The antiquities of Bridgnorth : $b with some historical notices of the town and castleBellett, George
History
The antiquities of Bridgnorth : $b with some historical notices of the town and castle
Bellett, George
Bridgnorth (England) -- Antiquities
men whom we should shun as we do sharpers and swindlers—the mocked and
ruined Non-jurors were honest men.” (_Christian Remembrancer_, _vol._
XXXI, _pp. 412-413_).
One of these has left a name in the Church which will be honoured, as
long as simplicity and godly sincerity are held in estimation among
men. The life of Bishop Ken, both before and after his deprivation,
was one so blameless and harmless—one of such uniform gentleness and
charity, as to win almost universal reverence and regard; and the
record of it has extorted the admiration of those who are most opposed
to his principles. He refused to take the new oath of allegiance.
After giving the subject every possible consideration, and calmly and
dispassionately deliberating on it, he felt that he could not with
a clear conscience swear fidelity to William and Mary as his liege
sovereigns, and he submitted patiently to the penalties which his
refusal brought upon him. He felt it his duty to enter a public protest
against the act of the government, which deprived him of his Bishopric;
but he retired from it without a murmur, attended, however, by the
tears and lamentations of his flock, who had known him long enough to
form an estimate of his character, and to calculate their loss in being
deprived of his overseership and counsel. Like others of his Brethren,
he would have been reduced to great poverty, had not his attached
friend and College companion, Lord Weymouth, received him into his
house, at Longleat. There he lived for upwards of thirty years after
his deprivation, and there he died. He suffered during his latter years
an amount of bodily anguish, which few men are called on to endure,
and this he sought to alleviate, and not in vain, by the exercise of
prayer and contemplation, and by indulging in strains of sacred poetry,
for which he had a natural aptitude. These he called anodynes, and
“alleviations of Paine,” and such they proved to him. His Biographer
states that “writing, saying, and singing hymns, were his chief solace:
they turned his mournings into penitential sighs.” His death was
like his life, one of perfect peace. His burial was in harmony with
his character, free from ostentation and parade. His special request
was that he might be buried in the Church Yard of the nearest parish
without any manner of pomp or ceremony, and that he might be carried to
the grave by six of the poorest men in the parish. He left in his last
Will this declaration of his stedfast attachment to the Church, which
coming from one of his stamp is of no small importance in these days of
disloyalty and division:—
“As for my Religion, I die in the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith,
professed by the whole Church, before the disunion of the East and
West: more particularly I die in the Communion of ye Church of England,
as it stands distinguished from all Papall and Puritan innovations, and
as it adheres to the doctrine of the Crosse.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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