Chapter 10 Soul-prosperity: Reading Psalm 1 with Matthew Henry (continued)
Loveday Alexander
It is evident unto all men diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Ministry in Christ’s Church; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.1
1. Introduction
On the plain granite obelisk that marks Chester’s homage to Matthew Henry, the great dissenting preacher is described simply as ‘MATTHEW HENRY V.D.M.’ (see figures 1.5 and 1.6).2 Unlike his father, who styled himself ‘Philip Henry M.A.’, Matthew had no university degree. Dissenters of conscience could not study at Oxford or Cambridge without subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. As a young boy, Matthew had been sent to study at Dr Doolittle’s dissenting academy in London, and then read law at Gray’s Inn, but the initials do not reflect any kind of academic qualification. ‘V.D.M.’ stands for Verbi Dei Minister (‘minister of the word of God’) and expresses a distinctive strand in dissenting thinking on the nature of Christian ministry.
In this essay I want to examine how Matthew Henry uses biblical resources to construct his remarkably high view of the ministry. My text is Henry’s exposition of Matt 24:45–51, in which the faithful and wise steward of Jesus’ parable is identified with the ‘faithful minister of Jesus Christ’ and the bad steward with ‘wicked ministers’. It is tempting to speculate how much Matthew Henry’s view of ministry resonates with his own experience as the son of an ‘ejected’ minister. Philip Henry was ejected from his living on St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August) 1662, the year of Matthew’s birth, but held quietly yet firmly all his life to the conviction that he was a legitimately appointed minister in the Church of England, duly ordained according to the rites in force at the time of the Commonwealth; appointed by Christ, the ‘head of the household’, to minister to his fellow servants, wherever they might be. On the surface, Matthew Henry’s treatment of the parable contains little trace of the fierce and bitter polemic surrounding the day his father called ‘Black Bartholomew’.3 Yet the trauma of that day resounds through Matthew Henry’s Life of his father, and neither of them could have endorsed the episcopal understanding of ministry set out in the preface to the Ordinal in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, cited above. What Matthew Henry offers here is not a refutation, but something much more powerful: a cogent and persuasive counter-reading of Scripture, as an alternative to the Anglican reading which the Ordinal so blithely assumes is ‘evident unto all men’.
In his exposition of the parable, Henry had a variety of learned sources to draw on. We can get a good idea of this critical tradition by reading Matthew Henry alongside Matthew Poole’s Synopsis Criticorum Aliorumque Sacrae Scripturae Interpretum (1669–76), which gives a digest (in Latin) of the learned tradition collected together in the Critici Sacri. Poole’s Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1685/1700) offers a more accessible English version, which was a favourite with dissenting preachers and commentators.4 But Matthew Henry also draws on a deep-rooted oral tradition of dissenting expository preaching and teaching which weaves together a chain of scriptural passages on the nature of ministry, and in which each passage triggers associations with other links in the chain. We get a glimpse of this tradition in the published sermons of the time, such as the Puritan Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor (1656), which began life as a series of pastoral addresses to the ministers of Worcestershire, based on Acts 20:17ff.5 I have here selected a less well-known address, a funeral sermon by George Hamond (1620–1705) entitled A Good Minister of Jesus Christ (published 1693).6 Hamond’s sermon was preached on 27 November 1692 at the funeral of Richard Steel (1629–1692), a much-loved and respected Presbyterian minister who had ordained both Matthew and Philip Henry to the ministry, and was a colleague and friend of both.7 We can, I think, be fairly confident that Matthew Henry would have heard this sermon (or at the very least would have read it when it was published by popular demand the following year). But my concern here is not so much to pinpoint a particular source for Henry’s exegesis, as to explore the hermeneutical dynamics that underlie both Henry’s Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1707–25) and the oral preaching tradition that lies behind it.
2. ‘A Good Minister of Jesus Christ’: George Hamond on Richard Steel
I begin with Hamond’s funeral address on Richard Steel. Hamond’s base-text or ‘epigraph’ is 2 Tim 2:15: ‘Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth’ (KJV). Around this biblical text, Hamond constructs a complex and closely argued vignette of the dissenting theology of ministry, offered as a ‘Glass or Mirror, wherein ye may behold the reflected Portraiture of our deceased Brother’.8 Framed within brief paragraphs about the deceased, it offers a detailed exposition of the base-text, further expanded by a thematic excursus on the biblical titles used for ministers. It is an extraordinarily dense piece of expository preaching for the occasion of a funeral, and gives the impression that Hamond used pre-prepared teaching material. But it also offers a good example of the preaching method recommended by the 1645 Directory for Public Worship as ‘very helpful’ for the understandings and memories of the people:
Ordinarily, the subject of his Sermon is to be some Text of Scripture, holding forth some principle or head of Religion; … Let the Introduction to his Text be brief and perspicuous, … In Analysing and dividing his Text, he is to regard more the order of matter, then [sic] of words; and neither to burden the memory of the hearers in the beginning, with too many members of Division, nor to trouble their mindes with obscure termes of Art.… The Doctrine is to be expressed in plain termes; … The parallel places of Scripture confirming the Doctrine, are rather to be plain and pertinent, then [sic] many, … The Arguments or Reasons are to be solid; and, as much as may be, convincing. The illustrations of what kinde soever, ought to be full of light, and such as may convey the truth into the Hearers heart with spirituall delight.9
The sermon contains three distinct frames of discourse, each nestling within the other, and each using the Bible in different ways to build up a theology of ministry.
A. Personal Remarks
The sermon begins and ends with brief personal remarks on the ministry of the deceased preacher, Richard Steel. Here the approach is poetic and richly intertextual, weaving together biblical texts in an allusive fashion but without drawing attention to the apparatus of critical scholarship. The faithfulness of the ‘good and faithful servant’ who has now ‘entered into the joy of his Lord’ (cf. Matt 25:21, 23) is combined with the wisdom of the saints who ‘turn many to righteousness’ and ‘shine like the brightness of the firmament’ (Dan 12:3). A tissue of Pauline echoes10 links back to the gospel parable of the wise steward (Matt 24:45). The invocation ends with Paul’s view of his own impending death in Phil 1:21–23 (‘to die is gain’). We should note, however, that there is relatively little exact citation in this passage; rather, the Bible provides a living and flexible language which can be freely used and re-used to articulate the visions, hopes, and emotions that hold the community together in a time of tragedy.
We are, this Day, to solemnize the Funeral of a good and faithful Servant of Jesus Christ, who is now entred [sic] into the Joy of his Lord. Wise he was, and skilful in turning many to Righteousness; and now (as we have good ground to believe), he shineth as the Brightness of the Firmament.… One of the Pillars is removed out of the Temple of God upon earth … there is one of the Watch-men taken away.… Some weep for the loss of their Spiritual Father, who begat them to Christ through the Gospel; Others miss their Nourisher, who was wont to give them their portion of Meat in due Season. And as for my self, I am deprived of a Brother greatly honoured and beloved by me, whom I always found an helpful and concordant Fellow-Labourer in the Work of the Gospel. On all hands, there are those who recount their Loss; but to him to die is gain, for he is departed and gone to Christ, which is best of all.11
B. Expository
The bulk of the sermon, however, is devoted to a systematic exposition of the base-text. Here the tone is quite different, with exact citations, multiple cross-references, etymologies, and grammatical analysis of the Greek text and versions, showing copious use of the critical tools available to the exegete. Hamond’s ‘analysis and division’ can be reduced to a set of four ‘properties’ of the ‘good Minister of Jesus Christ’, all derived from the base-text and expanded with parallel pieces of Scripture.
1)He is one who is ‘very studious and industrious’.12
2)He is one whose aim is to ‘approve himself unto God’ or to ‘be approved’, because ‘it is God who entrusts and employs him in the Ministration of the Gospel’.13
3)He is ‘a Work-man, that needeth not to be ashamed’.
a)‘If you look upon him absolutely; so he is a Workman’, one ‘whose Employment requires very hard Labour’.
b)‘If ye look also upon the Modification adjoined; so he is a Workman that needeth not to be ashamed’.14
4)He is ‘one who rightly divides the Word of Truth’.
a)He is exercised about ‘the Word of Truth’, not ‘doubtful Disputations’ or ‘cunningly devised Fables, or golden Legends’.
b)His ‘proper Work’ is ‘rightly to divide it’, understood ‘in a metaphorical Sense’.15
Hamond’s method of exposition, ‘expounding scripture by scripture’, creates a tightly-woven holistic vision of a biblical doctrine of ministry, and allows the preacher to move easily from one text to another. Scripture becomes an interconnected whole in which any text can act as a portal to connect with the biblical hypertext. As we shall see, Matthew Henry’s exposition of Matt 24, though it deals on the surface with a completely different base-text, connects him into the same underlying scriptural hypertext and triggers some of the same associations and arguments.
C. Thematic
In the very centre of the sermon, attached to point 3a (‘That he is a Work-man’), we have a long excursus on ‘some other Titles by which the Spirit of God doth notify him to us’.16 He divides these into two groups: those ‘that set forth their Dignity’ (Angels; Elders [Acts 14:23]; Guides [Heb 13:7]; Presidents [1 Tim 5:17]) and those ‘that bind them to their Duty’ (Bishops [episkopoi; Acts 20:28]; Pastors [Eph 4:11]; Servants [Luke 1:2; 1 Cor 4:1]; Ministers [diakonoi]).17 The structure here is thematic rather than expository; by bringing together a selection of biblical passages around a chosen theme, Hamond is able to build up a synthetic picture of ministry, which complements the expository analysis of the main sermon. At the end, he simply reverts to the exposition and continues with point 3b, in a manner that suggests that the excursus is created by the insertion of pre-prepared material.
3. The Faithful and Wise Steward: Matthew Henry on Matt 24:45–51
Matthew Henry begins his exposition, as is his custom, with a general summary of the passage and its intent:
Now this parable, with which the chapter closes, is applicable to all Christians, who are in profession and obligation God’s servants; but it seems especially intended as a warning to ministers; for the servant spoken of is a steward.18
Henry makes no attempt to set the passage in its historical context, but identifies the parable immediately as ‘applicable to all Christians’ but ‘especially intended as a warning to ministers’.19 The clinching detail that the servant is a ‘steward’ comes from the parallel passage at Luke 12:42, a nice example of synoptic assimilation.20 Matthew 24:45 has doulos, ‘slave’ (‘servant’ in the KJV). The identification of the role of the steward as a model for church leadership has a long pedigree and is already hinted at in Luke 12:41 (‘Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for everyone?’). For Henry, it would be sanctioned by Paul’s use of the analogy in 1 Cor 4:1 (‘Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries’), which is cited in Poole’s Synopsis Criticorum.21 It moreover has a precedent in the Hebrew Bible, in the image of the steward at Isa 22:15–25.
The parable divides naturally into two parts, the faithful servant and the wicked servant. Henry begins by setting out the three headings under which he will treat the first part, concerning the faithful servant:
[W]hat he is – a ruler of the household; what, being so, he should be – faithful and wise; and what, if he be so, he shall be eternally – blessed.22
This gives him the three main sections of his analysis: (a) the servant’s place and office (the nature and work of ministry); (b) his right discharge of this office (the exercise of ministry); and (c) his final blessing (the reward of ministry). Each section is then treated in detail, with supplementary notes creating links with other relevant biblical passages. This analytical method (which he follows throughout the Exposition) allows Henry to set out a concise and cogent portrait of what it means to be a ‘minister of Christ’. The gospel passage is not expounded in isolation; like Hamond, he offers a totalizing interpretation, following the classic method of ‘interpreting scripture by scripture’ and weaving the base-text together with other key passages on ministry to encapsulate a whole biblical doctrine of ministry, reaching back into the Old Testament and forward into the New.
A. His Place and Office: The Nature and Work of Ministry
Henry begins with the appointment of the steward; he is ‘one whom the Lord has made ruler over his household’.23 The significance of this simple statement is then elaborated with a series of ‘notes’. The first explicates the metaphor of the church as the ‘household of God’:
The church of Christ is his household, or family, standing in relation to him as the Father and Master of it.24
The Greek is oiketeia, a New Testament hapax, glossed by Poole as ‘famulitium suum, … i.e. famulos suos, sive domesticos’.25 Henry cites the (equally uncommon) phrase ‘of the household of God’ (oikeioi tou theou; Eph 2:19), but glosses this in turn with Eph 3:15: ‘It is the household of God, a family named from Christ, Eph. 3:15’.26 The underlying assumption that ‘household’ and ‘family’ are interlocking semantic domains in Greek (as they would have been in Henry’s own social world) is (linguistically speaking) perfectly correct.27 In theological terms, the gloss is less coherent. The Ephesians verse refers specifically to ‘the Father [pater], from whom every family [patria] in heaven and on earth takes its name’, and distinguishes clearly between ‘the Father’ and ‘the Son’. But Henry seems untroubled by the Trinitarian distinction; he is more concerned to create a straightforward allegorical reading of the parable, in which the household stands for the church, and the master for Christ.
The second note brings us to a more complex exposition of the nature of the office, drawing on a tissue of interrelated biblical passages which are read in tandem to create a biblical theology of leadership. Gospel ministers ‘are appointed rulers in this household’ (i.e., they have genuine authority), but they cannot exercise this authority ‘as princes’ because ‘Christ has entered a caveat against that’ (no text is cited, but the most obvious reference is to Luke 22:26).28 Stewards, by contrast, are by nature ‘subordinate officers’, appointed:
not as lords, but as guides; not to prescribe new ways, but to show and lead in the ways that Christ has appointed: that is the signification of the hēgoumenoi, which we translate, having rule over you …29
The reference to hēgoumenoi comes from Heb 13:17; the cross-link is created by the link-word ‘rule’ which appears not in the Greek but in the English of the KJV (‘them that have the rule over you’).30 Hēgoumenoi is linked with the noun hēgemōn, a ‘leader’ or ‘guide’; like its English equivalent, it is often used of political leaders. This is one of the few NT passages where the modern term ‘leaders’ is an appropriate translation for the Greek. Henry’s gloss, ‘to show and lead in the ways that Christ has appointed’, shows that he is well aware of the root meaning of the Greek word.
This also suggests that (like Hamond), Henry is drawing on a kind of mental checklist which lets him glide easily from one of the biblical titles for ministry to another. Hamond too cites hēgoumenoi from Heb 13:7 and 17 as one of the titles that ‘set forth the Dignity of the Minister’:
They are denominated Guides, such as have the Conduct of others, and go before them in the Way of Religion; Heb. 13.7. Remember them which have the Rule (or are the Guides) over you, who have spoken unto you the Word of God.… The Ministers of Christ have a Power to lead, though not to compel.31
Hamond accepts the KJV translation ‘rule’ but offers ‘guides’ as a gloss.32 Behind this lies a whole living tradition of sixteenth-century debate on the nature of the ordained ministry – ‘rulers’, yes, but not Prince-Bishops; the power to lead, but not the power to compel. ‘Guide’ is a nicely ambivalent term that captures the subtle shift in the dissenting ideology of ministry that Matthew Henry sums up in this passage. Dissenters were not, however, averse to the concept of the minister as ‘ruler’. Philip Henry used the same Hebrews passage as an argument against ‘Prelacy’:
That the government of the church of Christ, ought to be managed by the ministers of Christ. It appears, Hebrews, xiii. 7, that they are to rule us, that speak to us the word of God.33
Interestingly, Matthew does not pick up this more polemical reading.
A similar shift is evident in the third title to which Matthew Henry now turns, episkopoi: ‘as overseers, not to cut out new work, but to direct in, and quicken to, the work which Christ has ordered; that is the signification of episkopoi – bishops’.34 For Hamond, episkopos is one of the titles that ‘bind them to their duty’:
If the Greek word had been rendred [sic] here [Acts 20:28], as it is generally in other places, it might have been translated Bishops. The Apostle tells us, 1 Tim. 3.1. He that desireth the Office of a Bishop, desireth a good Work.35
The Nonconformists did not contest that episkopos was a biblical term. Their concern was not to abolish bishops but to bring them to understand their duty:
The Apostle calls it a Work, not an Honour, saith Grotius; or, as another glosseth, A Work, not a Dignity, or a more delicate and softer kind of Life. Let such as glory in the Name, do the Work of a Bishop, and all good Men will pay them due respect.36
Hamond goes on to list ‘what the Work of the Primitive Bishop was’:
[T]o be the Mouth of the People, to offer up their Prayers, Supplications, Intercessions and Thanksgivings to Almighty God. To receive to Baptism those that, upon due trial, were found meet for it: To administer the Lord’s Supper; which, in the first times of Christianity, was done very frequently: To visit the Sick, and to pray for them: To stop the Mouths of Gain-sayers; To admonish disorderly Walkers: To cast out the Obstinate and the Incorrigible: To receive Penitents into the Church, after sufficient trial made of their Repentance: To take care of the Poor, Orphans, Widows and Strangers. And, in short, to attend to all the Affairs of the Church of God.37
For Richard Baxter, the primitive episkopos was charged with all the tasks that properly belong to the local pastor.38 Characteristically taking a rather more ecumenical view, Philip Henry remarks (in a diary entry from 1671):
If all that hath been said and written to prove that prelacy is anti-christian, and that it is unlawful to join in the Common-Prayer, had been effectual to persuade bishops to study and do the duty of church-rulers, in preaching, and feeding the flock, according to the word, and to persuade people to be serious, inward, and spiritual in the use of forms, it had been much better with the church of God in England, than it now is.39
Crucially, the household image invoked by the parable allows Henry to clarify the structures of authority in the church. The power to appoint gospel ministers belongs to Christ alone, as head of the household. Their authority, then, is necessarily derivative and subordinate: ‘They are rulers under Christ, and act in subordination to him’.40 Their purpose is to fulfil the purposes of Christ, not to further their own ambition; they are ‘rulers for Christ, for the advancement of his kingdom’. But their authority is real and inalienable:
They are rulers by Christ; what power they have is derived from him, and none may take it from them, or abridge it to them; … Christ has the making of ministers.41
The phraseology has the authentic Henry touch: crisp, forceful, alliterative, and powerfully memorable. But the underlying theological perception, and the ecclesial structures it implies, are set out already by Hamond:
When, I say, the Office is from God, yet that leaves room enough for Men, who have a delegated Power from Christ (in the ordinary Way) to try the Persons, who are to be admitted to the Execution of that Office. And having found them fit, to ordain them with Fasting, Prayer, and Imposition of Hands; and so solemnly to invest them therewith [2 Tim 2:2; Tit 1:5]. Yet still it must remain unshaken, That Man doth not make the Ministry, neither may Man, by his proper Authority, appoint the Minister his Rule, nor apportionate his Work: For that belongs to the Lord Christ only; Eph. 4.8, to ver. 14.42
The process of selection and ordination of ministers by a ‘classis’ of senior Presbyterian pastors is graphically described in Matthew Henry’s account of his father’s ordination.43 The restored Church of England in 1662 followed the traditional Catholic doctrine that ordination could only be performed by bishops in historic succession – that is, in direct succession with the apostles appointed by Christ himself. Yet both Anglicans and Presbyterians agreed that the ultimate authority to ordain ministers to the church came from Christ alone; the ordaining ministers act only by delegated authority, and the act of ordination itself is wholly dependent on Christ. Henry’s argument can be read not only as a covert attack on the Anglican episcopate, but as a robust defence of the ejected ministers; since their ministry is derived from Christ, ‘none may take it from them, or abridge it to them; … Christ has the making of ministers’.44
Henry’s third note identifies the specific task of the minister: ‘to give to Christ’s household their meat in due season, as stewards, and therefore they have the keys delivered to them’ (perhaps a subtle allusion to the papal doctrine of the keys).45 Everything about this passage underlines the subordinate and derivative nature of ministerial authority (but subordinate only to Christ):
(1.) Their work is to give, not take to themselves (Eze. 34:8), but give to the family what the Master has bought, to dispense what Christ has purchased. And to ministers it is said, that it is more blessed to give than to receive, Acts 20:35. (2.) It is to give meat; not to give law (that is Christ’s work), but to deliver those doctrines to the church which, if duly digested, will be nourishment to souls. They must give, not the poison of false doctrines, not the stones of hard and unprofitable doctrines, but the meat that is sound and wholesome. (3.) It must be given in due season, en kairō –while there is time for it; when eternity comes, it will be too late; we must work while it is day: or in time, that is, whenever any opportunity offers itself; or in the stated time, time after time, according as the duty of every day requires.46
Hamond’s sermon relies on the same link between the steward and the minister of the word. The good workman’s task of ‘rightly dividing the word of truth’ (2 Tim 2:15 [KJV]) is compared with the steward’s task of distributing the ‘mysteries of God’ (1 Cor 4:1 [KJV]) to the members of the household:
Our Saviour assigns this as one Property of a good and faithful Steward, who is set over the Houshold [sic], that he may give to every one their portion of Meat in due season, Luk. 12.42, distributing to every one their proper Dimensum or Allotment: as Exod 16.16.47
Hamond notes in passing various critical conjectures in explication of the metaphor ‘rightly dividing’, but concludes: ‘But not to insist upon the Critical Part, I think the Sense and Meaning is well expressed by the vulgar Latin, Rightly handling the Word of Truth [recte tractantem]; and by the Syriac, Rightly preaching [recte praedicantem]’.48 He goes on to offer his own distinctive interpretation of the metaphor:
Herein then lies much of the good Minister’s Prudence, Care and Tenderness, so to divide the Word of Truth, that every one may have their proper Portion: He must provide Milk for Babes, and strong Meat for them that are of full Age, Heb. 5.13, 14, accommodating his Teaching to the Necessities and Capacities of the Hearers.49
This proficiency was amply demonstrated in the preaching of the deceased Richard Steel:
[H]e was very dextrous and skilful in rightly dividing the Word of Truth. In every Sermon he was careful to provide Milk for Babes, and strong Meat for grown Men. His Stile was easy, familiar, though far from being loose, careless or rustick: But his Matter was always substantial and weighty; and so, by a rare Composition, his Discourses were framed and attempered, that the Meanest might learn, and those of higher Attainments, meet with nothing to be nauseated.50
For ‘in season’ (en kairō), Hamond makes a link with Isa 50:4 (‘a word in season’ [KJV]):
A Word in season to the Weary, that they may be refreshed: A Word in season to the Sorrowful, that they may be comforted: A Word to the Doubting, that they may be settled and established: A Word to the Secure and Impenitent, that they may be awakened and convinced; and so to others, as their Care and Condition may require, for then is the Word of Truth rightly divided.51
Both Hamond and Henry demonstrate here the richness of the dissenting expository tradition, with a mature and confident use of Scripture, deftly considering a variety of critical conjectures and making fruitful intertextual connections. This is an art of exposition that opens up an infinite range of potential understandings of the scriptural text, not closing down options but opening them up by using verbal links to shed light from one passage to another. It is a rich and imaginative exposition, drawing on the visual imagery suggested by Scripture and making vivid and pungent links with the everyday life of their hearers – ‘full of light, and … spirituall delight’, as the Directory has it.52
B. His Right Discharge of this Office: The Exercise of Ministry
Next, Matthew Henry moves on to an exposition of the second sentence of the parable: ‘Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing’ (Matt 24:46 [KJV]). This becomes the vehicle for an exploration of the ‘right discharge’ of the ministry: the good minister is (i) faithful, (ii) wise, (iii) so doing (i.e., working at the ministerial task), and (iv) ‘found doing’ when his master returns.
i. ‘He is Faithful’
He is faithful; stewards must be so, 1 Co. 4:2. He that is trusted, must be trusty; and the greater the trust is, the more is expected from them. It is a great good thing that is committed to ministers (2 Tim. 1:14); and they must be faithful, as Moses was, Heb. 3:2. Christ counts those ministers, and those only, that are faithful, 1 Tim. 1:12. A faithful minister of Jesus Christ is one that sincerely designs his master’s honour, not his own; delivers the whole counsel of God, not his own fancies and conceits; follows Christ’s institutions and adheres to them; regards the meanest, reproves the greatest, and doth not respect persons.53
Faithfulness is integral to the image of stewardship, and Henry is able to draw on numerous biblical references here, paraphrased with the characteristic common-sense and pungency that marks his writing at its best. To be a diakonos is precisely to be entrusted with a commission, and bears its own built-in expectations of accountability (Heb 13:17).54 The language of the Pastoral Epistles is especially full of this trope; the ‘great good thing that is committed to ministers’ echoes the KJV of 2 Tim 1:12–14, rendering the Greek parathēkē ‘what has been committed [or entrusted] to me’. ‘[T]he whole counsel of God’ echoes Paul’s description of his own diakonia in Acts 20:27.55
ii. ‘He is Wise’
He is wise to understand his duty and the proper season of it; and in guiding of the flock there is need, not only of the integrity of the heart, but the skilfulness of the hands. Honesty may suffice for a good servant, but wisdom is necessary to a good steward; for it is profitable to direct.56
In his account of his father’s ordination, Matthew Henry records his father’s earnest prayer for wisdom in the exercise of his ministry: ‘Lord, thou hast filled my hands with work, fill my heart with wisdom and grace, that I may discharge my duty to thy glory, and my own salvation, and the salvation of those that hear me’.57
Hamond vigorously conveys the seriousness with which the reformed churches viewed the pastoral task:
I should desire no more of any Man, that thinks a Pastor’s Life to be a Life of Ease and Divertisement, than to make experiment; though it be but among a few, and those well-disposed People, and he shall quickly find how much his Work will daily grow upon his hands: To satisfy the Doubting and Scrupulous; To set in joint the Bones which have been dislocated or broken, by the Falls of such as have been overtaken or surprized by Sin. To bear with the Infirmities, Slowness of Capacity, and Untowardness of such as he labours to instruct: To apply suitable Remedies to their various Spiritual Distempers: To look after, and bring back such as have gone astray, either through their own Levity, or the Craftiness of Seducers: With Patience, Pity and Compassion, to bear with those that oppose themselves. And besides all this, meekly to treat the Petulant and Exorbitant, and to cicure or tame such as have altogether broken the Yoke, and burst the Bonds.58
iii. ‘He is So Doing’ With a neat piece of footwork, the parable’s ‘so doing’ opens a rich vein of reflection on the ministry as a ‘good work’ (kalon ergon; cf. 1 Tim 3:1).
He is doing; so doing as his office requires. The ministry is a good work, and they whose office it is, have always something to do; they must not indulge themselves in ease, nor leave the work undone, or carelessly turn it off to others, but be doing, and doing to the purpose – so doing, giving meat to the household, minding their own business, and not meddling with that which is foreign; so doing as the Master has appointed, as the office imports, and as the case of the family requires; not talking, but doing.59
Behind this lies a rather dubious bit of critical philology set out in Poole’s Synopsis Criticorum, linking the word sic (‘so, thus’) with officium ‘office, place, duty’.60 ‘[N]ot meddling with that which is foreign’ picks up allotriepiskopos from 1 Pet 4:15. There is an implied critique of the established episcopate in the negative precepts; it is the bishops, surely, who ‘indulge themselves in ease, … leave the work undone, or carelessly turn it off to others’. There are echoes too of a more personal trauma. Matthew Henry records his father’s attitude to the exercise of his ministry in the family home at Broad Oak, after the silencing of his public ministry: ‘for that was his Τὸ ἔργον, the thing in which he was, and to which he wholly gave himself, taking other things Ὡς πάρεργα [as incidentals]’.61 Matthew quotes from his father’s diary for 1662:
Read his conflict with himself at this time; – I own myself a minister of Christ, yet do nothing as a minister. What will excuse me? Is it enough for me to say, Behold, I stand in the market-place, and no man hath hired me?62
The essentially oral character of this formational tradition is evident in Matthew Henry’s coda:
[N]ot talking, but doing. It was the motto Mr. Perkins used, Minister verbi es – You are a minister of the word. Not only Age – Be doing; but Hoc age – Be so doing.63
This must be a piece of teaching tradition handed down orally (in Latin!) within the dissenting tradition, perhaps from Matthew Henry’s own notes (or his father’s) – perhaps as part of an ordination charge.64 If ‘Mr Perkins’ is the Puritan divine William Perkins of Cambridge (1558–1602), this particular piece of tradition has already spanned several generations. Moreover, I suggest it provides a key to the strong sense of personal identity expressed in Matthew Henry’s preferred self-designation as Verbi Dei Minister: ‘Minister verbi es – You are a minister of the word’.
iv. ‘He is Found Doing when his Master Comes’ The parable supplies the eschatological framework which is implicit in Paul’s use of the steward metaphor (1 Cor 4:5). This is a recurrent theme in the parables (cf. especially the parable of the talents; Matt 25:14–30). Hamond speaks of:
that tremendous Account which he must give to Jesus Christ.… 2 Tim. 4.1, 2.… Take the Talent from him: … Because it is God who entrusts and employs him in the Ministration of the Gospel: And to him he must give an account of his Stewardship.65
Hamond does however allow the minister a little time for relaxation:
[A] good Minister of Jesus Christ is a Work-man, whose Employment requires very hard Labour; so that he hath no time allowed him for Idleness or Remissness, though some time be indulged to him for his Relaxation, through his Master’s tender Compassion; Mark 6.31.66
Henry, by contrast, cites with approval Calvin’s exhortation to ‘constancy at his work’: ‘What, would you have my Master find me idle?’67
C. His Final Blessing: The Reward of Ministry
Finally, Matthew Henry turns to the reward of ministry. Such a minister, when his master returns, will be: (i) ‘taken notice of; (ii) ‘blessed’; and (iii) ‘preferred’. There is a distinctly hagiographic tone to the Lives of Philip and Matthew Henry, echoed (much more briefly) in Hamond’s eulogy on Richard Steel. The spiritual distinction which the dissenting tradition fiercely denied to the saints of the old Catholic regime re-appears, somewhat surprisingly, in the honour accorded to the ‘faithful and wise steward’ of the parable – though transposed into the heavenly realm. Behind this lies not just the present parable, which lends itself easily to such an eschatological reading, but an amalgamation with the parable of the talents (Matt 25:14–30), with its recurrent refrain, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant: … enter thou into the joy of thy lord’ (KJV).
i. ‘He Shall be Taken Notice Of’ The very question with which the parable begins (‘Who then is a faithful and wise servant…?’ [KJV]) indicates a minister of distinction. The linguistic observation on the part of Henry, ‘Which supposes that there are but few who answer this character’,68 is based on a careful reading of the Greek that can be traced back ultimately (via Poole’s Synopsis Criticorum) to the Patristic commentator John Chrysostom:
Quis, h[oc] e[st] ô qualis & quantus, quàm felix! ut ostendat, inquit Chrys. quàm rari & praestantes essent tales.69
Poole’s Annotations on the passage spells it out in English:
The Question intimates that there are but a few such. The Discourse plainly referreth to the Ministers of the Gospel whom Christ leaveth in trust with his Church to give them their Meat in due Season; …70
ii. ‘He Shall be Blessed’ The dissenting vision of ministry includes a future state of ‘peculiar blessedness’ that runs perilously close to sainthood.
He shall be blessed? Blessed is that servant; and Christ’s pronouncing him blessed makes him so. All the dead that die in the Lord are blessed, Rev. 14:13. But there is a peculiar blessedness secured to them that approve themselves faithful stewards, and are found so doing.71
For Matthew Henry, the reward of faithful ministers who ‘die in the field of service, ploughing, and sowing, and reaping, for Christ’ is ‘[n]ext to the honour of those who die in the field of battle, suffering for Christ as the martyrs’.72 Henry is not alone in this. Poole’s Annotations on the parable asserts:
he declareth the Blessedness of those Ministers that shall be found faithfully discharging their Trust, and that the Lord in the Day of Judgment will exalt them to a much greater Honour; according to that of Dan. 12.3. They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the Firmament; and they that turn many to Righteousness, as the Stars for ever and ever.73
As we have seen, Hamond’s eulogy on Richard Steel makes the same link between the faithful and wise steward of Matt 24 and the ‘wise’ of Dan 12:3.74
This ‘peculiar blessedness’ is well illustrated by the multitude of sermons and eulogies Matthew Henry reproduces on the death of his father: ‘let him be spoken of as one whom his Lord, when he came, found so doing; who took a very short step from the pulpit to the throne’.75 But what exactly does it mean? Matthew Henry was too good a Protestant to allow any confusion between the honour due to the faithful minister (even to his own dearly-loved father) and the honour due to God:
Let not your praise terminate in your minister, but pass through him to the Lord Christ, in whose right hand he was so long a bright and shining star.76
Neither can he allow any hint of the Catholic practice of soliciting the prayers of the saints. Yet it is with a certain wistfulness that he recalls:
While he was yet with us, he was often speaking for us at the throne of grace, making mention of us, and others, always in his prayers. And this is now not the least part of our grief, – that we shall have such an intercessor to pray for us no more.77
Henry notes that his congregation can take comfort from the thought of the intercession of Christ, but ‘with this thought also, that the prayers of our dear father, who is gone, are upon the file, in heaven, and, through the mediation of the great Redeemer, will receive an answer of peace’.78 Hamond expresses a similar hope about Richard Steel:
Your loving, laborious and faithful Pastor, is removed from you. He will never more instruct you, nor pray with you, not pray particularly for you, (at least, the Scripture gives no Assurance thereof) yet we may hope, that many Prayers which he put up in his Lifetime, for his Children, Friends and Hearers, are recorded in Heaven, and may, in God’s due time, bring down Blessings upon them.79
iii. ‘He Shall be Preferred’ Henry continues on the good servant:
He shall be preferred (v. 47); He shall make him ruler over all his goods. The allusion is to the way of great men, who, if the stewards of their house conduct themselves well in that place, commonly prefer them to be the managers of their estates; thus Joseph was preferred in the house of Potiphar, Gen. 39:4, 6.80
The parallel with Joseph comes from the Synopsis Criticorum (or an exegetical tradition going back to it), but Henry develops the theme in his own way by making connections with John 12:26, and with the ‘weight of glory’ of 2 Cor 4:17 (cf. 1 Pet 5:4):
But the greatest honour which the kindest master ever did to his most tried servants in this world, is nothing to that weight of glory which the Lord Jesus will confer upon his faithful watchful servants in the world to come. What is here said by a similitude, is the same that is said more plainly, Jn. 12:26, Him will my Father honour. And God’s servants, when thus preferred; shall be perfect in wisdom and holiness to bear that weight of glory, so that there is no danger from these servants when they reign.81
He has not forgotten the dangers of power; those who are rewarded with the heavenly ‘weight of glory’ will have the ‘wisdom and holiness’ to exercise the rule of the saints (Rev 20:4, 6) without the corruptions of those who seek to exercise such power on earth.82
4. The Wicked Servant
The corruptions of power are dramatically illustrated in the portrait of the ‘wicked servant’, the antithesis of the faithful steward. Here Matthew Henry has a long tradition of Puritan denunciation of unfaithful clergy to draw on. Poole’s Annotations is quite explicit:
By this Parable our Saviour doth quicken his Apostles, to whom he intended to leave the Care of his Church … that in succeeding Ages, there would arise a Generation of loose and debauched Ministers, and such as would persecute the sincerer Professors of his Gospel, who could not comply with their Doctrines, and Lives: Of which as all Ages of the Church have given a Proof, so the time since Popery hath prevailed in the World, hath given a more plentiful, and abundant Proof. All which Extravagancies are incouraged from their Atheism, and Unbelief of Christ’s Coming to Judgment.83
Matthew Henry’s presentation on this well-worn theme is in fact remarkably restrained, though he cannot resist the opportunity for a few well-aimed missiles at the established church, and, like Poole, he draws on the book of Revelation to flesh out the picture.
The persecutors of God’s people have commonly been the most vicious and immoral men. Persecuting consciences, whatever the pretensions be, are commonly the most profligate and debauched consciences. What will not they be drunk with, that will be drunk with the blood of the saints?84
What is peculiarly hurtful here, however, is that here the persecution comes not from a pagan empire but from within the Church:
It is no new thing to see evil servants smiting their fellow servants; both private Christians and faithful ministers. He smites them, either because they reprove him, or because they will not bow, and do him reverence; will not say as he saith, and do as he doeth, against their consciences: … And if he get power into his hand, or can press those into his service that have, as the ten horns upon the head of the beast, it goes further.85
Given the years of petty harassment suffered by dissenting ministers in the last decades of the seventeenth century, this is remarkably restrained.
Yet the faults are not all on the side of the established church. Matthew Henry is equally scathing about the nonconformist minister with a good preaching ministry whose life does not match up to his words:
Well, this is the description of a wicked minister, who yet may have the common gifts of learning and utterance above others; and, as hath been said of some, may preach so well in the pulpit, that it is a pity he should ever come out, and yet live so ill out of the pulpit, that it is a pity he should ever come in.86
5. Matthew Henry’s View of Ministry: Exegesis, Experience, Ecumenism
Three concluding observations. First, Matthew Henry’s exposition of the parable of the faithful steward elucidates Henry’s position within the history of Bible commentary.87 The Exposition is a devotional and popular work, drawing on the expository preaching that was the mainstay of Matthew Henry’s public ministry in Chester. Its roots lie in the author’s own practice of textual analysis, which in turn goes back to the practice of daily exposition he learned from his father. There is no attempt to conceal the analytical surface structure, which is seen as an aid to understanding and memorizing the meaning of the scriptural text. It is clear that the Exposition draws on a complex blend of sources, including the resources of critical scholarship as compiled by Poole and Pearson. Henry certainly uses both the English text of Poole’s Annotations and the Latin Synopsis Criticorum, but his use of this material is free and organic; he has an eye for the key points that help the reader to understand the flow of the argument, rather than getting bogged down in philological detail, and he will paraphrase and précis rather than quoting written sources as such. Alongside these written sources, he clearly draws on a rich oral tradition of nonconformist preaching, as represented by Hamond’s funeral sermon on Richard Steel (which is itself freely dependent on the critical compilations). However, Henry absorbs and adapts this material to his own purposes, giving the gist of a complex argument and driving it home with his own characteristically pungent and memorable turns of phrase.
Second, he opens a window into a rich dissenting tradition on the nature of Christian ministry. The chosen text is already woven into a richly-textured web of intertexts, in which every text automatically links with other key texts. The biblical model of the household manager or steward gives Henry a flexible and powerful picture of ministry, a picture that is at once humbling and exalting; it both bestows authority and limits it. The role of the steward is subordinate, not ‘princely’, but firmly and inalienably conferred by Christ himself: ‘none may take it from them, … Christ has the making of ministers’.88 It is clear that much of this resonates with Matthew Henry’s own experience as the son of an ‘ejected’ minister who held firmly to his own personal conviction that his ministry was derived from Christ and was both indelible and inalienable, even though its exercise was severely constricted. Matthew Henry’s eirenic tone should not blind us to the devastating force of his implied critique of the abuse of power by the established church.
Finally, it is worth reflecting on the ecumenical implications of Matthew Henry’s picture of ministry for the church today. Henry records a remarkable (if short-lived) period in his father’s life, after the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, when ‘there was generally, throughout the nation, a great change in the temper of God’s people, and a mighty tendency towards peace and unity, as if they were, by consent, weary of their long clashings’.89 Associations of ministers were formed (‘some being in their judgements episcopal, others congregational, and others classical [Presbyterian]’), and:
they agreed to lay aside the thoughts of matters in variance, and to give to each other the right hand of fellowship; that with one shoulder, and with one consent, they might study, each in their places, to promote the common interests of Christ’s kingdom, and common salvation of precious souls.… From this experience he likewise gathered this observation, – that it is not so much our difference of opinion that doth us the mischief; (for we may as soon expect all the clocks in the town to strike together, as to see all good people of a mind in every thing on this side heaven;) but the mismanagement of that difference.90
Matthew Henry learned from his father a respect for ‘conformists’ and a determination ‘to preserve and promote the unity and purity of the church, notwithstanding opposition and persecution, though to death’.91 So he records ‘that which he took all occasions to mention as his settled principle – In those things wherein all the people of God are agreed, I will spend my zeal; and wherein they differ I will endeavour to walk according to the light that God hath given me, and charitably believe that others do so too’.92 This is a principle that Henry follows in the Exposition, and may go some way towards explaining its enduring success; rather than using his exegesis to highlight the particular points of sectarian difference (as so many seventeenth-century commentaries do), he tends to focus on ‘those things wherein all the people of God are agreed’ – a call which is still relevant today.
1. From the preface to the Ordinal in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
2. Erected in 1860, and originally located in the churchyard of St Bridget’s Church, the obelisk now stands (rather inaccessibly) in the centre of the Grosvenor Roundabout. Edward Morris and Emma Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside (excluding Liverpool), Public Sculpture of Britain 15 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012), 66–67.
3. Matthew’s sister, Sarah Savage, records: ‘My dear father used to call it “the Black Bartholomew” ’; cited in Matthew Henry, The Life of the Rev. Philip Henry, A.M., corrected and enlarged by J.B. Williams (London: Holdsworth, 1825), 96 n.§.
4. On this tradition, see Philip Alexander, A Prince Among Preachers: Matthew Henry and the Interpretation of Holy Scripture – A Guide to the Exhibition (Chester: Chester Cathedral Library, 2014), 38–42.
5. Richard Baxter, Gildas Salvianus; The first Part: i.e. The Reformed Pastor (London: Robert White, 1656).
6. George Hamond, A Good Minister of Jesus Christ: A Funeral Sermon for the Reverend Mr. Richard Steel (London: n.p., 1693).
7. Matthew Henry’s Life of Philip Henry contains numerous references to Richard Steel, his father’s ‘great friend and companion’ (Henry, The Life, 52; also 37, 91, 92, 105, 106, 108). With regard to the ordination, Matthew Henry’s biographer, William Tong notes:
It is somewhat remarkable, that the Reverend Mr. Steele should be concerned in the Ordination of both Mr. Henrys, Father and Son; … now almost 30 Years after he is concerned in the Ordination of his Son; this Circumstance must be very pleasing both to Father and Son, and it could not be less pleasing to Mr. Steele himself, (that faithful excellent Preacher,) that he should be employed under Christ in sending out two such ministers into the Vineyard, such a Father and such a Son.
William Tong, An Account of the Life and Death of Mr. Matthew Henry, Minister of the Gospel at Hackney (London: E. Matthews, M. Lawrence, and S. Cliff, 1716), 71–72.
8. Hamond, A Good Minister, 4–5.
9. Anon., A Directory for the Publique Worship of God, Throughout the Three Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: G.M. and I.F., 1645), 13–14.
10. The father (1 Cor 4:14–15; 1 Thess 2:11); the pillar (Gal 2:9); the nourisher (1 Cor 3:2; 1 Thess 2:7); the fellow-labourer (Rom 16:3; et al.).
11. Hamond, A Good Minister, 1–3.
12. Hamond, A Good Minister, 19–26.
13. Hamond, A Good Minister, 26–37.
14. Hamond, A Good Minister, 37–66.
15. Hamond, A Good Minister, 66–73.
16. Hamond, A Good Minister, 42.
17. Hamond, A Good Minister, 42–60.
18. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
19. Compare Henry on Mark 13:28–37: ‘our Lord Jesus, when he ascended on high, left something for all his servants to do, … All are appointed to work, and some authorized to rule’.
20. Poole’s Annotations cites the Lucan parallel (‘whether spake at the same time, and upon the same occasion or no, I know not’), and adds, ‘The discourse plainly referreth to the Ministers of the Gospel, whom Christ leaveth in trust with his Church’; Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Edinburgh: n.p., 1700), at Matt 24:45–47. Poole’s Synopsis Criticorum on Matt 24:45 says more briefly, ‘Describit munus οἰκονόμου, i.e. dispensatoris; cui munus Pastorum in Ecclesia respondet’; Matthew Poole, Synopsis Criticorum Aliorumque Sacrae Scripturae Interpretum, 5 vols. (London: E. Flesher et al., 1669–76), 4:595.
21. Poole, Synopsis, 4:595.
22. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
23. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
24. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
25. Poole, Synopsis, 4:595.
26. Henry on Matt 24:32–51. Two more obvious passages might have been 1 Tim 3:15 or 1 Pet 4:17.
27. The Douay-Rheims version, following the Vulgate, has ‘whom his lord hath appointed over his familie’ (Vulg. ‘quem constituit dominus suus supra familiam suam’).
28. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
29. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
30. The Greek of Matt 24:45 has no noun but a verb, katestesen epi (‘put in charge’). The KJV (following Tyndale and the Geneva Bible) has ‘hath made ruler’.
31. Hamond, A Good Minister, 45–46.
32. Unlike the Douay-Rheims translation of Heb 13:7, which has ‘Prelates’.
33. Cited in Henry, The Life, 107 (my italics). This is also the implication of Baxter’s discussion (The Reformed Pastor, preface plus 1–11, etc.).
34. Possibly triggered by the Geneva Bible for Heb 13:7, which translates hēgoumenoi as ‘them which have the oversight of you’.
35. Hamond, A Good Minister, 50.
36. Hamond, A Good Minister, 50–51.
37. Hamond, A Good Minister, 51–52.
38. Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, preface plus 5–11. Cf. the funeral sermon for Philip Henry by Mr Samuel Lawrence, which states on Heb 13:7: ‘Bishops, no doubt, … are here meant, scripture primitive bishops, the pastors of particular congregations, for they were such as had spoken to them the word of God, and watched for their souls, verse 17’ (cited in Henry, The Life, 229).
39. Cited in Henry, The Life, 127.
40. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
41. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
42. Hamond, A Good Minister, 33–34.
43. Henry, The Life, 30–38.
44. Henry on Matt 24:32–51. In his Life of Philip Henry, Matthew Henry recalls the sermon on 1 Tim 1:12 preached at his father’s ordination by Mr Parsons: ‘Putting men into the ministry is the work of Jesus Christ’ (The Life, 32).
45. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
46. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
47. Hamond, A Good Minister, 71. Note the cross-reference to the distribution of manna in the wilderness. Cf. Poole, Synopsis, 4:595 (‘Demensum videlicet, σιτομέτριον, ut vocat Lucas’).
48. Hamond, A Good Minister, 70.
49. Hamond, A Good Minister, 71–72.
50. Hamond, A Good Minister, 87.
51. Hamond, A Good Minister, 72–73.
52. Anon., Directory, 14.
53. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
54. John N. Collins, Diakonia: Re-Interpreting the Ancient Sources (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
55. Hamond alludes to the same passage: the good minister must ‘declare the whole Counsel to the Edification of his Church’ (A Good Minister, 21).
56. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
57. Henry, The Life, 38. Cf. Matthew Henry’s own ordination prayer: ‘I have also need of Prudence and Discretion to order the Affairs of my Ministry’ (Tong, An Account, 55).
58. Hamond, A Good Minister, 54–56.
59. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
60. Poole, Synopsis, 4:595 (‘Sic facientem: Vel, officium suum facientem. Ut Latinè aequum & par pro eo quod justum est & fieri debet ponuntur, sic Heb. 
, sic, aliquando significat officium, ut 2 Reg. 17.9’). The argument works better in Latin than in Hebrew.
61. Henry, The Life, 121.
62. Henry, The Life, 103 (an allusion to the parable of the labourers in the vineyard; Matt 20:1–16). Hamond alludes to the same parable: ‘he [God] will not endure any Loiterers in his Vine-yard, … they should bring forth Fruit’ (A Good Minister, 40–41).
63. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
64. Hamond vividly illustrates the Presbyterian ethos of pastoral formation in which both Philip and Matthew were trained: ‘Of all Persons in the World, the good Ministers of Jesus Christ should be not idle or slothful, but studious and industrious in their proper Work, and persist therein with Alacrity, Activity, and Constancy’ (A Good Minister, 21). The work of ministry is, ‘no easy Employment, but very laborious; … hard Labour, even to Lassitude and Weariness, to the wasting of their Strength, and exhausting of their Spirits’ (A Good Minister, 37–38; also citing Matt 9:37–38, 1 Thess 5:12, and 1 Tim 5:17). The role of pastor, like the work of the shepherd, is ‘very busy and toilsom … Gen. 31.40’ (A Good Minister, 53).
65. Hamond, A Good Minister, 25–26, 32.
66. Hamond, A Good Minister, 39–40.
67. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
68. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
69. Poole, Synopsis, 4:595 (cf. also ‘Beatus, &c.: Tales raros fore significat’).
70. Poole, Annotations, at Matt 24:45–47.
71. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
72. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
73. Poole, Annotations, at Matt 24:45–47.
74. Hamond, A Good Minister, 1–3.
75. Henry, The Life, 298 (from Matthew’s own eulogy for his father, pp. 285–310). See too, 223–34.
76. Henry, The Life, 299.
77. Henry, The Life, 302–3.
78. Henry, The Life, 303.
79. Hamond, A Good Minister, 91.
80. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
81. Henry on Matt 24:32–51. There may also be a suppressed echo of the ‘double honour’ ascribed to the elders who ‘rule well’ in 1 Tim 5:17, ‘especially those who labour in preaching and teaching’.
82. In his eulogy on his father, Matthew Henry suggests that the minister ‘will be an assistant with Christ in the judgment, to assent and subscribe to the sentence, which, at that day, will be passed upon you; for thus the saints will judge the world, 1 Corinthians, vi. 2; especially ministers, Luke, xxii. 30’ (Henry, The Life, 301).
83. Poole, Annotations, at Matt 24:48–51.
84. Henry on Matt 24:32–51 (cf. Rev 17:6).
85. Henry on Matt 24:32–51 (cf. Rev 13:1; 17:12–17). Here Henry paraphrases Synopsis Criticorum on v. 49 (Poole, Synopsis, 4:595–96).
86. Henry on Matt 24:32–51.
87. See Alexander, A Prince Among Preachers.
88. Henry on Matt 24:32–51. This is a long-lived tradition which reappears in the work of T.W. Manson: ‘The Christ, who is for us the only and ever-present King and Head of the Church, is the Maker of ministers’ (T.W. Manson, The Church’s Ministry [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1948], 97).
89. Henry, The Life, 54.
90. Henry, The Life, 54.
91. Henry, The Life, 38.
92. Henry, The Life, 127.