| . |
The Pilgrim Fathers and Benjamin Franklin: the Psalms among the royalists Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Sanderson, Strafford, and Laud: the Civil WarMarston Moor, John Hampden, Charles I. at Newark: Puritanism as a poetical, religious, and political force in Milton, Bunyan, and Cromwell.
To the Puritans of the seventeenth century, the Psalter was the book of books. Psalms were sung at Lord Mayor's feasts, at City banquets. If the clown in the "Winter's Tale" (Act iv., sc. 2) be accepted as a witness, they were sung to " hornpipes " at rustic festivals. Soldiers sang them on the march, by the camp fire, on parade, in the storm of battle. The ploughman carolled them over his furrow; the carter hummed them by the side of his waggon. They were the song-book of ladies and their lovers, and, under the Commonwealth, the strains of the Psalms floated from windows in every street of Puritan strongholds. -'
To gain liberty of worship and of psalm-singing, men and women crossed the seas, seeking in the New World the freedom that was denied them in the Old. With this object the little congregation of Separatists, which gathered at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, made their way in 1608 to the East coast, and thence to the Low Countries. For twelve years they made the " goodly and pleasant city " of Leyden their "resting-place." But in July 1620, the Speedwell, a vessel of sixty tons burden, lay at Delft Haven equipped for their transport to the New World. " When," says Winslow, "the ship was ready to carry us away, the brethren that stayed having again solemnly sought the Lord with us and for us, they that stayed at Leyden feasted us that were to go, at our pastor's house, being large, where we refreshed ourselves, after tears, with singing of psalms, making joyful melody in our hearts as well as with the voice, there being many of the congregation very expert in music. And indeed it was the sweetest melody that ever mine ears heard."
To the singing of psalms the sails of the May/lower were set to catch the winds that wafted the Pilgrim Fathers to the white sandbanks of Cape Cod; to their music were laid the foundations of the United States of America. � At Salem is his tabernacle " (Ps. Ixxvi., verse a), were the words which suggested to John Endicott's company the name of their first settlement. The denial of the liberty of " singing psalms and praying without a book," drove Francis Higginson, the first appointed teacher at Salem, to exchange the Old World for the New. At the Sabbath services, both in Salem and in Plymouth, the Psalms were sung without music, from the version of Henry Ainsworth of Amsterdam. But it was not long before the Puritan divines had prepared their own version, and the third book printed in America was the Bay Psalm Book (1639-40). Till the end of the eighteenth century, the Psalms were exclusively sung in the churches and chapels of America. In the language of the Psalms the early progress of the first colony is recorded. " The Lord," says Johnson in his Wonder- Working Providence, " whose promises are large to His Sion, hath blest His people's provision, and satisfied her poor with bread, in a very little space." The Psalms were the chief instrument of Eliot in his missionary enterprises among the Red Indians. From the Psalms, Eliot's successor, David Brainerd, drew the language in which he clothed his daily thoughts. In versifying the Psalms, the early poets of the young Republic, such as Barlow, Dwight, or Bryant, exercised their powers. In the same task, Cotton Mather had previously found respite from his dark musings on the mysteries of the unseen world. In the Psalms was laid the coping-stone of American independence. In 1787, it was to the ist verse of Psalm cxxvii. that Benjamin Franklin appealed, when speaking before the Convention assembled to frame a Constitution for the United States of America :
"In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for the Divine protection. Our prayers. Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence. To that kind Providence we owe this opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance? I have lived for a long time (81 years), and the longer I live the more convincing proof I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that 'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this, and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall proceed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. I therefore beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers, 'imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service."
In the spirit of the Psalms, as they interpreted them, the brethren of the Pilgrim Fathers, the Puritans who remained behind in England, fought out their quarrel with Charles I. But the Psalter was not the peculiar property of the Parlia- mentary party. Charles I. himself caused his father's version of the Psalms to be printed. From Psalm IxxxiL, verse i (<( God standeth in the congregation of princes ; He is a Judge among gods "), Bishop Andrewes had silently protested against intrusion of churchmen into secular affairs. From another Psalm (Psalm lx., verse a, " Thou hast moved the land, and divided it: heal the sores thereof, for it shaketh"), Bishop Hall appealed for peace, in the Lent sermon which he preached in 1641 before Charles I. at Whitehall. To Anglican divines, as well as to Puritan preachers, the Psalter was as "the balm of Gilead." Jeremy Taylor (1613-67), who acted as chaplain in the army of Charles I., suffered both in person and in purse for his loyalty to Church and King. Of " liberty of prophesying " he was an assailant, of the Church's Liturgy a champion. But, in the midst of his persecution and troubles, it is in the Psalms that he finds consolation. "When I came," he writes, "to look upon the Psalter with a nearer observation, ... I found so many admirable promises, so rare variety of the expressions of the mercy of God, so many consolatory hymns, the commemoration of so many deliver- ances from dangers and deaths and enemies, so many miracles of mercy and salvation, that I began to be so confident as to believe there would come no affliction great enough to spend so great a stock of comfort as was laid up in the treasury of the Psalter." In the Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and of Holy Dying, he teaches from experience. His gorgeous, richly-tinted prose differs absolutely from the homely English of Bunyan. It winds its devious way along like some Roman triumph, laden with the captives and the spoils of other languages and literatures. Yet, when Taylor comes to the practical aids of holy life or death, it is on the Psalms that he almost exclusively relies. From the Psalter are drawn his prayers, ejaculations, and devotional forms of preparation, alike in health or old age, by day or at night, in sickness or at the moment of death.
Another peaceful yet shining light of the Church during the Civil Wars, was Robert Sanderson (1587-1662), who at the Restoration was consecrated Bishop of Lincoln, and has left his mark on the history of the Common Prayer Book. By the Parliamentarians he was ejected from his professorship at Oxford, and imprisoned. But his sorrows deepened and enlarged his love of the Psalter�' the treasury," as he told Izaak Walton, "of Christian comfort, fitted for all persons and all necessities; able to raise the soul from dejection by the frequent mention of God's mercies to repentant sinners: to stir up holy desires; to increase joy; to moderate sorrow ; to nourish hope, and teach us patience, by waiting God's leisure; to beget a trust in the mercy, power, and providence of our Creator; and to cause a resignation of ourselves to his will; and then, and not till then, to believe ourselves happy." He added, that, by the frequent use of the Psalms, " they would not only prove to be our souls' comfort, but would become so habitual, as to transform them into the image of his soul that composed them." He himself used them con- stantly. "As the holy Psalmist said," writes Walton, "that his eyes should prevent both the dawning of the day and the night watches, by meditating on God's Word (Psalm cxix., verse 148), so it was Dr Sanderson's constant practice every morning to entertain his first waking thoughts with a repe- tition of those very psalms that the Church hath appointed to be constantly read in the daily morning service; and having at night laid him in his bed, he as constantly closed his eyes with a repetition of those appointed for the service of the evening, remembering and repeating the very psalms appointed for every day." On the day before his death, he desired his chaplain to give him absolution. "After this desire of his was satisfied, his body seemed to be more at ease, and his mind more cheerful; and he said, Lord, forsake me not now my strength fa.ile.th me (Ps. Ixxi., verse 8); but continue thy mercy, and let my mouth be filled with thy praise. He continued the remaining night and day very patient, and to himself during that time did often say the io3rd Psalm, and very often these words. My heart is fixed, 0 God; my heart is fixed where true joy is to be found" (Ps. Ivii., verse 8). "Thus," continues Walton, in the con- clusion of one of the most charming of his biographies, " this pattern of meekness and primitive innocence changed this for a better life. It is now too late to wish that my life may be like his; for I am in the eighty-fifth year of my age; but I humbly beseech Almighty God, that my death may; and do as earnestly beg . . . any reader ... to say Amen. Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no guile" (Ps. xxxii., verse 2).
In love of the Psalter, Anglican and Independent, Cavalier and Roundhead, might be united. In all else they were bitterly opposed. Even before the execution of the Earl of Straftbrd and of Laud, men recognised that an appeal to arms was almost inevitable. Yet it was to the Psalms that those two ministers, whom the people held directly responsible for the king's most oppressive acts, appealed in the moment of their death.
In November 1640, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, had been committed to the Tower. It was not till five months later that his trial began. During that interval, the feeling against him grew every day more bitter. "Black Tom Tyrant" was hated by his former colleagues in the House of Commons as an apostate from the popular cause. Stronger than desire for vengeance or personal dislike was the fear with which his commanding ability and indomitable will inspired his opponents. Vague forebodings of violence, rumours of popish plots, suspicion of the king's purpose, were whispered in the House of Commons. Nothing is more cruel than a panic; as long as Strafford lived, men felt their own lives and liberties to be in peril. ((Stone dead hath no fellow," and his punishment was demanded as a protection against a public enemy. Strafford knew his danger, when he obeyed Charles's summons, and came from Yorkshire to London. But he had the king's assurance that he should suffer neither in his person, nor in his honour, nor in his estate. On this explicit promise he relied. Even after his committal to the Tower, he had written to his wife, bidding her keep up her heart. " I am," he said, " in great inward quietness and a strong belief that God will deliver me out of all these troubles."
On March sand, 1641, the trial had begun. In the centre of Westminster Hall was raised a stage, taking up the whole breadth of the building from wall to wall, and about a third part of the length. At the north end was set a throne of state for the king, -and a chair for the prince. These stood empty; but on either side of the throne was a gallery, on one side of which sat the King and Queen, Princess Mary, the Prince Elector, and some ladies of the Court, and on the other side various French nobles. In front of the throne sat the Earl of Arundel, who acted as Speaker. Below him were seats for the Judges, and a little table at which were the black-gowned clerks of the House. On forms, covered with red cloth, sat the Peers, in their red and ermine robes. On either side of the Hall, along its east and west walls, and at its southern end, were ranged stages of forms, on which sat the members of the House of Commons and spectators. Above the highest stage of forms, were boxes crowded with ladies.
At eight o'clock on the morning of March aand, the Earl of Strafford, dressed in a black habit, and wearing his George, was brought in, in custody of the Lieutenant of the Tower. His crisp dark hair was turning grey, and his figure stooped slightly from recent illness. He took his place at the bar, with his secretaries behind him, and on a level with him were the eight managers who conducted the case for the House of Commons. Hour after hour, he stood at bay. Every morning those who wished for seats were in the Hall by five;
the king arrived at half-past seven; the Lords took their seats, with heads covered, at eight, and,-continued sitting till four in the afternoon. When Stratford was preparing his replies to special points in the indictment, the Lords rose from their seats, talked and clattered about; the members of the House of Commons discussed the progress of the trial; " bread and flesh " were eaten, " bottles of beer and wine going thick from mouth to mouth without cups." Sometimes the speeches were hissed; at other times a deep hum marked the approval of the audience; and Stratford, as Baillie, his enemy, remarked, daily gained the affections of the ladies by his eloquence and address.
On April i3th, he made his defence against the whole charge of treason. It was evident that he was likely to escape. The Commons therefore determined to proceed by a Bill of Attainder, and to vote him a traitor. The Bill was read a third time in the Lower House on April aist, and in the Upper House on May 8th. Would the king accept or reject it ? Four days before the third reading, Stratford wrote a letter to Charles, " to set" the king's " conscience at liberty." " My consent," he says, " shall more acquit you herein to God than all the world can do besides. To a willing man there is no injury done: and as, by God's grace, I forgive all the world, with calmness and meekness of infinite content- ment to my dislodging soul, so, Sir, I can give to you the life of this world with all the cheerfulness imaginable, in the just acknowledgment of your exceeding favours."
The king delayed his assent to the attainder. All Sunday, May gth, an armed mob paraded the streets and threatened an attack on Whitehall. At length, late in the evening, Charles yielded. " My lord of Stratford's condition," he said, as he signed his name to a commission charged to give his assent, " is more happy than mine." On Tuesday morning, he made a final appeal to the Lords to commute Stratford's sentence to one of imprisonment. " But if," he adds, " no less than his life can satisfy my people, I must say Fiat justitia." Then follows the postscript, " If he must die, it were a charity to reprieve him to Saturday."
His weak appeal was made in vain. The next day, Mayiath, 1641, Stratford met his death courageously on Tower Hill. The news that Charles had deserted him had come to him with the shock of surprise. Perhaps he may have relied to the last on the king's promise. It is thus that a poet has represented him turning to the messenger of his fate ;
" See this paper, warm feel warm With lying next my heart I Whose hand is there?
ARCHBISHOP LAUD 161
Whose promise? Read, and loud for God to hearl ' Strafford shall take no hurt 'read it, I say! * In person, honour, nor estate.' "
But if such thoughts were in his mind, it was to the Psalms that, in bitterness of spirit, he turned for their expression:
"O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man for there is no help in them " (Ps. cxlvi., verse 2). Strafford's quotation recalls the words which Shakespeare places in the mouth of the fallen Wolsey :
"O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs or fears than wars or women have;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again."
With Stratford, in all the high-handed acts of Charles's Government, was
associated Laud. Against the archbishop were, in addition, arrayed the
bitterness of religious feeling and the desire for vengeance on a persecutor. It
was partly the error of his time, partly the bias of his legal mind, which led
him to depreciate the value of diversities and to exaggerate that of uniformity,
in matters of belief and opinion. But adversity revealed in him virtues which
official severity had too often concealed. "Prejudged by foes determined not to
spare," imprisoned in the Tower, old and failing in health, stricken with ague,
subjected to unworthy insults, threatened with violent death, he never lost his
courage, his patience, or his dignity. Libels against him flowed from the pens
of his opponents; slanders ran from mouth to mouth; abusive ballads were sung in
streets and taverns. Laud comforted himself with the thought that he was " in
the same case as the Prophet David." " They that sit in the gate speak against
me; and the drunkards make songs upon me" (Ps. Ixix., verse 12). Placed in
confinement in December 1640, committed to the Tower in the following March, he
waited for his trial till the spring of 1644. The proceedings against him were
conducted with as little respect to law as the most arbitrary act with which he
himself was charged. On loth January 1645, he suffered death on Tower Hill in
the seventy-second year of his age, his face showing so little fear of death
that his disappointed enemies accused him of having painted his ruddy cheeks. In
his speech from the scaffold he quoted Psalm ix., verse 12, "For, when he maketh
inquisition for blood, he remembereth them; and forgetteth not the complaint of
the poor." It was the Psalms that had sustained his courage during his long
imprisonment. His prayers, of which
the following may be quoted, are cast in the mould of their thoughts, and echo their language.
" 0 Lord, blessed is the man that hath Thee for His help, and whose hope is in Thee. 0 Lord, help me and all them to right that suffer wrong. Thou art the Lord, which looseth men out of prison, which helpest them that are fallen. 0 Lord, help and deliver me, when and as it shall seem best to Thee; even for Jesus Christ His sake. Amen."
" 0 Lord, Thine indignation lies hard upon me; and though Thou hast not (for Thy mercy is great) vexed me with all Thy storms, yet Thou hast put my acquaintance far from me, and I am so fast in prison that I cannot get forth. Lord, I call daily upon Thee, hear and have mercy; for Jesus Christ His sake. Amen."
"Lord, turn Thee unto me, and have mercy upon me, for I am desolate and in misery. The sorrows of my heart are enlarged; 0 briK^ Thou me out of my troubles. Look upon mine adversity and misery, and forgive me all my sins;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
" Hear my crying, 0 God, give ear unto my prayer; from the ends of the earth, whithersoever Thou shalt cast me, I will call upon Thee when my heart is in heaviness. 0 set me upon the rock that is higher than I, to be my hope and a strong tower against my oppressors. Amen."
"Save me, 0 God, for the waters are entered into my soul. I stick fast in the deep mire, where no stay is; I am come into deep waters, and the streams run over me. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head, and they which would destroy me causeless are mighty. 0 let not these water-floods drown me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. Hear me, 0 Lord, for Thy loving-kindness is great;
turn unto me according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies. Hide not Thy face from Thy servant, for I am in trouble, but draw near unto my soul, and redeem it; for Jesus Christ His sake. Amen."
When once the Civil War had begun, it was with the Psalms that the shock of battle was often heralded. So was it at the battle of Marston Moor. About two o'clock in the afternoon of July 2nd, 1644, the armies of the King and Parliament faced each other. The great ordnance began to play. " The first shot killed a son of Sir Gilbert Haughton that was a captain in the Prince's army; but this was only a showing their teeth; for after a few shots made, they gave over, and in Marston corn-fields fell to singing psalms." With a psalm also is associated the death of distinguished leaders like John Hampden. On Saturday, June iJth, 1643, about four in the afternoon. Prince Rupert rode out from Oxford at the head of his men, clattering over Magdalen Bridge, and crossing the Thame at Chislehampton. They encountered Hampden and his troop at Chalgrove Field. Early on Sunday morning, i8th June, Hampden was seen riding out of the fight before it was ended, his head bent, his hands resting on his horse's neck. It was a thing, says Lord Clarendon, " he never used to do, and from which it was concluded he was hurt." He was indeed mortally wounded. It is supposed that he first tried to reach Pyrton, where he had wooed and won his first wife, and where he would fain have died. But he was cut off by Rupert's horsemen, and forced to turn back and ride to Thame. There, in the house of Ezekiel Browne, after six days' agony, he died. His troopers, as they bore his body to the grave through the beech-woods of Buckinghamshire, chanted Psalm xc., which, since 1662, has had its place in the burial service of our Prayer-book.
His power broken at Marston Moor, Charles I. was a hostage or a prisoner in the Scottish camp at Newark. The triumphant ministers insulted their captive by ordering Psalm lii. to be sung: "Why boastest thou thyself, thou tyrant, that thou canst do mischief; whereas the goodness of God endureth yet daily ? " It was by an appeal to the Psalms that Charles robbed the insult of its sting. His only reply was to ask for Psalm Ivi. : "Be merciful unto me, 0 God, for man goeth about to devour me; he is daily fighting, and troubling me. Mine enemies are daily in hand to swallow me up; for they be many that fight against me, 0 Thou Most Highest."
Instances of the use ..of the Psalms by one side or other might be multiplied. But their influence upon a movement, which is still a living force in our midst, may be best illus- trated in the lives or writings of Milton, Bunyan, and Cromwell the finest products of Puritanism as a literary, spiritual, or political force.
Over Milton the Psalms threw their spell in early life. At the age of fifteen, already an undergraduate at Christ's College, Cambridge, he translated into verse Psalms cxiv. and cxxxvi. Of the latter, his version is the well known:
" Let us with a gladsome mind. Praise the Lord for he is kind, For his mercies aye endure Ever faithful, ever sure."
In 1648, he translated from the original " into meter " nine Psalms (Ixxx.-lxxxviiL), and in 1653, eight more Psalms (i. -viii.) were " done into verse." Throughout his poems are scattered allusions, more or less direct, to the Psalms. There is an echo of Psalm xxiv., verses 7-10, in his lines in Para- dise Lost (Book vii., U. 205-9, and 11. 565-9): "Heav'n open'd wide Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound On golden hinges moving, to let forth The King of Glory in His powerful Word And Spirit coming to create new worlds."
and, as God returns heavenward, his creative word accom- plished :
"Open, ye everlasting Gates, they sung, Open, ye Heav'ns, your living doors; let in The great Creator, from his work return'd Magnificent, his six days' work, a World."
In the same Book (11. 370-4), the picture of the Sun rejoicing " as a giant to run his course " (Ps. xix., verse 5) is in his mind, when he writes:
" First in his East the glorious lamp was seen, Regent of day, and all th' horizon round Invested with bright rays, jocund to run His longitude through Heav'n's high road."
Portions of the speech of Adam (Paradise Lost, Book xii., 11. 561-6) seem a paraphrase of Psalm cxlv.:
"Henceforth I leam, that to obey is best, And love with fear the only God, to walk As in his presence, ever to observe His providence, and on him sole depend, Merciful over all his works, with good Still overcoming evil, and by small Accomplishing great things, by things deem'd weak Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise By simply meek."
So also in " Samson Agonistes " (11. 932-7), when the blind Samson rejects the appeal of Delilah, he refers to the " deaf adder " of Psalm IviiL, verse 4:
" I know thy trains, Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils;
Thy fair enchanted cup, and warbling charms
No more on me have power; their force is nuli'd;
So much of adder's wisdom I have leam'd, To fence my ear against thy sorceries."
Finally, when, in Paradise 'Regained, Satan tempts Christ with the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, it is with praise of the Psalms, couched in the true spirit of the Puritan, that the Saviour repels the temptation:
" All our Law and Story strow'd With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscrib'd Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon That pleas'd so well our victor's ear, declare That rather Greece from us these arts deri^d 111 imitated, while they loudest sing The vices of their deities . . . Remove their swelling epithets thick laid As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest, Thin sown with aught of profit or delight, Will far be found unworthy to compare With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling, Where God is prais'd aright and god-like men, The Holiest of Holies, and his Saints," etc.
(Book iv., 11. 334-49.)