Death and Burial.
He died in 1748, at the age of seventy-four, in ripe years, and hoary
with the honours of holiness. We are dependent upon his friend and
biographer, Dr. Gibbons, for almost all that we know of his last days and
hours, but it is very pleasant to find that the author of “The World to
Come” himself went down to the grave with all the calmness and confidence
which the words he has uttered have so often imparted to others in the
outlook towards the better country. He says, “It is a glory to the Gospel
when we can lie down with courage in hope of its promised blessings;
dying with faith and fortitude is a noble conclusion of a life of zeal
and service.” “Death in the course of nature,” he says, “as well as by
the hands of violence, hath always something awful and formidable in it;
flesh and blood shrink and tremble at the appearance of a dissolution;
but death is the last enemy of all the saints, and when a Christian
meets it with sacred courage he gives that honour to the Captain of his
salvation which the saints in glory can never give, and which we can
never repeat; it is an honour to our common faith when it overcomes the
terrors of death, and raises the Christian to a song of triumph in
the view of the last enemy; it is a new crown put upon the head of our
Redeemer, and a living cordial put into the hands of mourning friends
in our dying hour when we can take leave of them with holy fortitude,
rejoicing in the salvation of Christ.”
Such were his words; such honour have not all the saints; some who have
looked forward through life with triumph to that hour have fainted
when it came, and some who feared it most have felt it least: peculiar
temperaments and special forms of pain and disease sometimes make death
dreadful; and an old writer says, “We are not glad to feel the snake,
even when we know its sting is drawn.” Thomas Walsh, one of the holiest
and most eminent of the early Methodists, was very angry against John
Fletcher, the seraphic vicar of Madeley, because he heard him say that
some comparatively weak believers might die most cheerfully, and that
some strong ones, for the further purification of their faith, or for
inscrutable reasons, might have severe conflicts. “Be it done unto you
according to your faith,” said Walsh, “and be it done unto me according
to mine.” But when the hour came to Walsh it was clouded, and those eyes
which had “looked out of the windows were darkened;” only at the last
moment he exclaimed, “He is come! He is come! My beloved is mine, and I
am His for ever!” And so he passed. But Fletcher died in a rapture. “I
know thy soul,” said his wife, “but if Jesus is very present with thee,
lift up thy right hand.” Immediately it was raised. “If the prospects of
glory sweetly open before thee, repeat the sign.” The hand was raised
a second time, and so his soul breathed itself away. Faith survives
the presence of sensible comforts. An aged believer in Southampton, on
her death-bed, complained of the absence of sensible comforts to her
pastor, the Rev. W. Kingsbury, but so strong was her faith that she
said, “It is against the whole scope of Divine revelation that my soul
should be lost.” Old Thomas Fuller, having surveyed the various modes
of death, arrived at the short, decisive conclusion, “None please me.”
“But away,” he adds, “with these thoughts; the mark must not choose
what arrow shall be shot against it.” The happiness of a clear, calm
departure was given to Watts, his closing days were serene and happy;
with all the imaginative glow of his mind, he had naturally a calm
character. He had well grounded his convictions; he had long lived like a
sunbeam amidst sunbeams in the light. Dr. Gibbons, speaking from his own
knowledge, says, “Although his weakness was very great, he knew no decay
of intelligence, and was the subject of no wild fancies.” His biographer
adds, “He saw his approaching dissolution with a mind perfectly calm
and composed, without the least alarm or dismay, and I never could
discover, though I was frequently with him, the least shadow of a doubt
as to his future everlasting happiness, or anything that looked like an
unwillingness to die; how I have known him recite with self-application
those words in Hebrews, ‘Ye have need of patience, that, after ye have
done the will of God, ye may receive the promise;’ and how often have I
heard him, upon leaving the family after supper and withdrawing to rest,
declare with the sweetest composure, that if his Master was to say to him
that he had no more work for him to do, he should be glad to be dismissed
that night. And I once heard him say, with a kind of impatience, perhaps
such as might in some degree trespass upon that submission we ought
always to pay to the Divine will, ‘I wonder why the great God should
continue me in life, when I am incapable of performing Him any further
service?’”
The death-beds of great and eminent men are often hung round with curious
fables and inventions; one is mentioned even to our own day, although
Dr. Gibbons denies the whole story in the very first edition of his
biography. Somebody conveyed it to Mr. Toplady, who says, “That little
more than half-an-hour before Dr. Watts expired he was visited by his
dear friend, Mr. Whitefield; he, asking him how he found himself, the
dying doctor answered, ‘Here am I, one of Christ’s waiting servants.’
Soon after a medicine was brought in, and Mr. Whitefield assisted in
raising him upon the bed that he might with more convenience take
the draught; on the doctor’s apologizing for the trouble he gave Mr.
Whitefield, the latter replied, with his usual amiable politeness,
‘Surely, my dear brother, I am not too good to wait upon a waiting
servant of Christ!’ Soon after, Mr. Whitefield took his leave, and often
regretted since that he had not prolonged his visit, which he would
certainly have done could he have foreseen that his friend was but
within a half-an-hour’s distance from the kingdom of glory.” There is
not a word of truth in the whole story; Dr. Gibbons says it is entirely
fictitious. “Mr. Whitefield never visited the doctor in his last illness
or confinement, nor had any conversation or interview with him for some
months before his decease. It were to be wished that greater care was
practised by the writers of other persons’ lives, that illusions might
not take place and obtain the regards of truth, and lay historians who
come after them under the unpleasing necessity of dissolving their
figments, and thereby, in consequence, evincing to the world how little
credit is due to these relations.”
His dying sayings are recorded, and they were all of them of a quiet and
peaceful nature. Dr. Jennings, who preached his funeral sermon, and
saw him on his death-bed, mentions, that while for two or three years
previous to his death his active and more sprightly powers of nature had
failed, his trust in God, through Jesus the Mediator, remained unshaken
to the last. To Lady Abney he said: “I bless God I can lie down with
comfort at night, not being solicitous whether I awake in this world or
another.” And again he said: “I should be glad to read more, yet not in
order to be confirmed more in the truth of the Christian religion, or
in the truth of its promises, for I believe them enough to venture into
eternity on them.” When he was almost worn out and broken down by his
infirmities he said, in conversation with a friend, that he remembered an
aged minister used to say, that the most learned and knowing Christians,
when they come to die, have only the same plain promises of the Gospel
for their support as the common and the unlearned. “And so,” said he, “I
find it; they are the plain promises of the Gospel that are my support,
and I bless God they are plain promises, which do not require much
labour or pains to understand them, for I can do nothing now but look
into my Bible for some promise to support me, and live upon that.” Dr.
Gibbons naturally regrets that he did not commit to writing the words
of his dying friend; it is wonderful that he did not; but Watts had an
amanuensis who had been with him upwards of twenty years, and who, as
Gibbons says, was “in a manner ever with him;” to him and to Miss Abney,
or, as she is generally called, Mistress Elizabeth Abney, the eldest
daughter and successor to the Abney property, we are principally indebted
for the record of his dying words. When he found his spirit tending to
impatience, he would check himself, saying: “The business of a Christian
is to bear the will of God as well as do it. If I were in health I
could only be doing that, and that I may do now; the best thing in
obedience is a regard to the will of God, and the way to that is to get
our inclinations and aversions as much modified as we can.” Some of his
expressions were such as the following: “I would be waiting to see what
God will do with me; it is good to say as Mr. Baxter, what, when, and
where God pleases. If God should raise me up again I may finish some more
of my papers, or God can make use of me to save a soul, and that will be
worth living for. If God has no more service for me to do, through grace
I am ready; it is a great mercy to me that I have no manner of fear or
dread of death. I could if God please lay my head back and die without
terror this afternoon or night; my chief supports are from my view of
eternal things, and the interest I have in them. I trust all my sins are
pardoned through the blood of Christ; I have no fear of dying; it would
be my greatest comfort to lie down and sleep, and wake no more.” Dr.
Gibbons a short time before his death came into his room, and finding him
alone sat down for conversation with him; he said not a word of what he
had been or done in life, but his soul seemed swallowed up with gratitude
and joy for the redemption of sinners by Jesus Christ. His visitor
thought he realized the description of the apostle, “Whom having not seen
ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing ye rejoice
with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
So he continued to the close, rising into no ecstasies, nor sinking into
any great depressions, in the full possession of his understanding, free
from pain of body, comfortable in spirit. This was during the autumn of
1748. It was during the month of November that he was confined to his
room, never to leave it any more. For three weeks he continued in the
state just described, tenderly attended for the most part by Lady Abney
or Mr. Parker. The following extracts are from Mr. Parker’s letters
to the brother of Dr. Watts, residing at Southampton, the first dated
November 24th, 1748: “I wrote to you by the last post that we apprehended
my master very near his end, and that we thought it not possible he
should be alive when the letter reached your hands; and it will no doubt
greatly surprise you to hear that he still lives. We ourselves are amazed
at it. He passed through the last night in the main quiet and easy, but
for five hours would receive nothing within his lips. I was down in his
chamber early in the morning, and found him quite sensible. I begged he
would be pleased to take a little liquid to moisten his mouth, and he
received at my hand three teaspoonsful, and has done the like several
times this day. Upon inquiry he told me he lay easy, and his mind was
peaceful and serene. I said to him this morning that he had taught us
how to live, and was now teaching us how to die by his patience and
composure, for he has been remarkably in this frame for several days
past. He replied, ‘Yes.’ I told him I hoped he experienced the comfort of
these words, ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.’ He answered,
‘I do.’ The ease of body and calmness of mind which he enjoys is a great
mercy to him, and to us. His sick chamber has nothing terrifying in it.
He is an upright man, and I doubt not that his end will be peace. We
are ready to use the words of Job, and say, ‘We shall seek him in the
morning, but he shall not be.’ But God only knows by whose power he is
upheld in life, and for wise purposes, no doubt. He told me he liked
that I should be with him. All other business is put off, and I am in
the house night and day. I would administer all the relief that is in
my power. He is worthy of all that can be done for him. I am your very
faithful and truly afflicted servant.”
On the next day, November 25th, in the afternoon, aged seventy-four
years, four months, and eight days, the gentle spirit of the Doctor
passed away, and Mr. Parker wrote again to the same person: “At length
the fatal news is come. The spirit of the good man, my dear master, took
its flight from the body to worlds unseen and joys unknown yesterday in
the afternoon, without a struggle or a groan. My Lady Abney and Mrs.
Abney are supported as well as we can reasonably expect. It is a house of
mourning and tears, for I have told you before now that we all attended
upon him and served him from a principle of love and esteem. May God
forgive us all, that we have improved no more by him, while we enjoyed
him!” “May I be excused,” says his biographer, “if I take the liberty of
adding that I saw the corpse of this excellent man in his coffin, and
observed nothing more than death in its aspect. The countenance appeared
quite placid, like a person fallen into a gentle sleep, or such as the
spirit might be supposed to leave behind it upon its willing departure
to the celestial happiness. How justly might I have said at the moment I
beheld his dead earth, as he does in an epitaph upon a pious young man,
who was removed from our world after a lingering and painful illness:
“So sleep the saints, and cease to groan,
When sin and death have done their worst:
Christ has a glory like His own
Which waits to clothe their waking dust!”
And this was the manner in which “this silver cord was loosed, and this
golden bowl broken.”
They buried him, of course, in Bunhill Fields; thither already had been
borne the bodies of many of those who had been his fellow-students, and
his most familiar friends; and thither were to follow him at last many
of those friends who were for a few brief years to survive him. It was
the _Campo Santo_ of Nonconformity, the spot consecrated by the memories
of the martyrs and confessors of civil and religious liberty, and their
tombs then were fresh. Their graves and their memories were green and
verdant. Amidst the wilderness of indiscriminate tombs it is now scarcely
possible to decipher localities, dust has mingled with dust, yet it would
be scarcely possible to visit anywhere a spot where almost every mound
recalled venerable remains or in the course of years became haunted by
such tender and animating memories. Bunhill Fields does not possess the
attractive and splendid tombs of _Père la Chaise_ or Munich, of Greenwood
or Kensall Green, but it may be with perfect certainty affirmed that none
of these places possess such a congregation of sainted sleepers, and such
consecrated dust.
The history of this pensive enclosure goes back to the reign of Henry
III. It had been from a period even anterior to this set apart as the
exercising and training ground for the archers and train-bands of the
City; indeed it is probable, whether he knew it or not, that this is the
very spot to which Lord Lytton refers in some of the earlier scenes of
the “Last of the Barons,” the archery-ground of Finsbury; a romantic and
lovely spot, a very easy walk from the quaint gabled houses of the old
City four hundred years since. It was a spot surrounded by gardens and
orchards in the Manor of Finsbury or _Fens_bury, and on the borders of
that extensive suburban tract, the Moor Fields; but when the Great Plague
decimated London, the Corporation set apart this field as a burial-place
for the poor. It was a gentle acclivity, a rising spot of ground, which,
affection had called the _Bon_hill, at a time when the language of the
country was very largely held in possession by Norman influences and
French terms, as in innumerable instances mingled with Saxon. Thus:
In death divided from their dearest kin,
This was a field to bury strangers in;
Fragments from families untimely reft,
Like spoils in flight, or limbs in battle left,
Lay there[45]⸺
The subsequent history of the place justifies another characterization
from the same poet:
For they were there to this Siberia sent,
Doomed in the grave itself to banishment.
As a humble cemetery for the purposes we have mentioned, it had been
enclosed at the charge of the Corporation, but for this purpose it was
not long needed; and when the ravages of persecution succeeded to those
of disease, one Tyndall purchased it, principally for the interment of
Dissenters, and it became known as Tyndall’s Burying Ground. The first
interment in this second epoch of its funereal history dates from the
first distinctly legible stone in the year 1668. Twenty years after
this, it received the beloved and revered remains of John Bunyan; in
the interim, many of those who had been among the foremost religious
actors, preachers, and writers of the time came hither—Thomas Goodwin,
Thomas Manton, Joseph Caryl, Theophilus Gale, John Owen, William Jenkyn,
Henry Jessey, William Kiffin, Hanserd Knollys, and many others. In
this spot almost every order of religious outlawed opinion finds some
representative: here reposes the active body of Daniel Defoe, and in
Bunhill Fields, but in a spot set apart to those of his opinion, rests
the founder of the Society of Friends, George Fox; and here that revered
and holy woman, from whose household in the Rectory of Epworth went forth
the inspiration, as from her own life went forth the lives of the prophet
and poet of Methodism, Mrs. Susannah Wesley; here rest two well-beloved
sweet singers, whose names are found in all our hymn-books, Joseph
Swain and Joseph Hart. As the years passed along every one brought some
additional revenue to the wealth of the spot. Hither came Dr. Gibbons,
Watts’ biographer, and, by-and-by, John Gill, the author of the huge
commentary, if wild in fancy, still learned in all Rabbinical and Hebrew
lore, and John Macgowan, the author of the “Dialogues of Devils;” here
rests Dr. Williams, the founder of the well-known library, and donor of
the scholarships connected with it, and by this name we are reminded
of the great Arians who sleep very quietly here. Here lie Theophilus
Lindsay, Abraham Bees, Richard Price, Nathaniel Gardner, and Thomas
Belsham, all men of huge scholarship, whatever our estimate of their
doctrines; here lies, of another order, the learned John Eames, the
friend and fellow-student of Dr. Watts, the friend and correspondent of
Sir Isaac Newton, and of whom Watts said that he was the most learned man
he ever knew; Thomas Bradbury, Watts’ abusive and disingenuous traducer
and adversary, found the quiet he never permitted himself to find when
living, either in tranquil or troublesome times; and hither, within
the memory of those living, came Matthew Wilks, quaint and witty old
preacher of the London Tabernacles, and his fiery-hearted and earnest
co-pastor, John Hyatt, and James Upton, John Rippon, and the beloved and
beautiful Alexander Waugh and George Burder. The names we have mentioned
are great, but a very small instalment from the list of those famous in
holiness and scholarship and sanctified genius, to whom Bunhill Fields
was the Machpelah of their lives. Indeed, until the opening of the Abney
Park Cemetery, a place which derived its name and interest from its
association with, and memories of, Dr. Watts, Bunhill Fields was the
receptacle of every Nonconformist notability in the neighbourhood of
London. It was as natural that those who had attained an eminence in its
confession should receive sepulture there, as that the great statesman
or poet should repose within the hallowed naves of Westminster. The
significance of the spot, and the fact that it received amongst its other
treasures all that was mortal of the subject of this memoir, seem to
justify this lengthy loitering amongst its tombs.
Watts, by his will, directed that his remains should find their last
resting-home in this place, amongst the fathers and brethren, many of
whom he had so well known; he also desired that it should be conducted as
quietly as possible, but wished that his body should be attended to the
grave by two Independent, two Presbyterian, and two Baptist ministers;
but an immense concourse of persons gathered, as was to be expected. Dr.
Chandler gave the address at the grave, and Dr. David Jennings preached
to his people the funeral sermon. Returning from the funeral, Dr.
Benjamin Grosvenor was met by a friend, who said, “Well, Doctor, you have
seen the end of Dr. Watts, and must soon follow him; what think you of
death?” “Think of it!” replied he, “why, when death comes I shall smile
on him if God smile on me.” Other funeral sermons were preached, and
they are in our possession, especially one by Dr. John Milner, of which
Doddridge thought very highly, and in whose house Oliver Goldsmith, a
poor, simple young man, his mind and heart full of worlds of shrewdness
and tenderness, for a long time lived as an usher. To prevent any
laboured and too flattering an epitaph, which in those days, indeed,
there was plenty of cause to dread, from the hands of partial friends,
who certainly had none of the graces of concision, Watts wrote his own
modest memorial, and it was placed over his grave. It reads as follows:
“Isaac Watts, D.D., pastor of a church of Christ in London,
successor to the Rev. Mr. Joseph Caryl, Dr. John Owen, Mr.
David Clarkson, and Dr. Isaac Chauncey, after fifty years of
feeble labours in the Gospel, interrupted by four years of
tiresome sickness, was at last dismissed to his rest—
In uno Jesu omnia.
2 Cor. v. 8: ‘Absent from the body, and present with the Lord.’
Col. iii. 4: ‘When Christ, who is my life, shall appear, then
shall I also appear with Him in glory.’”
“This monument, on which the above modest inscription is
placed, by order of the deceased, was erected, as a small
testimony of regard to his memory, by Sir John Hartopp, Bart.,
and Dame Mary Abney.”
But, shortly after his death, a monument was erected to his memory in
Westminster Abbey. Another monument erected in his chapel met with a
singular fate: some years since the chapel was pulled down, and all its
properties sold off. John Astley Marsden, Esq., of Liscard Castle, in
Cheshire, passing through one of the London streets, saw a marble tablet
inscribed with the name of Dr. Watts; inquiring about its meaning, he
found it was the very tablet which had been set up behind his pulpit;
he purchased it as an interesting relic of a man for whom he had a
great reverence, he took it home to his residence in Cheshire, and upon
his own ground he reared a church at his own expense, and there placed
the old cast-aside monument, handing the church over in trust to the
Congregational body. The inscription is that humble memorial which
Watts himself had prepared, and to which we have referred. In addition,
however, to these, a monument has been raised to his memory in Abney Park
Cemetery, a cemetery which has succeeded to the reputation of Bunhill
Fields as the resting-place of metropolitan Nonconformists, and is
spread out upon the grounds where stood the house and park, the history
of which, and its relation to the memory of Watts, we have given in an
earlier part of this volume.
In 1861, principally through the active exertions of Mr. William
Lankester, a monument was erected to his memory in his native town of
Southampton. The statue, about eight feet high, which is three feet
larger than life, is of white marble, and stands upon a pedestal of
polished grey Aberdeen granite; and the site selected has received
since then the designation “Watts’ Park.” The movement for the erection
of the monument received the co-operation of Churchmen as well as
Nonconformists, and the president of the committee was Dr. Wigram, the
Bishop of Rochester. The statue was uncovered by the Earl of Shaftesbury,
July 17th, 1861, and the day was kept with great festivity in the
town;[46] it took the shape of a great local celebration in honour of a
man who had conferred honour on the town by his life and writings. It
is not uninteresting to think of the change of public sentiment since
the day when the infant Isaac, in the arms of his mother, was held up
to the eyes of his father in the gaol of the very town where, to the
honoured memory of that infant, there was offered up so large an ovation
of respect, in which not only the Mayor and Corporation, but members,
ministers, and prelates of that very Church which had persecuted the
father for his opinions, united. It is a testimony to the change which
has passed over ecclesiastical opinion since that day.
Thus, some portion of the prophecy of Dr. Jennings in his funeral sermon,
from the text, “He being dead yet speaketh,” was fulfilled. “If I am not
greatly deceived, the same thing will be said of him in far distant ages
that is said of Abel in our text; while he is now celebrating the honours
of God and of the Lamb in the new songs of heaven, how many thousands
of pious worshippers are this day lifting up their hearts to God in the
sacred songs that he taught them upon earth! Though his voice is not
any longer heard by us, yet his words, like those of the day and night,
are gone out to the end of the world. America and Europe still hear him
speak, and it is highly probable they may continue to do so till Europe
and America shall be no more.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Isaac Watts, D.D.
_From the Bust in Dr. Williams’ Library._]
[Illustration]