Daniel Rowland
14
DANIEL ROWLAND
Eifion Evans
The two most prominent leaders of the eighteenth-century revival in Wales were Howel Harris and Daniel Rowland. Together they blazed the trail of an indigenous Methodism in Wales, experimental in its organization and Calvinistic in its theology. If Harris and Rowland complemented one another in gifts, they differed in temperament. Harris was the restless evangelist and organizer, impulsive, zealous, stubborn, while Rowland was the solid preacher and theologian, impassive, gifted, persevering. Their common ground lay in their extraordinary youth, their attachment to episcopacy, and their Calvinism.
At the time of his conversion in 1735, Rowland was twenty-two, married, and serving as curate to his brother at Llangeitho in Cardiganshire. God’s chosen instrument for this gracious change was the ministry of Griffith Jones; in the words of a contemporary, Rowland was “begotten to the new Gospel by . . . Griff. Jones.”1
The latter had labored long in the cause of a gospel reformation in South Wales at a time when a general darkness and deadness prevailed. As early as 1714 he had experienced in some measure what the Methodists were to pass through on a much wider scale: a time of revival, the censure of the bishop and clergy for preaching in other parishes, and the attendance of large congregations. He was a man of vision and evangelistic zeal, and had commenced in 1731 the popular movement for education which was six years later identified as the “Circulating Welsh Charity Schools.” These provided free instruction to adults as well as children, the teacher moving every three months or so, while the curriculum was confined almost exclusively to reading and catechizing.
The fact that Rowland was staying with Jones at the time of his receiving priests’ orders in August 1735 is an indication of the strong affinities between them in that early period.2 Later, however, Rowland’s Methodism estranged Jones, and Harris was called upon repeatedly to neutralize the pioneer reformer’s opposition and criticism.
Rowland’s brother had been instituted to Llangeitho on their father’s resignation in 1730, and to this was collated the vicarage of nearby Nantcwnlle the following year. In addition, he served three curacies in the area,3 and at various times, determined by availability and expediency, Rowland preached in these churches, but was not confined to them.
His missionary labors soon spilled over into the neighboring counties, and by the end of 1740 his preaching activities extended throughout South Wales and he had penetrated into the North.
Apart from occasional excursions as far as Bristol, Daniel Rowland traveled little in England. John Cennick suggests a reason when writing to Harris in 1742: “You can’t think how it troubled me when Frank told Mr. Rowland [he] thought I looked cold on him in Bristol. I am clear in my mind on this account but I know I talked very little to him, and that was because he talked so bad English I could not understand him, and so was fearful of offending him. If you see him tell him this and salute him very affectionately in my name.”4 On the other hand, he regularly preached at those places which remained open to him in Wales, often on a monthly basis, and sometimes administering the sacrament for the benefit of the scattered converts in the area. The Welsh Methodists used “Chapels of Ease,” buildings of the Established Church often dilapidated and isolated, to provide them with the preaching stations which they needed, especially in Carmarthenshire. In due course, however, the authorities frustrated this strategy by direct prohibition and the threat of ecclesiastical sanctions.
For these reasons repeated attempts were made by the authorities of the Established Church to curtail Rowland’s preaching liberties. The diplomatic measure of licensing a curacy at Ystrad-ffin in August 1741 deprived him of this valuable preaching station in North Carmarthenshire. Within a matter of months, March 1742, he was turned out of Llanddewibrefi. Eventually Rowland’s licence for Llangeitho itself was revoked in 1763 by the bishop “because he would not refrain to go about preaching for three years.” The result, according to one commentator, was that “Daniel Rowland is now continual about preaching.”
Four years later the Nantcwnlle parishioners unsuccessfully petitioned the bishop for Rowland’s reinstatement on the basis of non-residence by the vicar. Its failure did not silence Rowland; the Methodists had built a chapel at Llangeitho in 1760, which they replaced with a new building in 1764.5
Another attempt to restore Rowland in an official capacity within the Established Church in 1769 also failed, Rowland finding the conditions unacceptable. This was an attractive offer by John Thornton, a philanthropic member of “the Clapham Sect”:
I am desirous to recommend a diligent faithful minister to the Rectory of Newport in Pembrokeshire . . . from the account I have had of you I am persuaded you will prove such. I therefore make you the offer of it, provided you will reside and are satisfied to proceed regularly as a Minister of the Church of England. You may see by this I know how to make all proper allowances for those irregularities that ministers are too often forced into by being shut out of the Church, but when they receive an offer of work sufficient to employ them in the pale of the Church I think their whole strength ought to be devoted to it, as I hope yours will be henceforward.
Rowland was, however, as concerned for the Llangeitho Methodists as they were to continue under his ministry, and his attempt at the compromise of combining the Newport incumbency with serving his new chapel at Llangeitho proved a failure. Thornton was adamant: “Since writing to you I have got a letter from your son Nathaniel mentioning the concern your people are under at the thought of losing you and that you proposed sometimes doing duty where you are at present. That can’t be as it is not an ordained chapel and unless you resolve to reside at Newport and be wedded to your parish we can’t stand before the bishop properly and answer his objections.”6
These abortive attempts clearly show that Rowland was unwilling to sacrifice ministerial liberty on the altar of Canon Law. Bishop J. C. Ryle is hardly fair in referring to the bishop’s revocation of the license as a “blundering exercise of episcopal power,” “preposterous and stupid.”7 Rowland’s extra-parochial activities and chapel building were irregular to say the least according to the disciplinary standards of episcopacy, and the bishop cannot justly be blamed for acting consistently with them. The indictment must be ranged against the Church of England for their existence rather than against the bishop for their exercise.
Rowland did not object to the clerical orders of episcopacy, but he did consider its sacredotalism misguided and its discipline inadequate. The chapel built for him at Llangeitho was symbolic of his repudiation of these things. Despite the rebuff of the authorities Rowland continued to enjoy the support of his people and success in his ministry at Llangeitho until his death in 1790.
Extraordinary Power in Preaching
From the time of his conversion that success was extraordinary. His preaching of the law in the early months brought severe conviction of sin among the ever-increasing crowds. William Williams’ elegy to him speaks of the marvelous change which took place when, in addition to opening the wounds of the people, he applied the healing balm of grace: “After preaching for some years the stormy law and wounding very many, his tone changed; He proclaimed full, complete, perfect salvation through the Messiah’s death on Calvary. Henceforth the power of his sweet doctrines nurtured faith by revealing the Mediator, God and Man, as the foundation of free salvation; the One who freely redeemed, by His precious blood, all the treasures of heaven for a poor believer.” These words are an indication of the openly acknowledged, almost proverbial, reputation which Rowland enjoyed as a champion of orthodoxy, and of his primacy among contemporaries as preacher of the whole counsel of God.
Harris had special cause to thank God for Rowland’s ministry. In February 1738 a sermon on Proverbs 8:32 convinced him of the freeness and unchangeableness of God’s grace: “My eyes were opened to the light . . . he was the means whereby I was brought to the knowledge of the truth about Christ. . . . Today was an extraordinary day to my soul.”8 In his letters of this period Harris refers to Rowland as one of the clergymen “who preach Christ powerfully”; “there is a great revival in Cardiganshire through . . . D. Rowland . . . and he has been much owned and blessed in Carmarthenshire also.”9 “Blessed be God for the amazing gifts and power given to brother Rowland. Sure there is no such ministry in Wales. I never heard of like.”10
Nearly five years later, in March 1743, it was still as powerful, and Harris reported to Whitefield that “the Kingdom of our Lord” was “coming sweetly” among them. He continued:
I can’t tell where to begin to tell you what great things He is doing daily among us. . . . I was last Sunday at the ordinance with Brother Rowland where I saw, felt, and heard such things as I can’t send on paper any idea of. The power that continues with him is uncommon. Such crying out and heart breaking groans, silent weeping and holy joy, and shouts of rejoicing I never saw. Their “Amens” and crying “Glory in the highest”, etc., would enflame your soul was you there. ’Tis very common when he preaches for scores to fall down by the power of the Word, pierced and wounded or overcome by the love of God and sights of the beauty and excellency of Jesus; and lie on the ground, nature being overcome by the sights and enjoyments given to their heaven-born souls that it can’t bear, the Spirit almost bursting the house of clay to go to its native home. Some lie there for hours, some praising and admiring Jesus, Free Grace, distinguishing grace, others wanting words to utter. You might read the language of a heart running over with love in their heavenly looks. Their eyes sparkling with the fire of love and joy, and solid rest in God; others meeting when the Word, etc., is over to sing, and you might feel God there among them like a flame; others falling down one after another for a long time together praying and interceding and you might see and feel it is the prayer of faith, and that they are worshipping a God that they know, and love, and delight in, and that now no veil is between. Others lie wounded under a sense of their piercing Jesus, so that they can hardly bear it . . . others mourning and wailing for the Comforter, and such love and simplicity that a spiritual eye must see and acknowledge that God is there. This is but a very faint idea of it, for what words can express spiritual things? But methinks I see you bow the knee, and cry, “I can bear no more; I understand how it is.” [Rowland’s] congregation I believe consists of above 2,000 whereof a great part are brought to glorious liberty and walk solidly in clear light in the continual enjoyment of God without a moment’s darkness. Many others walk in solid faith rejoicing in the hope and expectation of the clearer manifestation of God’s glory and the glorious liberty of His children. . . . In some of our private societies the Holy Spirit is uncommonly powerful indeed . . . everywhere there is a reviving . . . there are eight counties open for you, and thirsting to hear you, and opposition ceases.11
According to Rowland himself the experiences of such heavenly disorder were common in those days at Llangeitho:
There is such power as I never felt before, given me in preaching and administering the Lord’s Supper. The Lord comes down among us in such a manner as words can give no idea of. Though I have, to prevent nature mixing with the work, openly discountenanced all crying out, yet such is the light, view, and power God gives very many in the Ordinance, that they cannot possibly help crying out, praising and adoring Jesus, being quite swallowed up in God; and thus I was obliged to leave my whole congregation, being many hundreds, in a flame . . . this is our condition generally every Sabbath.12
The congregations were drawn from a wide area as Harris was to find a few months later:
I find our great Immanuel come more and more down in wisdom and power, revealing more of his glory and grace continually. There were some there from eight counties . . . many I spoke with since were telling me how they were so overcome by the love of God’s Son on the way that (they were as though) overcome with new wine . . . there is fresh life everywhere . . . Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire are all in a flame.13
The divine blaze continued unabated in 1745:
Mr. Daniel Rowland is one of the most surprising men that ever I heard . . . such wisdom to divide the Word, such divine light to penetrate to the spiritual [meaning] of the Word and such power to apply [it] I never knew with any one . . . in his pulpit he is a second Paul . . . his gifts and call among the people are superior to any and so far as he can go none are so blessed and owned as he is . . . in all these places ’tis impossible to express what visible signs the Lord continues to give of his gracious Presence, what life and power, what holy fire and warmth, what shouts of praise from some, what groanings and moanings from others, what tears of love and joy, and what signs of real happiness appears in the looks of others can only be understood by what experiences [are] in one’s own soul and has seen also in such congregations.14
The crowds, which according to Harris’s reckoning were about 2,000 in 1737, had reached 10,000 by 1763, another time of refreshing at Llangeitho.15
It was under Rowland’s ministry ten years later that Thomas Charles “of Bala” was converted, and his record of the event is in itself a spiritual classic as well as glowing testimony to the authority of the preaching:
January 20, 1773, I went to hear Mr. Rowland preach at New Chapel [Llangeitho]; his text was Heb. 4:15. A day much to be remembered by me as long as I live. Ever since the happy day I have lived in a new heaven and a new earth. The change a blind man who receives his sight experiences doth not exceed the change I at that time experienced in my mind.
The earth receded, it disappeared,
Heaven opened to my eyes,
My ears with sound seraphic rang.
Then I was first convinced of the sin of unbelief or entertaining narrow, contracted, and hard thoughts of the Almighty. I had such a view of Christ as our High Priest, of His love, compassion, power and all-sufficiency, as filled my soul with astonishment—with joy unspeakable and full of glory. My mind was overwhelmed and overpowered with amazement. The truths exhibited to my view appeared too wonderfully gracious to be believed. I could not believe for very joy. The glorious scenes then opened to my eyes will abundantly satisfy my soul millions of years hence in the contemplation of them. I had some idea of gospel truths before floating in my head, but they never powerfully and with divine energy penetrated my heart till now. The effect of this sermon remained upon my mind above half a year, during which time I was generally in a comfortable and heavenly frame. Often in walking in the fields, I looked up to heaven with joy and called that my home, at the same time ardently longing for the appearance of the glorious Saviour to take me forever to Himself.16
A mere eight years before Rowland’s death, Thomas Charles’ future wife heard him preaching on Jude verse 20, “Praying in the Holy Spirit,” with great profit and lasting impression:
There was something solemn and awful in the place, and I thought that perhaps the greatest divine since the time of the apostles was then undertaking his glorious employment . . . [he] showed that lip service is not respected, that cursers and swearers were more justified than those that mocked God with their lips and their hearts far from him; that the saints could be in no state in this world that their prayer would not be heard; that the promise of the Comforter in the 16th [chapter] of St. John is now accomplished; that the Spirit of God in the saints makes them conquerors over God himself, as in Jacob’s case; that it is not difficult to prevail for spiritual blessings, but if we ask for riches or honours, things hurtful, they are given like the flesh to the Israelites, but to those that ask, the Holy Spirit is given abundantly, proved in the 13th verse of the [11th chapter of] Luke and in the 4th [chapter] of St. John, being the water spoken to the woman of Samaria that springeth up to everlasting life. He dwelt much upon the 14th and 16th [chapters] of St. John, about the three Persons in the glorious Trinity and of Christ’s humiliation and abasement, and upon those words I WILL pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter. He would not exempt Himself from being engaged for His people, but would send another also. He observed that Christ had prayed in different ways, sometimes with strong cries and tears, not that this was necessary to prevail, but like the cry of a man whose house was on fire, venting the grief that was in Him; that he prayed by shedding of His blood which cried louder than the blood of Abel, that He made one sacrifice of Himself, and that the prayers of His people are for ever acceptable in Him; that the Spirit teacheth to pray in His name; that Isaac and Jacob called upon God as the God of their fathers, Elisha called Him the Lord God of Elijah, but now the Antitype being come we have greater confidence in His name, but alas! I am darkening the lustre of the fine gold.17
Perhaps the feelings of Rowland’s hearers were best summed up in the words of a Montgomeryshire layman and exhorter: “Mr. Rowland’s preaching is so much betaken with me that I am ready to say as the primitive Christians for the Apostle Paul, O that we should hear Paul preach once more before we die. And say I, O that I should hear Mr. Rowland once more before I die.”18
Rowland’s excellence lay in preaching. In the estimate of some “he far surpassed Wesley and Whitefield.” One assessment which first appeared some forty years after his death brings out the difference between Rowland and Whitefield: “Rowland’s oratory bears most resemblance to that of Whitefield; but then there is this striking distinction, that when Whitefield rose in eloquence he appeared to fail in matter, whereas Rowland seemed to rise because he was overwhelmed with matter.”19 Even William Williams of Pant-y-celyn, Rowland’s friend and helper, acknowledged that “Mr. Rowland did shine in the pulpit, but was not fit for any other place or work.”20
Organizing Societies
The “other work” of the revival was the care of the emerging fellowship or society meetings. The blueprint for them can be traced to the end of the seventeenth century in Josiah Woodward’s Account of the Religious Societies.21 The organizing of them in Wales was due largely to the genius of Harris, and their effectiveness in nurturing Christian experience to the remarkable spiritual psychology of Williams. Rowland, however, was not entirely on the periphery of this “other work”; he established them doctrinally and resolved the dilemma of their embarrassing affiliation to the Church of England by providing chapels for their use.
Their beginning in Wales was a natural outcome of Harris’s homely attempts at evangelism. “The latter end of this year [1736], a man was going from one parish to another to instruct the young people in psalmody . . . I accompanied this man in his journeys, and every evening when the business of instruction was over, I proceeded to give a word of exhortation. By this means many were brought under convictions, and many religious societies were formed. I began in imitation of the societies which Dr. Woodward had given an account of in a little treatise on the subject.”22
Consequently, writing in October 1736 to Griffith Jones, Harris intimates, “we are beginning to set up private societies,” and within four years their number exceeded fifty. The need for them was patent; for one thing, “the scattered saints of the district must be gathered together for edification, and particularly for discipline”; for another, “many were leaving the Church and joining the dissenters because this privilege of meeting together to discuss the sermons they had heard, was enjoyed by the Nonconformists.” Basically, the societies were schools of the spirit, where the Christian disciple could be trained in the knowledge and experience of the things of God. Discipline, especially, was the keynote: “That is the purpose of our societies, and to this end I was called,” says Harris, “and through the power of grace I will set up such discipline that no hypocrite will be able to bear it.”23
An entry in Harris’s diary for March 18, 1737, crystallizes this lack in the Established Church:
I (on reflection) never saw anything wanting in the Church of England but these three modes . . . 1. A privilege of meeting together as a society to consult about points of salvation and self-examination. 2. More home pressed the necessity of regeneration in the pulpit, with familiar teaching, catechizing, and instructing privately in families and publicly; an inspection of the life of every communicant; the reason for their absenting to be taken by some set apart for that business—deacons, etc., with an examination on the Saturday before, public, ere they are admitted to Christ’s table and to have the sacrament monthly. 3. More familiarity between the Pastor and the sheep, etc.24
Rowland and Harris looked on the societies as supplying this serious deficiency in the episcopal system. Their efficient working depended on the use of unconsecrated buildings, and spiritual laymen whom the Welsh Methodists called “exhorters.” This term was adopted by Harris initially as a matter of expediency (“calling my work exhorting, not preaching, was a means of blinding the eyes of my opposers”25), but its usage persisted.
Whitefield soon recognized the indispensability of societies to the progress of the revival. As early as 1739 he wrote a letter “to the religious societies lately set on foot in several parts of England and Wales” with the purpose of guiding their meetings. Their purpose was unashamedly experimental, while their teaching function provided a safeguard against morbid introspection and unhealthy exhibitionism: “Form yourselves into little companies of four or five each, and meet once a week to tell each other what is in your hearts; that you may then also pray for, and comfort each other, as need shall require. None but those who have experienced it, can tell the unspeakable advantages of such a union and communion of souls. I know not a better means in the world to keep hypocrisy out from amongst you. Pharisees and unbelievers will pray, read, and sing Psalms; but none, save an Israelite indeed, will endure to have his heart searched out.”26 This appeared in Welsh translation the following year, when the rules of the societies had notice in another Welsh publication. Llwybur Hyffordd ir Cymru [Path of Instruction for the Welsh]. The latter was the precursor of a more official publication issued by the Welsh Methodists in 1742 called Sail, Dibenion a Rheolau’r Societies . . . [The Constitution, Purposes and Rules of the Societies], and attributed to “members of the Anglican Church.”27
The influence upon it of Whitefield’s letter is unmistakable, but the responsibility for its publication lay with Rowland and Harris. It shared Whitefield’s unequivocally experimental emphasis.
Objects of the Societies. 1. Heb. 10:24, to provoke unto love and good works. 2. To prevent hardness of heart and backsliding, 1 Cor. 3:2–3. 3. To understand better the deceitfulness of the heart, and the work of grace within us. 4. To instruct in the work of God and build up faith. 5. To warn against questionings and disputes of words. 6. To guard each other in life and conduct. 7. To glorify God in the presence of one another for his acts of grace. 8. To strengthen each other against common enemies of the soul and to pray on behalf of one another.
Rules of the Society. 1. After the singing of praise, and prayer, let the members relate in the hearing of one another the good and evil experienced since the last meeting. 2. So as to remove all possible hindrances to growth in grace, let even doubts, fears and suspicions be told and then examined. 3. Each member should be prepared to submit to an examination of his experience. . . . Refuse admission to no one who can satisfactorily answer the following questions: Are you convinced of sin? Have you been awakened by God’s grace? Do you admit your moral inability to do good in and of yourself? Do you accept the imputed righteousness of Christ in salvation? Have you felt the Spirit of God inclining you to surrender yourself to Christ? Have you counted the cost of following Christ? Have you received the testimony or witness of the Spirit? Has the Spirit of adoption followed your sorrow for sin? Do you accept and assent to the fundamental truths of the Trinity, election, original sin, justification by faith, and perseverance in grace as taught in the 39 Articles? Is it the love of Christ that impels you to join our society and are you prepared to abide by these rules?
Following the test of admission into the society come the tests to be applied to members who desire to gauge their growth in the Christian life:
1. Are you assured of faith, forgiveness, and the indwelling of the Spirit? 2. Is your sympathy with other people enlarged? 3. Is your spiritual comprehension of truth and holiness growing? 4. Is your conscience more sensitive to sin? 5. What spiritual lesson have you learnt since the last meeting? 6. Is the love of God deepening within you? 7. Are you more concerned with the salvation of your fellow men? 8. Does your inheritance in Christ grow more clearly to you?28
A regular check was kept on the state of the societies, their leaders meeting regularly in “association,” usually at monthly intervals, and more generally at less frequent intervals under Rowland as “Moderator.”
At these association meetings various aspects of the work were discussed, reports of the societies were examined, and future policy was decided.
While the societies provided the Methodists with a school for discipline where they could exercise their teaching ministry without fear of episcopal interference, the home of their disciples (for the most part, at any rate) still lay in the Church of England. The tension between this spiritual school and spiritual home was evident throughout the eighteenth century in Welsh Methodism, and not a little of Rowland’s energies were directed toward relieving it.
The Methodist policy with regard to separation from the Church of England is summed up by Harris in a letter to Whitefield in 1742: “Our call being not clear to me to separate from the Church till we are turned out.”29 They sought to reform the Established Church from within, making their appeal to the Thirty-nine Articles, but this position was repeatedly being challenged by the lay exhorters, many of whom could not obtain holy orders for all their spirituality and ability. Nevertheless, Welsh Methodism continued on this basis for the rest of the eighteenth century, and separated from the Church of England only in 1811 when Charles “of Bala” and others led in the first Calvinistic Methodist ordination. Rowland, however, was more flexible on the issue than Harris, and had advised the ordination, on Congregational lines, of one of the Monmouthshire exhorters, Morgan John Lewis, in 1756.
If the Welsh Methodists did not separate from the Church of England in Rowland’s time, they did everything else short of it. Their erection of chapels is a case in point. Rowland was the principal Methodist signatory to the Deeds of Soar Chapel, Cil-y-cwm (Carmarthenshire) in 1746, a building erected “for the exercise and performance of divine worship . . . and doing other acts for propagating the Gospel . . . preaching . . . and teaching.” The Deeds for Salem, Pen-coed (Glamorganshire) in 1774 are more explicit: “a Meeting house or place of religious or divine worship for the use of the said Protestants called Methodists and wherein such teachers or ministers only are to be admitted as shall preach or embrace the doctrine of salvation contained in the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Articles of the Church of England.” These related to the doctrines of original sin, bondage of the will, justification by faith only, the place of good works, and of works before justification, Christ’s atonement for sin, predestination and election, and that eternal salvation is to be obtained only by the name of Christ. In the year before his death Rowland’s name appears in the Deeds of Salem, Capel-y-Cwm, Llansamlet (Glam.), and there is no longer any attempt to avoid the appearance of nonconformity; the building was for “protestant dissenting subjects . . . to resort to, to publish divine worship.”30
Strong Pillar of Orthodoxy
Besides marking the emergence of Rowland’s nonconformity these deeds serve to indicate his Calvinism, and that of Welsh Methodism as a whole. Williams referred to him as “a strong pillar in the Church of God; a means to keep the Welsh Methodists from many errors their neighbours have fallen into.”31 Not only their neighbors, but sadly, Harris as well. The latter’s loose phraseology with regard to Christ’s person and death involved him in Patripassianism, and Rowland was obliged in 1750 to publish a pamphlet repudiating his views, Ymddiddan rhwng Methodist Uniongred ac un camsyniol [A Conversation between an orthodox Methodist and a mistaken one].
The seriousness of this situation was aggravated by other factors, and together they led to the separation between Rowland and Harris which was complete by 1752. The consequences for Welsh Methodism were far-reaching. The societies aligned themselves with one or other of the leaders; many of them gravitated toward dissent while others lost the vital spiritual ministry which Rowland and Harris had provided. It sapped the vigor of the revival for a decade, and brought about Harris’s tragic withdrawal to Trevecka. The breach was eventually healed in the early 1760s and by 1763 revival fires were again sweeping through South Wales.
It is William Williams who gives the clearest picture of Rowland’s theological acumen. In his elegy he credits Rowland with opposing the views of Baxter, Arminius, and Pelagius by instilling in the churches “the doctrines of divine grace.” He was in the vanguard of those who contended against the Antitrinitarians, the Antinomians, and the Sandemanians, following in the Reformed tradition of Huss, Jerome, Calvin, Cranmer, and Ridley. Finally, according to Williams, his doctrinal position is summed up in the historic Creeds, the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Westminster Larger Catechism, and is throughout thoroughly biblical.
The hymns which he wrote, the Puritan and other works which he translated into Welsh, and the sermons he preached consistently expounded the doctrines of grace. That in his long ministry of over fifty years at Llangeitho he was enabled to give a sustained presentation of these truths is a remarkable evidence of the goodness of God to this quiet laborer in the gospel vineyard. Nothing could be more fitting to close this study of Rowland and his place in the eighteenth-century revival than an extract from one of his sermons, the instrument which, more than any other, marked his outstanding contribution to it.
Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to them that love God.” Observe what he says. Make thou no exception, when he makes none. All! remember he excepts nothing. Be thou confirmed in thy faith; give glory to God, and resolve, with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” The Almighty may seem for a season to be your enemy, in order to become your eternal friend. Oh! believers, after all your tribulation and anguish you must conclude with David, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Thy statutes.” Under all your disquietudes, you must exclaim, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”
His glory is seen when he works by means; it is more when he works without means; it is seen, above all, when he works contrary to means. It was a great work to open the eyes of the blind; it was a greater still to do it by applying clay and spittle, things more likely, some think, to take away sight than to restore. He sent a horror of great darkness on Abraham, when he was preparing to give him the best light. He touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, and lamed him, when he was going to bless him. He smote Paul with blindness, when he was intending to open the eyes of his mind. He refused the request of the woman of Canaan for a while but afterwards she obtained her desire. See, therefore, that all the paths of the Lord are mercy, and that all things work together for good to them that love him.
Even affliction is very useful and profitable to the godly. The prodigal son had no thought of returning to his father’s house till he had been humbled by adversity. Hagar was haughty under Abraham’s roof, and despised her mistress; but in the wilderness she was meek and lowly. Jonah sleeps on board ship, but in the whale’s belly he watches and prays. Manasseh lived as a libertine at Jerusalem, and committed the most enormous crimes, but when he was bound in chains in the prison at Babylon his heart was turned to seek the Lord his God.
Bodily disease and pain have been instrumental in rousing many to seek Christ, when those who were in high health have given themselves no concern about him. The ground which is not rent and torn with the plough bears nothing but thistles and thorns. The vines will run wild in process of time if they be not pruned and trimmed. So would our wild hearts be overrun with filthy, poisonous weeds, if the true Vine dresser did not often check their growth by crosses and sanctified troubles. . . . There can be no gold or silver finely wrought without being first purified with fire, and no elegant houses built with stones till the hammers have squared and smoothed them. So we can neither become vessels of honour in the house of our Father till we are melted in the furnace of affliction, nor lively stones in the walls of the new Jerusalem till the hand of the Lord has beaten off our proud excrescences and tumours with his own hammers.
He does not say that all things will, but do, work together for good. The work is on the wheel, and every movement of the wheel is for your benefit. . . . All the events that take place in the world carry on the same work: the glory of the Father and the salvation of his children. Every illness and infirmity that may seize you, every loss you may meet with, every reproach you may endure, every shame that may colour your faces, every aching in your bones, are for your good. Every change in your condition, your fine weather and your rough weather . . . your liberty and your imprisonment, all turn out for good.
Oh! Christians, see what a harvest of blessings ripens from this test! The Lord is at work; all creation is at work; men and angels, friends and foes, all are busy, working together for good.