East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical AssociationsRitchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
History
East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical Associations
Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
East Anglia (England)
Good times came to Dr. Young. The seed he had sown bore fruit. For
awhile England had woke up to attack the Stuart doctrine of royal
prerogative in Church and State. The men of Suffolk had been the
foremost in the fight, and in 1643 we find the Doctor in Duke’s Place,
London. A sermon was preached by him before the House of Commons, and
printed by order of the House. A Stowmarket Rector speaks of it
naturally as a very prolix, learned, somewhat dull and heavy effort to
encourage them to persevere in their civil war against the King; but he
has the grace to add: ‘There is much less of faction in it than many
others, and it is rather the production of a contemplative than of an
active partisan.’ ‘One of his examples,’ writes Mr. Hollingsworth, ‘is
from 2 Sam. xiii. 28, where the command of Absalom was to kill Amnon:
“Could the command of a _mortal man_ infuse that courage and valour into
the hearts _of his servants_ as to make them adventure upon a _desperate_
design? And shall not the command of the _Almighty God_ raise up the
hearts of His people employed by Him in any work to which _He_ calls
them, raise up their hearts in following at His command!”’ The Doctor
had not cleared himself of all the errors of his times. He urged on his
hearers, by the example of the Emperors, the necessity of maintaining the
doctrine of the Trinity uncorrupt, by the aid of the civil power. He
urged, however, on them personal holiness, in order that the reformation
of the Church might be more easily accomplished. The two legislative
enactments he wished them to pass were to confer a power upon the
Presbyterian clergy to exclude men from the Sacrament, and enforce a
better observance of the Sabbath-day. The sermon is scarce, but is bound
up with others in the Library at Cambridge, preached at the monthly fasts
before the House of Commons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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