A few other hymn-writers of the eighteenth century remain to be
mentioned. The first writer is of a very different class from those of
the later years. In 1712 Joseph Addison published six hymns in
successive numbers of the _Spectator_. One was by Dr. Watts; the
others were undoubtedly his own, though the authorship has been
claimed for others. The hymns themselves are the work of a devout man
of letters, and, without being exactly ‘popular,’ have been and still
are extensively used. They have the easy grace of Addison’s
prose-writings, and his name made them at once acceptable to all
classes. They belong to no school, and are used by all the Churches.
The six hymns are—‘The Lord my pasture shall prepare’; ‘When all Thy
mercies, O my God’; ‘When Israel, freed from Pharaoh’s hand’ (Watts);
‘The spacious firmament on high’; ‘How are Thy servants blest, O
Lord’; ‘When rising from the bed of death.’
John Cennick (1718-55) had much of Newton’s simplicity and sincerity,
though he had not his touches of genius or any trace of the old
sea-farer’s raciness. Cennick was ‘found’ by John Wesley at Reading,
in 1739, and was one of his earliest lay-preachers. But he adopted
Calvinistic views, and soon left the Methodists and attached himself
to Whitefield, whom he served as a brother beloved for several years.
He bore reproach, violence, hardship, with the courage which
characterized the itinerants of that day of either school of theology.
He separated from Wesley in 1741, from Whitefield in 1745, and found a
more congenial home among the Moravians. He was ordained a deacon, and
ministered in London and Dublin. He it was who earned for Protestants
of the Methodist type the nickname of ‘swaddlers,’ so long common in
Ireland. ‘A name given to Mr. Cennick, first by a Popish priest, who
heard him speak of a Child wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and probably
did not know the expression was in the Bible, a book he was not much
acquainted with.’[164]
Cennick was vacillating, and apparently easily influenced by stronger
minds than his own, but he was not able to keep up a quarrel, and, ten
years after his defection from Wesley, wrote him an affectionate
letter, in which he wishes ‘heartily that Christians conferring
together had hindered the making that wide space between us and you.’
Whitefield, though he had suffered a larger defection from his Society
than Wesley, bore Cennick no ill will, but kept up an affectionate
correspondence with him to the end. ‘My dear John,’ he wrote in 1747,
‘I wish thee much success, and shall always pray that the work of the
Lord may prosper in thy hands.’[165] Cennick continued his abundant
labours till 1755, when he died in London in his thirty-seventh year.