole kingdom into 
 an astonishment.'" 2 
 
 1 "Correspondence," vol. iii. pp. 123, 124. 
 » "Life of Colonel Gardiner,"—" Works." 
 
AND THE PRETENDER. 
 
 139 
 
 " I should be glad," wrote the Colonel to him, later in 
 the year, " to hear what wise and good people among you 
 think of the present circumstances of things. For my 
 own part, though, I thank God, I fear nothing for myself, 
 my apprehensions for the public are very gloomy, con- 
 sidering the deplorable prevailing of almost all kinds of 
 wickedness amongst us — the natural consequence of the 
 contempt of the gospel. I am daily offering my prayers 
 to God for this sinful land of ours, over which His judg- 
 ments seem to be gathering ; and my strength is some- 
 times so exhausted with these strong cries and tears 
 which I pour out before God on this occasion, that I 
 am hardly able to stand when I rise from my knees." 1 
 
 Septentrione pandetar malum — " Out of the north evil 
 shall break forth." These words, as appropriated at the 
 time by one who was watching events, came true. July 
 24, 1745, Charles Edward Stuart embarked from Brittany 
 and set up his standard in Scotland, meaning to over- 
 throw the government of Great Britain, and on behalf of 
 his father to demand the throne. Even then, the real 
 danger was in the fact that the people generally felt no 
 personal interest in their king, and that their souls had 
 been sent fast asleep by their bodies. " I suppose," said 
 Horace Walpole, when told that the Pretender had landed, 
 " that the people may perhaps look on and cry, ' Fight, 
 dog, fight, bear!'" "When the late war broke out," 
 wrote Lord Hardwicke, in 1749, "I believe most men 
 were convinced that if the rebels had succeeded, Popery 
 as well as slavery would have been the certain conse- 
 quence ; and yet, what a faint resistance did the people 
 make in any part of the kingdom!" 2 "These state- 
 ments," as says Mr. Lecky, "are very remarkable, and 
 especially as this apathy was not due to any sympathy 
 with the Pretender." 
 
 On September 4th, the Pretender was proclaimed at 
 Perth. On the 6th, Charles Wesley wrote in his diary, 
 "The night we passed in prayer. I read there are 
 ' "Life of Colonel Gardiner." 
 
 a " Marchmont Papers," quoted by Lecky, vol. i. p. 468. 
 
140 DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, 
 
 heavy tidings out of the north. The lion is come out 
 of the thicket, and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his 
 way." 1 About a fortnight after this, it became plain that 
 there would be an engagement at Prestonpans, near 
 Colonel Gardiner's house. There was grave reason for 
 apprehension, for " In all wars, battles are but the 
 crises of the campaign, the tests of strength long trained 
 and long tried. People are victorious by reason of what 
 they were before the battle." 2 On September 20th, the first 
 battle of the campaign was fought, the king's troops were 
 defeated, and our brave colonel was entangled by a 
 scythe, dragged from his horse, and then killed with the 
 blow of a Lochabar axe at the back of his head. Dod- 
 dridge was not proud of his old college-mate, Sir John 
 Cope, the commander of the forces ; it appeared to him 
 that this fatal issue was very much the result of his in- 
 competency, yet most especially of his slights to Gardiner; 
 and in a letter written in the following year are these 
 words : 
 
 "He," Gardiner, "told a friend of his, that, humanly 
 speaking, the king's forces must be defeated ; and declared 
 his resolution of dying in his duty, if he were, as he 
 expected to be, deserted. His counsel, though his ex- 
 perience was so great, and knowledge of the ground so 
 perfect, that almost that single circumstance rendered His 
 advice of the greatest importance imaginable, was not 
 asked at all, nor at all regarded ; and such a disposition 
 made, and such measures taken, that had the General 
 been indeed in the pay of the rebels, without joining 
 them, it would be difficult to say how he could more 
 effectually have served them.'' 3 
 
 In November, "the Young Pretender" at the head of 
 his Highlanders set out for London. Comfortable people 
 were much disturbed in their minds at the thought of a 
 visit from these " salvages." No one knew anything 
 about them. No explorer had ever dared or cared to 
 
 * Jackson's "Life of Charles Wesley," vol. i. p. 428. 
 
 * "Against the Stream," chap. ix. 3 Wilson MSS. 
 
AND THE PRETENDER. 
 
 I 4 I 
 
 push up into their far-away frosty fastnesses in "the land 
 of night and wonder, and the terrible unknown," to see 
 what they were like. It was supposed that they were 
 like no known human specimens. They were things not 
 to be reasoned with ; not even to be fought with as men 
 of war ; but fierce, foul creatures, — creatures, which at a 
 whistle from their masters were ready to fly at us, and to 
 rush yelling over the land with blind and terrible fury, 
 making an ignominious " abomination of desolation." 
 The mutilated faces of soldiers from Prestonpans — soldiers 
 who had been thus used after they had asked for quarter, 
 and then had been allowed to crawl away in misery — ■ 
 showed what they could do. Thoughts of Highlanders and 
 Frenchmen, of the Pope and the Pretender, all confused 
 into one horror, suddenly mastered many people, and 
 changed their supineness into a pitiful panic. If they 
 were prepared for anything, it was for flight. There was 
 a violent run on the Bank of England. Yet there were 
 fine exceptions. The nobility began to raise regiments. 
 Leaders in the Church of England, in the Kirk of 
 Scotland, and in the Nonconformist Churches, sent out 
 printed addresses to rouse the loyalty of their several 
 communities. For particulars, read the due chronicles ; 
 we only allude to them in a degree just necessary to explain 
 the part that was being taken by Doddridge. While 
 these movements were going on we find, from a com- 
 parison of dates, that he was first in the field. He had 
 already been at work, trying to get the Earl of Halifax 
 to raise a corps of volunteers in the county. In a 
 letter addressed to him by the Earl of Halifax on the day 
 before the fatal battle, there is an answer to this sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 "Your letter," says the Earl, "confirmed me in my 
 opinion of the necessity of showing an early zeal in the 
 defence of all that is dear to us, and I should forthwith 
 have made my proposal to his Majesty" — of endeavour to 
 raise a regiment in and about Northampton — "but that 
 the advice of some friends convinced me that, as this 
 rebellion is not yet considered in so serious a light as to 
 
142 DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, 
 
 render any extraordinary offer of this nature acceptable to 
 those in power, I had better wait until the exigency would 
 better justify them. I cannot say that I totally concur in 
 their opinion, but as I would not, upon consideration, 
 appear officious in my zeal, which has not now, or ever 
 shall have, any other motive than the support of his 
 Majesty's royal family and the true interest of the people, 
 ' I resolved for the present to waive my purpose.'' 
 
 The Earl asked the Doctor to dine with him at Horton 
 on the following Monday, for the purpose of discourse 
 on the subject. The result of this conference was, that 
 in the following week "a large assembly of gentlemen," 
 Dr. Doddridge specially included, met at the George Inn, 
 Northampton, at his lordship's invitation, who then de- 
 livered "a very eloquent and animated speech" on public 
 affairs, and proposed that an attempt should be immedi- 
 ately and strenuously made " to raise and maintain a body 
 of forces in and about Northampton." At the conclusion 
 of this speech, a paper was signed by every gentleman 
 present, expressing readiness to support the proposal. 
 After that, the Doctor printed a circular, dated September 
 26th, addressing it to persons of influence in the county, in 
 which he explained the details of the plan, and urged the 
 reasons for it. In this he says : 
 
 " I had taken care to engage about fourteen or sixteen 
 of the leading persons in my congregation to join me in 
 desiring his lordship to make this proposal ; and am now, 
 in concurrence with them, endeavouring to engage the 
 names of as large a number as I can, who may be willing 
 to promote the design, either by their contribution, or 
 their personal service ; and I am writing letters to be sent 
 by special messengers to all the dissenting ministers in 
 the neighbourhood, to engage them to do the like; in 
 consequence of which I hope that we shall have a large 
 body of men present, by the middle of next week at farthest, 
 to receive the arms which will probably be sent down by 
 the Government, and to enter upon their exercise within 
 a few days ; and the character of many of those who I 
 
AND THE PRETENDER. 
 
 143 
 
 know will be personally engaged will do a great credit to 
 the undertaking." 1 
 
 One of the doctor's pupils, a son of Lord Kilkerran, 
 bore the colours of the regiment. A letter addressed to 
 Dr. Clark, October 13th, thus alludes to his labour in 
 procuring volunteers : "I carried my lord yesterday, twenty- 
 four brave soldiers ; if I may guess at them by their looks, 
 the very best that were brought him. We join in a weekly 
 contribution when they are to march out, but I am in great 
 hope the rebels will quickly disperse without a battle, else 
 I fear it will be a very obstinate one. We have had re- 
 newed days of fasting and prayer. May God return some 
 remarkable answer. Hitherto it hath been by terrible 
 things in righteousness." 2 
 
 The invaders were still on their march to London, 
 " with a full purpose to throw into confusion and sack 
 the city." 3 They meant to take Northampton in their 
 way, acting of course in the same fashion. Our friends 
 were on a constant look-out for these unw elcome visitors, 
 and we may be sure that when they woke in the night, 
 Fancy often heard "the measured steps of marching men." 
 The Duke of Cumberland, writing to Marshal Wade on 
 December 4th, having alluded to his halt at Stafford at 
 the time of his letter, says, " From whence we shall march 
 without any halt to Northampton, where we hope to give 
 them battle, as it is an open country." * Four days after 
 this intention was expressed by the Duke, that is, on De- 
 cember 8th, Dr. Doddridge wrote a letter to the Secretary 
 of State. This interesting document, lately found by Dr. 
 Waddington in the State Paper Office, contains a string 
 of urgent, practical queries, which the writer said he 
 should not have presumed to offer, "had it not been for 
 this late alarm at Northampton, which seemed to bear so 
 threatening an aspect even on London;" they all bear on 
 
 1 " Correspondence," vol. iv. p. 439. 
 
 1 Ibid. vol. iv. p. 442. 3 State Papers. 
 
 4 State Tapers. All the State Papers quoted in this chapter are 
 those discovered by Dr. Waddington, and referred to by him in his 
 "Congregational History, 1700-1800," chap. x. 
 
i 4 4 
 
 DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, 
 
 the importance of the Government encouraging the form- 
 ation of volunteer troops all over the country. He asks : 
 " Might not some good use be made of the zeal of 
 thousands of able-bodied men in different stations, who 
 would gladly learn discipline and serve on occasion near 
 home, if properly authorised, under gentlemen of approved 
 attachment to the Government ? Perhaps, ten thousand 
 such might be raised in this country, who, though not to 
 be depended on as reguDr forces, might on one exigence 
 do something, and by their numbers greatly discourage 
 an enemy without expense to the public." 
 
 In the course of this letter he says, " Had the rebels 
 come hither, I would have engaged that my friends and 
 acquaintance in the neighbouring parts of the country 
 should have brought the Duke a thousand, if he had 
 desired, in the twelve hours' time ; and I don't doubt he 
 might, in twenty four hours have had double or treble the 
 number, on the interest of six or eight gentlemen in the 
 neighbourhood, had their concurrence been requested ; 
 and I am confident the persons concerned would have 
 rejoiced in such an opportunity of serving his Majesty and 
 the country." 1 
 
 When Charles Edward heard at Derby of the warm re- 
 ception awaiting him at Northampton, he turned back to 
 Scotland. From that moment everything went against 
 him. His precipitate flight from Stirling, early in the 
 following year, furnished the topic of his sermon preached 
 by Doddridge, February 9, 1746, and then printed under 
 the title of "Deliverance out of the Handsof our Enemies." 
 At last, the terrible surgery of Duke William eradicated 
 the evil from the land, when, on April 16, 1746, was 
 fought the decisive battle of Culloden. We still shudder 
 at the name. "The 'Order Book ' of the Duke," says 
 Dr. Waddington, " recently published, shows that the 
 troops were firmly held in check, and warned against all 
 violence and disorder." Some of the soldiers, however, 
 were not more civilised than the Highlanders. We know 
 
 * State Papers. 
 
AND THE PRETENDER. 
 
 145 
 
 that their immorality was great. " This," Doddridge 
 had said to the Duke of Newcastle, " I am exceedingly 
 sorry to say, makes the British forces infamous beyond 
 most in the world, and, forgive me that I must say it, the 
 Guards beyond all the rest." 1 It is to be feared that 
 there is too much truth in the old stories of atrocities 
 after the battle. We are reminded that, exactly on the 
 next anniversary of it, he wrote and printed a tract, en- 
 titled " A Friendly Letter to the Private Soldiers in a Regi- 
 ment of Foot, one of those engaged in the Important and 
 Glorious Battle of Culloden: " the object being faithful 
 reproof of the sins common in the army, and earnest in- 
 vitation to the Saviour. 
 
 While our good man was rejoicing to think of the 
 great blow to Popery that had at last been given, his joy 
 was suddenly dashed by a new trouble, and that was the 
 discovery that two of the sentenced lords were Presby- 
 terians ! He poured out his heart in these words to 
 Mrs. Doddridge, dated London, August 9, 1746. "Lord 
 Kilmarnock and Lord Cromartie," said he, " have, to my 
 great grief, declared themselves Presbyterians ! The former 
 is attended by Mr. Foster; 2 the latter by Mr. Chandler, 
 who says, I am told, that he finds him in a fine temper. 
 Lady Cromartie was here this day at Dr. Hughes's, and 
 desired that there might be a meeting of ministers to 
 spend some time in prayer, on her account and his lord- 
 ship's. She is a fine and very pious young woman.'' 3 In 
 another letter he says to her, " I visited Mr. Chandler on 
 Saturday, who gave me a large account of the excellent 
 temper and behaviour of Lord Cromartie, and of the 
 
 1 State Papers. 
 
 2 This was Dr. Foster, the eloquent but sceptical Baptist, of 
 whom Tope had said : 
 
 " Let modest Foster, if he will, excel 
 Ten metropolitans in preaching well." 
 
 3 Ten years before this he had accepted the pastorate of the Inde- 
 pendent Church at Pinner's Hall, "from which circumstance," Mr. 
 Wilson remarks, "he appears to have been an advocate for free- 
 communion." — Wilson's History of Dissenting Churches, vol. ii. 
 p. 276. 
 
 II 
 
146 DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, 
 
 reasons on which the King and Council have proceeded 
 in determining his pardon, which I think very con- 
 siderable." 
 
 The poor Lords, Kilmarnock and Balmerino, suffered 
 August 1 8th. Dr. Doddridge, writing from London, 
 calls it " The dreadful work . . . which I would not see." 
 A letter from a youth who did see it, written to his 
 brother, once one of the Doctor's students, may here be 
 given for the sake of its historic interest and simple, 
 graphic power : 
 
 " I yesterday saw the execution of the two rebel lords. 
 I was in the house that they went from to be executed, and 
 shall give you as particular account of the whole affair as 
 I can. The scaffold on which they were executed was 
 about fifty feet from the above house ; the entry of the 
 house and the passage, from thence to the stage, and 
 that also with the steps that went up to it, were hung 
 with black baize ; the block and the two new axes with 
 which they were beheaded were brought to this house. 
 I saw them several times. About nine o'clock in the 
 morning the two sheriffs came, and also the executioner, 
 who was very handsomely dressed. He had on a gold 
 laced hat, a light wig, a blue cloth coat, and breeches 
 with brass buttons and gold vellum button holes, a white 
 waistcoat, ruffled shirt, white stockings, and handsome 
 silver buckles in his shoes. He seemed to me to have 
 too much modesty and humanity for one of that pro- 
 fession. He often laid his head upon his hands and 
 leant against something or other, said but little, and was 
 very dull ; so much for him at present. 
 
 " The sheriffs viewed the block and the axes and went 
 on to the scaffold. About ten o'clock" they walked to the 
 Tower to receive their prisoners. The way was lined 
 with soldiers, horse and foot, and also a large ring round 
 the scaffold. They very soon returned on foot in the 
 following manner : Sheriff Blackford with Lord Kil- 
 marnock, who had Mr. Foster on his right hand and a 
 young clergyman on his left, cousin to my Lord Hume. 
 
AND THE PRETENDER. 
 
 147 
 
 Kilmarnock was a pretty tall man ; he wore his own hair, 
 which was tied up in a bag, was dressed in black cloth, 
 walked very upright, and looked very much cast down. 
 Foster talked to him all the way and with a great deal of 
 earnestness. Lord Balmerino followed at some little 
 distance with the other sheriff. He walked betwixt two 
 gentlemen, and there were two clergymen whom he took 
 no notice of. He was dressed in blue cloth, turned up 
 and lined with red, had brass buttons, and a scarlet cloth 
 waistcoat, grey stockings, and a tie wig. He did not 
 seem to be the least concerned, but looked very bold. 
 When they came to the house they were conducted to 
 separate rooms, which rooms I was in several times 
 before they came. There was a table set in the middle 
 of each room with a bottle of white wine on it and half- 
 a-dozen glasses. I saw Kilmarnock several times whilst 
 in his room. Mr. Foster took up most of the time in 
 talking to him, and prayed with him a little before he 
 went to execution. I can't tell how Balmerino spent his 
 time, but I believe in conversation and drinking. It was 
 about a quarter after twelve o'clock when Kilmarnock 
 went on to the stage. I saw him come out of his room. 
 He looked as much affected as you can suppose a person 
 in his circumstances. I then went on to my seat where 
 I had as plain a view as if I had been on the stage. He 
 was supported on going up the steps on to the stage by 
 two gentlemen. The clergymen and Mr. Foster went 
 with them. Mr. Foster talked with him some little time. 
 Then the executioner came in a very submissive manner 
 to him. He said something to him, then put his hands 
 in his pockets, and then gave him something, which I 
 suppose was money. The poor fellow cried like a child, 
 and I believe would have fainted if a gentleman had not 
 applied some drops to his nose. Mr. Foster took his 
 leave of the lord, who embraced him. He did not stay 
 to see the execution, but went off the stage, as did also 
 the sheriff. . . . When he had fixed himself on the block, 
 he lay near ten minutes before he gave the signal, which 
 time I believe he spent in prayer, and then he dropped 
 
DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, 
 
 h is handkerchief. . . . One stroke. . . . The black cloth 
 i hat covered the block and the cushion that he knelt 
 upon were taken away, and others placed in their room, 
 and fresh sawdust strewed about the stage. Then, in a 
 very short time, Balmerino came on to the stage with the 
 other sheriff, two clergymen, and several gentlemen. As 
 soon as he was on he looked all about on the spectators 
 with such an air of unconcerneduess as I could not have 
 thought was possible for any person in his circumstances 
 to have done had I not been an eye witness of it. As 
 soon as he saw his coffin he went to it, and read the 
 inscription ; he then took off his hat and laid it down 
 upon it ; talked to several people. The executioner paid 
 his respects to him : he gave him something, and took 
 him by the hand and went with him to the block ; was 
 going to lay his head on the wrong side, found his mis- 
 take, laid his head on the right way, and gave Jack Ketch 
 instructions how he should act ; several times putting his 
 hand to his neck. After he got up again he went and 
 took his hat from off the coffin and put it under his arm, 
 walked about, and then pulled a paper out of his pocket, 
 and his spectacles, with as careless an air as you can 
 possibly suppose. He read the paper to the sheriff and 
 the rest of the company. Before he had done reading 
 the whole, he left off, and went towards the block, and 
 pointed with his hand ; returned again, and made an end 
 of reading, then delivered the paper to the sheriff, pulled 
 off his spectacles and put them in his pocket, went again 
 to his coffin, viewed it very narrowly, and then went to 
 the opposite side of the stage, beckoned up one of the 
 warders of the Tower; as soon as he came to him he 
 pulled off his wig and his neckcloth, and gave them to 
 him with his hat. He put on a cap made with cloth, 
 then, having spoken to certain gentlemen in a very polite 
 manner, pulled off his waistcoat with an air, and laid 
 them upon his coffin. . . . When he was going to lay 
 himself down he saw the axe in the executioner's hand ; 
 he took it from him, and viewed it very much ; then gave 
 him some further directions, laid himself down, and rose 
 
AND THE PRETENDER. 
 
 149 
 
 again, and pulled off a white waistcoat, which I suppose 
 he found ill-convenient, and then laid himself down again, 
 and in a minute's time gave the signal, and soon after 
 received the fatal stroke. ... I should have observed 
 that the clergymen said nothing to him upon the stage, 
 nor he to them. He seemed to have no thoughts of a 
 future state ; not so much as once lifting up his eyes or 
 hands to heaven." 1 
 
 We are sorry for these infatuated men, and think that 
 they might have been rendered harmless, and have even 
 been sentenced to a political death without all this 
 ghastly tragedy ; but we have not one word to say for 
 them. The common throng of Highlanders knew no 
 better, but these chiefs had been to school and college. 
 Their conduct was madness — but madness for which they 
 were responsible. We have no sympathy with that senti- 
 mental admiration of their deed which has lately become 
 so common. Government is bound to make society safe. 
 When burglars break in upon us, whether on a large or 
 on a small scale, it is not respectable to call them heroes 
 of romance; 'to call it a grievance if they happen to be 
 caught by the police ; and, if they happen to be wearing 
 a white cockade at the time, to call that "a flower of sad 
 poetry." It has been denied that Rome had anything to 
 do with this attempt, and much lofty scorn has been ex- 
 pressed of the bigotry that could ever dream of such a 
 thing. But when we read history — when we find from 
 State Papers 2 written in Rome at the time, that on the 
 tidings arriving of Charles Edward's landing in England, 
 the Pope's secretary and several of the cardinals were 
 " in almost continual conference with the Pretender and 
 Murray," and that there appeared " in that whole party 
 an inconceivable joy, mixed with the highest insolence " 
 
 1 Letter from Charles Buxton to his brother John, at Coxall, in 
 Essex. Furnished some years ago by my esteemed friend, the late 
 Travers Buxton, Esq. 
 
 2 See information from State Papers and other authorities given 
 by Dr. Waddington, "Congregational History, 1700-1800, " pp. 
 348, 352- 
 
150 DODDRIDGE, KING GEORGE, ETC. 
 
 — when we find that a circumstantial account of the 
 battle of Prestonpans, and of the fall of Colonel Gar- 
 diner, was printed in Italian and widely circulated — when 
 we see still remaining under the dome of St. Peter's 
 monuments to the Pretender and his Lady Clementina, 
 in which the one is styled " King James III." and the 
 other " Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland," it 
 is useless to tell us that Rome had no complicity in the 
 mischief of 1745. It has been said there never was any 
 danger. Even just after the event, David King, of 
 Lisbon, writing to Dr. Doddridge, congratulated him on 
 the defeat of Romanism by the suppression of the rebel- 
 lion, but made merry at the panic which had been caused 
 byva mere "rabble of ragged thieves." 1 Perhaps the 
 invaders would not have been formidable if they had not 
 been the tools of a formidable combination ; but, in the 
 circumstances, the crisis was one of the greatest danger 
 to the throne and country, and of this we think that 
 thoughtful people who said so, and who were living on 
 the spot at the time, were the best judges. Doddridge 
 saw it, and we claim for him the honour of being the first 
 Englishman in a private station who took action, and 
 who roused his countrymen to the like, in defending the 
 threatened throne and liberties of our land. 
 
 1 He used an equivalent expression, but less delicately courteous 
 than this. Wilson MSS. 
 
XII. 
 
 PLANS FOR CHRISTIAN UNION. 
 
 " How good and how beseeming well 
 It is that we, 
 Who brethren be, 
 As brethren should in concord dwell. 
 
 Like the deere oile that Aron beares, 
 
 Which fleeting down 
 
 To foote from crown, 
 Embalms his beard and robe he weares. 
 
 Or like the teares the morne doth shedd, 
 
 Which ly on ground, 
 
 Empearled round, 
 On Sion or on Hermon's head. 
 
 For joined therewith the Lord doth give 
 
 Such grace, such blisse, 
 
 That where it is, 
 Men may for ever blessed live." 
 
 Psalm exxxiii. ; version by Sir PHILIP SIDNEY. 
 
 WE gladly turn to the more congenial theme of 
 Christian catholicity. Our souls rejoice in the 
 serene purity of this fresh air. In all the last century 
 Doddridge was one of the most beautiful types we know 
 of what is really meant by the word "catholic." He, 
 and like-minded " men worth remembering," delighted 
 to think about plans for Christian union. Certain ideal- 
 ists thought that this union might be promoted, if, in 
 some modified way, and by some process of " give and 
 take," the Dissenters could be comprehended in the 
 
152 PLANS FOR CHRISTIAN UNION. 
 
 National Church. In 1689, an attempt had been made 
 to establish such a scheme by Act of Parliament, but of 
 course it failed. In 1746 it began to be talked about 
 again. Good Sir John Thorold was much enchanted by 
 the fancy, and writing to Doddridge, December 19, 1747, 
 he said : 
 
 " How desirable is union ! Like the precious ointment 
 of the sanctuary it at once exhilarates and fortifies the 
 spirits, and exhibits some foretaste of that everlasting 
 pleasure which is at the right hand of Him who is, and 
 was, and is to come. Our common adversaries, the 
 emissaries of the Church of Rome, are too politic not to 
 take advantage of the present disunited state of Pro- 
 testants ; and from this popular topic to play off among 
 the people the sounds of ' Head of the Church ; ' ' Vicar 
 of Christ;' ' Infallibility,' etc. If nothing more were to 
 be reaped from Protestants agreeing together about reli- 
 gious matters than putting a stop to the plausible but 
 fallacious arguments of these sophists, it would be a very 
 valuable end ; but there are divers other considerations 
 to prompt us to this coalition. God grant that they may 
 operate to their full force on the hearts and minds of 
 those whose interest and duty it is to hold the truth in 
 the unity of the Spirit, in the bond of peace, and in 
 righteousness of life ! " 
 
 In the course of the year the subject was brought into 
 more prominence by a discussion which strangely arose 
 out of the events related in the last chapter. The Dis- 
 senters were feeling somewhat vain-glorious on account of 
 their services and sacrifioes in the late national crisis. 
 Doddridge leading, every one had followed ; in many 
 instances, meeting-house yards had been converted into 
 parade-grounds ; ministers had become recruiting officers; 
 all, in some way, had rallied in defence of the crown, 
 and even the Quakers had helped the army by supplying 
 the soldiers with flannels. In accepting commissions as 
 volunteers, our friends had incurred the penalties of the 
 
PLANS FOR CHRISTIAN UNION. I53 
 
 Test Act, and all the reward they received was their 
 incidental inclusion in the Act of Indemnity, and in the 
 royal pardon for the rebels. His mind still freshly 
 excited by these facts, Dr. Chandler, who had acted as 
 chaplain to one of the sentenced lords, being afterwards 
 at Norwich, went to hear the bishop, Dr. Gooch, deliver a 
 charge to his clergy. In the course of this, the bishop 
 spoke in uncomplimentary terms of the Nonconformists, 
 and said, " The heads of the rebellion were Presbyterians, 
 as appeared by those lords in the Tower sending for 
 Presbyterian confessors." Now, really, this was almost 
 unkind. Dr. Chandler thought so, and on his return 
 wrote to his lordship in remonstrance, who "very hand- 
 somely " replied. We are sure that he meant no malice, 
 but had simply said what was the usual thing to say 
 "about that sort of people;" but when he thought a 
 little, he found that he had been unfair. On coming to 
 town, shortly after this, he invited Dr. Chandler to pay 
 him a visit. When he did so, the talk became increas- 
 ingly cordial, and at length drifted into a debate on the 
 possibility of comprehension. The debate was resumed 
 in a second visit, when the Bishop of Salisbury was also 
 present The bishops, by the necessity of their function, 
 being practised to the delicate adjustment of differences — 
 in the cautious manipulation of things having to do with 
 " many men, many minds " — and in endeavours to make 
 their ecclesiastical pale elastic and comprehensive, were 
 open to any fair representation on the subject. They 
 both favoured the new idea, and requested Dr. Chandler 
 to wait on Archbishop Herring. This he did, the Bishop 
 of Salisbury being again in the conference. There was 
 a long conversation, and before parting, the archbishop 
 said "that comprehension was a very good thing, and 
 that he was encouraged to hope from the piety, learning, 
 and moderation of many of the Dissenters, this was the 
 proper time to make the attempt." 1 Mr. Barker, whose 
 letter to Doddridge, February 2, 1748, contains all the 
 
 1 Wilson's "History of Dissenting Churches," vol. ii. p. 373. 
 
154 PLANS FOR CHRISTIAN UNION. 
 
 information we have respecting the movement, was him- 
 self sympathetic with it. Doddridge sent an abstract of 
 this letter to his friend Sir George, afterwards Lord, 
 Lyttleton, who, on March 19th, commented on it thus: 
 " The account you give of the conversation with Dr. 
 Chandler I extremely approve, and it may in time produce 
 a comprehension which all good men must heartily wish ; 
 yet I have my fears that, if an attempt were now made to 
 carry it into execution, it would meet with difficulties 
 which from these fair beginnings one would not expect. 
 For there is a great deal of difference in things of this 
 nature between talking and doing." 1 
 
 Doddridge never seriously thought such a scheme to 
 be practicable ; but courtesy creates courtesy, and when 
 dignitaries invited conversation on the subject, he was 
 pleased to take part in it. In the following August, being 
 at Lambeth Palace, there was talk about it between him 
 and the archbishop, of which he thus wrote to his wife : 
 " I was received by his Grace in a very obliging 
 manner. I sat a full hour with him alone, and had as 
 free conversation as I could have desired. It turned on 
 Archbishop Leighton ; on the Rebellion ; on the late 
 debates in the House of Lords ; about the Scots non- 
 juring clergy ; and especially on the affairs of a compre- 
 hension ; — concerning which I very evidently perceive that 
 though his Grace has most candid sentiments of his 
 dissenting brethren, yet he has no great zeal for attempt- 
 ing anything to introduce them into the Church, wisely 
 foreseeing the difficulties with wJiich it might be attended ; 
 but when I mentioned to him (in the freedom of our 
 discourse) a sort of medium between the present state, 
 and that of a perfect coalition, which was that of acknow- 
 ledging our churches as nnschisniatical, by permitting 
 their clergy to officiate among us, if desired ; which he 
 must see had a counterpart of permitting dissenting 
 ministers occasionally to officiate in churches, it struck him 
 much as a new and important thought ; and he told me, 
 
 1 Phillimore's " Life of Lyttleton," p. 408. 
 
PLANS FOR CHRISTIAN UNION. 155 
 
 more than once, that I had suggested what he should lay 
 up in his mind for future consideration. If Providence 
 spare our lives, I question not but I may have an oppor- 
 tunity of resuming the subject, perhaps with some 
 advantage, for his Grace has been so good as to desire 
 that I would visit him whenever I am in town." 
 
 Of course, the kind of comprehension thus dreamt of was 
 a beautiful impossibility. Right or wrong, where State 
 churches are — and where such matters as articles of faith, 
 the priesthood, the sacraments, and the province of the 
 magistrate in things Divine are matters, not of expediency, 
 but of conscience : some Christian persons will be sure to 
 assent, some to dissent, and the one class can never be 
 comprehended in the other. If indeed it were possible 
 to comprehend Christian thinkers representing all the 
 different creeds and schools of thought, within some 
 bond of externalism, it could only be for a time. When 
 these persons came together for teaching or for united 
 work, there would be a sense of tension, as of explosive 
 elements known to be present, needing to be watched ; 
 there would be an avoidance of burning questions — often 
 the most important questions of the day ; there would 
 often be a temptation to cowardly silence about truth, or 
 to that skilful management of language which is next 
 door to a lie ; and there would sooner or later be a 
 catastrophe, proving that such union is only formalism, 
 and that the peace it glories in is only death. In the 
 battle of interpretations, with our present errors and weak- 
 nesses, and under the circumstances which they have 
 created — surely Christian union must not wait for its 
 realisation until all Christians are comprehended in some 
 one visible church — in yours, for instance, or in mine. 
 Living union begins in a centre, not in a circumference. 
 Christ is the centre of Christian souls. The essential 
 oneness of believers is not the attribute of the fold, but 
 of the flock. All who belong to Christ are " one flock 
 under one shepherd ; " but that flock is so large that it needs 
 many folds. Let us try to be fair to one another. Let 
 us never stipulate for the suppression of any conscien- 
 
156 PLANS FOR CHRISTIAN UNION. 
 
 tiously held opinion on the part of any tested Christian 
 man, before we give him our hearty love. Let every one 
 — every one who is now in a communion with which he 
 can agree in all great Christian principles, if not in all 
 preferences — every one, especially every one who most 
 passionately longs for the triumph of catholicity — keep 
 where he is ; and try to do his best in the section of the 
 great one Church in which he finds himself, not leaving it 
 for another if he can help it. Let us all most cherish 
 what is most central in importance to all Christians as 
 such, and, cleaving to Christ, get more charity from 
 Christ, so shall we all grow into unity. 
 
 So Doddridge thought and acted. For his own part 
 he was a resolute Nonconformist, in the old sense of the 
 term. Writing in 1748 to a person who thought that his 
 interest in discussing the question of comprehension 
 implied that he was about to desert an old standard, he 
 said : " Assure those who may have heard the report, that 
 though my growing acquaintance with many excellent 
 persons, some of them of great eminence in the Estab- 
 lishment, increases those candid, respectful sentiments of 
 that body of Christians which I had long entertained ; yet 
 I am so thoroughly persuaded of the reasonableness of 
 Nonconformity, and find so many of the terms of minis- 
 terial conformity contrary to the dictates of my con- 
 science in the sight of God, that I was never less inclined 
 to submit to them, and hope I shall not be willing to buy 
 my liberty or life at that price. But I think it my duty 
 to do my part towards promoting that mutual peace and 
 goodwill which I think more likely than anything else, 
 either to reform the Church, or else to promote true 
 Christianity both in the Establishment and separation ; to 
 strengthen the Protestant cause, and to defeat the designs 
 of our common enemies." 
 
 Without surrenderor modification of distinctive Church 
 principles on his own part, or wishing for it on the part .of 
 those who in these respects dissented from him, his simple 
 plan for Christian union was that each Christian should 
 realise the vital union of all Christians in Christ. In a 
 
PLANS FOR CHRISTIAN UNION. 157 
 
 sermon preached at a ministers' meeting in 1750, having 
 spoken of " Consolation in Christ " as the property of all 
 Christians equally, he said : " The thoughts of being 
 joint proprietors," in the blessings of this consolation, 
 " must naturally be a source of love. For every one who 
 is admitted to a share in these blessings is honoured and 
 adorned by them ; is not only exhibited to us as the object 
 of the Redeemer's love which surely should greatly 
 recommend him to ours, but is made lovely in conse- 
 quence of it, and that, with this further important and 
 endearing circumstance, that he is destined by our glo- 
 rious Master to dwell with us and with Him in a world of 
 final and everlasting felicity. Let our souls enter into the 
 attractive thought. However we now be divided, if we 
 are indeed the members of Christ, one temple shall at 
 length contain us ; one anthem shall at length unite our 
 voices ; one object of supreme love for ever fill, and by 
 ever filling animate, our hearts. Such consolations have 
 we in Christ, and such are the engagements in love which 
 result from them." 1 
 
 Sometimes ministers find the sharpest test of their 
 Christian chivalry come in the course of their dealings 
 with congregations locally nearest their own, and most of 
 all with those nearest their own in faith and order. He 
 survived this test. His relations with his Baptist neigh- 
 bours were most happy. Reference has already been made 
 to his week- night services in their meeting-house. For 
 nearly a century it was their practice to baptize in the 
 river Nene, thinking that they thus followed as nearly as 
 as they could the steps of the blessed Lord and His first 
 disciples. Here it was that Carey, the great missionary, 
 afterwards made his first public confession of faith. On 
 these occasions the candidates had the use of Castle Hill 
 vestry, because of its nearness to the river. Tradition 
 
 1 The dedication to the Rev. James Hervey of his sermon on 
 "Christ's Invitation to Thirsty Souls ; " passages in his introduction 
 to Archbishop Leighton's works ; the close of his letter to the Bishop 
 of London quoted from the Fulham MSS. by Dr. Waddington, and 
 other extracts are heie omittid from want of space. 
 
158 PLANS FOR CHRISTIAN UNION. 
 
 says that Dr. Doddridge was sometimes present at such 
 services, and has been known to take part in them by 
 giving out a hymn. Many years after, aged persons 
 delighted to tell Dr. Ryland of one particular instance 
 of his presence, when he took off his own gown and 
 put it on the minister, with a remark to him, heard by 
 all the assembly, on " the solemnity of the ordinance." 
 
XIII. 
 
 WRITINGS. 
 
 " Should the well-meant songs I leave behind, 
 With Jesu's lovers an acceptance find, 
 'Twill heighten even the joys of heaven to know, 
 That in my verse the saints hymn God below." 
 
 Bishop Ken. 
 
 DURING the twenty-one years of his life at North- 
 ampton, he printed, or got ready for the press, fifty- 
 three works. Some of them were poly-volumed ; so that 
 altogether they numbered twenty five thick tomes, besides 
 thirty-seven thin treatises — such as pamphlets and single 
 sermons. Most of these passed through several editions 
 under his own superintendence. It would be impossible 
 to tell the total number of editions from first to last, 
 down to the present time ; but, leaving out the numerous 
 issues of his works in whole and in part in America, also 
 those in the French, Dutch, Danish, and Welsh languages, 
 and not attempting to discover all published in our Eng- 
 lish provincial towns, we have already counted two hun- 
 dred and nine editions of his works, great and small, and 
 have not yet finished counting. We include in our enu- 
 meration some that are not in the Leeds edition of his 
 collected writings, in ten volumes. The first effect on 
 our minds, especially when we recollect his other strenuous 
 and multifarious labours, is wonder at his industry ; and 
 the next is wonder at his popularity; or, if not that, 
 curiosity as to the secret of it. Copies of his books have 
 been circulating in hundreds of thousands, and each copy 
 
i6o 
 
 WRITINGS. 
 
 has had its own group and succession of readers. The 
 cause of this influence is not evident at once. We are 
 not at once struck with his thought, nor with his art in 
 rendering thought into form. We meet with little or no 
 poetry, no pith, no nerve, no tense, tight exactness, no 
 sentences of the kind which Lady Mary Montagu says 
 she aimed at in her talk — "short, clear, and surprising; 1 
 but we must remember that the men of his day admired, 
 not these qualities of writing, but rather what they called 
 "a flowing style" — a style, the ideal of which is given by 
 Dr. Watts, who, when speaking of Joseph Stennett as one 
 of the three greatest preachers he had known, said, " His 
 preaching was like a silver stream which runs along, with- 
 out bush or stones to interrupt it." 1 Writers and speakers 
 aimed at this, and were in consequence too often open to 
 the compliment once paid to the orator Anaxamines when 
 he rose to speak — "here beginneth a river of words." 
 The style of Doddridge was popular because it was a flow, 
 sometimes strengthening into a rush of language, but he 
 was far too wordy. Another cause of his effectiveness in 
 this kind of Christian work was his own interest in it. 
 He wrote as one who had something to say, not merely 
 as one who had to say something. If his thoughts were 
 not always deep, subtle, or glorious, they were always 
 alive, his devotion was always fresh, and his aim was 
 always practical. 
 
 "The Family Expositor" was the magnum opus of his 
 life, the work on which he was engaged for twelve years. 
 Even when riding to an ordination service, or to some 
 ministers' meeting, some leaves of this with his Greek 
 Testament would be sure to be stowed in the saddle bag, 
 that he might add a line at the first chance moment, or set 
 down in hot haste before it was lost some felicity of transla- 
 tion. One day, just as he had finished the last volume, he 
 found it on his desk in flames, with lighted sealing-wax 
 running over it; and the burnt edges of the manuscript, 
 
 1 Gibbon's " Life of Dr. Watts," p. 164. According to him, the 
 other two great preachers were John Howe and Thomas Gouge. 
 
WRITINGS. 
 
 161 
 
 now preserved in Regent's Park College Library, explain 
 the question in the preface — " Is not this a brand plucked 
 from the burning?" 1 
 
 In this work, the four reports of the evangelists are 
 blended into one continuous narrative, and all through 
 the Testament, the precise forces and delicate meanings 
 of the great, strong Bible words were — we will not say 
 watered down, but brought out, and diffused through the 
 many words of a free English version. All the words of 
 the Authorized Version were still preserved, were with great 
 ingenuity imbedded in the new, diluted sentences, and 
 marked with italics, so that the family reader might, if 
 he pleased, pick his way warily on these stepping-stones 
 without slipping into the flood of the paraphrase. When 
 it came out, he received letters from all quarters in its 
 praise, some wise, some otherwise. "Indeed," said the 
 Hon. Mrs. Scawen, " I think it is vastly entertaining." 
 Some readers have hesitated to say as much ; but it has 
 great merits, and if not free from the almost inevitable 
 faults of a paraphrase, and though not distinguished by 
 the high expository excellencies belonging to works of 
 such men as Calvin or Beza, it has been of great value to 
 all churches, and biblical students still derive much help, 
 both from the translation and the notes. The fact that 
 twenty-one editions of it, generally in six volumes, have 
 been published in London alone, is a witness to its popu- 
 larity. Hartwell Home has spoken of it as "masterly;" 
 referring to the second volume, Bishop Warburton said, 
 "The greatest thing I can say of it is that it is equal to 
 the first ; and the truest thing I can say of both, that they 
 surpass everything of the kind." It has received fervent 
 praise from Bishops Watson, Tomline, Barrington, and 
 other great critics. " The Speaker asked me," says Wil- 
 berforce, "what commentary on the New Testament 1 
 recommended. I answered, 'Doddridge's Expositor;'" 
 adding, as we should have done, " yet Doddridge is un- 
 
 1 This MS. is now in the possession of the Rev. Dr. Angus, of 
 Regent's Park College. 
 
 12 
 
WRITINGS. 
 
 satisfactory, and we still want such a work." 1 If less striking 
 in its scholarship than when he wrote it, this is partly be- 
 cause the book itself has helped to make the discoveries 
 of such scholarship common and domestic, and the very 
 completeness of the success achieved by Doddridge has 
 tended to efface from the minds of the present generation 
 the extent of their obligations to him. " It needs but the 
 lapse of a few years, and what was rare in knowledge be- 
 comes merged in the current of educated thought, and is 
 accepted as truism." He was without the helps that the 
 most inferior men may now have from the progress of 
 philology and the exactness of modern exegesis; but 
 one of his claims to our regard is that he wrote before 
 all these. It would be ungracious to criticise the first 
 pioneer in a continent for not having the information 
 about it possessed by the last explorer; let us give the 
 pioneer his due. We claim for Doddridge the honour 
 of being the first who attempted to popularise a critical 
 knowledge of the Bible. 
 
 His best known and most precious book is the " Rise 
 and Progress of Religion in the Soul." Yet, here again, 
 it would be easy to find fault. We know that his object 
 is to lead the poor trembler to Christ, but he seems to us 
 to be a long time about it. He seems to lay down too 
 many rules, and to give a needless impression of difficulty 
 and entanglement. We think that he is too introspective, 
 and that the attention to our own consciousness that he 
 compels tends in some degree to withdraw the soul's eye 
 from Christ, and to fix it on what is going on within itself. 
 " So long as we are resting on anything within ourselves, 
 be it even a work of grace, there remains, at least to 
 honest hearts, a ground for continual restlessness and dis- 
 appointment. To know that we have nothing, are nothing 
 out of Christ, is to know the truth that makes us free." 2 
 The solemn form of self-dedication which he recommends, 
 and which he himself observed at set intervals with great 
 
 1 " Diary of Wilbcrfoice," Ai g. 29, l8ll. 
 ■ 1 Patience of Hope," p. 121. 
 
WRITINGS. 
 
 163 
 
 advantage all his days, 1 has in many instances tempted to 
 indulgence in a legal spirit, or led to sore discouragement. 
 Andrew Fuller says of Samuel Pearce : " At the time of 
 his conversion, having read Doddridge's ' Rise and Pro- 
 gress,' he took up the idea suggested in that book, and 
 resolved formally to dedicate himself to the Lord. He 
 drew up a covenant accordingly, and to make it more 
 solemn and binding, signed it with blood drawn from his 
 own body. Afterwards, failing in his vows, he was 
 plunged into great distress. Driven therefore into a 
 more complete examination of his motives, he was led to 
 see that he had been relying too much on his own 
 strength ; and carrying the blood-signed covenant to the 
 top of his father's house, he tore it in pieces, scattered 
 it to the winds, and resolved henceforth to depend upon 
 the peace-making and peace-keeping blood of Christ." 2 
 With all its drawbacks, however, tried by the test of the 
 good it has done, it may be called a great work. The 
 dear heart of Doddridge was often cheered by known in- 
 stances of blessing that crowned it. Writing to Darracott, 
 March 25, 1750, we find him saying: "As to myself, 
 I never had more cause to sing of the goodness of the 
 Lord. ... An unusual blessing seems to have attended 
 my writings, both at home and abroad ; especially the 
 ' Family Expositor,' which is translated into German, and 
 the ' Rise and Progress,' of which four translations have 
 been made, besides a new English edition in one of our 
 plantations." He goes on to tell his friend of the interest 
 taken in its dispersion by the Prince and Princess of 
 Orange, and of the tidings which had reached him of 
 " many conversions " in consequence. Already, there- 
 fore, he began to see an answer to his printed prayer at 
 the commencement of the book — " Impute it not, O 
 God, as a culpable ambition, if I desire that this work 
 may be completed and propagated far abroad ; that it 
 
 1 "Rise and Progress," chap. xvii. 
 
 2 Fuller's "Life of Samuel I'earce, M.A.," p. 3. A similar in- 
 stance appears in the " Life of Mary Jane Graham," p. 15. By Rev. 
 Charles Bridger, M.A. 
 
164 
 
 WRITINGS. 
 
 may reach to those that are yet unborn, and teach them 
 Thy name and Thy praise when the author has long dwelt 
 in the dust. But if this petition be too great to be granted 
 to one who pretends no claim but Thy sovereign grace, 
 give him to be in Thy almighty hand the blessed instru- 
 ment of converting and saving one soul ; and if it be but 
 one, and that the weakest and meanest, it shall be most 
 thankfully accepted as a rich recompense for all the 
 thought and labour this effort may cost." The answer is 
 still in process ; the book has had a glorious career. No 
 reader of Christian biography but has met with some 
 records of its effectiveness. Wherever our language is 
 spoken, in nearly all the languages of Europe, and even 
 in Eastern languages, it has been read with impression ; 
 by the power of God multitudes have been converted 
 through it, and many of these have been the centres of 
 many other conversions. 
 
 "Passages from the Life of Colonel Gardiner" is the 
 name of another book which has left a mark in the world. 
 The most " remarkable passage " was thought to be the 
 story of the Colonel's conversion. In his hot youth he 
 had fallen into the awful debauchery and extravagance 
 which then prevailed in high society. During the month 
 of July, 17 19, he became the subject of a wonderful 
 change, which was wrought by wonderful means, the 
 story of which may be thus summed up. One night he 
 had a disgraceful assignation with a married woman, whom 
 he was to attend exactly at twelve. Breaking up from 
 some company at eleven, and looking through his books 
 for something to amuse himself for an hour, he took out 
 Watson's " Heaven taken by Storm,'' a book which his 
 good aunt had put into his chest without his knowledge. 
 While glancing over it, a great light suddenly flashed on 
 the page, and looking up, "he solemnly declared to me," 
 says Doddridge, " that he, being broad awake, if ever in 
 his life, apprehended that he saw clearly and distinctly, 
 Jesus Christ upon the cross, with a strong impression 
 on his mind of these words : ' O sinner, did I suffer this 
 for thee, and are these thy returns?' The consequence 
 
WRITINGS. 
 
 I6 5 
 
 was that he was struck with such confusion that he sank 
 down in his chair, and, on recovering himself a little, had 
 such views of the holiness, justice, and glory of God, as 
 threw him into the utmost distress and abasement ; and 
 from that moment the whole tenour of his heart was 
 changed, and Divine grace took possession of his soul." 1 
 When the work on Colonel Gardiner came out, con- 
 taining the full statement of this story, the truth of it was 
 challenged in two angrily-written pamphlets — one pub- 
 lished in London, the other in Edinburgh. 2 We find it 
 also disputed in the " Autobiography of Doctor Alex- 
 ander Carlyle," a Scotch clergyman, who, like the pamph- 
 leteers, took offence at the Colonel's remarks about 
 ministers holding articles of faith at variance with those 
 to which they had subscribed. This gentleman, known 
 as Jupiter Carlyle by his convivial friends, spoken of by 
 Sir Walter Scott as " a shrewd, clever old Carle," and 
 entitled in his own ecclesiastical circle, " Destroyer of 
 Superstition in the Church," was predisposed to scorn 
 everything Methodistic, and such he considered to be 
 this account "The Colonel,'' he said, <; was a noted 
 enthusiast ; a very weak, honest, but brave man." He 
 had heard him tell the story at least three or four times 
 to different sets of people, and the circumstances were 
 not correctly related by the enthusiasts. The time was 
 m\dday, not midnigAt; the appointment was for one 
 o'clock, not for twelve; the excessive brightness was a 
 fanciful invention, and Mr. Spears, the clergyman who 
 confirmed the strange tale, was not trustworthy. To us, 
 however, it seems far more likely that the Colonel would 
 
 1 " Journal," A-ig. 14, 1739. 
 
 2 The Londi n pamohlet has this remarkable title : " Addressed 
 to the Clergy in General. A Letter to the Rev. P. Doddridge, D.D., 
 Concerning his Life of Colonel Gardiner, and the Account of the 
 Family of the Monroes, in which the Nature of Apparitions in 
 general are Considered, and many of the Doctor's mistakes rectified. 
 The whole interspersed with curious Anecdotes, among which the 
 Case of Augmenting the Stipends of the Ministers of the Church of 
 Scotland is impartially slated. London : Printed for S. Ilolloway 
 in the Strand. 1749." 
 
i66 
 
 WRITINGS. 
 
 confide all particulars as to the sanctities of his spiritual 
 experience to his own pastor than to any one else ; that 
 pastor's record, written down at the time, would, we think, 
 be far more reliable than the record set down sixty years 
 after — the record of an impression left on the mind of a 
 man like Carlyle. We hold that the fact was accordant 
 with Doddridge's narrative, though without altogether 
 * accepting his interpretation of it. The Colonel was a 
 travelled man. While in Germany he had, most likely, 
 seen a certain old painting of Christ on the cross, having 
 under it a Latin inscription roughly translatable into the 
 English words that seemed to have been mysteriously 
 spoken out of another world. There must have been a 
 dream. In dreams, forgotten sensations are quickened 
 into freshness. In many a dream we seem to live a day 
 in a moment, and without being conscious of a moment's 
 sleep, he might have had this chapter of life in a dream- 
 flash. No supernatural machinery, beyond that which is 
 working every day, is wanted to explain the phenomenon. 
 The gospel of " Jesus Christ and Him crucified " is the 
 instrument used by the Spirit of God in conversion, but 
 this instrument is not always applied by a sermon. How- 
 ever, whatever philosophy may say as to the mode of the 
 cause in this instance, there was no doubt as to the 
 effect. From this point, Gardiner was a new creature in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 At first the book made many persons very angry. 
 They were so on account of the doctrine of conversion 
 it set forth, as well as because they thought too much 
 was said about this particular instance. They were 
 angry because it honoured as a spiritual hero one whom 
 they had despised as an enthusiast ; and they were angry 
 because Doddridge, who in the opinion of many ought 
 to have known better, endorsed his pronounced ortho- 
 doxy, as well as his blunt censures of ministers who 
 taught sentiments at variance with the standards to which 
 they had subscribed. His friend, Dr. Ayscough, tutor to 
 the Royal Family, writing to explain why he had not 
 at once returned thanks for a copy of the book, says, 
 
WRITINGS. 
 
 167 
 
 " What could I have said if I had wrote to you ? Could 
 1 have told you that I thought it a good performance, 
 and such as would have been of use to the world ? That 
 I could not, after the many reflections that I had heard 
 the world make upon it. I could only have told you 
 how much I wished you had never published it." On 
 the other hand, many fervent spirits were delighted. " I 
 say, Doctor," wrote Mr. Pearsall, of Taunton, " let the 
 devil rage and his instruments flout ; your account of 
 God's wonderfully appearing to rescue that soul out of 
 the jaws of the lion may prove the wisdom of God and 
 the power of God to the salvation of souls." " I wish," 
 said he in another letter, " it may be read by the whole 
 army, and weighed according to its deserts by all, from 
 the Duke himself to the meanest soldier who carries a 
 musket : and, my good friend, blessed be you of the 
 Lord, who have been the honoured instrument of hand- 
 ing forth so glorious a light in the view of thousands." 
 This good minister read the work to his congregation 
 two evenings in a week until the whole was finished. 
 The knowledge of great good done by the memorial soon 
 healed the stings inflicted by adverse criticism. 
 
 If the dust has now somewhat settled on the row of his 
 other books, they were once read most eagerly. One 
 work that did good service in its day was his " Chris- 
 tianity founded on Argument," an answer to a pamphlet by 
 Henry Dodwell, the son of the Non-juror, entitled " Chris- 
 tianity not founded on Argument; " in which, under a show 
 of defending the Christian revelation, he aimed to prove 
 an authoritative record of it to be impossible. It was 
 clever dialectic play, and exhibited a skilful use of the 
 artifices that make for victory in a mere game of disputa- 
 tion ; but Doddridge was a match for his quick, elusive, 
 well-trained antagonist. Now this old form of opposition 
 to Christianity is being revived, perhaps this defence of 
 it may again be of use as a clear, strong, masterly word 
 in season. Robert Hall considered his " Evidences of 
 Christianity" as "in some respects superior to Paley's, 
 particularly for young persons who had some religious 
 
i68 
 
 WRITINGS. 
 
 knowledge." He also urgently recommended his " Ser- 
 mons to Young People," and of one sermon in the series, 
 " Christ Found in the Soul the Only and Eternal Hope 
 of Glory," that great preacher entertained so high an 
 opinion, that one Sunday afternoon at Cambridge, instead 
 of preaching a sermon of his own, he actually delivered 
 this one from memory. His course of sermons on " The 
 Education of Children," that on "The Power and Grace of 
 Christ," and that on " Regeneration," were severally distin- 
 guished for their evangelical instructiveness, and for their 
 adaptation to the popular mind of the age. John Foster, 
 whose intellectual rank is so vastly higher than that of 
 Doddridge, but whose name will ever live along with his 
 on account of his fine introduction to the " Rise and 
 Progress," had Doddridge's sermons read to him in his 
 last illness. One of the last sermons read to him was the 
 solemn one on the " Incapacity of an Unregenerate Soul 
 for Relishing the Enjoyments of the Heavenly World.'' 
 He was so much struck with it that he desired his 
 daughters to promise him that they would read it every 
 month, saying he thought no one could read it often with- 
 out a salutary effect. 1 His revision of " Leighton on the 
 First of Peter," which up to that time had been obscured 
 by " the most faulty printing ever known," was a good 
 service to the Church ; and so was his translation of the 
 good Archbishop's " Prelectiones Theologicre," and of his 
 " Ethico-critical Meditations " on certain Psalms. 
 
 His hymns, 364 in number, were edited, after his 
 death, by faithful Job Orton. Others have been published 
 by Mr. Humphreys, under the title " Doddridge's Hymn- 
 book," and many are still in manuscript. These can 
 hardly be called "works," as they were all flung off with 
 happy facility, each one after he had finished the prepar- 
 ation of his sermon, while his mind was still brimming 
 and kindling with the thought. Each hymn, therefore, 
 preserves the leading ideas of some forgotten sermon. 
 James Hamilton, after calling attention to this, beauti- 
 
 « Ryland's "Life of Foster," vol. i. pp. 355, 358. 
 
WRITINGS. 
 
 169 
 
 fully says, " If amber is the gum of fossil trees, fetched 
 up and floated off by the ocean, hymns like these are 
 spiritual amber. Most of the sermons to which they 
 originally pertained have disappeared for ever; but, at 
 once beautiful and buoyant, these familiar strains' are 
 destined to carry the devout emotions of Doddridge to 
 every shore where his Master is loved, and where his 
 mother tongue is spoken." 1 
 
 On about twenty of these hymns, most especially, the 
 Church catholic has so set the seal of her approval, that 
 they are found wherever Englishmen live; and tliere is 
 probably not a hymn-book without them. His Christmas 
 hymn, and the hymn beginning with the words, " My 
 Cod, and is Thy table spread," appeared for many years 
 on the last page of the Prayer-book, and are associated 
 with the " fair linen cloth " and the chancel table. " O 
 happy day that fix'd my choice," said by Montgomery to 
 be the grandest hymn in the language, has been used, at 
 Prince Albert's suggestion, in the confirmation services of 
 the Royal Family, and is also the confirmation hymn of 
 the American Episcopal Church. Our favourite hymn, 
 "O Cod of Bethel, by whose hand," was long ascribed to 
 Logan, who included it in his own " Poems," published 
 in 1 781; but it bears date in Doddridge's manuscript, 
 Jan. 16, 1736-7, several years before Logan was born. 
 This hymn, like many of the others, may be said to have 
 had a most interesting biography, which there is now no 
 time to tell ; but we must not omit to note the new charm 
 given to our memory of it, by its use in the services 
 when certain great Englishmen were buried in West- 
 minster Abbey. It was sung there at Livingstone's 
 funeral ; and we feel an electric shiver as we recollect how, 
 on July 5, 1879, when the mortal remains of Lord Law- 
 rence, the great Indian administrator, were taken to their 
 tomb there — when the procession stopped, and when 
 the coffin, covered with sweet-scented flowers and the 
 baron's coronet, was placed on a square space of sable 
 
 * "Our Christian Classics," vol. iii. p. 374. 
 
170 
 
 WRITINGS. 
 
 cloth covering the walls of the grave — Doddridge's hymn, 
 set to old cathedral music, was beautifully chanted, and 
 how, while this was sounding, the body was slowly, slowly 
 lowered, disappearing just at the point where the hymn 
 finished with the words — 
 
 " O spread Thy covering wings around, 
 Till all our wanderings cease ; 
 And at our Father's loved abode 
 Our souls arrive in peace." 
 
 Some reviewers have questioned the claims of these 
 hymns to be called poetry. A man may be a good 
 hymnist without being, in the ordinary sense of the word, 
 a good poet. Poet or not, we think that an apostle 
 would have included his verses in the " Psalms, hymns, 
 and spiritual songs " which make " melody in the heart 
 unto the Lord." If any Christian pilgrim, weak and 
 wounded, unable to keep step with the caravan, is left 
 behind on the lonely sands, he will be surprised, if he 
 will but try these hymns, to find how suited they are to 
 his extremity ; how they will help to make "the solitary 
 place glad ; " and how he will have all the poetry he wants 
 as his soul learns to sing with the soul of Doddridge — 
 
 " O Love beyond that stretch of thought ! 
 What matchless wonders it hath wrought I 
 My faith, while she the grace declares, 
 Trembles beneath the load she bears." 
 
XIV. 
 
 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING: THE OUTER LIFE 
 SPENT. 
 
 " As candles light do give 
 Vntill they be consumed 
 Doing good, so should men liue 
 Vntill their daies be ended. 
 The truth be bold to speake, 
 Not fearing any face ; 
 The Lord thy part will take, 
 And strength thee with His grace. 
 Then needst thou not to feare 
 Death, come he late or early : 
 In truth to God draw neare, 
 And He will loue thee dearly." 
 
 Anthony Fletcher, 1595. 
 
 DODDRIDGE'S vestry is one of our shrines. The 
 old arm-chair, rush-seated ; the dark, napped old 
 table, tottering on legs that look like upright rows of 
 balls ; the little corner fire-place, and the deep, latticed 
 windows, are all as he left them. There is not much to 
 look at Yet when we stand alone there, our souls are 
 hushed within us, and we are more impressed with a 
 sense of being on consecrated ground than we should be 
 on the pavement of St. Peter's ; for this, more especially 
 during his later years, was to him a " Holy of holies," and 
 here he often found that heaven touched earth. Here 
 he agonised in prayer, not for himself only, but for his 
 people, his pupils, and his children by name; here he 
 mourned for sin ; here the faith that seemed to be dead 
 
172 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING: 
 
 became alive again, and the lost was found ; and here he 
 had "joy unspeakable and full of glory." Although, as 
 Austin saith, " Every saint is God's temple, and he that 
 carrieth his temple about with him may go to prayer when- 
 ever he pleaseth ;" while we dwell in time and on earth, the 
 life of prayer needs many helps. It needs help from system, 
 help from solitude, and sometimes help from the sound 
 of the voice. Like ancient saints who prayed in their 
 oratories, Doddridge hastened to this solitude within a 
 solitude, where he could pour out his heart, sure that 
 there could be no auditors of his awful privacy. - Apart 
 from this consideration, the central stillness of the place 
 itself was a help to a public man like him, and in the old 
 poetic sense of the words, it was often a place of escape 
 from "the windy storm and tempest." During the 
 month of April, 1743, the "Ram" Inn, just over the 
 way, was one of the houses of the Knightley party, and 
 scenes like those now alive in Hogarth's " Election " 
 cartoons, were witnessed there every day. " I am in- 
 sulted abundantly by the mob," said he, " with most 
 outrageous clamours ; . . . probably, if they durst, they 
 would be glad to trample me under their feet." On the 
 1 6th, when the shouts " No Hanbury ! no Doddridge !" 
 were loud in the street, and the storm was at the worst, he 
 was all the while writing to Miss Saunders, a young lady 
 who was one of his wards, on the best methods of pre- 
 paration for the Lord's Supper ; but just as he had got as 
 far as a sentence about " the peace and delight " spring- 
 ing from "a humble, diligent, and holy walk with God," 
 the disturbance became intolerable, and he wrote, " The 
 very disagreeable circumstances in which I have been 
 obliged to write, amidst almost continual interruptions, 
 one of them from a kind of battle under my study 
 window, must be my apology for the confusion and' 
 inaccuracy which you may see in almost every line and 
 word." At such times, as well as when other calls were 
 distracting, we can understand what significance there 
 was in his frequent words, " my asylum, the vestry." 
 The first Monday in every month was here spent as a 
 
THE OUTER LIFE SPENT. 
 
 173 
 
 fast day. His views on the use of fasting appear to have 
 been those which are quaintly condensed by an old 
 divine : " My flesh is my beast. Christ is the way I am 
 to go. If the beast be too wanton, shall I not withdraw 
 some of the provender? If I cannot govern him, shall I 
 not tame him?" 1 While fasting, he prayed about his 
 plans and his people, in review of the past month and 
 in prospect of the coming one. 
 
 Here also, at this very table, he wrote many of his 
 solemn, but artless diaries. Some diaries make us think 
 that the poor souls revealed in them are proud of their 
 graces ; are even proud to stand before the public with 
 the white sheet of penitence falling over them in folds of 
 ornamental drapery. We protest against such emblazon- 
 ments, and think that no one, even in his own case, has 
 a right to publish the secrets of the confessional ; but 
 these diaries were not published by the writer. He never 
 dreamt of such publicity. He wrote because it was his 
 nature to write. He seemed always to think, feel, pray, 
 and search the secrets of his heart, pen in hand ; so that 
 he was always putting himself on paper, and allowing 
 his inner life to register itself without being quite con- 
 scious of the process. Probably it was a help to hirn, 
 just as praying aloud was a help to him, and spirituality 
 was intensified by definition. 
 
 It was a saying of the late Bishop Hamilton of Salis- 
 bury, that "no man was likely to do much good in prayer 
 who did not begin by looking at it in the light of a work, 
 to be prepared for and persevered in with all the earnest- 
 ness which we bring to bear on subjects which are in our 
 opinion at once most interesting and most necessary." 2 
 Doddridge looked at it in this light ; and the conse- 
 quence was what Dr. Chalmers has called the intense 
 business-like spirit of his prayers. In fact, prayer was to 
 him a business which he was bent on understanding well, 
 and carrying out thoroughly. In order to this he was a 
 
 1 Dr. Donne. 
 
 2 Canon Liddon's " Elements of Religion," p. 172. 
 
174 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : 
 
 man of rules. Besides the rules already noticed for 
 seasons in the vestry, he always had on his desk, ready 
 for reference, a paper of rules for the devotional life of 
 the week. Each day had rules for its own specific 
 errands to the throne of grace ; questions for self-exami- 
 nation, topics for meditation, and resolves for conduct. 
 Lists of persons to be prayed for according to their 
 specialised characters and wants were all under rule. 
 Let system have only its right use, and let it never be 
 forgotten that the rules are for the man, not the man for 
 the rules, then such a habit will only help the springing 
 of the inner life ; it certainly did so in the case of Dr. 
 Doddridge, and private exercises of devotion, carried on 
 in modes most natural to himself, made his latest years 
 years of vehement heavenliness. 
 
 " Slight those who say amidst their sickly healths, 
 Thou livest by rule. What doth not so but man? 
 Houses are built by rule, and commonwealths ; 
 Entice the trusty sun, if that you can, 
 
 From his ecliptic line; beckon the sky. 
 
 Who lives by rule, then, keeps good company," 
 
 Poor man ! his body was not so prosperous as his soul. 
 The outer man was getting spent in rapid energy of 
 service. The death of Dr. Watts in 1748, left him the 
 most conspicuous minister among the churches of his 
 own order, and he was more than ever consulted on 
 matters needing leadership. He became increasingly a 
 miser of moments. In a note written about this date, we 
 find that he kept up his old practice of rising at five in 
 the morning. 1 Every month madehini a more influential 
 worker. The reward of work is work. For the wear and 
 tear of a life like his, an iron man was wanted, and he 
 never was that. Sir Godfrey Kneller and his friend Pope 
 were once valued by a slave-trading gentleman as worth 
 about ten guineas the pair. Once, Doddridge might 
 have fetched about the same, but he had deteriorated. 
 
 * See "Family Expositor" on Romans xiii. 13, note K. 
 
THE OUTER LIFE SPENT. 1 75 
 
 He was getting worn out as much by worry as by work. In 
 a letter to John Ryland, M.A., of Warwick, May 17, 1747, 
 he said : " I have been much afflicted by the breach made 
 in our church by the Moravians, who have got from us a 
 little congregation ; the affliction has been increased by 
 the death of some very promising and hopeful persons, 
 especially of one who died last night, and whose age, 
 circumstances, and character concurred to give us the 
 greatest hopes of usefulness from him ; so that it is one of 
 the greatest blows of that kind I have received since I 
 came hither. My spirits are much grieved and oppressed. 
 Pray that I may be enabled to wait on the Lord with 
 quiet submission and humble hope." 1 
 
 His causes of anxiety are more fully explained in the 
 following passages written at about the same time to Mr. 
 and Mrs. Darracott : 
 
 "God is pleased to exercise me of late with much 
 greater discouragements as to my ministry than have 
 attended me in the whole course of it. Considerable 
 numbers have been removed by death and other pro- 
 vidences, the places of which have not been filled up by 
 those who have succeeded. God has suffered sin to 
 break in upon us, and we have been obliged within these 
 ten years to separate at least ten persons from our com- 
 munion as scandalous ; and, what discourages me most of 
 all, there are several who have withdrawn from the table 
 of the Lord and other ordinances, concerning whom I 
 had good hope that they were real Christians. Particularly 
 last sacrament day, both Mr. and Mrs. Ager quitted us, 
 as Mr. and Mrs. Maud had done a month before. . . . 
 In the evening they go to hear a Moravian tailor, who 
 lives in the town, and who is come hither to gather, if 
 possible, a Moravian Society. Their pernicious error is 
 that external worship signifies little ; and they have hardly 
 any ordinance among them but singing, unless concerts 
 for music, which they get when they can, may be called 
 
 • " Rylandiana," p. 140. 
 
176 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : 
 
 ordinances. Strongly do I suspect the secret working of 
 Popery among them ; as I know they have prostrate 
 adoration in their communion, and am credibly informed 
 that not only do they pay great regard to crucifixes, but 
 that in one of their hymn-books there is a song to the 
 Virgin Mary. They also certainly teach the power 
 of the Church to forgive sins, and they have such 
 notions of the infallibility of the Church, which they 
 teach even to the children, under the phrase of following 
 their Mother where she leads them, that I think no 
 Papist could speak upon this head in stronger terms ; 
 but all this mischief is done in the name of the Lord, 
 and under pretence of exalting the Lamb. . . . They 
 cry down all preaching of inward work of repentance and 
 holiness, as if it were the very subversion of the gospel 
 of Christ. Could I perceive that while these things 
 happen one way there were any considerable increase of 
 the Church, or any support of the power of the 
 gospel among others, I should be the more comforted 
 to bear the affliction ; but I have the grief to tell 
 you that additions to the Church have these last two 
 years been very few ; no more than thirty have been 
 added since April was twelvemonth (when we took 
 in six together), and I believe we have lost since that 
 time almost double the number of communicants, sup- 
 posing these seceders to be lost, as I am much afraid 
 they are. Nor can I find that many are awakened 
 by the Word ; nor can I prevail with many excellent 
 Christians who have long been standing out to come 
 and join themselves to the Church. How these 
 things grieve and wound me, I leave you to judge ; but I 
 communicate them to you, that you may pity me and 
 pray for me. I have indeed one token for good, which 
 is that these things have really quickened my spirit of late 
 to cry to God with more earnestness than I have com- 
 monly done for the more evident success of my ministry ; 
 but I cannot yet see that my prayers have been answered, 
 and some of these discouraging circumstances, especially 
 with regard to the Moravians, have happened even since 
 
THE OUTER LIFE SPENT. 
 
 177 
 
 these cries have been most fervent. I forgot to tell you 
 in a more proper place that Mr. Evans, once a clergy- 
 man, has also left us, not for any other ordinances what- 
 ever, but to continue at home or to walk in the fields, 
 and reading the Bible under a pretension that human 
 explications do but pervert and corrupt the Word of God, 
 and that it is to be taken in its own simplicity. Thus 
 I see souls ensnared around me on every hand, 
 and my attempts to recover them do really signify 
 nothing. All these enthusiasts are as confident as if 
 immediately inspired, and only repay with pity, if not 
 with scorn, all attempts to bring them to sounder senti- 
 ment. And what is most deplorable of all, is, that many 
 who continue in their attendance continue unconverted 
 and unimpressed under the most awakening preaching. 
 
 " I have seriously examined myself as to the cause of 
 these things, and have a testimony in my conscience that 
 I never more sincerely sought the glory of God, and I 
 think I never preached or wrote with more that seemed 
 in my own soul the token of His presence. . . . Give me, 
 my dear brethren, your prayers ; send me also your 
 advices. . . . Bring my case before your praying societies ; 
 tell them that I labour in vain, and spend my strength 
 for nought ; and that the work of the Lord is not estab- 
 lished, but my eyes do almost fail, while I wait for 
 God's salvation. Perhaps I am leaving the world, and 
 God is weaning me from it. I truly sometimes think 
 sincerely whether God is not pointing out to me some 
 different scene of labour ; and yet I am very unwilling to 
 conclude it, especially as I am dearer than ever, rather 
 than less so, to the main body of my people ; and the in- 
 fluence which I plainly see I have among my brethren 
 here, and the nourishing state of the interest of religion 
 all around me, for almost all the congregations are in an 
 advancing state, is a further encouragement to continue. 
 O may I know the mind of God ! O may I be recon- 
 ciled to all His will, and go on strenuously and faithfully 
 preaching the gospel, though I should have no more 
 success in my ministry than Jeremiah or than Noah had 
 
 '3 
 
178 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : 
 
 in theirs ! and O ! what a rebuke to think that the success 
 of such eminent men was no greater, and that I am so 
 ready to be disquieted when God is blessing almost all 
 the other works of my hands ! His will be done. I 
 desire to leave all with Him. But I do long more and 
 more after the salvation of souls, and the edification of 
 the Church ; and the Lord pardon His servant in this 
 matter, if these longings be sometimes impatient. Let 
 me only add one word. I have sometimes had a thought 
 that God suffers things to decline, that the revival of 
 religion, when He returns in mercy, may be so much the 
 more remarkable ; and perhaps, too, that some of my 
 brethren who in their great humility are ready to think 
 me much their superior — though, alas ! I am far from 
 being so — may either be more thankful if God do 
 succeed them, or more resigned if He do not. On the 
 whole, my dear friends, I desire to refer all to the Lord, 
 and to acquiesce in His will. I am sensible I am not 
 better than my fathers, and in many respects much inferior 
 to a multitude of them ; and if God says He docs not 
 delight in me, for the purposes of building up His Church 
 here or elsewhere, I desire to say, ' Here am I, let Him do 
 with me what seemeth good in His sight.' But as I was 
 determined with all humble submission to His will to 
 renew my fervent intercession at the throne of grace 
 more frequently for a blessing on my ministry, I was 
 desirous to engage your communion on these addresses." 
 
 Thoughts like these wear the body out, and make the 
 soul like a sword of fire, working through its sheath. 
 
 One of the hymns alluded to in the letter contained 
 the following stanza, intended to be a description of the 
 Church : 
 
 "The daughters reverence do, 
 Chris tess, and praise thee too 
 Thou happy Kyria, daughter of Abijah, 
 Ve— Ruach Elohah, sister of Jehovah, 
 Manness of the man Teshuah, 
 Out of the Pleura hosannah." 
 
THE OUTER LIFE SPENT. 
 
 179 
 
 This verse is not at all more remarkable than many that 
 might be quoted, but it happens to come first, and is 
 given as a fair specimen of what was thought to be ideal 
 hymnology by these professedly advanced Christian 
 thinkers, and as affording at the same time a proof of their 
 extravagant exaltation of the Church. They also allowed 
 Count Zinzendorf's claim to be absolute ruler in matters 
 ecclesiastical, under the title of " Papa," which was only 
 an affectionate form of the word "Pope;" therefore, all 
 things considered, Doddridge was not morbid in con- 
 sidering that their system looked like a mode of Popery, 
 and we are not surprised to find that these strange 
 doctrines, now avowed by his old friend, gave him a 
 shock of surprise and revulsion. The Methodists, repre- 
 sented by Whitefield and Wesley, had already felt the 
 same. Sir John Thorold and other devout members of 
 the Establishment, who, regarding the Unitas Fratrum 
 as the most ancient, yet most spiritual of Episcopal 
 Churches, had for some years communed with it, now 
 felt forced to disown it, and had returned to communion 
 with the Church of England. We must be allowed to 
 say in passing, that these remarks have reference to the 
 eccentricities of one single individual, and to the evils 
 resulting from them. Not the very faintest reflection is 
 cast on our brethren of the Moravian Church. AVe would 
 humbly tread in the steps of their heroic missionaries, 
 would study the models of holy love that so enrich their 
 story, and feel that when we think of Cambold, Latrobe, 
 and James Montgomery, their very names ought to be 
 means of grace. 
 
 One symptom of the marasmus into which the church 
 at Northampton had sunk w as decrease of numbers. He 
 alluded to this in the letter only in general terms ; but we 
 learn from certain memoranda found elsewhere, that there 
 had been a falling off in this respect since the year 1745, 
 and his last statement on the subject is : " In looking over 
 the account for the year 1749, 1 find that twenty-two had 
 been admitted, and twenty-two removed by death or other- 
 wise, so that we were just as at the beginning of the year — 
 
l8o THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : 
 
 in all, 239." 1 This is a study for those who teach us that 
 the Divine credentials of ministers must be looked for in 
 the statistics of their visible success. The worth of no 
 work is known till it is done, and his work, even at North- 
 ampton, will not be done till the trumpet sounds. 
 
 After gathering from all quarters the breviates for the 
 year 1750, we find that, besides multifarious correspon- 
 dence, besides expository and devotional lectures, and 
 besides ordinary work for church and college, he preached 
 one hundred and forty five times. In January, he published 
 " Christian Charity and Unanimity Stated," a sermon 
 preached at a meeting of ministers at Creaton. Further 
 important work arose out of the alarm caused by an earth- 
 quake in February. The fabled rock of Britannia heaved 
 from its basis : three times, all England was tilted up two 
 or three inches from end to end, and the water in every 
 river dashed over the bank on one side, like water spilt 
 from a cup when shaken. There was a horrible sense 
 of insecurity, and the roads leading out of London were 
 crowded with the carriages of fugitives, who hastened into 
 the open country out of danger from falling houses. Dod- 
 dridge published in "Philosophical Transactions" notes 
 of the phenomena as observed by himself; 2 and on 
 August 20th delivered a burning sermon at Salters' Hall on 
 the subject, taking for his text, " And thou, Capernaum, 
 which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to 
 hell." One immediate effect of this was that it roused 
 Mr. Forfitt, a wealthy merchant who was present, to go 
 at once and found the* " BoOk Society for Promoting 
 Religious Knowledge, among the Poor." He sent the 
 preacher the first donation of Bibles and catechisms, and 
 later on said to him in writing, " I do not know, dear sir, 
 whether justice does not oblige me to inform you that, if 
 the zvorld receives any advantage from this design, I think, 
 under God, it is indebted to Dr. Doddridge ; for as the 
 sacred fervour which animated your addresses from the 
 pulpit when last in town, kindled a spark of the same 
 1 Castle Hill Church Book. 
 
 f " Philosophical Transactions," vol. xlvi. p. 712. 
 
THE OUTER LIFE SPENT. l8l 
 
 benevolence to souls in the breast of one who could no 
 longer retain his desire of usefulness within the compass of 
 his own small abilities, without exciting others to the same 
 views." This society distributed Bibles and Tracts for 
 nearly fifty years before our more illustrious Bible and 
 Tract Societies began their career ; and there can be no 
 reasonable doubt that it helped to suggest and quicken 
 into existence these and other institutions with the same 
 object both in England and America. 1 Its own story, 
 told in a hundred and thirty annual reports, is a right 
 noble one ; and it is a rousing thought that all the vast 
 uselulness, direct and indirect, growing out of it, sprang 
 from seed sown by Doddridge. 
 
 In the course of the year he prepared for the press a 
 letter to Count Zinzendorf. He also laboured to further 
 the endeavours of the Protestants to found a college at 
 Breslau, " which was to be after the German plan, and 
 to comprehend all sorts of schools," but which chiefly 
 had reference to the education of ministers. This, he 
 thought, " would have a wonderful influence on the state 
 of religion in Silesia." The project had been encouraged 
 by help from Holland, as well as from several English 
 congregations. He tried to obtain "a brief" in aid of it 
 from Lambeth ; but the Archbishop, advised by the 
 Episcopal bench, returned a negative to the application. 2 
 This year he also worked hard, both by speech and by 
 writing, in endeavours to check the ravages of small-pox, 
 by recommending the practice of inoculation. We have 
 nearly forgotten this ancient terror. It used to be always 
 hovering near. You could go into few companies with- 
 out seeing faces scarred by it Without taking time to 
 search, we happen to light on twelve of Doddridge's 
 letters in collections before us, each of which contains 
 harrowing reference to it. The remedy introduced from 
 Turkey in 1722 was the best then known, but the popular 
 dislike to it, against which Doddridge and others had to 
 work, was almost invincible. " It was a new thing — it 
 
 « Sermon by John Rippon, D.D., 1802. 
 
 • Stedinan's " Letters to and from Doddridge," p. 305. 
 
182 
 
 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : 
 
 came from foreigners — needless fuss was made about the 
 small-pox — people did not die of that so much as of the 
 doctors." This seems to have been Dr. Warburton's 
 opinion, who on February 2, 1741, characteristically 
 wrote : " We have it now, and have had it some time 
 in the village from whence I write. . . . About forty 
 have had the distemper, and all recovered but two, who, 
 without my knowledge, sent for an apothecary, who soon 
 did their business ! But I have taken care for the future 
 that those who die of it shall die a natural death. The 
 very same case happened here three years ago. The 
 same number then had it, and but two died, and of the 
 same distemper — the apothecary ! " When Christians 
 have made up their minds against a reform, they generally 
 extract a reason for their decision out of Scripture. It 
 was so in this case. Inoculation was denounced as 
 tempting Providence by superinducing disease, endeavour- 
 ing to counteract a Divine visitation, and imitating the 
 action of the devil, who caused boils to break out on the 
 body of Job. In town and country, in public and in 
 conversation, he tried to meet the religious difficulty, 
 and also published the following tractate : " The Case of 
 receiving the Small-pox by Inoculation, Impartially con- 
 sidered, and especially in a Religious View. Written in 
 the year mdccxxv. By the late Reverend Mr. David 
 Some; and now published from the original Manuscript 
 by P. Doddridge, D. D. 'I will ask you one thing, Is it 
 lawful . . . to save life or to destroy it ? ' 1750." 
 
 In the course of this year he made fresh attempts to 
 serve the cause of Christian missions. It will be re- 
 membered that in a conference of ministers in 1741, 
 following his memorable sermon on "The Evil and 
 Danger of Neglecting Souls," he submitted a plan for the 
 formation of missionary auxiliaries, and founded an earnest 
 appeal upon it. We have no report of results from this 
 appeal. Five years after, Thomas Harmer thus wrote to 
 ask what was being done : 
 
 " Be so kind as to let me know what success you have 
 
THE OUTER LIFE SPENT. 183 
 
 met with at Northampton in your plan, and what methods 
 you have taken to apply the contributions of your friends 
 for that purpose, so as to answer the design most 
 effectually. / am appreltcnsive of very great difficulties in 
 the doing of any tolerable service for the propagation of 
 the gospel ; nor have I received much instruction from a 
 collection of papers published by the Society for the 
 Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in 17 19, 
 which I have in my hands. I presume it must be by 
 the channel of New England that you propose to do 
 some service in this way ; however, it would be agreeable 
 entertainment to me to receive an account from you 
 concerning the management of these collections, and, if 
 there be any room for it, I shall be desirous of recom- 
 mending it to our brethren in these counties, so it may 
 be brought into deliberation at our meetings." 1 
 
 It is probable that, though much was felt, little was 
 done. Some doubted ; some thought about the scheme 
 in the spirit of Matthew Greene's couplet — 
 
 " Reforming schemes are none of mine, 
 To mend the world's a vast design ! " 
 
 Others shook their heads and were of opinion that, although 
 it was all very well to say " the gospel should be preached 
 to every creature," it was a vastly difficult thing to carry 
 out ; so the suggestion was not taken up with spirit. We 
 are not able even now to answer Mr. Harmer's queries. 
 No notes survive to show what funds were raised, or how 
 they were applied. We know that Dr. Doddridge was 
 the medium of what was attempted, and that the enter- 
 prise took the direction of America. Our colonies were 
 a fringe skirting the coast; and in the continent beyond — 
 now wonderful with the life of a great empire — were vast 
 lakes of grass and mysterious woody wildernesses, in 
 which the red men had their wigwams and hunting- 
 grounds. Their tribes were very numerous. Bancroft 
 
 » Wilson MSS. 
 
184 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : 
 
 speaks of forty on the east side of the Mississippi, and 
 these poor heathens, starving in filthy wretchedness and 
 cruelty, yet in frequent contact with our settlers, justly 
 and naturally had the first claim on our kindness. It is 
 not likely that Dr. Doddridge had many contributions in 
 hand, but we have evidence from letters written in 1750 
 that what he had were applied to the assistance of 
 missionary efforts made by Christian colonists who were 
 stationed at the southern outposts of civilisation. Mr. 
 Samuel Davies, Presbyterian minister of Hanover County, 
 Virginia, was one of the leaders of these, and there is 
 an interesting letter written by him to Doddridge this 
 year, giving intelligence about the mission, and thanking 
 him for help. Dr. Doddridge also had to do with the 
 earliest measures for founding the college in New Jersey, 
 now called Princeton College, and this was part of the 
 same missionary work. Writing to Mr. Macculoch April 
 27, 1750, Mr. Whitefield says: "Last week, I saw Dr. 
 Doddridge concerning it, and the scheme that was then 
 judged most practical was this — that Mr. Pendleton's 
 letter should be printed, and that a recommendation of 
 the affair subscribed by the doctor and others should 
 be annexed, and that subscriptions and collections should 
 be set on foot. . . . The spreading of the gospel in 
 Maryland and in Virginia in a great measure depends on 
 it." Job Orton says : " He lamented that there were so 
 few missionaries among the Indians near our settlements 
 in North America; and was very desirous to train up 
 some serious youths of good health and resolution to be 
 employed in this capacity. Two of his pupils were 
 educated with this view, and would cheerfully have gone 
 upon this service, but their nearest relations would not 
 permit them. 'Such,' saith he, 'is the weakness of their 
 faith and love ! I hope I can truly say that, if God 
 would put it into the heart of my only son to go under 
 this character, I could willingly part with him, though I 
 were to see him with us no more. What are the views 
 of a family and a name, when compared with a regard 
 to extending my Redeemer's kingdom, and gaining souls 
 
THE OUTER LIFE SPENT. 
 
 I8 5 
 
 to Christ?'" The reference here is to his disappoint- 
 ment in two young men, who in 1750 were understood 
 to be going from the academy as missionaries to New 
 York. His heart was more "than ever devoted to the 
 missionary cause, and it was about this date that he 
 exclaimed, " I am now intent upon having something 
 done among the Dissenters, in a more public manner, 
 for propagating the gospel abroad, which lies near my 
 heart. I wish to live to see this design brought into 
 execution, at least into some forwardness, and then I 
 should die the more cheerfully. " 
 
 In his letters of this year are several allusions to an 
 improved state of health, but hints found in the letters of 
 friends show that they felt doubtful about it His tall, 
 slender, stooping form; his thin, flushed, vibrating features; 
 the hurried breath and hollow cough, now and then sug- 
 gested misgivings. There were many persons in the 
 world who prayed earnestly that he might have long life. 
 Here are sentences from a letter written in November, 
 1750, by the Countess of Huntingdon, who was then 
 very ill : 
 
 " Prayers from me you will have ; and I believe one of 
 the last I put up will be to beg a reward for you. The 
 involuntary voice of my heart is glory, glory ! Sure great 
 things are to be done soon, or I unfettered soon from 
 flesh and blood. I will, should the kind lot be appointed 
 for me, rejoice over you as your ministering spirit, and I 
 shall always have good news to bring you. 1 will watch 
 carefully to protect your life long upon earth, for the 
 sake of thousands ; and then, by gentle operation, help 
 to unfold your garment of flesh, and with my fellow 
 companions waft your gracious spirit to the bridal feast 
 of the Lamb, and will hymn on Mount Zion your glorious 
 deliverance." 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Darracott, dated December 5, 1 750, he 
 says : " My worthy and ever honoured friend and father, 
 
 1 Transcribed by Mr. Darracott. Darracott MSS. 
 
l86 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : 
 
 Dr. Clark of St. Alban's, died last night, after having been 
 wonderfully renewed of late, and having a growing pro- 
 spect of returning to public usefulness. I think he ad- 
 ministered the Lord's Supper on the Lord's day ; w as 
 better than ordinary at noon, but was immediately seized 
 and carried of! in a paralytic stroke. O blessed spirit ! how 
 does he exult in the regions of everlasting day ! How 
 sweetly does he celebrate the praises of his great Deliverer, 
 and repay, as it were, in additional activity, to the 
 utmost of his enlarged capacities, the want of service 
 which the declining state of his health has of late months 
 rendered unavoidable ! May his memory never be absent 
 one day from my mind, but may I ever remember how 
 eminently he honoured God, and was honoured by Him, 
 and may I tread in those shining steps in which he was 
 so remarkably and so steadily a follower of Christ — for a 
 steadier Christian I have never known, nor a man more 
 uniformly good ! " 1 
 
 Dr. Clark, since known to thousands of humble Chris- 
 tians by his " Scripture Promises, ' was the friend on whom 
 Doddridge had been accustomed to lean, and from whom 
 since the days of his orphaned childhood he had received 
 constant, wise, and beautiful kindness. The letters that 
 passed between the two fill a thick quarto volume of 
 manuscript Riding to the funeral of his friend through 
 the white winter day, he caught a cold, from the effects of 
 which he never recovered. The next year was a year of 
 last things. His last printed performance came out in 
 January, under the title, " Meditations on the Tears of 
 Jesus over the Grave of Lazarus," and was his funeral 
 sermon for Dr. Clark. His last sacramental service was 
 on June 2nd, when, after preaching on " the General As- 
 sembly and Church of the Firstborn," he spoke with 
 solemn delight on the view of Christ in the Rook of Reve- 
 lations, as holding the stars in His right hand and walking 
 in the midst of the golden candlesticks. The last work 
 he prepared for transcription out of shorthand for the 
 
 ■ Darracott MSS. 
 
THE OUTER LIFE SPENT. 
 
 I8 7 
 
 press was "A New Translation of the Minor Prophets; 
 with Paraphrase and Notes." This was finished June 5, 
 1751, but still remains locked up in the original cyphers. 
 Perhaps the last glimpse we have of him as taking part in 
 Methodistic service is when, at Lady Huntingdon's seat 
 at Ashby, we find him discussing with Whitefield the 
 question of the new Tabernacle, joining in hearty approval 
 and promise of support. This we believe to have been a 
 little later in June. A day or two later in the same month, 
 he preached at a meeting of ministers at Sudbury, and 
 made his last attempt to rouse public interest in the cause 
 of foreign missions. The last visit he paid to his friends 
 in London was June 21st. We have found several un- 
 published letters written by him to Mrs. Doddridge in the 
 course of this visit. In one of these, dated June 22nd, 
 he says, with reference to his recent engagement at Sud- 
 bury, " / hope 1 have laid a good stone in the foundation of 
 that scheme for the propagation of the gospel, which you 
 know I have lately had so much on my heart. I thank 
 God, I feel more and more daily how little the value of 
 life is, any further than it may subserve the purposes of 
 the Divine glory and the good of mankind, in the pursuit 
 of which I live and die ; and I hope I may say, such 
 prospects opening upon us indeed increase my obligations 
 to take all the more care of my health, which, out of grati- 
 tude to my dear wife, who is pleased to set such a dispro- 
 portionate value upon it, I also would do." 1 June 25th, 
 he wrote, " I am pure well, and have been very merry to- 
 night, and laughing abundantly at poor Mr. Addington 
 about his mistress, who, if I can help it, never shall be 
 his wife." 2 June 29th, he wrote, " If there be any con- 
 sideration in the world, next to the honour of God and 
 the edification of the Church, which could make me wish 
 to see many future years, it is that I may enjoy your de- 
 lightful friendship, and repay it by every act of gratitude 
 and expression of tenderness. I know not how sufficiently 
 to thank you for the charming letter which I have re- 
 
 « Wilson MSS. 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
1 88 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : 
 
 ceived from you last night, and I think I have been better 
 ever since. ... I have been pure well all the day, and 
 my cough has been very civil." Speaking of a visit to 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, he said, " He looks most 
 charmingly well ; I think, several years younger than when 
 I first saw him, as perhaps your Methusaleh may do some 
 years hence." 
 
 His last sermon at Northampton was preached July 
 14th, and was founded on the words, "For whether we 
 live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die 
 unto the Lord : whether we live therefore, or die, we are 
 the Lord's." The last service of all was a charge de- 
 livered July 18th at the ordination of Mr. Adams, of 
 Bewdley ; from Bewdley he passed on to Shrewsbury, 
 where he spent several happy weeks in the house of his 
 old friend and former pupil, Mr. Orton. While here he 
 received a letter from Mr. Barker, which had in it these 
 passionate lines : 
 
 " Consent and choose to stay with us a little longer, 
 my dear friend, if it please God. This is not needful to 
 Northampton and its adjacent towns and villages only, 
 but desirable to us all, and beneficial to our whole interest. 
 Stay, Doddridge, oh stay ! and strengthen our hands whose 
 shadows grow long. Fifty is but the height of vigour, 
 usefulness, and honour. Don't leave abruptly. 'Provi- 
 dence hath not directed thee yet on whom to drop thy 
 mantle. Who shall instruct our youth, fill our vacant 
 churches, animate our associations, and diffuse a spirit of 
 piety, moderation, candour, and charity through our vil- 
 lages and churches, and a spirit of prayer and supplication 
 into our towns and cities when thou art removed from us? 
 Especially who shall unfold the sacred oracles, teach us 
 the meaning and use of our Bibles, rescue us from the 
 bondage of systems, party opinions, empty, useless 
 speculations, and fashionable forms and phrases ; and 
 point out to us the simple, intelligible, consistent, and 
 uniform religion of our Lord and Saviour? Who shall 
 but I am silenced by the voice of Him who says, 
 
THE OUTER LIFE SPENT. 
 
 ' Shall I not do what I will with mine own ? Is it not my 
 prerogative to take and leave as seemeth me good ? I 
 demand the liberty ot disposing of my own sen-ants at my 
 ow n pleasure. He hath laboured more abundantly. His 
 times are in my hand. He hath not slept as do others. He 
 hath risen to nobler heights than things below. He hopes 
 to inherit glory. He hath laboured for that which cn- 
 dureth to eternal life — labour which the more it abounds 
 the more it exalts and magnifies its objects, and the more 
 effectually answers and secures its end. It is yours to 
 wait and trust, mine to dispose and govern; on me be the 
 care of ministers and churches. With me is the residue 
 of the Spirit. Both the vineyard and the labourers are 
 mine. I set them in work, and when I please I call them, 
 and give them their hire.' With these thoughts my passions 
 subside, my mind is softened and satisfied. I resign tliee, 
 myself, and all to God, saying, 'Thy will be done.'" 
 
 In -August, at the advice of his physician he visited 
 Bristol to try the effect of the Hot-Wells, and a clergyman 
 of the Church of England invited him with the most de- 
 licate kindness to accept his house as his home until he 
 could find lodgings near the spot Dr. Maddox, the 
 Bishop of Worcester, paid him a visit, and offered him the 
 use of his own carriage at the stated times of drinking the 
 water. Becoming still weaker, he was advised to try a 
 voyage to Lisbon. To defray the cost of this, a few friends, 
 including Lady Fanny Shirley, Lady Chesterfield, and 
 the Countess of Huntingdon, contributed three hundred 
 pounds, the latter giving one-third of the amount. Leav- 
 ing Bristol September 17th, he stopped for a few days at 
 Bath, on his way to Falmouth. Here he was Lady Hun- 
 tingdon's guest. We are indebted to Mr. Toplady for 
 the following anecdotes : 
 
 " While Dr. Doddridge was at Bath, on his way to 
 Falmouth, Lady Huntingdon's house at Bath was his 
 home. On the morning of the day on which he set out 
 from thence for Falmouth, Lady Huntingdon came into 
 his room, and found him weeping over that passage in 
 
190 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : 
 
 the prophet Daniel (chap. x. n, 12), '0 Daniel, a man 
 greatly beloved. ' ' You are in tears, sir,' said Lady 
 Huntingdon. ' I am weeping, madam,' said the good 
 Doctor, ' but they are tears of comfort and joy. I can 
 give up my country, my relations, and friends into the 
 hand of God ; and as to myself, I can as well go to heaven 
 from Lisbon as from my own study at Northampton.' 
 Told me by Lady Huntingdon, at Clifton, this day, Aug. 
 19. I77S- 
 
 " She also said that Dr. Warburton (the present Bishop 
 of Gloucester) came to see her the evening before the day 
 above-mentioned. Dr. Doddridge, Dr. Oliver (the phy- 
 sician), and Dr. Hartley (author of ' The Observations on 
 Man '), were in the room at the time. Warburton, who 
 never knew anything of politeness or refined behaviour, 
 ran out very furiously against what he called enthusiasm ; 
 and observed, however, that ' all enthusiasts were honest, 
 though extremely warm and extravagant in their zeal.' 
 Shortly after, Oliver Cromwell's name came on the carpet ; 
 and Warburton termed him 'the greatest enthusiast 
 and the greatest rogue that ever existed.' Lady Hun- 
 tingdon pointed out the inconsistency of such a remark, 
 from the gentleman who had said just before, ' enthusiasm 
 and honesty always went together ; ' but Warburton (who, 
 I believe, was never known either to blush, to retract, 
 or to apologise) brazened it out very lamely." 1 
 
 Ten days after he had left Bristol, which from unfavour- 
 able weather on his journey, bad roads, and increas- 
 ing weakness were days of great fatigue, he arrived at 
 Falmouth, where he was the guest of Dr. Turner, until 
 the time of his embarkation. While here he expressed 
 himself in this way when writing to a friend, we believe 
 Mr. Darracott : 
 
 " I am, upon the whole, better than could be expected 
 after such a journey. Let us thank God, and take 
 courage. We may yet know many cheerful days. We 
 
 Toplady's Works, vol. iv. pp. 141, 142. 
 
THE OUTER LIFE SPENT. 191 
 
 shall at least know (why do I say at least ?) one joyful 
 one, which shall be eternal. I have trespassed a great 
 deal on your time, and a little on my own strength. I 
 say a little, for when writing to such a friend, as I seem 
 less absent from him, it soothes my mind agreeably. Oh ! 
 when shall we meet in that world, where we shall have 
 nothing to lament, and nothing to fear for ourselves or 
 each other, or any dear to us ! Let us think of this as a 
 momentary state, and aspire more ardently after the 
 blessings of that If I survive my voyage, a line shall 
 tell you how I bear it ; if not, all will be well ; and as 
 good Mr. Howe says, I hope I shall embrace the wave 
 which, when I intended Lisbon, would land me in 
 heaven ! I am more afraid of doing what is wrong than 
 of dying." 
 
 Mr. Toplady has referred to some of Dr. Warburton's 
 salient characteristics. There was, however, kindness 
 under the roughness, and he deserves to be held in per- 
 petual remembrance for his last kindness to his sick friend. 
 He, with Mr. Allen of Prior Park (Fielding's Mr. All- 
 worthy), used their influence at the London Post Office 
 to obtain for him, in the packet, the exclusive use of the 
 captain's cabin, who was not sailing on that occasion. 
 On September 30th, accompanied by his anxious wife 
 and a servant, he set sail from Falmouth. He was what 
 is called " a good sailor," and, seated in his easy-chair, 
 enjoyed the soft wind and the sight of the shimmering, 
 heaving sea. Best of all, he had the happiest thoughts 
 of his life. He would say : " Such transporting views of 
 the heavenly world is my Father now indulging me with, 
 no words can express." Mrs. Doddridge afterwards de- 
 clared that sometimes the rapture that lighted his face 
 reminded her of his own lines — 
 
 " When Death o'er Nature shall prevail, 
 And all the powers of language fail ; 
 Joy through my swimming eyes shall break, 
 And mean the bliss I cannot speak." 
 
 When the ship was gliding up the Tagus, and Lisbon 
 
1 92 THE INNER LIFE SPRINGING : 
 
 with its groves, gardens, and palaces appeared in sunny 
 perspective, the sight seemed to give him a iiesh glow 
 of health and spirits. He was warmly received at the 
 house of Mr. David King, whose mother was a member of 
 his congregation at Northampton, and here the illusive 
 appearance of increased strength soon vanished, and on 
 October 26th all was over. Put a flower into the cold 
 hand, let all passion sink into peace. " Blessed are the 
 dead which die in the Lord .-. . Yea, saith the Spirit, 
 that they may rest from their labours ; and their works 
 do follow them." Black, for those who wear the white 
 robes of the glorified, seems to be out of place ; but we 
 may wear it for the bereaved. Lisbon was a disappoint- 
 ment. Poor Mercy ! To her the sun shone with a cruel 
 glory, and the air swept with a mocking freshness now. 
 But she was not left comfortless. Even in the hour of 
 her first, unspeakable solitude, the Great Comforter filled 
 her with His own strength. In writing the story of her 
 last distress, she said to her children, "'God all sufficient, 
 and my only hope,' is my motto ; let it be yours." 
 
 "Doddridge is gone," said George Whitefield; "Lord 
 Jesus, prepare me to follow after ! " Spoken or un- 
 spoken, this was the prayer of many a mourner. Some 
 of those who were most earnest in presenting it, and who 
 tried to follow him most faithfully, were left long on the 
 road. His widow was on her lonely journey after him 
 for nearly forty years ; and three of his children lived to 
 a much later date. Our plan does not permit us to tell 
 the tale of their lives ; but this is the order in which the 
 members of the family passed away : — Philip, only son, 
 died unmarried, March 13, 1785, aged 47 ; Mrs. Dodd- 
 ridge died April 7, 1790, aged 82; Mary, who married 
 John Humphreys, Esq., died June 8, 1799 ; Mercy died 
 October 20, 1809, aged 75 ; and Anna Cecilia, October 3, 
 181 1, aged 74. 
 
 In the Times for May 23, 1879, there was this notice, 
 quoted from the Athenceum ; " The tombs of Henry 
 Fielding and Dr. Doddridge, who are buried in the 
 English cemetery at Lisbon, have been cleaned, and their 
 
THE OUTER LIVE SPENT. 193 
 
 inscriptions renovated, by the order of the Rev. Godfrey 
 Pope, the resident chaplain. The monuments of these 
 famous Englishmen sadly required such an attention." 
 
 Few will question the claims of Dr. Doddridge to be 
 entitled, as in this notice, "a famous Englishman." Say 
 that he was not a famous English classic, not a famous 
 poet, not a famous orator; he was yet a great man. He 
 was a great genius, if we accept Carlyle's definition, 
 " Genius, which means transcendent capacity for taking 
 trouble." He was a great worker, and we have shown 
 that, by strict system and constant plodding, he did an 
 amount of work in twenty years that hardly any other life 
 can match. He was a pioneer in several great enter- 
 prises of social and evangelical beneficence. He was a 
 great pattern of charity. He was a great instrument of 
 conversion — if not in his own lifetime, yet ever since; for 
 every year since he died, thousands, consciously or un- 
 consciously, have enjoyed good thoughts, good impulses, 
 and helps to Divine life that had their instrumental origin 
 in the soul of Doddridge ; and if, to borrow the phrase 
 of the other famous Englishman, whose name has just 
 been connected with his own, he had not "great great- 
 ness," he had great goodness; — this we say remembering 
 that " what is good in us, is God in us." Few men have 
 been more useful than he by the power of those "indirect 
 influences which distil from a life, rather than from sud- 
 den, separate, brilliant efforts ; " and if no other motive 
 existed for calling fresh attention to him, there would be 
 that which the present essayist takes leave to express in 
 borrowed words — the last words ever written by the late 
 Dr. Hodge, of Princeton College— who, when giving his 
 reason for setting before his students the life-story of a 
 great, good man, said : " I wanted to show how much 
 good could be done by simply being good." 
 
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