EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PIETY
“Thou say’st thy _will_ is good, and glory’st in it,
And yet forget’st thy Maker ev’ry minute:
Say, _Portio_, was there ever _Will_ allow’d
When the testator’s _mem’ry_ was not good?”
QUARLES.
It was said that such expressions of religious faith as those of Dr.
Johnson and his namesake were still frequent in the eighteenth century,
and still to some extent formal. There is an interesting commentary
on this in the will of the Rev. Philip Doddridge, D.D., the famous
writer and divine. His will is dated June 11, 1741, and was proved with
a codicil on the 31st of December, 1751. “Whereas it is customary on
these occasions to begin with recommending the soul into the hands of
God thro’ Christ, I do it not in mere form but with sincerity and joy,
esteeming it my greatest happiness that I am taught and encouraged to
do it by that glorious Gospel, which having most assuredly believed I
have spent my life in preaching to others, and esteem an infinitely
greater treasure than all my little worldly store, or possessions ten
thousand times greater than mine.”
In his will dated 13th of May, 1751, and proved in December the same
year, another divine, the Rev. Obadiah Hughes, D.D., recommends
his soul to God in a peculiarly touching dedication. We cannot but
believe in its sincerity and strength. “In the name of God, Amen. I
Obadiah Hughes, of Aldermanbury, London, Minister of the Gospel and
Doctor in Divinity, (being sensible of the frailty and uncertainty of
life, and reckoning it a duty of very great importance incumbent upon
every man to set his house in order, as well as his heart, before he
dies,) do make this my last will and testament in manner following.
I recommend my soul into the hands of God, to whom I am humbly bold
thro’ Jesus Christ to claim a relation as my God and my Father; and
though conscious to myself of great unworthiness, yet I hope to be
accepted in the beloved Son of God, and for His sake to obtain mercy
and pardon and life eternal. This Jesus I have endeavoured to serve in
the Gospel, with great sincerity, I trust, tho’ with many infirmities
and too much remissness; with Him I have long ago lodged my everlasting
concerns, and I do now most solemnly in the views and expectation
of another world declare that I receive Christ Jesus by faith as my
Lord, and repose an unshaken confidence in Him as my all-sufficient
Saviour; and according to the constitution of the Covenant of Grace,
as a penitent returning believing sinner, I hope for Christ’s sake to
be made a partaker of an inheritance with the Saints in light, at that
awful season when my soul and body shall by death be parted. And in
those regions of immortal bliss I hope with inconceivable joy to meet
the departed spirit of my late most dearly beloved wife, which I doubt
not has safely reached its heavenly home upon its dislodgment from the
body—Lord Jesus Christ, let not this hope leave me ashamed, nor my soul
finally miscarry.”
Truly in wills we are delighted with intimacies that elsewhere are
seldom seen. Here, again, is a familiar touch in one of Dean Cheyney’s
many codicils, already quoted in part: “Hond. Madam, As I have by will
given the greatest part of my estate entirely unto your disposal (being
desirous you should enjoy it and be made as happy as possible whilst
in this world), I make no doubt but, if you survive me, you will as
well out of regard to justice as my request, immediately after my death
make a will, and therein take effectual care of what I here recommend
to you.... This I have writ in haste to supply the defects of my will
now made, in case I die before I make a new one; which I intend in a
few months when my affairs will be better settled, if it please God
to spare me so long. I have nothing to add but that I shall with my
last and earnest prayers commend you to the providence of God, hoping
that He will, in such way as He knows best, supply the loss of friends
and have you always in His holy keeping, and conduct you in His own
appointed time to those happy mansions where all tears will be wiped
away from your eyes. If you fix your thoughts here, (as you ought,) you
will soon learn to despise the world and all its uncertain goods. Have
no thought of me, but if any let it be that I am taken out of a very
miserable life, and wish me not out of that happiness everlasting which
through the merits of Christ Jesus I hope to be made partaker of in
another world. Adieu! Your dutiful son, Thomas Cheyney. Nov. 3rd, 1724.”
The Dean seems to have lived in constant apprehension of death: in
April, 1724, he was “labouring under great bodily infirmities which
daily call upon me to remember my latter end”; but he lived till 1759,
being in that year “of sound mind and not forgetful of my mortality.”
Twice in his testamentary papers he commends his soul to God in prayer.
“And so I once more commend myself to Thee, O Father of Spirits,
professing myself to die, however wickedly and unprofitably I have
lived, in the Christian religion as taught in the Church of England,
lamenting her divisions and disputes about obscure and unnecessary
things, being in peace and charity with all the world.” (1735.) “And
first I recommend into Thy hands, Almighty and Everlasting God, my
immortal soul, beseeching Thee in all changes to keep it close unto
Thyself, and that I may in the day of Judgment find such mercy as I
shall stand in need of through the merits of a blessed Redeemer.” Wills
sometimes begin or break out thus in prayer. “Good God direct me in
this and all other good things which I shall go about,” cries Phillippa
Jones in 1768, and Samuel Gillam in 1787: “O Lord, Thou art great and
good, but I am a vile sinner; give me all the mercies I stand in need
of for time and for eternity, for the sake of Jesus Christ; and through
Him accept all my thankgivings for whatever I have and hope for: To the
Father Son and Holy Spirit be eternal glory, Amen.” The Rev. Richard
Forster (1728) most humbly commends his soul “into the hand of God the
faithful Creator, most earnestly beseeching Him that through the merits
and mediation of the merciful Redeemer who purchased it by His blood,
being purged and cleansed from all the defilement contracted in this
miserable and naughty world, the lusts of the flesh, or the wiles of
Satan, and being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, it may be precious in
the sight of the glorious Trinity, and be presented without spot in the
presence of the Divine Majesty.”
Of peculiar interest, again, are some of the wills of French
Protestants in this century. Two may be quoted as differing types,
which yet help to illustrate one another as well as the times
they represent. The first is that of John Lacombe, translated
(indifferently) from the French and proved on May 4, 1702. “In the
name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. I John
Lacombe underwritten, born in the city of St. Hipolite, ... having
settled my house and lived the greatest part of my time in the city
of Paris, after having received so many graces and favours from the
mercy of God in all the course of my life, and chiefly in this time of
affliction and grief for His Church in which so many persons do sigh
after the liberty of serving Him purely according to the motives of
their conscience, I render Him my most humble actions of grace, and
desire that one may know after me that I do bless Him eternally from
the profoundest of my heart, for the kindness which He hath done me for
conducting me through His providence in this city wherein I find the
pureness of His service, and the means to render Him my adorations, in
mind and truth according to His word. I am come into it with the five
children which it hath pleased God to leave me of a greater number
which He had given me. I have still in France Elizabeth Beauchamp my
wife, their mother. I hope that God shall grant me grace to see her in
this country to end together the few days which remain to us: to live
and to die in it in peace and tranquillity, that is the prayer which I
make daily to God. And as I am advanced in years, being in my seventy
fifth year, very infirm of body, but of sound mind and understanding by
the grace of God, and that the hour of my death is as much uncertain
as it is sure, I am upon the watch expecting the time of my going off.
I beg instantly to my God the forgiveness of my sins, and to grant
me mercy for the sake and through the merits and intercession of our
Lord Jesus Christ, my only Redeemer. I invoke all the adorable Trinity,
one only God, eternally blessed. And desiring to live and die in the
profession of the reformed religion, I pray God when my time shall be
come to receive me in His rest.”
The will of Isaac Rigoullott (1720), translated out of Dutch, is more
truculent. “In the Name of God, Amen. Because death is certain and
the hour thereof uncertain, after having recommended my body and soul
to God by Jesus Christ our Lord through His Holy Spirit, and being
come out of France by reason of the persecution against our holy
Christian religion, forcing us to worship the Bread and Wine as being
the flesh and bone of our Lord Jesus Christ, making us to believe in
the invocation of Saints, the imaginary fire of Purgatory, and other
falsehoods inspired by the spirit of the Devil, to worship the true God
in spirit and in truth as He hath commanded us in His holy word in the
Old and New Testament, I Isaac Rigoullott ... give,” &c.
We are sometimes surprised, considering their characters, with the
lack of this or that feature in the wills of well-known men; but it
would, indeed, have been a surprise and a disappointment if Alexander
Cruden, the writer of the famous “Concordance,” had not expressed in
his will something, at least, of his doctrinal views and pious soul.
Written with his own hand, and signed and sealed at Aberdeen, April 10,
1770, his will thus begins: “In the name of God, Amen. I Alexander
Cruden, late a citizen and stationer of London, now living at Aberdeen,
being through the goodness of God sound in body and mind, do make and
ordain this to be my last will and testament. I acknowledge that I am
a miserable sinner by nature and life, being descended from the first
Adam, who by his fall in sinning against God hath involved himself and
his posterity in sin and misery. And I desire grace at all times, by
a true and saving faith, to look for redemption and salvation through
the blood and righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ, the second Adam
and God Man Mediator, who by His wonderful incarnation obedience and
death hath satisfied divine justice, and purchased salvation for all
who are enabled truly to believe in this all sufficient and suitable
Saviour, and to receive Him as their Prophet Priest and King, and to
rest and rely upon Christ and His Righteousness alone for pardon and
eternal Salvation. And I desire that my body may be decently buried in
the Church yard of Aberdeen, where my pious father and his family are
interred.”
These are elaborate instances of piety in the eighteenth century; short
and general phrases as “I resign my soul into the hands of my Almighty
Creator, in the hopes of a glorious resurrection through the merits and
mediation of His blessed Son Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer,”
contained in the will of John Pybus (1789), are frequently to be found.
More uncommon is the confession of George Baker (1770), considering
the usual tone of contrition and penitence in wills. “In the Name of
the Eternal and Everlasting God the great Creator and Disposer of all
things, Whose divine law has been my study and His sacred paths my
supreme delight, I George Baker, of the Inner Temple, London, Esquire,
do make this my last will and testament.”
In Mrs. Gaskell’s “Sylvia’s Lovers” is the following passage: “Has
thee put that I’m in my sound mind and seven senses? Then make the
sign of the Trinity, and write ‘In the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost.’” “Is that the right way o’ beginning a will?”
said Coulson, a little startled. “My father and my father’s father,
and my husband had it atop of theirs, and I’m noane going for to cease
fra’ following after them, for they were godly men, though my husband
were o’ t’ episcopal persuasion.” It would be necessary to remember
how largely tradition and custom count, if we were to examine wills
carefully and thoroughly for the purpose of studying the piety of this
or that period of English life. Yet it can be seen how valuable these
prefaces are. Elaborate or simple, there is much to learn and mark in
them. But it is curious to observe that George Herbert (to leave the
eighteenth century for a moment), and William Law, two of the most
pious souls of their periods, use very few words in their religious
dedications. The first says simply: “I George Herbert, recommending
my soul and body to Almighty God that made them, do thus dispose of
my goods.” William Law, in terms only a little more elaborate, thus
begins: “I William Law, of Kings Cliffe, in the County of Northampton,
Clerk, being I bless God in good health of body and soundness of mind,
do make this my last will and testament in manner and form following,
that is to say: Imprimis: I humbly recommend my soul to the mercies of
God in Christ Jesus, and my body I commit to the earth to be interred
in the Church yard of Kings Cliffe aforesaid, at the discretion of my
executrix.”