disordered and debilitated, by the frequent and heavy strokes of
illness, and his intense exertions of mind, especially in his youth[9].
He was for several years together greatly distressed with insomnia, or
continued wakefulness. Very often he could obtain no sleep for several
nights successively except such as was forced by medical preparations;
and not unfrequently even opiates lost their virtue, and only served to
aggravate his malady. It is wonderful how, with such a weak frame and so
many shocks rapidly succeeding each other, he was able to maintain such
equanimity of temper, and vigour of intellect: The state of his mind
through all the decays of nature, his humble confidence and his joy gave
the decisive stamp of reality to his hopes and exemplified the sublime
attainments of which we are capable in this vale of imperfection and
sorrow. His superiority to the pressures of sickness, and his triumphant
assurance of the love of God are beautifully expressed in his own devout
soliloquy which he entitles Thoughts and Meditations in a long sickness,
1712-1713.
Yet, gracious God, amidst these storms of nature,
Thine eyes behold a sweet and sacred calm
Reign through the realms of conscience. All within
Lies peaceful, all compos’d. ’Tis wondrous grace
Keeps off thy terrors from this humble bosom.
Though stain’d with sins and follies, yet serene
In penitential peace, and chearful hope,
Sprinkled and guarded with atoning blood.
Thy vital smiles, amidst this desolation,
Like heav’nly sun-beams hid behind the clouds,
Break out in happy moments, with bright radiance
Cleaving the gloom, the fair celestial light
Softens and gilds the horrors of the storm,
And richest cordials to the heart conveys.
O glorious solace of immense distress,
A conscience and a God! A friend at home,
And better friend on high! This is my rock
Of firm support, my shield of sure defence
Against infernal arrows. Rise, my soul,
Put on thy courage. Here’s the living spring,
Of joys divinely sweet and ever new.
A peaceful conscience, and a smiling heav’n.
The two universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen in the year 1728
severally conferred on him unsolicited and without his knowledge, the
degree of doctor in divinity. This academical honour was never better
bestowed or received with less vanity; and happy would it have been for
such seminaries had titles of this sort never been disgraced by any
thing mercenary in their source or by ignorance or superciliousness in
their subjects. In this case the honour was reciprocal, so far as a
diploma may be allowed to bear any proportion to poignancy of genius,
highly cultivated understanding, the richest talents of the head, added
to the most amiable virtues of the heart.
Although a non-conformist from principles and uniformly such in
practice, he held a friendly correspondence with some of the first
characters in the established church. Among these were Seeker,
archbishop of Canterbury, Gibson, bishop of London; Hort, archbishop of
Tuam, and many others of elevated rank and eminent literary reputation.
Their letters[10] to him are written in an uncommon strain of
reiteration and esteem, and although many expressions occur which bear
too near an affinity to the language of flattery, those who knew the man
and were benefited by his writings may be allowed some latitude beyond
what is common in such cases.
If, while the deadly night shade of infidelity is diffusing its poison
through our country, churchmen and dissenters, especially the clergy and
those who entertain the same views of the faith that was once delivered
to the saints, could agree thus to differ, and lay aside all intemperate
zeal for and against the modes and forms of religion; would they
mutually cherish brotherly love and unite as far as possible to aid each
others exertions in the common cause; what a mighty change would soon be
produced in the state of religion, and what sources of pleasure they
would daily open to the advocates of the truth?
Mental light has no immediate or necessary dependance upon exterior
circumstances, nor can it be confined within the bounds of any
denomination, so like that glorious element its progress is
irresistible, and must be unbounded in its dominion. Here superstition
has no influence, bigotry has no power; and although we cannot
accurately pronounce the Shibboleth and Sibboleth of different parties,
we may yet unite our prayers and our zeal where, as the candidates for
eternal life, we are all one. As we often perceive in chemical
experiments that two things the most hostile by nature, and most averse
to unite, by the addition of a third become perfectly miscible, so by a
spirit of true piety and candour poured out upon both, we should see
conformists and non-conformists extend to each other the right hand of
fellowship and unite in every office of friendship and in all the
obligations of their religious characters. May the auspicious period
soon dawn when Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and when Judah shall not
vex Ephraim.
Let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but strive,
In offices of love, how we may lighten
Each other’s burden in our share of woe[11].
“Such characters as Dr. Watts still live and flourish in our churches:
(I adopt the words of a late acute writer). It would be easy to give a
long list of names from the dawn of the reformation to this day: but I
sacrifice the pleasure of doing so to the modesty of my friends. This
however, I will venture to say, and _no man shall stop me of this
boasting_, we have in our churches now exact copies of our ancient
models. _The prophets, do they live for ever?_ Yes they do. _The
spirit of Elijah rests upon Elisha!_ The grave solidity of Cartwright
and Jacob seemed to reside in our Owens and Goodwins and Gills. The
vivacity of Watts and Bradbury and Earle lives in others, whom I dare
not name. The patient laborious Fox, the silver Bates, the melting
Baxter, the piercing Mead, the generous Williams, the instructive
Henry, the soft and candid Doddridge, Ridgley, and Gale, and Banyan
and Burgess, in all their variegated beauties yet flourish in our
pulpits exercising their different talents for mutual edification. We
have Barnabas the son of consolation, and Boanerges the thunderer,
still.—Ye servants of the Most High God, who shew unto us the way of
salvation! _Peace be within the walls of_ your churches, _and
prosperity within your_ dwelling-houses[12].”
One great man after celebrating the just praises of Dr. Watts’s talents,
after acknowledging he was such as every christian church would rejoice
to adopt, descends to the miserable littleness of cautioning the world
against his non-conformity, as if that were a diminution of his
literary, or a blot upon his theological reputation. A melancholy proof
how far a philosophic mind may sometimes be debased by a churlish
bigotry; the very spirit that gave birth to all the persecutions which
harassed and oppressed the present established church when she dissented
from the church of Rome, and to which we may ascribe all the animosities
which divide and degrade those who only deviate in questions of a
circumstantial discipline since that period. In Dr. Watts were combined
all the excellencies which form a complete reverse of a party zealot,
and if a meek and lowly mind could shield the memory of any man from the
envenomed influence of this passion, his non-conformity had never been
mentioned but with a view of recommending the virtues by which he so
greatly adorned it.
As an author no man’s posthumous claim upon the gratitude of the church
and of his country, can be urged with a more imperative tone: The
natural strength of his genius, which he cultivated and improved by a
very considerable acquaintance with the most celebrated writers, both
ancient and modern, had enriched his mind with a large and uncommon
store of just sentiments, and useful knowledge of various kinds. His
soul was too noble and large, to be confined within narrow limits, he
could not be content to leave any path of learning untried, nor rest in
a total ignorance of any science, the knowledge of which might be for
his own improvement, or might in any way tend to enlarge his capacity of
being useful to others.
Though that which gave him the most remarkable pre-eminence was the
extent and sublimity of his imagination: how few have excelled, or even
equalled him in quickness of apprehension, and solidity of judgment: and
having also a faithful memory to retain what he collected from the
labours of others, he was able to pay it back again into the common
treasury of learning with a large increase. It is a question whether any
author before him ever appeared with reputation on such a variety of
subjects, as he has done, both as a prose-writer, and a poet. However
this we may venture to say, that there is no man now living of whose
works so many have been dispersed, both at home and abroad, that are in
such constant use, and translated into such a variety of languages; many
of which will remain more durable monuments of his great talents, than
any representation we can take of them, though it were to be graven on
pillars of brass[13].
His excellent friend, Dr. Doddridge, in his dedication of his Rise and
Progress of Religion in the Soul, congratulates him, “that while
condescending to the humble work of forming infant minds to the first
rudiments of religious knowledge by his _various Catechisms_ and _Divine
Songs_, he was also daily reading lectures of logic and other useful
branches of philosophy to studious youth, and this not only in private
academies but in the most celebrated seats of learning, not merely in
Scotland, and in our American colonies, where for some peculiar
considerations it might be most naturally expected, but, through the
amiable candour of some excellent men and accomplished tutors, in our
English universities too. And that he was also teaching hundreds of
ministers and private christians by his sermons, and other theological
tracts, so happily calculated to diffuse through their minds that light
of knowledge, and through their hearts that fervour of piety, which God
had been pleased to enkindle in his own. And as to my certain knowledge
your compositions have been the singular comfort of many excellent
christians on their dying beds, for I have heard stanzas of them
repeated from the lips of several, who were doubtless in a few hours to
begin the song of Moses and the Lamb, so I hope and trust, that, when
God shall call you to that salvation for which your faith and patience
have so long been waiting, he will shed around you the choicest beams of
his favour, and gladden your heart with consolations like those which
you have been the happy instrument of administering to others.”
Dr. Johnson, whom no one here will suspect of partiality, and whose
decisions in such case no one will dispute, acknowledges that few books
had been perused by him with greater pleasure, than Watts’s Improvement
of the Mind, of which he says, “the radical principles may indeed be
found in Locke’s Conduct of the Understanding, but they are so expanded
and ramified by Watts, as to confer upon him the merit of a work in the
highest degree useful and pleasing. Whoever has the care of instructing
others may be charged with deficience in his duty if this book be not
recommended.”
Of his Logic, which soon obtained considerable celebrity at home and
abroad, Lord Barrington speaks in the following terms of high encomium:
“I returned you my thanks for the kind present of your Logic soon after
I received it. I can now do it on much better grounds, for since I have
read it, I do not barely thank you for the civility, or the satisfaction
I have received on reading a book finely written on a noble and useful
subject, or for the profit I have reaped by it, but for a book, by
which, I expect, not only the youth of England, but all, who are not too
lazy, or too wise to learn, will be taught to think and write better
than they do, and thereby become better subjects, better neighbours,
better relatives, and better christians; for as wrong reasoning helps to
spoil each of these, so far will putting us in a right way of thinking,
help to mend us. I think your book so good an help to us in this way,
that I shall not only recommend it to others, but use it as a manual of
its kind myself, and intend, as some have done Erasmus or a piece of
Cicero, for another purpose—to read it over once a year.”
The author of the Meditations among the Tombs, and the Dialogues between
Theron and Aspasio, in a letter of acknowledgment for the present of his
discourses on the glory of Christ, says—“To say your works have long
been my delight and study, the favourite pattern by which I would form
my conduct and model my style, would only be to echo back in the
faintest accents what sounds in the general voice of the nation. Among
others of your edifying compositions, I have reason to thank you for
your sacred songs, which I have introduced into the service of my
church; so that, in the solemnities of the sabbath, and in a lecture on
the week day, your muse lights up the incense of our praise, and
furnishes our devotion with harmony.”
The Countess of Hertford, afterwards Duchess of Somerset, writes to him
in a strain of peculiar admiration and thankfulness, on reading his
Theological Works. “Almost all the hours I passed alone, I have employed
in reading your works, which for ever represent to my imagination the
idea of a ladder or flight of steps, since every volume seems to rise a
step nearer to the language of heaven, and there is a visible
progression toward that better country through every page, so that,
though all breathe piety and just reason, the last seems to crown the
whole, till you shall again publish something to enlighten a dark and
obstinate age, for I must believe that the manner in which you treat
divine subjects, is more likely to reform and work upon the affections
of your readers, than that of any other writer now living. I hope God
will, in mercy to many thousands, myself in particular, prolong your
life many years. I own this does not seem a kind wish to you, but I
think you will be content to bear the infirmities of the flesh some
years longer, to be an instrument in the hands of God, toward the
salvation of your weak and distressed brethren.”
Dr. Vicesimus Knox, in his Christian Philosophy, after a long citation
from the Inward Witness to Christianity, concludes thus:—“For my own
part, I cannot but think this good man approached as nearly to christian
perfection as any mortal ever did in this sublunary state; and therefore
I consider him as a better interpreter of the christian doctrines than
the most learned critics, who, proud of their reason and their learning,
despised or neglected the very life and soul of christianity, the
living, everlasting gospel, the supernatural operation of divine grace;
and be it ever remembered, that Dr. Watts was a man who cultivated his
reason with particular care, who studied the abstrusest sciences, and
was as well qualified to become a verbal critic, or a logical disputant
on the scriptures, as the most learned among the doctors of Sorbonne, or
the greatest proficients in polemical divinity. I mentioned this
circumstance for the consideration of those who insinuate that the
doctrines of grace cannot be entertained but by ignorant as well as
fanatical persons; by persons uninitiated in the mysteries of
philosophy.”
His Theological Works are numerous, and none of them appear to have been
hurried into the world under the impulse of a thoughtless vanity. The
perspicuity and elegance of his expression and the richness of his
imagination, enliven the most common subjects, and add lustre to the
most interesting. The multiplicity and diversity of his native and
acquired talents are every where conspicuous; and the application of
these talents uniformly discovers an accurate knowledge of human nature,
a high veneration of the gospel, an unshaken attachment to the cause of
christian liberty, and an habitual readiness for any sacrifice to the
virtue and happiness of the world. While exploring the most abstruse
subjects of corporeal and spiritual nature, he became a teacher of
babes; and that wayfaring men, though almost ideots, might not err in
the path of life, he laid aside the metaphysician and the philosopher,
to explain the doctrines and familiarise the history of the bible.
“Whatever he took in hand was, by incessant solicitude for souls,
converted to theology; it is difficult to read a page without learning,
or at least wishing, to be better. The attention is caught by indirect
instruction, and he that sat down only to reason, is on a sudden
compelled to pray.”
The Psalms and Hymns of Dr. Watts, which have given his name a kind of
immortality in our worshipping assemblies, deserve to be mentioned,
independent of their intrinsic merit, for the circumstance in which they
originated. The Hymns which were sung at the dissenting-meeting in
Southampton, were so little to his judgment and taste, that he could not
forbear complaining of them to his father. His father, who, perhaps,
fondly attached to his old guides in this service, and impatient of
innovations, was not very well pleased, bid him try what he could do to
mend the matter. He immediately set to work, and so successful was he in
his first essay, that a second was earnestly desired, and then a third,
and a fourth, till there was such a number as to make up a volume, which
was afterwards considerably enlarged. The first edition of his Hymns was
published in 1707, and his Psalms, 1719. The happy manner in which he
has rendered these composures intelligible to the ignorant, yet
instructive and delightful to the more intelligent, shew at once, how
warm a desire of extensive usefulness animated his heart, and how
skilful an hand directed his pen; while the strong images, the bold
flights, the lively painting, the sublimity of thought, and majesty of
expression, which occur in some other of his poetical writings, proclaim
what a master he was in that art, and how much self-denial he practised,
in condescending to a lower strain, when the genius for which he wrote
required it.
The two volumes published as the Dr.’s Posthumous Works, must be
ascribed to the avarice of a bookseller, or to the urgent calls of
hunger, expecting success from the celebrity of his character, and the
general avidity with which his productions were received. These volumes
are said, in the title-page, to be compiled from papers in possession of
his immediate successors, and to be adjusted and published by a
gentleman of the University of Cambridge. Many of the hymns in the first
volume were published before, and, with only one exception, they are
unmercifully mutilated. The rest bear no more resemblance to the poetic
ardor and sublimity of Dr. Watts’s muse, than the grasshopper does to
the eagle. It would be easy to select various proofs of imposition in
this work, were it necessary; but none, who have read the poet, can
hesitate to pronounce it a malicious attempt to hold him up to ridicule
and contempt; or, which is most probable, a design to make his name the
medium of pecuniary advantage. Such a farrago should not have been
mentioned, but as a reason for their exclusion from the genuine works.
Such authors as the subject of these memorials are the glory of nations.
The man whose writings expose the doctrines and ordinances of
christianity to contempt, who artfully endeavours to destroy the cause
of virtue, while he affects to celebrate its praise, by taking away all
its animating principle, throws open the flood gates of licentiousness,
destroys all public spirit, social order, domestic fidelity, and
personal happiness, takes the subject from under the restraint of the
civil law, saps the foundation of honour and confidence in commerce,
involves his wretched proselytes in the guilt of inveterate rebellion
against the Prince of Life, and subjects them to inconceivable woes in
the future world. When authors, whose writings have thus subverted the
faith, poisoned the morals, and destroyed the souls of their deluded
readers, are forgotten, or only remembered as objects of execration, the
Works of Dr. Watts justly claim the gratitude of his country, will be
perpetuated as blessings in the church, and be honoured with the final
plaudit of the Supreme Judge.
The dissolution of Dr. Watts fully corresponded with his holy and useful
life. For near three years prior to this period, his lamp had given such
a tremulous and uncertain light, that his friends daily expected its
utter extinction. But his prospects were bright and his confidence was
firm. If his intellectual faculties were not vigorous, they yet
continued to perform their office to the last. When in full possession
of himself he committed his soul into the hands of his Redeemer,
triumphing over all the terrors of death. Thus glorifying his profession
and the ministry of the gospel, administering the consolations of hope
to his sorrowing friends, and displaying the faith, fortitude, and joy,
which form the noblest conclusion of a life devoted to God.
Soon after, Mr. Henry Grove, who contracted an intimate friendship with
Dr. Watts, had published a funeral sermon on the fear of death; the
subject was treated in so masterly a manner that a person of
considerable rank in the learned world declared, that after reading it
he could have laid down and died, with as much readiness and
satisfaction as he had ever done any thing in his life. Some similar
effects may, it is hoped, be produced by reviewing the circumstances of
an event, where theory was most unusually realized in experimental fact.
It is not from books however finely written, but from the lips of the
dying disciple of Jesus, that we shall learn the exercise of patience
and courage in the anticipation of that state where we shall flourish in
everlasting health and vigour.
Let us mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, and see how
peacefully he reposes on his dying pillow, with what chearfulness he
bids adieu to his friends, and how he descends to the grave in a full
age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season. The day of this great
man’s life was not more useful in its progress, than serene and glorious
in its close. Without perturbation he read his summons to appear before
the Judge of all, and without reluctance he obeyed. After a long and
rough voyage he came with a propitious gale within sight of the peaceful
harbour; and how fully he enjoyed the prospect, his own language in that
happy period will abundantly testify.
With application to himself he often repeated the words of Paul to the
Hebrews, “Ye have need of patience that after ye have done the will of
God, ye may receive the promise.” Not that he was exercised with bodily
pain, but, retaining his desire to do good in undiminished force, he was
not at times so resigned to his providential disability as he should
have been. In such a frame of mind perhaps, he once said, “I wonder why
the great God should continue me in life, when I am incapable of
performing him any further service.” But now he had finished the work
given him to do, he must quietly wait till the Lord of the vineyard
shall bestow the promised, the desired reward. With these considerations
he would check the encroachments of impatience, “The business of a
christian,” said he, “is to bear the will of God, as well as to 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 mortified as we
can.” He discoursed much of his dependance upon the atoning sacrifice of
Christ; and his trust in God through the Mediator remained unshaken to
the last. “I should be glad,” he said, “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 an eternity
on them.” How his soul was absorbed in the faith of these promises, and
the certainty of their accomplishment, all who visited him during the
illness which terminated in his dissolution, could bear testimony.