'Christ disarmed Peter, and in so doing He unbuckled the sword
of every soldier.'
TERTULLIAN.
A dauntless fighter in his day was Captain Amor Stoddart, seeing he
had served in the Parliamentary Army throughout the Civil Wars. In
truth, it was no child's play to command a body of men as tough as
Oliver's famous Ironsides. Therefore Captain Stoddart had doubtless
come through many a bloody struggle, and fought in many a hardly
fought contest during those long wars, before the final victory was
won.
But now, not a single memory remains of his small individual share in
those
'Old unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.'
His story has come down to us as a staunch comrade and a valiant
fighter, in a different kind of warfare. His victory was won in a
struggle in which all the visible weapons were on the other side;
when, through long years, he had only the armour of meekness and of
love wherewith to oppose hardship and violence and wrong.
Wherefore, of this fight and of this victory, his own name remains as
a symbol and a sign. Not in vain was he called at his birth 'Amor,'
which, in the Latin tongue signifies 'Love,' as all men know.
The first meeting between Captain Amor Stoddart and him who was to be
thereafter his spirit's earthly captain in the new strange warfare
that lay before him, happened on this wise.
In the year 1648, when the long Civil Wars were at last nearing their
close, George Fox visited Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and held a
meeting with the professors (that is to say the Puritans) there. It
was in that same year of 1648, when every day the shadow was drawing
nearer of the fatal scaffold that should be erected within the Palace
at Whitehall the following January. But although that shadow crept
daily nearer, men, for the most part, as yet perceived it not. Fox
himself was at this time still young, as years are counted, being only
twenty-four years of age. Four other summers were yet to pass before
that memorable day when he should climb to the summit of old Pendle
Hill, and, after seeing there the vision of a 'great people to be
gathered,' should begin himself to gather them at Firbank and
Swarthmoor and many another place.
George, though still young in years, was already possessed not only of
a strange and wonderful presence, but also of a gift to perceive and
to draw the souls of other men, and to knit them to his own.
'I went again to Mansfield,' he says in his Journal, 'where was a
Great Meeting of professors and people, where I was moved to pray; and
the Lord's power was so great that the house seemed to be shaken. When
I had done, one of the professors said, "It was now as in the days of
the Apostles, when the house was shaken where they were."'
After Fox had finished praying, with this vehemence that seemed to
shake the house, one of the professors began to pray in his turn, but
in such a dead and formal way that even the other professors were
grieved thereat and rebuked him. Whereupon this praying professor came
in all humility to Fox, beseeching him that he would pray again.
'But,' says Fox, 'I could not pray in any man's will.' Still, though
he could not make a prayer to order, he agreed to meet with these same
professors another day.
This second meeting was another 'Great Meeting.' From far and wide the
professors and people gathered to see the man who had learnt to pray.
But the professors did not truly seem to care to learn the secret.
They went on talking and arguing together. They were 'jangling,' as
Fox calls it (that is to say, using endless strings of words to talk
about sacred things, without really feeling the truth of them in their
hearts), jangling all together, when suddenly the door opened and a
grave young officer walked in. ''Tis Captain Amor Stoddart, of Noll's
Army,' the professors said one to another, as, hardly stopping for a
moment at the stranger's entrance, they continued to 'jangle' among
themselves. They went on, speaking of the most holy things, talking
even about the blood of Christ, without any feeling of solemnity, till
Fox could bear it no longer.
'As they were discoursing of it,' he says, 'I saw through the
immediate opening of the invisible Spirit, the blood of Christ; and
cried out among them saying, "Do you not see the blood of Christ? See
it in your hearts, to sprinkle your hearts and consciences from dead
works to serve the living God?" For I saw the blood of the New
Covenant how it came into the heart. This startled the professors who
would have the blood only without them, and not in them. But Captain
Stoddart was reached, and said, "Let the youth speak, hear the youth
speak," when he saw that they endeavoured to bear me down with many
words.'
'Captain Stoddart was reached.' He, the soldier, accustomed to the
terrible realities of a battlefield, knew the sight of blood for
himself only too well. George Fox's words may seem perhaps mysterious
to us now, but they came home to Amor and made him able to see
something of the same vision that Fox saw. We may not be able to see
that vision ourselves, but at least we can feel the difference between
having the Blood of Christ, that is the Life of Christ, within our
hearts, and only talking and 'jangling' about it, as the professors
were doing. 'Captain Stoddart was reached.' Having been 'reached,'
having seen, if only for one moment, something of what the Cross had
meant to Christ, and having felt His Life within, Amor became a
different man. To take the lives of his fellowmen, to shed their blood
for whom that Blood had been shed, was henceforth for him impossible.
He unbuckled his sword, and resigning his captaincy in Oliver's
conquering army, just when victory was at hand after the stern
struggle, he followed his despised Quaker teacher into obscurity.
For seven long years we hear nothing more of him. Then he appears
again at George Fox's side, no longer Captain Stoddart the Officer,
but plain Amor Stoddart, a comrade and helper of the first Publishers
of Truth.
In the year 1655, Fox's Journal records: 'On the sixth day I had a
large meeting near Colchester[33] to which many professors and the
Independent teachers came. After I had done speaking and was stepped
down from the place on which I stood, one of the Independent teachers
began to make a "jangling" [it seems they still went on jangling, even
after seven long years!], which Amor Stoddart perceiving said, "Stand
up again, George!" for I was going away and did not at the first hear
them.'
If Amor Stoddart had unbuckled his sword, evidently he had not lost
the power of grappling with difficulties, of swiftly seeing the right
thing to do, and of giving his orders with soldier-like precision.
'Stand up again, George!'--a quick, military command, in the fewest
possible words. George Fox was more in the habit of commanding other
people than of being commanded himself; but he knew his comrade and
obeyed without a word.
'I stood up again,' he says, 'when I heard the Independent [the man
who had been jangling], and after a while the Lord's power came over
him and all his company, who were confounded, and the Lord's truth was
over all. A great flock of sheep hath the Lord in that country that
feed in His pastures of life.'
Nevertheless, without Amor Stoddart the sheep would have gone away
hungry, and would not have been fed at that meeting.
Again we hear of Amor a little later in the same year, still at George
Fox's side, but this time not as a passive spectator, nor even merely
as a resourceful comrade. He was now himself to be a sufferer for the
Truth. He still lives for us through his share in a strange but
wonderful scene of George Fox's life. A few months after the meeting
at Colchester, the two friends visited Cambridge, and 'there,' says
Fox in his Journal, 'the scholars, hearing of me, were up and were
exceeding rude. I kept on my horse's back and rode through them in the
Lord's power. "Oh," said they, "HE SHINES, HE GLISTERS," but they
unhorsed Amor Stoddart before we could get to the inn. When we were in
the inn they were so rude in the courts and the streets, so that the
miners, colliers, and carters could never be ruder. And the people of
the inn asked us 'what we would have for supper' as is the way of
inns. "Supper," said I, "were it not that the Lord's power is over
them, these rude scholars look as if they would pluck us in pieces and
make a supper of us!"'
After this treatment, the two friends might have been expected to keep
away from Cambridge in the future; but that was not their way. Where
the fight was hottest, there these two faithful soldiers of the Cross
were sure to be found. The very next year saw Fox back in
Cambridgeshire once more; and again Amor Stoddart was with him,
standing by his side and sharing all dangers like a valiant and
faithful friend.
'I passed into Cambridgeshire,' the Journal continues, 'and into the
fen country, where I had many meetings, and the Lord's truth spread.
Robert Craven, who had been Sheriff of Lincoln, was with me [it would
be interesting to know more about Robert Craven, and where and how he
was "reached"], and Amor Stoddart and Alexander Parker. We went to
Crowland, a very rude place; for the townspeople were got together at
the inn we went to, and were half drunk, both priest and people. I
reproved them for their drunkenness and warned them of the day of the
Lord that was coming upon all the wicked; exhorting them to leave
their wickedness and to turn to the Lord in time. While I was thus
speaking to them the priest and the clerk broke out into a rage, and
got up the tongs and fire-shovel at us, so that had not the Lord's
power preserved us we might have been murdered amongst them. Yet, for
all their rudeness and violence, some received the truth then, and
have stood in it ever since.'
George Fox was not the only man to find a faithful and staunch
supporter in Amor Stoddart. There is another glimpse of him, again
standing at a comrade's side in time of danger, but the comrade in
this case is not Fox but 'dear William Dewsbury,' one of the best
loved of all the early Friends.
Amor Stoddart was Dewsbury's companion that sore day at Bristol when
the tidings came from New England overseas, that the first two Quaker
Martyrs, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, had been hanged for
their faith on Boston Common. Heavy at heart were the Bristol Friends
at the news, and not they only, for assembled with them were some New
England Friends who had been banished from their families and from
their homes, under pain of the same death that the martyrs had
suffered.
'We were bowed down unto our God,' Dewsbury writes, 'and prayer was
made unto Him when there came a knocking at the door. It came upon my
spirit that it was the rude people, and the life of God did mightily
arise, and they had no power to come in until we were clear before
our God. Then they came in, setting the house about with muskets and
lighted matches. So after a season of this they came into the room,
where I was and Amor Stoddart with me. I looked upon them when they
came into the room, and they cried as fast as they could well speak,
"We will be civil! We will be civil!"
'I spoke these words, "See that you be so." They ran forth out of the
room and came no more into it, but ran up and down in the house with
their weapons in their hands, and the Lord God caused their hearts to
fail and they passed away, and not any harm done to any of us.'
Eleven years after this pass in almost complete silence, as far as
Amor is concerned. Occasionally we hear the bare mention of his name
among the London Friends. One short entry in Fox's Journal speaks of
him as having 'buried his wife.' Then the veil lifts again and shows
one more glimpse of him. It is the last.
In 1670, twenty-two years after that first meeting at Mansfield, when
Captain Stoddart came into the room, and said, 'Let the youth speak,'
George Fox, now a man worn with his sufferings and service, came into
another room to bid farewell to his old comrade as he lay a-dying. Fox
himself had been brought near to death not long before, but he knew
that his work was not yet wholly finished, he was not yet 'fully
clear' in his Master's sight.
'Under great sufferings, sorrows, and oppressions I lay several
weeks,' he writes in his Journal, 'whereby I was brought so low that
few thought I could live. When those about me had given me up to die,
I spoke to them to get me a coach to carry me to Gerard Roberts,
about twelve miles off, for I found it was my place to go thither. So
I went down a pair of stairs to the coach, and when I came to the
coach I was like to have fallen down, I was so weak and feeble, but I
got up into the coach, and some friends with me. When I came to
Gerard's, after I had stayed about three weeks there, it was with me
to go to Enfield. Friends were afraid of my removing, but I told them
that I might safely go. When I had taken my leave of Gerard and had
come to Enfield, I went first to visit Amor Stoddart, who lay very
weak and almost speechless. I was moved to tell him "that he had been
faithful as a man and faithful to God, and the immortal Seed of Life
was his crown." Many more words I was moved to speak to him, though I
was then so weak, I could scarcely stand, and within a few days after,
Amor died.'
That is all. Very simply he passes out of sight, having heard his
comrade's 'well done':--this valiant soldier who renounced his sword.
His name, AMOR, still holds the secret of his power, his silent
patience, and of his victory, for
'OMNIA VINCIT AMOR.'