The Story of an Ancient Parish: Breage with Germoe: With Some Account of Its Armigers, Worthies and Unworthies, Smugglers and Wreckers, Its Traditions and SuperstitionsCoulthard, H. R. (Hugh Robert)
History
The Story of an Ancient Parish: Breage with Germoe: With Some Account of Its Armigers, Worthies and Unworthies, Smugglers and Wreckers, Its Traditions and Superstitions
On the other hand, to the latitudinarian and philosophic Henry Eusticke,
John Wesley would no doubt appear as a lawless and erratic High Church
Clergyman, who out of pure self-will, in defiance of the orders of his
Bishop, went about obtruding himself into parishes where he had no
jurisdiction, and generally turning the world upside down. It was
enthusiasm, however, and not cold moralities, coupled with a Dr. Panglos
attitude towards all constituted things, as making for the best of all
possible worlds, that was going to change the hearts of the people. The
pity of it all is that the mutual prejudices between John Wesley and his
brother clergy ended in one more cruel rent in the seamless garb of the
Church--in making the holiest aspirations of the human heart, which
should have been the chiefest strength of the Church, into a source of
discord and division.
In speaking of John Wesley one is naturally reminded of another saintly
character, the tenderest episodes in whose career are closely bound up
with the parish of Breage. John Wesley confined his labours to people of
his own race and language; Henry Martyn sought to become the Apostle of
India and Persia. The connection of Henry Martyn with Breage was due to
Lydia Grenfell, the lady to whom he was engaged, having made her home to
a large extent with her brother-in-law, a Mr. Wylliams, who for many
years acted as curate-in-charge of Breage, for a non-resident pluralist
incumbent. Henry Martyn thus came to pass many happy days in what is now
the old Vicarage at Breage, previous to his departure for India. In his
diary he pathetically tells us how he proposed spending the last Sunday
in England at St. Hilary with Lydia Grenfell, but early in the morning
of that day a messenger arrived from Falmouth with the news that the
troopship in which he was sailing was about to put to sea with all
possible speed. He immediately started from St. Hilary by road, passing
through Breage on his way. There is a touching pathos in the statement
in his diary that he anxiously waited on deck till the ship in which he
sailed passed the Lizard Point, that he might search the twilight coast
for the familiar landmarks linked with the tenderest associations of his
life--one of the most prominent of which would be the old grey tower of
Breage Church, visible on clear days far out to sea--but, alas! as the
ship rounded the Lizard the whole coast lay embedded in thick banks of
cloud, and as the darkness fell and the ship forged out to sea this
lonely pioneer of the faith descended to his cabin, and poured out his
soul in prayer, that in the distant East, to which he was voyaging, he
might win kingdoms for Christ. This first of the great modern English
Missionaries was never fated to see the home of his youth again; his lot
was not to win kingdoms for Christ, but to find a martyr's grave in
Persia. Lydia Grenfell rests at Breage under the shadow of the old grey
Church on the hill overlooking the sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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