Chapter 1 Introduction
Matthew A. Collins and Paul Middleton
Three hundred years after his death, Matthew Henry (1662–1714) remains arguably the best known expositor of the Bible in English. This is almost entirely due to his massive six-volume commentary on the Bible, or to give it its full title: Exposition of the Old and New Testament, with Practical Remarks and Observations. This monumental work, informed by Henry’s sermons, was published between 1707 and 1725. That by 1855 it had already been published in twenty-five different editions is testament to its early popularity, yet it is also still widely used today both in its print and online versions. While Henry is best known for his Exposition, this was by no means the only expression of his engagement with the Scriptures. Amongst his forty or so further publications, his many sermons and works on Christian piety – including the still popular Method for Prayer (1710) – are saturated with Henry’s peculiarly practical approach to the Bible.
Yet despite the enduring popularity of his commentary and other works, and his significance as a leading figure among eighteenth-century Dissenters, there has been remarkably little scholarly assessment of Henry’s life and approach to the Bible. His influence is largely restricted to evangelical strands of popular Protestant piety. Indeed, it may be the case that most biblical scholars encounter Henry through grading the work of students, for whom the ease with which they can find the pre-critical Exposition online may prove too tempting to resist. However, given his influence and considerable significance, this lack of scholarly attention is surprising. The present volume aims to begin to rectify that neglect. Matthew Henry: The Bible, Prayer, and Piety is intended to open a scholarly conversation about the place of Matthew Henry in the eighteenth-century nonconformist movement, his contribution to the interpretation of the Bible, and his continued legacy in evangelical piety.
The volume is predominantly the fruit of a symposium held in Chester in 2014 to mark the tercentenary of Henry’s death. Chester was an ideal place to celebrate the life and work of Matthew Henry, for it was there that he ministered for twenty-five years and wrote much of his Exposition. The three-day meeting (14–16 July) was hosted by the University of Chester in collaboration with the University of Manchester and Chester Cathedral Library. It brought together historians, theologians, and biblical scholars to consider the context, work, and legacy of Matthew Henry, and in particular his engagement with and use of Scripture. We were especially grateful to Peter Bamford from Chester Cathedral Library, who organized a ‘Matthew Henry Trail’ walking tour for the delegates, culminating in crossing some rather busy roads to get to Chester’s Grosvenor Roundabout, on which a memorial obelisk to Matthew Henry stands (see figures 1.5 and 1.6).
The volume is divided into four parts. In the first section, four essays set the scene in providing biographical details of Matthew Henry and placing him in his seventeenth-/eighteenth-century context. The second section focuses on Henry’s iconic commentary, containing essays that study both the way in which Henry traces themes through his Exposition, as well as case studies on three specific chapters (Joshua 7, Psalm 1, and Matthew 24) in order to examine Henry’s exposition in action. This is followed by essays addressing themes of prayer and piety in some of Henry’s other writings. The volume is completed with inclusion of the first extensive annotated bibliography of Matthew Henry’s works.
Jeremy Gregory (‘The Church and Nonconformity in Later Stuart England: The Wider World of Matthew Henry’) opens the ‘Context and Biography’ section by painting a picture of how the Church and nonconformity were faring in Later Stuart England. Gregory contrasts the religious landscape in which Matthew Henry lived and worked with that of his father, Philip, as they ministered on either side of the turbulent seventeenth-century dramas of the Restoration (from 1660), the Act of Uniformity (1662), and the Act of Toleration (1689). Gregory’s essay sets the scene for David L. Wykes’ biography of Matthew Henry (‘Matthew Henry: Minister and Preacher’). While Henry is chiefly remembered for his writings, Wykes argues that his initial reputation was made instead principally as a preacher and minister, and that this activity left just as powerful a legacy upon the nonconformist movement. Clyde Binfield (‘From Educated Underworld to the Queen’s First Knight: The Henrys in Context’) then places Henry and his father in their familial, social, political, and ecclesiastical contexts, exploring how the Great Ejectment (1662) shaped a mind-set determinative for the evolution of national attitudes that stretched from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.
While the first three essays together provide a detailed overview of the historical and religious context, Peter Bamford (‘ “For the Church or the Stable”: A Chester Consistory Court Case of 1693–94’) zooms in on one particular point of conflict, examining the controversy over Matthew Henry’s first known publication, A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature of Schism (1690), and an ensuing case heard in Chester’s consistory court (1693–94). While it may be imagined the Act of Uniformity, only moderated by the Act of Toleration, created theological tensions between Anglicans and Nonconformists, Bamford’s investigation of court records suggests that political or even commercial interests may have played a rather more significant role than theological differences in marring the otherwise cordial relations that appeared to exist between the two groups.
Henry’s famous Exposition of the Old and New Testament is the focus of the second – and appropriately the largest – section (‘The Bible’), containing essays by six biblical scholars examining various aspects of Henry’s hermeneutical approach, practical application, and interpretation in light of his seventeenth- and eighteenth-century context. First Stuart Weeks (‘Matthew Henry’s Commentary in Context: Reading Ecclesiastes’) explains how Matthew Henry’s Exposition came to be written in the first place, and situates his magnum opus in the context of the contemporaneous Bible commentary tradition, noting that Henry sought to situate his work between the ‘hard core’ Latin scholarship of the elite and the atomistic simplicity of more popular annotations. Then, using Henry on Ecclesiastes as a test case, Weeks considers his interpretative method, concluding that Henry was a better writer than exegete and that his commentary exudes a reasonable and generous humanity, making neither a puzzle nor a burden of the Bible. These factors, Weeks suggests, helped the commentary remain popular in the following centuries.
The next two essays by Matthew A. Collins and Paul Middleton take up Henry’s treatment of two themes running throughout the Exposition. First, Collins (‘Professors of Religion and their Strange Wives: Diluvian Discord in the Eyes of Matthew Henry’) considers Henry’s treatment of scriptural legislation regarding intermarriage and the command in Ezra-Nehemiah that the Israelites separate from their foreign (or ‘strange’) wives. Collins demonstrates that Henry’s concern about mixed marriages extends beyond merely the surface level of the biblical text, such that it is perceived by him to lie also behind other events of the Hebrew Bible ostensibly unconcerned with the topic, most notably the flood narrative. Thus Henry’s commentary traces (indeed, creates) a far more prominent thematic thread running all the way from the antediluvian age through to the post-exilic period of calamities resulting from mixed marriages between ‘professors of religion’ and their ‘strange wives’.
Similarly, Middleton (‘ “Filling up the Full Measure of their Sins”: Matthew Henry on the Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple’) argues that Henry not only finds reference to the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE) in the Old Testament, but that he transforms it into a major theme in the prophetic literature. The Roman War, Henry argues, was God’s adjudication between law-observance and Christ-believing; the Temple’s destruction was punishment on the Jews not only for killing Jesus, but also persecuting the Church. However, Middleton argues that Henry saw this final judgement prefigured with remarkable accuracy in the Jews’ own Scriptures. Henry, therefore, finds the Jews’ continuing rejection of Jesus inexplicable. Finally, while Henry certainly has antipathy for Jews, these ancient enemies of God represent Henry’s real target, Roman Catholics, who he accuses of similarly persecuting the Church but who will likewise be appropriately judged.
The essays of David J. Chalcraft, George J. Brooke, and Loveday Alexander each focus on Henry’s treatment of a single chapter in order to demonstrate Henry’s methods of biblical interpretation. Chalcraft (‘Matthew Henry’s Exposition of Joshua 7 in Socio-Legal and Sociological Perspective’) takes the morally difficult story of Achan in Joshua 7, in which for the sins of an individual an entire family is slaughtered. Henry’s reading, Chalcraft argues, interfaces with both the justice system of early eighteenth-century England and his belief in the need for personal, communal, and indeed national purity. Individuals can bring disaster on their communities, and so those communities must be ready to expunge the evil. Henry reasons that, as those who harboured Achan, his family were thus deserving of death.
Psalm 1 also contrasts the godly and ungodly, although, unlike Joshua 7, here a righteous individual is found within an ungodly community. George J. Brooke (‘Soul Prosperity: Reading Psalm 1 with Matthew Henry’) praises Henry’s sensitive reading of the grammatical detail of the Psalm, arguing that Henry draws out the theme of soul-prosperity in order to encourage his readers to maintain godliness in the face of temptations presented by the early eighteenth-century raucous sea-port community of Chester.
In the final essay of the section focused on the Exposition, Loveday Alexander (‘The Making of Ministry: Matthew Henry on the Parable of the Faithful Steward’) examines Henry’s reading of the parable of the faithful steward (Matt 24:45–51). Alexander notes that Henry reads the parable as an exposition of the high call of ministry. The virtues of the faithful steward are found in all those who faithfully minister to the people in the service of Christ. However, Alexander also argues that when it comes to his reading of the wicked servant, Henry tones down the standard Puritan denunciation of their enemies in the Established Church, and so is in some way a forerunner of ecumenism.
Loveday Alexander’s attentiveness to the practical application of Matthew Henry’s exposition of the biblical text serves as a bridge to the third section (‘Prayer and Piety’), which acknowledges Henry’s considerable influence on the Protestant piety of his day and beyond. Christine Helmer (‘Prayer and Providence: Matthew Henry and the Theology of the Everyday’) turns to Henry’s Method for Prayer, noting that although the world has transformed enormously from the early eighteenth century to our post-industrial scientific age, Henry’s prayers still resonate with people today. Helmer demonstrates that Henry’s writing on prayer harnesses the spirituality of earlier monastic traditions, but the Method is more than simply ‘spiritual literature’. Helmer argues that Henry’s prayers should also be analysed as a critical contribution to dogmatic theology, advancing the thesis that Henry uses prayer to cultivate a ‘theology of the everyday’, which had a distinctive impact on the development of a modern concern for everyday life, and explains why Henry’s work of piety transcends the apparent chasm between the pre- and post-scientific worlds.
While the other contributions to this volume focus primarily on the Exposition and Method for Prayer, Michael A.L. Smith (‘ “The Expressing of Devout Affections of the Heart”: Piety and the Affections in the Works of Matthew Henry’) surveys a broader range of Henry’s pietistic writings. He argues that, contrary to popular belief, late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Puritan England was not simply dominated by moralistic approaches to faith; Puritans cultivated pious affections, and this, Smith argues, was also central to Henry’s practical divinity. For Henry, godly affection practised in the religion of the home prepared the believer to participate in public worship and ultimately the Eucharist, which was an affective celebration. Smith concludes that in his emphasis on the affections, Henry anticipated the highly charged emotion of the later Revivalist movements.
In the final essay of this section, Ligon Duncan (‘Matthew Henry’s Legacy in Prayer and Piety’) considers the ongoing impact of Henry’s pietistic writings, unpicking the complex structural and practical foundations of the Method for Prayer and highlighting thereby both its timelessness and continuing legacy. Duncan argues that Henry, like his contemporary Isaac Watts, navigated a path between the ‘rigid’ Prayer Book style of Anglicans and the often disordered Puritan tradition of ‘free prayer’. Instead, in Method for Prayer, Henry develops a form of ‘studied free prayer’ that creates a pattern or framework firmly rooted in the biblical tradition, within which those responsible for leading prayers may appropriately focus on the person and work of God – a model that even today still influences a stream of Protestant piety.
Finally, the popularity of Matthew Henry’s works has seen them published in many editions and forms, with varying degrees of reliability. As noted above, there has been a surprising lacuna in scholarly treatments of Matthew Henry given his historical importance and enduring contemporary popularity. The result of this vacuum is that no scholarly critical editions of any of his works exist. Moreover, many of his writings remain only in manuscript form. If, as is hoped, this volume helps spawn further scholarly treatments of Matthew Henry, then the task will be made considerably easier by Philip Alexander’s contribution (‘Matthew Henry: An Annotated Bibliography’), constituting the volume’s concluding section (‘Cataloguing the Works of Matthew Henry’). Alexander’s detailed annotated bibliography of Matthew Henry and his works is the most up-to-date and complete list of Henry’s writings and related material, and will be an invaluable resource for future work on Matthew Henry’s life, work, and influence.
In light of the many editions of Matthew Henry’s Exposition, we have adopted a ‘standard text’ for the present volume: Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008). However, references to the commentary are made to its various sections, so they can be readily followed up in any unabridged edition of the Exposition. For example, ‘Henry on Gen 4:1–2’ guides the reader to Henry’s specific comments on Genesis 4:1–2. Reference to Henry’s introductory comments on a chapter take the form ‘Henry on Gen 4’, while his introduction to a book as a whole appears as, e.g., ‘Henry on Genesis’. The commentary was published in six volumes, the fifth of which appeared just after Henry’s death. Fourteen nonconformist ministers completed the final volume (Romans–Revelation), in a labour made lighter by Henry’s extensive notes on Romans and Revelation on which they were able to draw, along with his copious notes and sermons on the other epistles. While individual essays may refer to these authors, the referencing system makes no distinction between the text Henry wrote (Genesis–Acts) and those books completed with use of his notes after his death (e.g., ‘Henry on 1 Thess 2:13–16’). Quotations from and references to other of Henry’s writings tend to draw upon the original editions (for the most part freely available in digitized form online), preserving Henry’s original spelling and italicization, and referenced as normal.
The tercentenary of Matthew Henry’s death provided the opportunity for scholars of history, theology, and biblical studies to come together for the conference in Chester. While many of the participants had a long-standing interest in Henry, for others, including the editors, this was a new area of work. We wish to thank Philip Alexander and George Brooke for the original idea to hold the conference, and to all who contributed to the symposium and this collection. Sarah Blake and Anna Turton at Bloomsbury have been extremely helpful and supportive in bringing this volume to fruition. It of course largely reflects the particular interests of the conference participants (there were also additional papers by Alan Clifford, Andrew Crome, Keith Giles, and Viv Randles that do not appear here), and thus there remains further work to be done, not least on the Exposition but also various aspects of Henry’s theology. We hope this collection of essays will prompt other scholars to consider the life, work, and legacy of Matthew Henry.
Finally, we wish to acknowledge two sources of funding which made the initial conference and this volume possible. First, we are grateful to the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, who awarded a grant to assist with the costs of hosting the symposium. We also received very generous funding for the conference from the late Dan Arnold (1957–2015), founder of the Road Ranger chain. He was a very successful businessman, and was named Ernst and Young’s ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ in 2009. He was also a well-known philanthropist and supported many causes, including help for recovering addicts. He was, moreover, a keen promoter of Matthew Henry, and in 2008 he funded a website dedicated to disseminating a new edition of Matthew Henry’s Method for Prayer, edited by Ligon Duncan with William McMillan (www.matthewhenry.org). Dan Arnold was an enthusiastic supporter of our symposium, and in gratitude for his generosity, we dedicate this volume to his memory.