'The Saint Paul of the Nonconformists'
CHAPTER ONE
'The Saint Paul of the Nonconformists'
There is not a greater service done to the devil's kingdom than the silencing of faithful ministers, and the putting them under a bushel that are the lights of the world.
Matthew Henry Ox the twentieth of January 1669, there was born to the well-known Nonconformist divine, Dr Samuel Annesley, the last of his twenty-five children, a girl named
Susanna. She was the child of his age, for Dr Annesley was a man of fifty when Susanna was born to his second wife at their house in Spital Yard, off Bishopsgate Street. She was the child of his age in a deeper sense too, for to the end of her days she remained a daughter of the seventeenth century, which had seen the triumph and eclipse of Puritanism. It was in this century that her Christian name first became widely current in England, and though she soon left the Dissent in 1 The house still stands, and, under the name of Annesley House, serves as headquarters of the Women's Fellowship of the Methodist Church. See
Frederick C. Gill, In the Steps of Zohn Wesley, (1962), p. 43f. a
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which she was reared for the Church of England, Susanna emerged, like her name, with the stamp of that Puritan century clear upon her.!
Susanna's mother, whose Christian name is unknown, was the daughter of John White, a Puritan lawyer who sat in the Long Parliament as member for Southwark, and distinguished himself as Chairman of the Committee for Religion.
He published in 1643 an account of the first hundred clergymen whom the Parliament had deprived of their livings for immorality or neglect of duty. The title of the book, The First
Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests, earned him his nickname of 'Century White'.2 Of Susanna's father, Samuel
Annesley (1620-96), whose life spans almost as much of the seventeenth century as his grandson John Wesley's does the eighteenth, much more is known. He was born at Kenilworth in Warwickshire, the son of John Annesley, whose father had been granted an Irish peerage by Charles I. John's elder brother, Arthur, succeeded to his father's titles, and was later admitted to the English peerage as the first Earl of Anglesey.
Edmund Calamy, writing about Dr Annesley some thirty years after his death, records that, 'He was descended of a Good Family; and I am inform'd his Paternal Estate was considerable. His Father died when he was four Years old; and his religious Mother took great care of his Education.
He was strongly inclin'd to the Ministry from his Infancy; and was not discourag'd in it by an affecting Dream he had while he was a Child: Which was, that he was a Minister, and sent for by the Bishop of London, and to be burnt for a Martyr.'4 At the age of fifteen, Samuel Annesley went up to Queen's College, Oxford, and proceeded B.A. in 1639, on the * For the name Susanna, cf. The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names,
Ed. E. G. Withycombe, 2nd ed. (1950), p. 26of.
*s.v. John White. See Dictionary of National Biography (afterwards D.N.B.) * D.N.B. s.v. Samuel Annesley; Clarke, Wesley Family, 11, 362.
"Edmund Calamy, A Continuation of the Account of the Ministers, Lecturers, Masters and Fellows of Colleges, and Schoolmasters, who were Ejected and Silenced after the Restoration in 1660, by or before the Act of Uniformity. 2 vols. (1727), I, 65.
"THE SAINT PAUL OF THE NONCONFORMISTS'
eve of the Civil War. He then disappears from sight during the first few confused years of the conflict, until, on the twentieth of December 1642, we find his name listed among the Puritan lecturers or preachers sanctioned by the Long
Parliament: 'Samuel Anneley [sic| Lecturer of Chatham (Kent).'! Yet, though already preaching, he was not ordained—as a Presbyterian minister—until two years later.
His ordination certificate, signed by seven senior ministers, relates that he has been chosen to serve as a chaplain aboard the warship Globe, which formed part of the fleet under the command of the Earl of Warwick, the Parliament's Lord
High Admiral.?
His naval service was not continuous, however, for by 1645 he had become the Rector of Cliffe, Kent, a wealthy living worth some three hundred pounds a year.® At Cliffe
Annesley replaced Dr Griffith Higgs, a cleric who was not acceptable to the Parliament.* His own allegiance to the parliamentary cause gained him other distinctions, besides
- his living and his naval chaplaincy. At the instance of the Earl of Warwick, who 'had other Chaplains that were
Doctors' and 'was willing that Mr Annesley should be a Doctor too',® the University of Oxford did the patriotic thing and made the young chaplain a Doctor of Civil Laws in 1648. In this same year he was chosen to preach to the House of Commons at a solemn monthly fast-day, on July the twenty-sixth. The members assembled in St Margaret's,
Westminster, and heard the young minister announce his text from the Book of Job, chapter 27, verses 5 and 6: 'God forbid that I should justify you: till I die I will not remove
1 Commons Fournals, I1, 897, as cited in W. A. Shaw, The English Church 1640-
1660, II, 304.
2 See Calamy, Continuation, 1, 66f.
3 See Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, I1, 53. For the valuation of the Sat ae Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England (1714),
"See Walker, op. cit., Pt. II, 39.
5 Calamy, Continuation, 1, 67.
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my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.'
The Commons must have wondered what was coming next, after this announcement of unshakeable integrity. They were soon to find that this young man of twenty-eight, for all the preferments he had received from Parliament, was no time-server. He proceeded fairly to trounce the members, by way of recalling them to their duty to maintain strict integrity of faith and practice. Far from being overawed by the occasion, he claimed it as the privilege of ministers to 'propose sifting Interrogatories-—in other words, to ask searching questions—and proceeded to do so in no uncertain terms. His first 'interrogatory' set the tone for all the rest:
'And first, let me ask you, what you are in matters of Religion, and the power of godliness? For present forget your greatness, and give account of your goodness (if you have it); do not some of you cause the Enemies of God to blaspheam, & the very name of Reformation to be a byword among those that hate it?! The members of the House can hardly have sat easily under his probing series of questions: 'What ends had you in seeking or accepting publick employments? ..
. What have you done in point of Justice?
.. Have you let slip seasons of Reformation?'—a question clearly expecting the answer yes. He ended by urging them to humiliation, repentance, justice, integrity, resolution, and in a final word "To the People' somewhat ironically warns them not to disparage their Magistrates.
In this sermon of Annesley's there is no smooth flattery of a distinguished congregation. It is typically direct, searching, Puritan preaching, though perhaps its sharp edge is made sharper by the fiery idealism of a young man and the 1 A Sermon preached to the Honourable House of Commons, Fuly 26, 1648. At Margarets Westminster, being The Solemn monethly-Fast day. By Samuel Annesley, L.L.D.,
Preacher of the Gospel at Cliffe in Kent. In the spirit of self-mortification, the Commons ordered the sermon to be printed.
'THE SAINT PAUL OF THE NONCONFORMISTS'
tense state of the war.! By August he was at sea again, and prepared the sermon for the press, 'aboard the George riding off Goree in Holland', where the Parliament's fleet had sailed in pursuit of the ships which had gone over to Prince
Charles.? His sea journal ended in November, and by midwinter he appears to have returned to his pastoral charge at Cliffe. He had been strongly critical of Charles I in his sermon to the Commons, but he drew the line at regicide and by his own account 'publicly detested the horrid murder' of the King. In 1651, when Cromwell defeated Charles (II) at Worcester, Annesley 'refused to send a horse against his
Majesty .
. and despatched a servant at night from a distance of forty miles to secure the church keys, in order that no schismatical ministers might hold a thanksgiving service in his church in celebration of Cromwell's victory'.
His outspoken criticism of Cromwell ('the arrantest hypocrite that ever the Church of Christ was pestered with'), apparently lost him his living of Cliffe, for he spoke of himself later as 'necessitated to quit a parsonage worth between two and three hundred pounds per annum. and get into the least parish in London, without any other title besides the choice of the people'.
The 'least parish in London' was St John the Evangelist, Friday Street, where he began work in 1652.5 Despite his opposition to the Cromwellian regime, he was appointed in 1657 to preach 'a lecture on the Lord's Day afternoon in St Paul's Cathedral',* and received one hundred and twenty
1 Part of the Parliament's fleet had revolted. See note under 27 July 1648 in Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, 3rd ed. (1888), p. 278.
2 Calamy, Continuation, I, 67. Annesley kept a journal of this spell at sea, and for notes of some of his sermons preached on shipboard, see Historical MSS
Commission, 12th Report, Appendix, Pt. IX, 177.
3 For Baxter's similar charges against Cromwell, see The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, ed. J. M. Lloyd Thomas, (n.d., Preface 1925), p. 69f.
4J. Stoughton, History of Religion in England (1640-1700), (6 vols., 1881), il, 42-3.
5 Clarke, Wesley Family, 1, 366.
* Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1657-8, Pp. 52.
Fad
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pounds a year for doing so.The next year he was authorized by Richard Cromwell, the Lord Protector's son, as Vicar of the great parish of St Giles, Cripplegate, where he remained until the Restoration brought a drastic change in the religious settlement.
Dr Annesley's ministry at St Giles ended with a bang rather than a whimper, for in September 1661 there was held in his church a special series of 'morning exercises', or daily preaching services, at which leading Puritan ministers took turns to officiate. The 'Exercise' had begun as a prayer meeting in the dark and confused days of the Civil War, when, Most of the citizens in London having some relation or friend in the army of the Earl of Essex, so many bills were sent up to the pulpit every Lord's day for their preservation, that the ministers had not time to notice them in prayer, or even to read them.
It was therefore agreed to set apart an hour at seven o'clock every morning, half of it to be spent in prayer for the welfare of the public, as well as particular cases, and the other in exhortatioris to the people. Mr Case began it in his church in Milk-street, from whence it was removed to the other distant churches in rotation, a month at each. A number of the most eminent ministers conducted this service, in turn; and it was attended by great crowds of people. After the heat of the war was over, it became what was called a Casuistical Lecture, and continued till the Restoration. The sermons were published in six volumes quarto.
On the fourteenth of November 1661; Dr Annesley wrote his editorial preface to the first of these six volumes, which bore the title, The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate: or, Several
Cases of Conscience Practically Resolved, by sundry Ministers, September 1661. It was to be one of his last acts as Vicar of St Giles, for the year 1662 confronted 'sundry Ministers', including Annesley, with a very searching and personal 'Case
*D. Neal, History of the Puritans, ed. J. Toulmin (5 vols., 1796), I, 797.
'Mr Case' was Thomas Case, author of The Morning Exercise Methodized (1660). Dr Annesley edited the first four volumes of the published sermons—in 1661, 1674, 1682, and 1690.
'THE SAINT PAUL OF THE NONCONFORMISTS'
of Conscience', and one which had to be most 'Practically Resolved'.
To conform or not to conform, that was the question. With the restoration of the monarchy came the restoration of the Established Church, of the Prayer Book, and of episcopacy.
For the moderate Puritan, the dilemma was an agonizing one. Should he make the declaration required by the Act of Uniformity, which involved a complete endorsement of every jot and tittle of the doctrine and liturgy of the Prayer Book, a step which, for men like Annesley in Presbyterian orders, would mean re-ordination at the hands of a bishop? Or was he to heed the pastoral needs of his people and the economic circumstances of his family, take the Oath, swallow his scruples, and hope for a measure of reform and toleration in the Church as time went on? Annesley, in company with many of the finest of the Puritan ministers, men of the stamp of Richard Baxter, Daniel Williams, and John Wesley's great-grandfather Bartholomew Westley, chose to foresake his
benefice rather than violate his conscience, and so ended his term as Vicar of St Giles.} 1662 was to prove the great watershed, the beginning of the time of troubles for Nonconformity, and the source of that long tension between 'Church' and 'Chapel', which, if it has diversified, has also bedevilled, English religious history. Though for many years moderates on both sides made brave attempts at comprehension and reunion, the breach grew steadily wider, and 1662 proved to be a real turning point in the religious life of the nation. Puritanism— the attempt to purify, transform, revolutionize the Church from within—now gave way to Nonconformity, separately organized, with its own ministry, training colleges, congregations and meeting-houses, standing over against the 1 According to Annesley's son-in-law, John Dunton, the living of St Giles was worth £700 a year. See The Life and Errors of John Dunton, ed. J. Nichols
(2 vols., 1818), I, 367f.
y 4 o
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parish church and the hierarchy of the Establishment.
Despite a myriad personal contacts across the divide, and a leavening of Christian charity which survived all the persecution and bitterness, English religion could never be the same again.
Yet though Annesley had surrendered his living, he had not given up his ministry. A survey of Nonconformist activity made in 1669 reported him as preaching to a congregation of no less than eight hundred Presbyterians in Spitalfields,
'at a New House built for that purpose, with Pulpit & Seates'. In this meeting house, with its 'three good galleries',
Dr Annesley was licensed as a Presbyterian 'teacher' in 1672, when the Declaration of Indulgence officially allowed Nonconformists to worship in public.1 Here he ministered until his death in 1696, though his long and fruitful ministry was subject to periodic disturbances, both religious and secular. The first of these was a reminder that the tumultuous religious passions roused under the Commonwealth were by no means extinct in the 1670s. On October the twentieth
1678, the service at Dr Annesley's new meeting house was interrupted by a Quakeress named Elizabeth Bathurst, who under conviction of the Spirit's leading, proceeded to vent the wrath of the Lamb upon the astonished congregation.
Elizabeth Bathurst and her sister Anne had both belonged to Annesley's Presbyterian congregatign before joining the Friends. When Elizabeth failed to gain a satisfactory hearing at the meeting house where she had once worshipped, she published An Expostulatory Appeal to the Professors of Christianity, Foyned in Community with Samuel Ansley.2 In this pamphlet she described, more in sorrow than in anger, the rebuff she had met with at their hands. She tried to speak during the service, but was asked 'to be silent during Prayer time' and wait till the end of the service. She duly waited,
+ A. Gordon, Freedom after Ejection, (1917), p. 201.
* No date; a copy is in the Library of the Friends' Historical Society.
'THE SAINT PAUL OF THE NONCONFORMISTS'
but 'no sooner had I charged you with being out of the right way, but you made good that charge immediately, by shewing that persecuting Spirit, which infallibly marks out and deciphers the false Church'. In other words, they promptly showed her the door. She had approached Dr Annesley personally, 'to render the Reason of my turning from him', but received only 'a hasty Put-by from him'. No doubt he found it hard to deal with this sincere but volatile woman, who while professing 'a kind and friendly Respect' for him, denounces him and his flock as 'found in the Spirit of Antichrist'.?
On Saturday November the eighteenth 1682, Dr Annesley suffered a disturbance of a different kind when his house was raided and his goods seized to pay fines incurred by conducting Nonconformist worship. The Declaration of Indulgence
(1672) had been revoked the following year, and sporadic persecution of the Dissenters began again. A contemporary chronicle of events recorded laconically that, 'Dr Ansleys
-house was broke into by the Informers &c. on Saturday & his Goods distrained upon for severall latent Convictions.'?
Such a raid was often a vicious affair, in which the constables, incited by the informers, ransacked a man's house and plundered his goods far beyond the limit of the legal fine.
Not that the fines were negligible. One London minister in this very year was fined £840 for holding meetings, and even
Dr Annesley's private means cannot have stood such losses for long.® The period 1682-3, brought two further personal blows to Dr Annesley, through the actions of his daughters. One was married without his knowledge to the infamous Thomas
Dangerfield, one of the informers involved in the Popish Plot. He was impartial in his malice, and would inform
1 Elizabeth Bathurst, An Expostulatory Appeal, pp. 4-5.
2 Dr. Williams' Library, Morrice MSS, Entering Book, Vol. 1, f. 345.
® For full details, see G. R. Cragg, Puritanism in the period of the Great Persecution
1660-1688, (1957), pp. 5O6ff.
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against Presbyterians as Well as Catholics, having drawn up in 1679, 'a paper concerning pretended clubs or meetings of the presbyterians, with full lists of the members of each'.?
Under 7 April 1683, a contemporary record noted, 'Mr Dangerfield some time since marryed Dr Annesley's daughter without her father's knowledge, and about the beginning of last weeke claimed her and has her', adding, what we may well believe, 'it makes a great deale of discourse in town.'?
Yet what was to the town a passing scandal, must have been to Dr Annesley an enduring shame and sorrow.
The second family upset at this period was the decision of his young daughter, Susanna, not yet thirteen, to return to the Church of England. We shall look more fully at this crucial turning point in her life, and suggest some possible reasons for it, in the next chapter. Here we need only say that Dr Annesley, whose feelings can be imagined, accepted Susanna's decision with a quite extraordinary charity and understanding.® This reaction is an index of the strength of Annesley's Christian character, a character which neither ecclesiastical reversals nor personal misfortune could sour. He remained active and hopeful to the end. His son-in-law, John Dunton, compared him to St Paul, and described how, 'He had the care of all the Churches upon his mind, and was the great support of Dissenting Ministers, and of the Morning Lecture.' He was also one of the Managers of the 'Common Fund' set up jointly in 1690 by Presbyterians and Congregationalists for the support of needy ministers and congregations. He made a personal contribution of a hundred pounds, and promised to continue it as an annual subscription.' In 1694 he took part in the first public ordination service for a Nonconformist minister to be held in London since 1662, at his own meeting-house. Yet 1 See D.N.B., s.v. Thomas Dangerfield.
* Dr Williams' Library, Morrice MSS, Entering Book, Vol. I, f. 363.
* See below, pp. 61f.
"A, Gordon, Freedom after Ejection, pp. 158ff.
"THE SAINT PAUL OF THE NONCONFORMISTS'
neither his responsibilities nor his sorrows could overwhelm him, and John Dunton could write from personal knowledge,
'His Nonconformity created him many troubles ; however, all the difficulties and disappointments he met with from an ungrateful world did never alter the goodness and the cheerfulness of his humour.'! In the last year of Dr Annesley's life,
1696, there was published the autobiography of his old friend, Richard Baxter. It contained, as part of a 'Description of the London Ministers', a characterization of Annesley:
'Dr Annesley is a most sincere, godly, humble Man, totally devoted to God, worthily to be joyned with his two great intimate Friends, Dr Drake, and Mr White, whose Preaching in those two greatest Auditories, Giles's Cripplegate, and Paul's Church, did very much good till he was silenced."?
Silenced he may have been in the pulpits of St Paul's and St Giles', but he continued to proclaim the Word committed to him at his ordination, in his family, in his meeting-house, and through his books.
In outlining the career of Dr Annesley, we have incidentally gone some way towards sketching his character also. He stands out as a man of principle and integrity, devoted to his calling, and unswervingly loyal to his conscience. To fill out the picture, we can draw on a variety of sources of information. The first group consists of personalia bearing the impress of his character: portraits, a copy of the sale catalogue of his library, and, most notably, his own writings. The second group comprises descriptions of his character published by his friends and contemporaries. Of these, the two fullest are the funeral sermon preached by his friend Dr Daniel Williams,? and a 'Character' of Annesley
1 Dunton, Life and Errors, I, 165.
2 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. Matthew Sylvester (1696), Pt. III, 95.
Baxter wrote this part of his life in 1670. For a letter from Baxter to 'my Reverend & worthy friend Dr Annesley', dated
13 January 1678-9, see Dr Williams' Library MSS, Baxter Letters, Vol. I, f. 51.
3 Daniel Williams, The Excellency of A Publick Spirit: Set forth in a Sermon preach'd .. . at the Funeral of that late Reverend Divine Dr Samuel Annesley, (1697). de 4
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in the form of an elegy, from the pen of Daniel Defoe,! who had sat in his congregation and paints a lively picture of him as pastor and preacher.
There are three known portraits or engravings of Dr Annesley, all in Dr Williams' Library." Two are rather nondescript, sparing in detail, and showing him with a round, full face. The third, a fine portrait in oils, is much more interesting and distinctive. It shows him dressed in a skullcap, gown, and preaching bands, with a lean, strong face, framed in long, black, curling hair. It is a manly face, full of strength and determination, and serves to remind us that Annesley had seen action as a naval chaplain. It does not so readily suggest the face of a scholar, but the testimony of friends and the evidence of his library combine to show that he was in fact a close student and a well-read divine. His library was large and impressive in its breadth: the Fathers,
Greek and Latin, together with Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Nonconformist divinity, filled his shelves. Edward Millington, who auctioned his books on Thursday, 18th
March 1697, at Rolls' Auction House in Petty Canon Alley near St Paul's, urged upon readers of his catalogue of the Annesley Library the worth both of the Doctor and his books :
This Catalogue consists of the Library of the Reverend and Learned Dr Annesley, lately deceas'd, a Person so Eminent for his Piety and Usefulness, being generally known, and universally esteem'd in this City, that I forbear any farther Character.
I presume I may without Offence say, That the Books are considerable, and well chosen, being the best that cou'd be bought,
1 The Character of the late Dr Samuel Annesley, By way of Elegy... Written by one of his Hearers. The Preface is signed 'D.F.', and John Dunton (Life and Errors,
I, 166) confirms that these are in fact the initials of Daniel (de) Foe: 'After his decease, Mr Williams preached his Funeral Sermon, and Mr De Foe drew his Character, which I published. .
. .» On Defoe's personal piety, partly no doubt formed under Annesley's ministry, see G. H. Healey, The Meditations of Daniel Defoe (1946).
* The engravings are found in a folio volume of illustrations to W. Wilson's History of the Dissenting Churches of London, (4 vols., 1808).
'THE SAINT PAUL OF THE NONCONFORMISTS'
and generally Valu'd in his time. The Fathers, the best Editions, both Greek and Latin, that are extant; Church-History and Councils, valuable; School-men and Casuists, not common;
The Commentators and Practical Expositors, Authors of great Repute (if not of Prime Note) when he purchas'd them. Philology,
Humanity in Greek and Latin, not many, but very scarce. The whole is Inviting to all Studious and Knowing Persons, and will appear so, in the Perusing of the Catalogue, as also upon the View of the Books Three Days before the Sale.!
To the critical professional eye of Millington, some of Dr Annesley's books no doubt seemed rather out of date. They were 'the best that cou'd be bought, and generally Valu'd in his time'. Books, and not least theological books, date quickly, and some of the tomes from Dr Annesley's library published in the early and mid-seventeenth century would assuredly not find a very ready sale in 1697. Yet discounting the economics of book-selling—something Millington could hardly afford to do—it is clear that Dr Annesley had amassed a fine collection of books during his ministry of more than
_ half a century.
Nor were his books simply so much study furniture. He really read them, as his writings show. Here the works listed in Millington's sale catalogue appear again, thumbed and used, cited and criticized, as part of a minister's working library and not of a neatly classified inventory. Writing on 'What it is to love God with the whole heart', he refers, within a page or so, to the Fathers (Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and Origen), to Anselm the scholastic, to John
Gerhard the Lutheran, and to Cajetan the Roman Catholic controversialist.2 The copious marginal references in his books reveal the breadth of his learning, and yet it was learning put to extremely practical use. Most of his
1 Bibliotheca Annesliana: or a Catalogue of Choice Greek, Latin, and English Books, both Ancient and Modern .
. being the Library of the Reverend Samuel Annesley, L.L.D. And Minister of the Gospel Lately Deceas'd. (S.C. 881 in the British Museum collection of Catalogues of British Book Sales.)
2A Supplement to the Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Sam. Annesley, and ed. (1676), pp. +5 . od
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published work consists of sermons: the sermon before the Commons, funeral sermons for his friends, sermons at the Morning Exercises. Like his grandson, John Wesley, whom a recent writer has described as 'the last of the Pur?
divines',! Dr Annesley was 'a. great preacher to the conscience'.? His normal preaching dealt with 'cases of conscience', or practical matters of Christian conduct and belief.
At the Morning Exercises he handled such questions as, 'How may we be universally and exactly conscientious?', 'How may we attain to love God?', and 'How may we give Christ a satisfying account why we attend upon the ministry of the Word?' In the words of his friend, Daniel Williams, 'By his very often reading over the Scriptures from his Childhood, he became a great Textuary; and by aptly produced Texts, he oft surprised eminent Ministers; as his solution of Cases of Conscience (which his Sermons much consisted of) did instruct and satisfie them.' Daniel Defoe concurs as to the essential bent of his learning: 'Practical Divinity was" his
Business, and Cases of Conscience his Study.'
As a preacher, Annesley had the gift of presenting Christian truth at once attractively and with a searching personal application. Defoe shows him in action in the pulpit:
The SACRED BOW he so Divinely drew, That every shot both hit and overthrew; His native Candor, and familiar Stile, Which did so oft his Hearers Hours beguile,
Charm'd us with Godliness, and while he spake, We lov'd the Doctrine for the Teacher's sake.
While he inform'd us what his Doctrines meant, By dint of Practice more than Argument, Strange were the Charms of his Sincerity,
* Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England from Watts and Wesley to Maurice, 1690-1850, (1961), p. 184.
*jJ. H. Rigg, The Living Wesley, pp. 128-9; quoted by Horton Davies, op. cit., p. 156n.
*D. Williams, The Excellency of a Publick Spirit, p. 139.
"D.F., The Character of the Late Dr Samuel Annesley, Preface.
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Which made his Actions and his Words agree At such a constant and exact a rate, As made a Harmony we wondred at .. .1
Part of his attractiveness as a preacher no doubt sprang from his skilful use of the homely illustration. With a few deft strokes he could drive his point home sharply and memorably. Preaching on conscience, he argues that even 'practical
Atheists', who reject God, 'yet cannot get rid of his Deputy, their Conscience', and adds, "Those that are without or Reject the Sunshine of Scripture, yet they cannot blow out
Gods Candle of Conscience'.? In the same sermon he likens conscience to a sleepy, fretful child: 'O how often hath thy
Conscience whimper'd, and thou hast husht it to sleep again!
What doth thy sleepy Conscience most dread? an awakening Ministry? So far cross thy Conscience as to attend no other:
Instead of lullaby notions, improve cutting convictions.' In his treatment of 'A scrupulous Conscience', he has another neat simile: 'A scruple in the minde is as gravell in the shooe,
* it vexeth the Conscience as that hurts the foot.'
Together with Dr Annesley's popular preaching style, there went an intense pastoral concern and zeal for souls.
It was these very qualities that led many Nonconformists to supply the places of parish clergy who fled from London when the horror of the Great Plague struck the city in 1665.
Puritans then mounted the steps of pulpits left empty by their incumbents, and ministered to the sick and dying in the stricken city.4 Of Samuel Annesley's activities during the Plague Year, we have no direct knowledge; but of his pastoral concern and devotion, there is evidence from more than one source. We see it in the pastoral letter with which 1 Tbid., pp. 6-7.
2 The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley (1661), p. 5.
3 Ibid., pp. 10, 17 (2).
4 For contemporary references, see Cragg, Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution, 1660-1688, p. 13, and Defoe,:A Journal of the Plague Year (1927 ed.),
P32.
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he prefaced the first volume of sermons preached at the Morning Exercise:
To my most unfeignedly Beloved Parishioners of Saint GILES Cripplegate.
My Dear Friends, These Sermons, both preach'd and printed are the meer product of love to your Souls. I never yet (that I remember) went thorow the Parish without some (though not sutably compassionate) heart-akeing yearnings towards my charge. to think
(and oh that I could think of it according to the worth of Souls) how many thousands here are posting to Eternity, that within a few years will be in Heaven or Hell, and I know not how, so much as to aske them whither they are going...
.} We see the high conception of the ministerial office, a sure token of the true Puritan, which lay behind this pastoral concern, in his funeral sermon for the Reverend William
Whitaker, preached in 1673. Whitaker, says Annesley, embodied the truth that, 'A Minister's whole being should be in his Ministry ; his soul, his body, his time, all his graces, all his learning, all his studies, all his interests, all laid out in the work of THE Ministry.' He goes on to stir up his fellowministers to emulate Whitaker in the exercise of their ministry : "Lets make it our business to be as much Ministers out of the Pulpit, as in it. The well discharge of the Ministry is an intolerable drudgery to a carnal heart: to have not our
Sermons, but our occasional discourses; to have not only our words, but our silence speak us Ministers of Christ ; to be always upon our watch (if I may so speak) sleeping and waking, that is, to sleep no more than is necessary to our watchfulness; who that is not gracious (I had almost said) eminently gracious, can endure it???
Annesley's own words are endorsed by the testimony of those who knew him well. Timothy Rogers, preaching at the funeral of Annesley's daughter Elizabeth, who did not long
» The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley (1661), Preface.
* Annesley, A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of Reverend Mr Will, Whitaker (1673), pp. 24ff.
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survive her father, calls to mind his having 'so flaming and so hearty a Love to the Salvation of Men'. As the funeral was being held in Annesley's meeting-house, Rogers could confidently assert, 'I know there are among you several that bless God for him, and who love everything that's any way related to so tender and so good a Man. This Pulpit, and these Seats, and all you have been Witnesses of his Fervour : he never spared his Body, nor his Pains to do you good; many an hour in secret did he pray for you, as well as many an hour he spent in very diligent and severe Studies, to do you good.'! John Dunton, the eccentric printer and bookseller who married Elizabeth Annesley, paid a similar tribute to his father-in-law: 'Among my Dissenting Authors, I shall begin with Dr Annesley, a man of wonderful Piety and Humility. I have heard him say, that ""He never knew the time he was not converted". The great business and the pleasure of his life was, "to persuade sinners back to God from the general apostacy"' ; and in the faithful discharge of 'his Ministry he spent fifty-five years.'? While on a business trip to America in 1686, Dunton received striking confirmation of Dr Annesley's evangelical zeal. He was visiting places of interest in New England, and having seen Harvard
College, of which Annesley's friend Richard Baxter was a benefactor, he records:
My next ramble was to Roxbury, in order to visit the Rev. Mr Elliot, the great Apostle of the Indians. He was pleased to receive me with abundance of respect; and inquired very kindly after Dr Annesley, my Father-in-law, and then broke out with a world of seeming satisfaction, 'Is my brother Annesley yet alive? Is he yet converting souls to God? Blessed be God for this information before I die." He presented me with twelve Indian Bibles, and desired me to bring one of them over to Dr Annesley; as also with twelve 'Speeches of converted Indians', which himself had published.
1 Timothy Rogers, The Character of a Good Woman (1697), pp. 122ff.
* Dunton, Life and Errors, 1, 165.
; 3 Dunton, op. cit., I, u 5:
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The saintly Puritan John 'Eliot (1604-1690) was nearing the end of a noble life and ministry when Dunton met him in 1686. His gifts and graces were in many ways similar to those of Dr Annesley himself, and his sterling character gives his words of commendation real weight. Richard Baxter said of Eliot, 'There was no man on earth whom I honour'd above him,' while a modern biographical sketch suggests a singularly impressive and attractive character:
He was the first to carry the gospel to the red man, and perhaps the earliest who championed the negro. Strangers with whom he came in contact spoke of the peculiar charm of his manners. He united fervent piety and love of learning to burning enthusiasm for evangelisation, these qualities being tempered with worldly wisdom and shrewd common sense .
. No name in the early history of New England is more revered than his. Eliot was truly of a saintly type, without fanaticism, spiritual pride, or ambition.
A final tribute to Dr Annesley's capacity as pastor and evangelist, comes from Edmund Calamy, who is defending him agaimst an opponent who alleged that Annesley was unlearned and quite undeserving of his doctorate. Calamy rejoined, 'Whatever he was for a Civilian
(i.e. a Civil Lawyer) his Works will witness for him that he was a Good Divine, and a considerable Casuist. And if Solomon's Maxim that he that winneth Souls is wise, may be allow'd to stand good, Dr Annesley must be own'd to have been one of more than common Wisdom."?
With this intense pastoral concern, Dr Annesley united acute spiritual insight in the cure of souls. Puritanism at its' best excelled in this insight, which received classic expression in Baxter's Autobiography. We find the same quality in a sermon of Annesley's on conscience, where he gives detailed
1 D.N.B., s.v. John Eliot.
2 Calamy, Continuation, I, 72. For the quite unsubstantiated charge of 'Egregious Stupidity', made against Annesley by John Walker, to whom
Calamy is replying, see Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, (1714), Pt. II, 39.
* Compare especially, Baxter, Autobiography, ed. Lloyd Thomas, pp. 103-132 (Baxter's 'Self-analysis and Life-review'). pene
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and pertinent advice to the man with a 'trembling conscience', who has fears for his soul's state. First, says Annesley,
"Bless God for an awakened conscience.' Then, 'Observe 'tis Gods usuall method to bring the soul through these perplexities to the most solid spirituall peace.' Finally, in. the sphere of action, he counsels, 'Do but hold on in the vigorous use of all means of Grace, and reckon Gods keeping thee from turning thy back on his ways, when thou hast no comfort in them, the secret hed he gives, which thou tak'st no notice of.'?
All his pastoral zeal and spiritual insight, however, were tempered by a humble modesty. In both theology and churchmanship he seems to have been, like his friend Richard
Baxter, of a notably moderate and irenical spirit. It is surely significant that such a leading divine as Dr Annesley should have left behind him no contributions to the fierce theological warfare of his day, no controversial tracts and pamphlets instinct with the odium theologicum. He was content to be
'preacher, pastor, casuist; controversy he left to others. Not - that he lacked openings, if he had been looking for personal matters of dispute, for his doctorate, his relationship to the Earl of Anglesey, his sermon before the Commons, and his dealings with the Quakers, all made him the subject of attack, sometimes in print. Yet he never replied in kind,— almost as though he were too preoccupied with his ministry to spend time wiping off the personal slurs which were cast upon him. It was not merely lack of time, however. He positively eschewed controversy. In a preface he contributed to Richard Allein's Instruction about Heart-Work (1684), he expressed a fervent wish that the only contention among Christians might be over who could do most to promote personal religion: 'Were all our swords of contention beaten into plough-shares and pruning-hooks, for ploughing up the fallow ground of the heart, for pulling up the weeds, and 1 The wie es alae Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 18 (2). s
SUSANNA WESLEY
cutting off the luxuriances of the heart; were it the only contention, who should most promote gracious heart-work in themselves and others; it would afford comfort both living
-and dying.'
We may gauge Annesley's own disposition even more clearly from the tributes included in the funeral sermon he preached for his friend and convert, Thomas Brand. He extolled Brand as a minister whose 'chief Zeal was neither for, nor against any Party whatsoever, but for the vigorous
Promoting of the sound Knowledge of those Doctrines wherein we are all agreed, and of that Holiness which we all commend, tho' too few practice: And this right Christian
Temper he exercised towards the Conforming Clergy. He spake honourably of the Piety and Learning of some, and never let fly indecent Reflections, or bitter Invectives against any, but maintained and encreased this Commendable Moderation all his Life'.1 And so, we may be reasonably certain, did Dr Annesley. Defoe referred to him as, 'Dr
ANNESLEY, whose generous Soul had nothing in him that was little or mean,' and grew warm in praise of, 'the Zeal, the Candor, the Sincerity of his Mind; the Largeness of his
Charity, the Greatness of his Soul, the Sweetness of his Temper, and the Vastness of his Designs to propagate the Kingdom and Interest of his Master.'? In the same vein,
Daniel Williams was moved by the life of Annesley to urge those who attended his funeral to 'an intentness to promote mere Christianity, and unaffected Godliness, which reforms the world, edifies the Church, and saves the Souls of Sinners in proportion to its success.' Annesley's whole life was a rebuke to 'a narrow Sectarian Spirit', by which, said Williams, 'I mean a Spirit that confineth Charity to a Sect distinguished from other Christians, by Customs or Opinions co The Life and Funeral Sermon of the Reverend Mr Thomas Brand,
1692), p. 3.
2D. F., The Character of the late Dr Samuel Annesley, Preface.
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that are not essential to true Godliness, and is embittered and enraged against all who differ from such Usages and Opinions. This is the Spirit of Popery ; speeaee is a Sect, tho' a great one)....'!
Here we breathe the same atmosphere as in the writings of Richard Baxter, who in ecclesiastical controversy was a consistent champion of the Augustinian formula for peace,
"Unity in things necessary and liberty in things unnecessary, and charity in all,' and who confessed, 'I am much more sensible than ever of the necessity of living upon the principles of religion which we are all agreed in, and uniting these ; and how much mischief men that overvalue their own opinions have done by their controversies in the Church; how some have destroyed charity, and some caused schisms by them, and most have hindered godliness in themselves and others, and used them to divert men from the serious prosecuting of a holy life.'?
To charity and tolerance, Dr Annesley added humility 'and modesty. His humility was indeed one of the qualities
' which most impressed those who knew him intimately.
Baxter's description of Annesley as 'a most sincere, godly, humble man', was echoed by Defoe, who called him, 'A Moses for Humility and Zeal', and averred:
Humility was his dear and darling Grace, And Honesty sate Regent in his Face ; Meekness of Soul did in his Aspect shine,
But in the truth, resolv'd and masculine.* John Dunton similarly testified that he was
'a man of wonderful Piety and Humility', and Daniel Williams 1 Williams, The Excellency of A Publick Spirit, p. 64.
2 Baxter, Autobiography, ed. Lloyd Thomas, pp. 91, 106. For other examples of this irenical and ecumenical spirit in Nonconformity, see William Bates,
A Funeral Sermon... upon... Dr Thomas Manton (1678), pp. 55f; Isaac Watts's Preface to John Reynolds, A Practical Discourse of Reconciliation (1729), p. viii; and Isaac Watts, Orthodoxy and Charity United (1745), pp. 94, 266, 281f.
3D.F., The Character of the late Dr Samuel Annesley, p. 9.
« Dunton, Life and Errors, I, 165." a"
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concurred: 'His humility' was signal. He seemed to have the meanest Opinion of his own Gifts and Labours.'?
Enough has been said to show that there was more than a touch of the 'catholic spirit' of John Wesley in his grandfather's life and character. Nor does the resemblance end there. We may be sure that Annesley's grandson would have kindled to the old Puritan's pursuit of 'downright godliness'.
When we hear Annesley pleading for, 'an humble, serious, constant course of godliness,'? we are reminded of Wesley's persistent quest for holiness of heart and life, and of his passion for Christianity in earnest. This likeness is most strikingly seen in a remarkable passage from one of Dr
Annesley's sermons, which might well have been written by John Wesley, who did in fact reprint it in his Christian
Library. As we hear Annesley's words, it might almost be Wesley expounding that master text which for him embraced the whole dimension of Christian living, 'Faith working by love'. The passage runs:
Remember these two words, though you forget all the rest of the Sermon, viz., 'CHRIST and Holiness, Holiness and CHRIST': interweave these all manner of ways, in your whole conversation....
It is serious Christianity that I press, as the only way to better every condition: it is Christianity, downright Christianity, that alone can do it: it is not morality without faith ; that is but refined
Heathenism: it is not faith without morality: that is but downright hypocrisy: it must be a divine 'faith, wrought by the HOLY GHOST, where GOD and man concur in the operation ; such a faith as works by love, both to GOD and man; a holy faith, full of good works.
In Annesley, as in Wesley, we find the same stress on love of God as the supreme motive force of Christian living; the same emphasis upon duty—Annesley's first prescription for 1 Williams, The Excellency of a Publick Spirit, p. 142.
2A Supplement to the Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley (1674), Preface to the Reader.
8 A Christian Library, ed. John Wesley, (30 vols., 1819-27), XXIV, 4536.
"See below, p. 134.
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a good conscience is, 'Consult duty not events. There's nothing in the world for us to do, but to mind our duty,'— and upon method; the same concern for Christian perfection; the same insistence upon the means of grace. In temperament too, in their common charm of manner, their generous temper and irenical spirit, it would appear to be a case of like grandfather, like grandson. This hereditary influence and family likeness was transmitted to Wesley through his mother, who was the child of a Puritan home.
Having looked at her father's life and personality, we must now try to understand in greater detail exactly what was involved in the Puritan upbringing which helped to shape his daughter so decisively.
1 The Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate, ed. Annesley, p. 23 (2).
Bt #