Pastor of a London Church.
Watts preached his first sermon on his birthday, July 17th, 1698; he was
then twenty-four years of age. He probably mingled with his duties as
tutor those of chaplain to the excellent family in which he resided. The
ice once broken, he began to preach constantly. Sir John Hartopp and his
family were members of the church of Dr. Chauncy, in Mark Lane; and it
was, no doubt, greatly in consequence of this friendship that Watts was
invited to become the assistant of the doctor.
It is curious to compare the dearth of chapels and preachers in the
City in the present day with the many remarkable for their importance
at the time when Watts became a pastor. Still a few places stand out,
dating from that time; but, for the most part, all have gone, leaving
only the memories of certain men of remarkable attainments, wit, and
eloquence behind them. To the distinguished circle of ministers, and to
the church which had known, before him, men so eminent, Watts, all but
unknown, brought a name which was to give to them a crowning reputation.
His qualities as a preacher all accounts represent as rather solid
than shining. His sermons were beautiful in their clear harmonious
symmetry of powers, rather than startling. Surely never a man who
poured into his verse so much rich brilliancy of expression—sometimes,
it must be admitted, with questionable rhetorical afflatus and pomp of
utterance—preserved through all that we know of his public teaching so
quiet and equable a flow of language and ideas, so instructive, while
so entirely removed from all that can unduly agitate the spirit. In
Jeremy Taylor we wonder that the poet seems to abandon every ambitious
attempt when he writes verse, while his sermons possess a gorgeous and
overwhelming splendour of diction and imagery. In Watts, on the other
hand, it is equally surprising that so sprightly and splendid a fancy,
so rich a command over sacred verses and images, should express itself
with such calmness and modesty in words intended for the pulpit; but this
was probably of a piece with his whole character. His hymns are often
raptures and ecstasies, but he reserved these for his most private life,
for his own heart, for his closet and study. There was nothing in his
character bustling, prominent, or obtrusive. In an evening conversation
he would shrink as far as possible from taking any prominent part, and
would never in ordinary company lead it. In the home circle, among close
and well-known friends, he shed around himself a genial atmosphere; but
he was too essentially a student and a book-man to be in any high sense
a popular preacher. Eminent and eminently honoured, his greatness was
not of that order which easily finds itself at home in multitudes. His
person was not striking, although we can conceive it to have been very
impressive; and his mode of setting forth all things upon which he wrote
or spoke was so purely thoughtful, demanded so intimate a sympathy with
pensive and meditative moods, and required so close an acquaintance
with high and abstract thoughts, that it is not to be wondered at that
his fame as a preacher and scholar was rather reserved for the intimate
circle than for more extended, not to say vulgar, spheres.
The City of London at present conveys no idea of what it was then; and
what it was very materially affects our estimate of the position of
Watts as one of its Nonconformist ministers. The City of London was the
chief bulwark of English freedom. Happily all the needs and occasions
for what it was in those days have long since passed, and England
itself has greatly become what London was then. The City of that date
calls up the idea of some such spots as the great mediæval cities, the
burgher strongholds of the middle ages. Not many years before it had
been the refuge of the five members whom Charles I. sought to attach
for high treason. It had been committed to the cause of Puritanism,
Protestantism, and William; some of its chief men had become martyrs to
the cause of civil and religious liberty. The governments of Charles
II. and James II. scarcely permitted to active minds and public men a
middle way. Nonconformity was imposed by the exactions of tyranny upon
spiritually minded men. Hence, leaving the fanes and structures then
very pleasantly standing in many a retired close, surrounded by pleasant
trees, sequestered places in the midst of the graves of many generations,
such persons were compelled to assemble for worship where they best
could, in some old guild hall or place of trade, some loft over offices
and warehouses.[9] Most of the congregations we now should consider
small. No company composed of faithful souls meeting for Divine service
beneath the blessing of Him who said, “Where two or three are gathered
together in My name, there am I in the midst of them,”[10] can be held
contemptible; but their congregations were largely composed of persons
who had figured prominently in the great actions of the immediately
preceding years, officers and soldiers of that great army which had
overawed the world by their fame, persons to whom Nonconformity was
no mere negation, but the profession of all that was dearest to human
freedom or to human hopes, men of substance and position, the most
eminent merchants, to whose sense religious and civil liberty were so
closely related that it was impossible to do injustice to the one without
aiming at the heart of the other, and who knew that to injure either was
to hurt the lesser, but still eminent interests of trade and commerce,
and industry, and national prosperity. Nonconformity in the City of
London has grown in representative wealth and importance; but it may be
safely affirmed that it could not show such congregations of noble men as
those which thronged its contemptible meeting-houses in Watts’ day.
Referring back to those times, entering one of the chapels during the
time of service, we should, perhaps, be astonished and chilled by the
want of animation and ardour, if these are to be tested by the apparent
excitement. Indeed, to our taste, the service must have appeared very
formal and frigid; not merely in the fact that no instrumental music of
any kind would have been tolerated, no response or chant, but, in many
congregations, there was no singing at all. To the stricter Puritan
sensibility this would have been merely intolerable. We have instances of
ministers who were made uncomfortable in their churches, and compelled
to relinquish them, because they desired to introduce some religious
melody; in other instances it was the minister who disapproved such
extravagant piety in his people. The Society of Friends was not alone in
its renunciation of all the adornments and flights of religious song.
Even where singing was indulged, it was Patrick’s or the Scotch version,
or some such literal translation of the words of Scripture. Paraphrases
and more expanded religious sentiments had never been heard of, and were
regarded, when first introduced, as seditious and dangerous innovations,
disturbing the purity of so reasonable a service, which derived all its
life and interest from its most perfect conformity to a spiritual order;
the simple voice of the minister in prayer, and in preaching, meandering
in many instances through roads of uncommon length. We have instances
on record of a prayer itself taking the entire length of that time we
now ordinarily allot to a public service. This state of things in the
congregation must have greatly influenced the religious life of the times
where it existed at all. It became cold, remote, and abstract; not that
there were wanting instances, both of ministers and congregations, who
maintained, in the midst of so much lifelessness, a high spiritual state
and intercourse.
The Nonconformists throughout the country were, in the latter part of
the seventeenth century, for the most part men disposed to social quiet.
They had now recovered in some measure a state of religious tranquillity,
and they were rather interested quietly to preserve what they possessed,
than to attempt any occupation of new ground, either in principle or
in practice. They made few efforts to correct the vices of men, or to
convert them from their life of sin. The round of Nonconformist duty and
piety was a quiet, staid, and respectable service; nothing, we suppose,
could be more unlike the satires so often pronounced upon it. Most of
its ministers were men of considerable scholarly attainments, their minds
fed by the rich and strengthening food to be found in some of the oldest
fathers and the earliest reformers; at the same time they were accustomed
to abstractions and questions, which at once enlarged and strengthened
the understanding. They had no acquaintance with our large varieties of
nature and language; but they were keen observers of _human_ nature, and
they submitted their knowledge to the test and use of daily life. As to
their people, in many instances, no doubt, they were humble, perhaps even
of obscure rank, but this was not always the case. Nonconformity in those
times included others than those we should even call the respectable
middle classes; it represented an order of political opinion quite as
much as religious doctrine and practice, not only as we have seen in
London, but in many districts of the country. Some of the highest and
oldest families formed the staff and stay of congregations. It was a
respectable but cold piety, in many instances with assured tendencies
towards Socinianism and Unitarianism. The Nonconformity into which Watts
came, and with which during the whole of his life he mingled, is quite
removed from that Nonconformity of Methodism and Revivalism which became
the great religious movement of the last century. It was a Nonconformity
educated, solid, rooted in certain principles and assurances, inclining
too exclusively to a life of thought; the religion of intelligent
multitudes who could not conform, especially to what the Church of
England was, in that coarse and intolerant time, when her nets gathered
fish of every sort, among them some chiefly remarkable for their rapacity
and impurity.
It was over one of these old City churches, probably the most famous
of them, that the youthful Isaac Watts was called to preside as the
pastor. The congregation or church contained a number of eminent persons;
its pastors had been eminent men; here a few years before ministered
Joseph Caryl. From the pulpit of this place probably were poured forth
those prelections on the Book of Job, assuredly in more than one sense a
monument to the memory of Patience! Vast and mammoth-like, a megatherium
of books, the most huge commentary ever written, but a structure of
learning, with eloquence and evangelical truth, if large in bulk almost
equal in worth. Over this church, more recently, had presided a greater
man in the person of the mighty John Owen, the friend of Cromwell, and,
during the Protectorate, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. The place of meeting
was in Mark Lane, and in the congregation there were present some whose
character and lives might a little daunt any preacher, much more a very
youthful one. There were many in that congregation able to carry the
memory back through the days of England’s fiery trials, through the years
of war and of persecution, and the times when the City was alive in its
own defence. They had heard the cry, “To your tents, O Israel!” when,
in an ill-omened hour, Charles I. came to the City; they had seen the
Thames alive with barge and boat as the members were escorted back to
Westminster; some had served in the camp with the Ironsides, and some
had seen Sir Harry Vane hailed to the scaffold; there were officers of
the old Commonwealth army, members of the old Long Parliament, strong
merchants and magistrates who had stood up for the liberties of the City
and of England; there, in that congregation, scattered over the place
were clustering remnants of the immediate members and descendants of
Cromwell’s family, none more remarkable than that most singular woman,
Mrs. Bendish, Bridget Ireton, the grand-daughter of Cromwell, of whom
all contemporaries spoke as hearing just the same relation to her
grandfather in character that Elizabeth bore to Henry VIII.—a woman with
a most remarkable life; there was Charles Fleetwood, her mother’s second
husband; there was Charles Desborough, the brother-in-law to Oliver
Cromwell; there was that fine old English gentleman Sir John Hartopp, and
Lady Hartopp, who was a daughter of Charles Fleetwood, and thus allied
to Mrs. Bendish; there was Lady Vere Wilkinson, and Lady Haversham, a
daughter of the Earl of Anglesey, and the wife of John Thompson Earl of
Haversham; and there, last as we mention them, but far from least in
importance in the life of Watts, Sir Thomas and Lady Abney.
As we have said already, the Independent churches of the City were in
that day greatly composed of such characters as these. Look into any one,
and you will see such persons of rank and influence, although probably
a kind of Cromwell clannishness gave distinctness and importance to
the little church in Mark Lane; there was a respectability and dignity
about those churches in general which we should in these days but little
appreciate. They were snug little spiritual corporations, held together
by several bonds which have ceased to be distinctive now; a strong faith
in certain great first principles in religion; a strong faith also in
certain political principles, quite essential to the freedom of their
faith and their religious life and its usages. Nor can we conceal from
ourselves that there was also a conservative spirit of an aristocratic
flavour; there was nothing in the communion which savoured of our modern
more heterogeneous assemblies: the members were usually persons of strong
character, considerable culture, and thought. Their idea of liberty was
no more cut out after the modern type than was their theology; indeed
both were ideal. If the Harringtons and Sidneys dreamed their republics,
not upon the wild democratic inclusiveness of complete suffrage, the
proclamation of the sanctity of ignorance, and the wisdom of vice, but
upon the models of classical times,—these for the most part idealized the
republic of the saints, and formed their conceptions of church life and
political freedom upon the unattainable standard of the college of the
apostles, and the traditions of the community of the saints. Yet it is
very easy to perceive how, ensconcing themselves in religious life as in
a comfortable arm-chair, while perfectly faithful themselves, they became
the parents of that large declension of such churches to Arianism and the
cognate Socinian ideas which in the later periods of his life vexed the
spirit of Watts, and led his thoughtful philosophic nature into an arena
of mild, but not the less earnest conflict.
Watts, accepting the charge of the church, was ordained over it March
8th, 1702, the day on which King William died. The young minister’s
immediate predecessor was Dr. Isaac Chauncy, who, like most of his
coadjutors in the ministry of that period, was a gentleman of good and
ancient family; originally coming over with the Conqueror, settled
at Yardley, Berkshire, in the time of Elizabeth, and by the drift of
circumstances conducted to considerable eminence among the Puritans and
Nonconformists. The father of Isaac Chauncy had been professor of Greek
in the University of Cambridge, and vicar of Ware, in Hertfordshire.
He took up his testimony for Nonconformity when the “Book of Sports”
was published, commanding him to desist from preaching on the Sabbath
afternoon, that the people of his parish might indulge themselves in
profane amusements; he fell beneath the vengeance of Archbishop Laud,
and was twice cited before the Court of High Commission; he made a
recantation, which he afterwards so regretted and bewailed that he threw
up everything and withdrew to New England. His son Isaac held the living
of Woodborough, in Wiltshire, from whence he was ejected, and after
ministering a short time in Andover came to London, intending to practise
as a physician, when the church in Mark Lane called him to become its
minister; but he was not popular as a preacher, however eminent in other
qualifications.
The congregation had exhibited signs of decline when Watts was called
in, probably as one on whom the eyes of leading Nonconformists were
fixed, especially as the friend of Sir John Hartopp. Although so young,
his knowledge of mathematics, of the classics, of Church history, of
theological science, especially his piety, must have made him already
well known in Nonconformist circles. This knowledge extended back to the
early part of 1698, so that for nearly two years he must have been the
preacher, and it may be presumed very considerably the pastor of the
church before, upon the resignation of Dr. Chauncy, he succeeded him in
his office: the members of this distinguished church must have invited
him with their eyes completely open to all that he was as a preacher
and as a man. But he gave no indications of ability to enforce by his
bodily powers the manifestations of his genius—his health appeared to be
constantly failing. For some months before his ordination he had been
laid aside from preaching, and in search of health had, by the advice
of physicians, visited Bath. And then again we find him for some time
resting at home at his father’s house, now, no doubt, a comfortable
residence, a flourishing school, and released from all the terrors which
had shadowed it in his infancy. And from thence again by physicians we
find him sent to Tunbridge Wells, so that he says, “I was detained from
study and preaching five months by my weakness, except one very short
discourse at Southampton in extreme necessity.” He was of a slight and
most fragile frame throughout his life. His works constitute an amazing
monument of industry. But during the years he had been tutor in Sir John
Hartopp’s family he must have performed these duties in a spirit of
remarkable conscientiousness, for he prepared some of the works which
afterwards delighted and instructed the world, as the necessary means of
the course he was pursuing in the education of the young man, his pupil.
Very remarkably this is the case with his “System of Logic,” which when
it was published many years after was adopted and continued to be until
recently the text-book for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; this
appears also to have been the case with his “Scheme of Ontology.” He
refers to many of his writings published at a much later period of his
life, as for the most part the productions of these his earlier years. We
shall have occasion to speak of these again; at present it is sufficient
to refer to this persistency of mental labour and assiduous industry as
not only the sufficient cause for the illness which suspended him from
labour, but the foundation of future years of painful infirmity which
accompanied him through life.
There must have been much about him not only to command respect
but to enchain affection. Long hesitating as to whether he should
accept the proffered pastorate, he had not long entered upon the real
responsibilities of his office before he was again seized with a painful
and alarming illness; almost immediately he was compelled again, in
July, 1702, to renew his rest in Southampton, and then returning to
London he mentions, in the memoranda we have already quoted, that he was
“seized with violent gaundise and colic three weeks after my return to
London, and had a very slow recovery, eight or nine weeks’ illness. From
September 8th, or thereabouts, to November 27th or 28th. This year, viz.,
1702, by slow degrees removed from Newington to Thomas Hollis’s, in the
Minories.”
During a period of about six years Watts appears to have resided in the
family of Sir John Hartopp; in the paragraph above quoted he refers to
his removal to the house of Mr. Hollis, in the Minories. The names of
the places associated with the ministrations or the residence of Watts
and his fellow ministers in the City, sound to our ears now strange and
singularly unromantic and uninteresting; but what they are now we must
not for a moment suppose they resembled then. Even the Minories—now
the last place in which one could wish to reside—lay, at that time,
open and fresh towards the pleasant fields of the east end of London, a
rather distinguished neighbourhood beneath the shadows of the Tower, and
pleasantly refreshed by the breath from the waters of the then really
silvery Thames, whose banks were alive with the songs of watermen. The
Minories or Minoresses—so called from the nuns of the Order of St.
Clair—had once been the region of noble residences; here had been the
residence of Sir Philip Sidney, here his body lay in state. The spot was,
and is, full of interesting memories. The family of the Hollis’s was
from Sheffield, in Yorkshire, and having founded churches in Doncaster
and Rotherham, removing to London, the father of Watts’ friend became
one of the most helpful representatives of Nonconformity in the City,
immediately connected with the church assembling in Pinners’ Hall,
beneath the pastorate of Dr. Jeremiah Hunt. To this place, in consequence
of the narrow and dilapidated state of the building in Mark Lane, Watts
and his people were compelled to remove in the year 1704. Pinners’
Hall had for years been used by Nonconformists, and in their turns
Baxter, Owen, Bates, Manton, and Howe had all preached in it to crowded
congregations, hence the reason, most likely, of the friendship of the
minister and Mr. Hollis.
We have few particulars of Watts in his pastoral work. From the first
days of his pastorate his health was a frequent source of interruption to
his activity. The hymns and poems frequently expressing the experience
of pain, weakness, and weariness are no fancies; they express a very
devout spirit of resignation, with regret, as he expresses it, that
“many other souls are favoured with a more easy habitation, and he hoped
with a better partner, accommodated with engines which have more health
and vigour;” but he instantly recovers his spirits to exclaim, “Shall
I repine then, while I survey whole nations and millions and millions
of mankind that have not a thousand’s part of my blessings?” He was
laid aside by sickness for five months soon after he became assistant
to Dr. Chauncy, 1698; he was the subject of another illness soon after
his settlement in the pastoral charge in 1701; a violent fever seized
him in 1712, his constitution was shattered by it, his nerves weakened
and unstrung, and he prevented from returning to his public work until
October, 1716; we find from his own record that he was confined by
illness in 1729; and many other occasions might be discovered of these
sharp bodily afflictions. Life around him was usually beautiful and
serene; he seems to have possessed a very large revenue of love, but
he unquestionably possessed this “thorn in the flesh,” nor can we doubt
that such experiences to such a faith as his, gave personal meaning to
his hymns. He sung very often as one stretched on a rack, and not the
least of his pains must have been that his incessantly active nature, his
constant design and desire to carry out some purpose or to pursue some
task found itself checked and arrested. Dr. Gibbons quotes a paragraph
from a very beautiful letter to a friend, a minister, in affliction,
through which there runs a vein of true spiritual friendship, and a
pathos which his own experience of trials would very naturally inspire:
“It is my hearty desire for you that your faith may ride out the storms
of temptation, and the anchor of your hope may hold, being fixed within
the veil. There sits Jesus our Forerunner, who sailed over this rough sea
before us, and has given us a chart, even His Word, where the shelves and
rocks, the fierce currents and dangers are well described, and He is our
Pilot, and will conduct us to the shores of happiness. I am persuaded
that in the future state we shall take a sweet review of those scenes
of Providence which have been involved in the thickest darkness, and
trace those footsteps of God when He walked with us through the deepest
waters. This will be a surprising delight, to survey the manifold harmony
of clashing dispensations, and to have those perplexing riddles laid
open to the eyes of our souls, and read the full meaning of them in set
characters of wisdom and grace.”
It is not extraordinary, therefore, that even so early as 1703 the church
relieved Watts by choosing a co-pastor, Mr. Samuel Price, a native of
Wales, but a student from Attercliff, in Yorkshire. As it was necessary
to have a co-pastor, he was chosen upon the express desire and earnest
recommendation of Watts; but many years appear to have passed between
the choice of the church and his ordination as joint pastor, for Watts’
autobiographic memoranda says: “June, 1703, Mr. Samuel Price was chosen
by the church to assist me;” but he was not ordained to the office of
co-pastor until 1713. This relationship continued until it was dissolved
by death. They were colleagues considerably upwards of forty years, and
Price succeeded his beloved and amiable friend, whom he survived about
seven years; he died in 1756, having been connected with the church
fifty-three years. Watts mentions him in his will as his faithful friend
and companion in the ministry, and leaves some little legacy, “as only
a small testimony of his great affection for him, on account of his
services of love during the many harmonious years of their fellowship
in the work of the Gospel.” Watts several times, in the course of the
prefaces and dedications to his published works, refers affectionately
to his colleague; and his colleague when he died expressed a wish that
he might be buried as near as possible to his honoured friend. It may be
incidentally mentioned that he was uncle to the celebrated Dr. Richard
Price.
Although his companion in the ministry neither as a preacher nor man of
letters approached the eminence of Watts, it would seem that he was in
every way acceptable as a preacher and a pastor, “judicious, and useful,
and eminent in his gift of prayer,” says Gibbons. Certainly, the old
place in Mark Lane became too small, for, after a temporary sojourn in
Pinners’ Hall, in 1708 the congregation removed from Mark Lane[11] to
Duke Street, St. Mary Axe.
It had been the site of one of the most celebrated metropolitan
ecclesiastical establishments previous to the Reformation, the Priory
of the Holy Trinity, the founder of which was Matilda, Queen of Henry
I.; it became a huge establishment and enormously wealthy, the richest
convent in England, some have said; rich in lands and ornaments, and
incomparably surpassing all the other priories in the same county. The
prior was always an alderman of London, although, if he happened to be
exceedingly pious, he appointed a substitute to enact temporal matters;
and on solemn days this clerical alderman rode through the city with the
other aldermen, but arrayed in his monastic habit. On the dissolution of
the monasteries this became one of the earliest spoils, and it was given
by Henry VIII. to Sir Thomas Audley, the Speaker of the House of Commons,
and afterwards Lord Chancellor. On the site of the old priory he erected
a splendid mansion, in which he resided until his death in 1544. His
daughter and sole heiress, Margaret, married Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, so
the estate descended to the Howard family, and became the Duke’s place;
he lost his head; passing to his eldest son, he sold it in 1592 to the
mayor, corporation, and citizens of London. This is a singular piece
of history, which Wilson, in his “History of Dissenting Churches,” has
gathered from Strype, Maitland, and Pennant.
In the time of Watts the neighbourhood had scarcely fallen from its
high estate. Time had been since the period of the Reformation when Sir
Francis Walsingham, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and the Earl of Northumberland had
their houses here; and Bury Street derived its name from the abbots of
Bury, who also had a residence on this spot. Since the time of Cromwell,
however, the region had become a kind of _Juden Strasse_. The Jews, who
now form its principal inhabitants, then first settled there. The spot
on which the chapel was built was part of a garden, although removed from
public observation, a necessity laid upon the Nonconformists of that
time, who were compelled to retreat into obscure recesses to escape the
vigilance of prowling informers. The building has now entirely passed
away, but we very well remember it, one of the old square substantial
buildings with its galleries, exactly an ideal conventicle of those
times, one of those in which the Nonconformists seemed to teach that
there was no beauty in architecture which they particularly desired.
The rich furniture and attainments of the ministers’ minds contrasting
singularly with the plain and altogether unornamented and even barn-like
simplicity of the scene of their ministrations: almost the only buildings
which now retain the entirely unornamented architecture of the Puritan
times are those of the members of the Society of Friends. Such was the
building opened in Bury Street, October 3rd, 1708; it is also interesting
to notice that it was erected at the costly sum of £650! In the present
year of the publication of this volume a building has been erected in
the City of London for the same order of communicants as those in Bury
Street, at a cost of £55,000. The two sums are very suggestive of a
comparison and contrast between the Nonconformists of the time of Watts
and of to-day.
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