praying was his whole life. He did not eat above one meal a day; which was but very little when he took it; and his continual study was upon his knees. In the midst of his dinner he used often to muse with himself, having his hat over his eyes, from whence came commonly plenty of tears dropping on his trencher. Very gentle he was to man and child; and in so good credit with his keeper, that at his desire in an evening (being prisoner in the King's Bench in Southwark), he had licence, upon his promise to return again that night, to go into London without any keeper to visit one that was sick, lying by the Still-yard. Neither did he fail his promise, but returned to his prison again, rather preventing his hour than breaking his fidelity, so constant was he in word and deed. Of personage he was somewhat tall and slender, spare of body, of a faint sanguine colour, with an auburn beard. He slept not commonly above four hours in the night; and in his bed, till sleep came, his book went not out of his hand. His chief recreation was in no gaming or other pastime, but only in honest company and comely talk, wherein he would spend a little time after dinner at the board, and so to prayer and his book again. He counted that hour not well spent wherein he did not some good, either with his pen, study, or exhorting of others, &c. He was no niggard of his purse, but would liberally participate what he had to his fellowprisoners. And, commonly, once a week he visited the thieves, pick-purses, and such others that were with him in prison, where he lay on the other side, unto whom he would give godly exhortation, to learn the amendment of their lives by their troubles, and, after so done, distribute among them some portion of money to their comfort. One of his old friends and acquaintances came unto him while he was prisoner, and asked him, if he sued to get him out, what then he would do, or where he would go? Unto whom he made answer as not caring whether he went out or no; but, if he did, he said he would marry, and abide still in England secretly, teaching the people as the time would suffer him, and occupy himself that way. He was had in so great reverence and admiration of all good men, that a multitude which never knew him but by fame greatly lamented his death-yea, and a number also of the Papists themselves wished heartily his life. There were few days in which he was thought not to spend some tears before he went to bed; neither was there ever any prisoner with him, but by his company he greatly profited, as all they will yet witness, and have confessed of him no less, to the glory of God, whose society he frequented."* He was eminently one to whom to live is Christ. All his letters breathe the air of vital personal religion. In the depths of his own inner life he was enjoying the sunshine of God's presence, though outwardly surrounded by the wintry storms of persecution. Open the volume of his letters written whilst waiting for martyrdom, and you are amidst utterances at once manly and heavenly. He writes to his mother, "Perchance you are weakened as to that I have preached, because God does not defend it, as you think, but suffers the Popish doctrine to come again and prevail ; * Foxe, vol. vii., p. 145, 146. but you must know, good mother, that God by this tries and proves his children and people, whether they will unfeignedly and simply hang on Him and His word. : I am at a point, even when my Lord will, to come to Him death nor life, prison nor pleasure, I trust in God, shall be able to separate me from my Lord God and His Gospel. . . . If it should be known that I have pen and ink in the prison, then will it be worse with me; therefore keep this letter to yourselves, commending me to God and His mercy in Christ Jesus. Make me worthy, for His name's sake, to give my life for His Gospel and Church. -Out of the Tower of London, the 6th day of October, 1533." The public materials for the general history of Evangelical doctrine during the reign of Queen Mary are all to be found in the confessions of persecuted and dying The proscribed truths were, however, held in secret by many a scholar, and many a peasant, whom the shades of obscurity or the partiality of powerful friendship concealed from the persecutors. men. This state of things introduces a new feature into the religious history of our country: it led to the organization of private assemblies; gatherings of such as found themselves to be under the ban of a common proscription for the sake of their Lord, and who invited each other to share the precarious but precious ordinances of united worship, with the administration of the Lord's Supper, thus forming voluntary churches. Foxe calls them congregations, and says that they first met at the house of one. and then another, in order to elude the vigilance L of the authorities. The London congregation first resorted to Sir Thomas Carden's house in Blackfriars; then about Aldgate; then near the great conduit in the City through a narrow alley into a clothworker's loft; then into a shop at Billingsgate; next, into a ship called Jesus ship, moored between Ratcliffe and Rotherhithe, where they had prayer, sermon, and communion; next to a "cooper's house in Pudding-lane; then to a house in Thames-street. They were ultimately driven into Islington fields, when several were captured for the last dreadful holocaust at Smithfield. Prompted by the stern necessities of their position on the one hand, and encouraged by the discovery of the suitableness and scriptural propriety of their course on the other, they formally recognized each other in the bonds of the Gospel, and were strengthened. Their contemporaries allege that "they did appoint mere laymen to minister; yea, and lay women sometimes, it is said."* Strype says of them, in his Life of Cranmer, "Sometimes, for want of preachers of the clergy, laymen exercised. Among them I find one old Henry Daunce, a bricklayer of Whitechapel, who used to preach the Gospel in his garden every holiday, where would be present sometimes a thousand people." On New Year's Eve, 1555, the assembly was in a house in Bow churchyard, "where they were, with their minister, Maister Thomas Rose, devoutly and zealously occupied in prayer and hearing of Goddes word. But whyle they where in the middest of their godly exercise, * Watson's two notable Sermons, 1554. they were sodenly betraied (as it is thought, by some false dissembling hipocrite), and about xxx. of them apprehended and sent to the counters: but Maister Rose was had before the Lord Chauncelor, and from thence to the Fleet." Joy lies very close to the sorrow which such narratives excite. The rambler through the woodlands in springtime forsakes the beaten path, and, after pushing through tangled underwood, finds an open peaceful glade overhung by the blue canopy, and decorated by the countless beauties of harebell and anemone, which flourish as if the plague of sin were unknown. So, in searching into the past, do we occasionally fall upon the vision of a small community living together in the faith and love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and, like the flowers, giving a character of beauty to the lowly homes where they dwell. But we now look on them only after the ruthless blast of persecution, more bitter than the wind which howls through the woodlands, has crushed them and made the moral greensward a desert. Yet we are thankful that they once lived. "As evening's pale and solitary star But brightens while the darkness gathers round, It is not probable that any true spiritual force ever manifested on earth has been really lost. It may apparently have failed, and vanished from the place of its first occurrence; but the heat which it evolved only * Foxe, vol. vi., Appendix, p. 775. |