Bushell; from Newton Bushell to Totness; from Totness to Dartmouth; from Dartmouth to Kingsbridge; from Kingsbridge to Modbury, including all the country parishes of these parts. These met once a quarter."

The history of Presbyterianism in Devonshire is closely connected with the name of the godly and pious JOHN FLAVEL, who, though associated with its earlier operations in that county in 1650, and one also of its ejected ministers in 1662, was spared to take a leading part, after the Revolution of 1688, in endeavouring to effect a union between the Presbyterians and their Congregational brethren in 1691. He had the satisfaction of seeing matters brought to what he thought an amicable conclusion, though unfortunately the arrangement did not last very long, being ultimately broken through by the Congregationalists. At the meeting of the Devonshire ministers held

1 Born about 1630, in the pleasant parsonage of Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. After graduating at Oxford, John Flavel received Presbyterian ordination in 1650, at Deptford, Devonshire, whence, in 1656, he removed to the larger and more populous Dartmouth, in the same county, on the earnest and unanimous call of the people, though it was "to his great loss in temporals, the Rectory of Deptford being a much more valuable benefice." When only twenty-three years of age, he presided with great dignity as "Moderator" of the Devonshire "Provincial Synod;" and when a Presbyterian Established Church was no longer possible, he was one of those who, under the Protectorate and later Commonwealth, strove in the spirit of Baxter at Kidderminster, and others in different places, to advance genuine godliness by a coalition of Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists, "that so, by their united counsels and forces, they might prevent the desolation of the Church and of the reformed religion," and stem the torrent of practical wickedness, as well as mitigate the evil of prevailing heresies, blasphemies, and divisions. "No man," we are told," was more generally popular or more beloved by his people. When ejected from Dartmouth, they clung to him with such devotion that it was with great difficulty he could tear himself away. On the passing of the Oxford Act,' the whole congregation followed him out of the town, and at Townstall Churchyard they took a mournful farewell." He suffered much under the Five-mile" and other persecuting Acts, ministering often secretly to his flock, and at great personal risk. On one occasion he was surprised when preaching to an immense congregation near the high road between Crediton and Exeter; but while several of his hearers were seized and heavily fined, he himself managed to escape the officers of the Crown. During the plague of London, 1665, his worthy father, Richard Flavel, who was also one of the ejected, happened to be on a visit to the City, and with his wife was at a meeting for prayer at a private house in Covent Garden, which was broken in upon by soldiers with drawn swords. They were arrested with the other worshippers, and being committed to Newgate, where the plague was raging, they both caught the infection, and were at last released only to die. John Flavel was spared till 1691, and reaped the benefits of the Revolution for a year or two. His practical works, The Mystery of Providence, A Token for Mourners, A Saint Indeed, and the two volumes on Husbandry, and Navigation spiritualized, have long continued among the best known and most useful of their kind, with their rich sap and savour, their homely yet striking metaphors and illustrative stories, their evangelical glow, and all the other ingredients of arresting and effective writing.

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at Exeter in June, 1691, to consider and adopt the London Articles of Agreement, Flavel was Moderator; but the thanksgiving sermon he so gladly preached on the occasion, was "his dying song." That very night, after supper, he was struck with paralysis, and passed to his rest saying, "I know that it will be well with me." A few years later, we find JOHN QUICK (to whom we are indebted for valuable sketches and memorials of Flavel and other worthies, in his Icones Sacræ Anglicanæ, still in MS.), crying out of a sorrowful heart, "Come out of your graves, ye old Puritans and self-denying ministers, and shame this selfish, quarrelsome, and contentious generation. Oh! that there were a double portion of the healing spirit of those Elijahs whom I knew in my younger days!"

tant.

1 John Quick's Icones Sacra Anglicane MS. "This interesting MS. volume is preserved, though in a very dilapidated and mouldering condition, in the Dr. Williams Library. It is entitled, "Icones Sacræ Anglicana, or the Lives and Deaths of severalls eminent English Divines, Ministers of the Gospel, Pastors of Churches, and Professors of Divinity in our own and foreign Universitys. A work never before ex2 Tim. 4, 5; Heb. 6, 12; Heb. 13, 7. Performed by John Quick, minister of ye Gospel." This is accompanied by other two volumes in folio, one of which is entitled, "Icones Sacræ Gallicana, being a History of the Lives of five-and-thirty eminent French Divines, Pastors, and Professors in the Reformed Church and Universities of France." The three volumes are written out in a fair hand, and carefully prepared for the press. (Prefixed are some poetical pieces, congratulating the author on the appearance of his work.) They appear to have been written about the year 1691, but, though the author's death did not take place till 1706, they were never published. Probably they came into the hands of Dr. Daniel Williams, who preached his funeral sermon. Dr. Calamy had access to these manuscripts, and has made ample use of them (see Calamy's Account, p. 230). He was the author of Synodicon in Gallia Reformata, or a History of the French Reformed Synods. Settled first at Brixton, in Devon (he was minister, too, at Middleburg, in Holland, where Cartwright had been, and also Joseph Hill, see Steven's Hist. of Rotterdam Church, p. 318, 319), he came to London, and continued to labour there for several years, chiefly in a meeting-house in Bartholomew Lane, near the ruins of St. Bartholomew's Church, where, through a low gateway, still extant, the martyrs were led to the stake at Smithfield. Strange, that the name of that blessed apostle should be so mixed up with scenes of massacre, martyrdom, and ejectment!" (M'Crie's Annals of English Presbytery, pp. 285, 286.)

VI.

THE FIRST, OR NEO-NOMIAN, CONTROVERSY. DR. DANIEL WILLIAMS AND THE RUPTURE OF THE LONDON UNION.

THERE was unfortunately too much reason for these sighings and expressions of grief by good John Quick, on account of the spirit of contention and recriminative suspiciousness that broke out in 1692 among the leading Dissenters, Presbyterian and Independent, in the Metropolis, and which raged with such fury for the next seven years, till the end of the century. The violent and unseemly theological controversy which suddenly sprang up, entirely shattered the London Happy Union within four years of its formation; but happily its worst effects were confined to the London neighbourhood, and did not seriously threaten the United Associations elsewhere, though it checked their development and prevented the growth of more. That the leading Congregational Brethren, who ultimately broke away from the Union, were the parties chiefly responsible for the rancour and bitter personal animosities of the controversy, will soon painfully appear.1 A dangerous spirit of Antinomianism2

1 See Bogue and Bennett's History of Dissenters, vol. i. pp. 402 and 418, for support of this view by candid Independents.

2 This was the dregs of an old controversy, inherited from the days of the Civil War, when it had been thrashed out in many treatises by members of the Westminster Assembly and others. One of the most famous of these volumes was, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, by Edward Fisher, originally published 1644-5, and designed to strike out the true middle way between Legalism and Antinomianism. The author endeavouring to reconcile and heal those unhappy differences which have lately broken out afresh amongst us," says Joseph Caryl in his Recommendation and Imprimatur of May 1, 1645. This was the book which, when reissued in 1718, with preface by James Hog of Carnock, produced such a commotion in Scotland, with memorable results. Of the author, Edward Fisher, we learn (Wood's Athene Oxoniensis, vol. ii. p. 198) he was a godly Puritan gentleman of good birth and education, the eldest son of a Knight, a member of Brazen-nose College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1627, and afterwards lived privately, "a noted person among the learned for his great reading in Ecclesiastical History, and in the Fathers, and for his admirable skill in Greek and Hebrew." His other writings were, An Appeal to the Conscience, 1644, 4to; A Christian Caveat to Old and New Sabbatarians, 1650; and An Answer to Sixteen Queries, touching the Rise and Observation of Christmas.

had begun to prevail among the more narrow but zealous section of Dissenters, fostered by the hyper-Calvinistic and supralapsarian forms of phraseology which so many, ignorantly but none the less vehemently, affected, as the alone test of orthodoxy. This now burst into a flame, when the son of the oncenotable Dr. Tobias Crisp1 republished his father's sermons with additions; and in order to promote the sale of this Episcopalian clergyman's works among Dissenters, had the art to secure an attestation of the genuineness of the fresh matter from some of their popular London preachers. The book fell in with the prevailing mood of narrow and bitter Evangelicism that had a hold on many of their hearers. Its circulation and influence were enormous, especially among many well-meaning but fiery members and ministers of the Independent and Baptist persuasions, who were carried away with its high-sounding but nonsensical paradoxes about predestinarianism and the doctrines of substitution and imputation. Something like a theological frenzy ensued; the advocates of an ultra-Calvinism denouncing all opponents of Crisp's views as legalists or worse, and decrying them, in speech, sermon, and pamphlet, as enemies of the pure Gospel. It was at this point that the afterwards celebrated Dr. DANIEL WILLIAMS began to distinguish himself in this controversy; and as he was one of the few among his prominent contemporaries who not only held firmly by Presbytery, but maintained still the Divine right of it as well, and was one of the most influential Presbyterian

1 Tobias Crisp, born of a wealthy London family, and educated at both Cambridge and Oxford, became a Wiltshire Rector; but being a Royalist, was driven from his parish at the beginning of the Civil Wars. He died in London, 1642, at the early age of forty-one. At first he was a vehement Arminian in Laud's time; but having adopted Calvinistic views with great earnestness, he wrote and preached these with corresponding vehemence, and to the uttermost extreme; unconsciously caricaturing and travestying each Calvinistic point with puzzle-headed perplexity, though doubtless with the best possible intentions. Through confounding imputation with transference, for example, he wrote of Christ's righteousness, not as if imputed, but actually transferred to the believer; not seeing that it is the benefits of Christ's righteousness that are transferred by virtue of the righteousness itself being imputed. He wrote, too, of Christ, as if He were a sinner-having men's sins actually transferred to Him; whereas it is the penalty that was transferred, the sins being only imputed. Crisp's heresies arrested the attention of the Westminster Assembly Divines, who, however, reckoned them too weak for further notice beyond their exposure by John Flavel and others at the time.

benefactors of his age, some special notice of him is here demanded.

Daniel Williams, D.D. (founder of the famous Library in London that bears his honoured name, and The Memoirs of whose Life and Eminent Conduct were written by his friend. and admirer, DANIEL DEFOE),' was born at Wrexham, Denbighshire, in 1644, and became at an early age one of the first to offer himself to the hazardous work of a Presbyterian probationer or preacher after the Uniformity Bill had been passed. Having gone to Ireland as chaplain to the Earl and Countess of Meath, he became Presbyterian pastor for a season at Drogheda, removing in 1667 to the central and influential Presbyterian Church in Wood Street, Dublin, where he laboured with great acceptance for the next twenty years. Exciting the rage and malice of the Papist party, and his life hardly being safe, he removed to London in 1687, and became the minister and friend of many poor Irish Protestant refugees. After the Revolution he was often consulted on Irish affairs by King William and Queen Mary, to whom his advice, it was understood, proved very serviceable. At the same time he accepted the pastoral charge of Hand Alley Presbyterian Church, Bishopsgate, one of the largest in the city. He was an intimate friend of the aged Richard Baxter, on whose death he was chosen, in 1692, to fill his place as one of the Pinners' Hall lecturers. Being thus a rising man among the London Presbyterian ministers, he was urged by some of his brethren to reply directly to Crisp and so to allay the plague.

"Williams possessed talents for the undertaking. He had a clear, logical head, he was well skilled in polemical theology, and he entered on the work of confutation with as much candour as can be well expected in a controversial writer. Having collected Dr. Crisp's opinions into certain heads, he stated under each what is the truth: what is the error that Dr. Crisp maintains, and quotes passages from his writings in support of the charge; he takes pains to specify wherein the Doctor does not differ from the common sentiments of divines, and after that, wherein the difference really lies; and he points out the way in which the Doctor was led into

1 See also Palmer's Noncon. Memorials, vol. ii. p. 640; sketch of his life by Rev. Thos. Morgan, 1816; and Armstrong's Ordination Sermon, etc., Dublin, 1829.