Headnote
In the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Exeter was a key centre for Protestant Dissenters. Dissenters (also known as Nonconformists) were English Protestants who refused to conform to the established Church of England. English Dissenters suffered sporadic persecution, including fines and imprisonment, from the 1660s to 1680s, following the Restoration of the monarchy. Exeter had a large population of Dissenters, of whom the Presbyterians were the largest group with three distinct congregations, along with Independents (also known as Congregationalists), Baptists, and Quakers. Allan Brockett (a former librarian at the University of Exeter) estimates that in 1715 Dissenters made up between a quarter and a third of the population of the city (Brockett 72).
The Devon and Exeter Institution, a historic library in the centre of Exeter, has in its possession a 26 volume collection of manuscript sermons and other religious material by Exeter Dissenting ministers. The sermons contained in this collection date from around 1660 to around 1750, with some by named ministers and some remaining unattributed (for more on the DEI Dissenting sermon collection as a whole, see my open access 2024 article in Studies in Church History (Parry)). The preacher of this sermon, Joseph Hallett III (bap. 1691, d. 1744), was the son of Joseph Hallett II (1656–1722), and the grandson of Joseph Hallett I (bap. 1620, d. 1689). All three were Dissenting ministers in Exeter, and they have been designated Roman numerals by historians to distinguish more clearly between them.
While Joseph Hallett I, like fellow Exeter Presbyterian minister George Trosse (whose spiritual autobiography is also included in this online anthology), held to the standard Calvinist puritan orthodoxy of the first generation of Dissenters, Joseph Hallett II and III were key players in the so-called Exeter Controversy from 1713 to 1719 (for fuller accounts of the Exeter Controversy and its wider impact on English Nonconformity, see Brockett, chapter 6 (74–95), Hill, and Wykes). Students training for the Dissenting ministry at the Exeter Academy (including Joseph Hallett III) secretly discussed and some adopted Arian views on the Trinity – the belief that the Son is a subordinate being created by the Father rather than a co-equal person of the Godhead as the orthodox Trinitarian view states. The ensuing controversy saw the Exeter Assembly of Dissenting ministers require ministers to affirm their belief in the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Those who refused included Hallett II and his colleague James Peirce, who had by this time already been expelled from James’s Meeting where they were ministers, with the locks being changed so they couldn’t get in. In 1719, Hallett II and Peirce’s followers built a new meeting house, known as the Mint Meeting, for a congregation of Arian Nonconformists. Joseph Hallett III in turn become Peirce’s co-minister at the Mint Meeting on his father’s death in 1722.
Nevertheless, this particular sermon does not highlight Hallett III’s heterodox views on the Trinity, but rather, themes and ideas shared by the Dissenting community as a whole. This sermon was preached on 5th November 1740, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot of 1603 (John Bond’s sermon elsewhere in this anthology may also have been a 5th November sermon). In this period the established Church of England marked the anniversary each year as a celebration of God’s providential deliverance of England’s Protestant monarch and parliament from Catholic conspiracy. While Dissenters such as Hallett III were not bound by the calendar of the established Church, he embraces the opportunity to show the loyalty of Dissenters to the monarchy and a wider English Protestant national identity despite their differences from the established Church. Hallett takes the occasion to consider the failure of the Gunpowder Plot as one of a wider series of five providential deliverances of Protestant England by God from the threat of ‘popery’ (associating Roman Catholicism with religious idolatry and political tyranny). These deliverances are the Gunpowder Plot of 1603, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Hanoverian succession of 1714, the Spanish Armada of 1588, and the Western Rising (also known as the Prayerbook Rebellion) of 1549. For more on the Western Rising, see ReConEx Podcast 1: Mark Stoyle on the Western Rising, the Civil Wars and Early Modern Exeter (here).
In two of these, Exeter had a prominent role. Hallett III focuses especially on the role of Exeter in resisting the rebels in the Western Rising of 1549, who were opposed to church services in English and wanted to restore elements of pre-Reformation Catholic practice and belief (for a recent scholarly account of the Western Rising, see Stoyle). Hallett III’s account of the Western Rising appears to draw on John Hooker’s account of the siege of Exeter (excerpted elsewhere in this anthology), which was written within living memory of the events. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which the Protestant William of Orange and his wife Mary were invited over from the Netherlands by parliament to supplant the Catholic James II, was significant for Protestant Dissenters in particular because it was swiftly followed by the 1689 Act of Toleration that gave freedom of worship to Protestant Dissenters (though Hallett III glosses over the fact that the Act technically excluded non-Trinitarians such as himself from toleration, an exclusion to which the local authorities in Exeter also turned a blind eye). Hallett III highlights that William’s landing (at Brixham in south Devon) was also on 5th November, but does not mention the more particular connection with Exeter – William made a triumphal entry to the city and stayed for twelve days, being proclaimed as king in Exeter Cathedral. In the concluding sections of the sermon, Hallett III sees God’s past deliverances of England as giving hope that God would give victory to Protestant Britain in its current war with Catholic Spain (the 1739–48 war that the Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle gave the colourful name the War of Jenkins’ Ear), but also calls his hearers to repent for the sins of England and for their own personal sins.
Joseph Hallett III
Sermon preached 5th November 1740
(Devon and Exeter Institution MS 143.6, pp. 258–77)
(Click here for photographic images of the whole sermon in manuscript.)
Extract 1: Introduction – God’s Deliverances [pp. 258–9]
Preach’d the 5th November 1740[1]
Let us, this Day, call to mind some particular Times, when God has remarkably saved us. And here it is natural to give the
1. Place,[2] to the two great Deliverances, which almighty God was pleas’d to grant us on this Day, and which we are met together at this Time particularly to commemorate. They were both Deliverances from the worse of Evils, Popery and Slavery.[3] Every rising Generation[4] ought to be inform’d of these great things which God has done for us; and to be made sensible of the greatness of those Civil and Religious Liberties which they injoy. Parents should inculcate these things upon their Children, as has been the good Custom of wise men in all ages. So, Psalm XLIV. 1, 2.[5] We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the time of old. How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantest them, how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.
Extract 2: The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 [pp. 260–63]
Now instead of setting up such Pillars as a Memorial of our Deliverances,[6] we have a particular Day every year set apart and devoted to the commemoration of them, that every Generation may know what great things God has done for us. Let then the Children know, that 135 Years ago, The Papists[7] in this Kingdom, being vext[8] that their former Plots against the Protestant Government had proved abortive,[9] were desperately determined with one fatal Blow to destroy the King, the Queen, the Princes, the Lords and the Commons then assembled in Parliament. In order to accomplish this diabolical[10] Purpose, they hired a covenient Cellar just under the Parliament house, into which they secretly convey’d thirty six barrels of Gun-Powder , and intended to set fire to them on the fifth of November, when the King was to have met his Parliament, that so King and Parliament might have perish’d together. But thro’ the Goodness of the Divine Providence,[11] the darling[12] Design was in season[13] brought to Light, and utterly defeated; and the Conspirators received their just Reward by the hands of the Executioner;[14] and no doubt also, from the hands of a Righteous God. Whatever were the means of discovering that secret Plot, this is certain, that they were only means or instruments in the hands of God our great Deliverer, to which all the Glory is due.
Let the rising Generation[15] also know, that our danger of a dreadful Inundation[16] of Popery and Slavery[17] was again vastly great a little above fifty years ago,[18] in the remembrance of several here present, when there was a Popish King[19] upon the Throne, who impiously claim’d a Power of suspending, or repealing Laws at his Pleasure,[20] and who was industriously seeking by all possible Methods, to deprive us of the greatest Blessings we can wish to injoy in this Life, namely, Our natural Liberties, and the Religion of the Bible. Then the hearts of all true Protestants were filled with Fear and Pain. Under their Distress God heard their Prayers, and found out a Way for their Security, and sent them a deliverer, the Prince of Orange,[21] whom the Nation, out of Gratitude for his kind interposition[22] constituted their King. When the Popish King James was retired,[23] and our Great Deliverer King William seated in the Throne, the Protestant Religion was in safety, and our Natural Privileges declared, and ascertain’d[24] beyond whatever they were before. And we, Protestant Dissenters have the greater Reason to rejoyce at the Remembrance of this Glorious Revolution, because hereupon the Nation was come to such a Temper of Moderation and Charity as to grant us an Act of Toleration.[25] In all Protestant Reigns before, those Christians who pleaded for the unmingled, and pure Religion of Jesus Christ, had no Liberty given them to assemble for public Worship. And in most Times the Protestant Government grievously oppress’d, and severely persecuted them. But now thanks be to God, ever since the Glorious Revolution under King William, we are tolerated in the exercise of the Religion of the New Testament, and our Churches are guarded by wholesom Laws, so as that no one dares to injure, or molest[26] Us. It was the Grace of God, which turn’d the hearts of Men to pity us, and to do us good. To him, this Day, whereon our Great Deliverer landed among us, let us cheerfully give all the Glory.
Extract 3: The Western Rising/Prayerbook Rebellion of 1549 [pp. 266–68]
The last particular Deliverance I shall mention, tho’ it happen’d first in order of Time, is one in which the City of Exeter was more concern’d than the rest of the Kingdom. A little after the Reformation of Religion in the Reign of that pious Youth, King Edward the VI.[27] the common people, near Oakhamton[28] in this County tumultuously compell’d their preist, their Parish Priest to say Mass, and officiate in Latin, being best pleas’d with what they least understood.[29] At length the Zealots increas’d to above ten thousand, and march’d in a full Body to Exeter. Upon the Citizens refusing to admit them in, the seditious resolved immediately to besiege it. In the mean Time Famine raged extremely within our Walls, and at last the Citizens were reduced to the utmost extremity, for want of victuals:[30] Bread they made of coarsest Bran moulded in Cloths, because otherwise it would not cleave[31] together:[32] their finest Flesh was that of their own Horses. But at length it pleas’d God to give success to the Kings Forces, and to graunt Deliverance to the City, both from Famine, and from the sword. At the same Time we were deliver’d from the Danger of Popery.[33] For those Rebels that besieged the City, abhor’d the Reformation, would not bear, that the Prayers of the Church should be pronounced in a Language, which they did understand, and grieved, because the Popish Idols[34] were removed out of their sight. Could they have prevail’d, they would have procured the strangling of the Reformation in its infancy, and the establishment of all the superstition, Idolatry, and Cruelty of the Popish Religion again. But in the time of the most imminent Danger, and of the Greatest Extremity God was graciously pleas’d to interpose,[35] and to work out Deliverance for us. Thus mercifully has God preserved us again, and again, when our Enemies have been confident, that they should soon triumph over us. Happy art thou, O Britain, O People saved by the Lord.[36]
Extract 4: The Present Crisis – War with Spain [pp. 272–75]
Let us, in the present War wherein the Nation is ingaged,[37] seek Deliverance and Success from God. He hath often deliver’d us, he doth deliver: and let us trust in him, that he will still deliver us.[38] We may the rather hope for this, because the Enemy, with whom we are ingaged, has in a very extraordinary Manner, set it self against God. The Spaniards are sunk into the very depths of Popish[39] Superstition, idolatry, persecution, and Barbarity. These are among them National, and they are crying sins.[40] Should they have Success, they will impiously ascribe the Glory of it to the Saints, to whom they now pray for Success. When the famous Spanish Armada[41] was beaten and almost destroy’d, in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, the Spaniards observed a Day of thanksgiving thro’ their whole Land, and gave thanks to God, and to the Saints, that the Calamity was no greater. This must be very provoking to a jealous God,[42] who will not give his Glory to another, nor his praise to graven images.[43] That Nation has daringly fought against God by their Barbarity cruelty, and inhumanity, and by shedding seas of innocent Blood. The establishing of a Bloody Inquisition[44] among them cried for vengeance on that impious Land. It is shocking to read of their unparalel’d Cruelties, committed on the Natives of the West Indies, when the Spaniards took possession of them[.][45]
[…]
And may not the righteous Governor of the World be justly avenged on such a People as this? The innocent Blood of Millions of Heathens,[46] Mahometans,[47] Jews and Christians, that has without cause been shed by the Barbarous Nation that now makes war with us, cries to God for Vengeance.[48] And we would hope, that his Time to take vengeance, to take righteous Vengeance on them is fully come. May a good God grant us such Success in this War against his, and our Enemies, as shall force them to submit to make Peace with us upon Terms just in themselves, and safe and honourable to Us!
Extract 5: Conclusion – Britain’s Sins and Call to Repentance (pp. 275–77)
Let us by hearty Reformation and sincere Obedience, seek to ingage the almighty Providence[49] of God on our side. We must own to our shame, that if our Enemies have sinned against God; so have we of this Nation too in a very great Degree. We have been long provoking God by Oaths and Curses, by profanation of the Lord’s Day,[50] by prostitution of the Lord’s Supper,[51] by injustice and Oppression, by Malice and Envy, by uncharitableness, and Divisions, by heats and Animosities,[52] by carnal[53] and spiritual sins. And our sins have been aggravated, by means of the extraordinary Light which we have injoy’d,[54] and the peculiar distinguishing Favors[55] which our God has bestow’d upon us. It is necessary therefore that we should immediately thro’ the whole Kingdom, from the highest to the lowest, set about a thorough Reformation of our hearts and Lives. How can we expect, that God should be for us, if we continue to fight against him? But if others will take no warning, if they will provoke God more and more to be their Enemy; let us for our own parts, take care to reform our own hearts and Lives. Let us now, while we have opportunity for it, flee from the Wrath to come.[56] Let us make our Peace with God, and thus seek an interest in his peculiar Favor.[57] Let us heartily thank God for worldly Salvation;[58] and earnestly seek the eternal Salvation of our souls. And let us never grow weary in well doing, as knowing, that in due season, we shall reap, if we do not faint.[59]
Works Cited
Brockett, Allan. Nonconformity in Exeter, 1650–1875. Manchester UP, 1962.
Hill, Bracy V. “The Language of Dissent: The Defense of Eighteenth-Century English Dissent in the Works and Sermons of James Peirce.” Ph.D. diss., Baylor University, 2011. Available online at http://hdl.handle.net/2104/8083 (accessed 19 June 2024).
Hooker, John, Samuel Izacke et al. The Ancient History and Description of the City of Exeter. Exeter: Andrews and Trewman, 1765. Available online at https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Ancient_History_and_Description_of_t/hMcpAAAAYAAJ?hl=en (accessed 19 June 2024).
Parry, David. “The Problems of Performing Piety in some Exeter Dissenting Sermons c.1660–1745.” The Church, Hypocrisy and Dissimulation (Studies in Church History 60), edited by Catherine Cubitt, Charlotte Methuen, and Andrew Spicer, Cambridge UP, 2024, pp. 340–62. Open access article available at https://doi.org/10.1017/stc.2024.15 (accessed 19 June 2024).
Stoyle, Mark. A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549. Yale UP, 2022.
Wykes, David L. “The 1719 Salters’ Hall Debate: Its Significance for the History of Dissent.” Trinity, Creed and Confusion: The Salters’ Hall Debates of 1719, edited by Stephen Copson, Centre for Baptist Studies in Oxford, 2020, pp. 31–61.
Endnotes
[1] 5th November is the anniversary of the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, with the arrest of Guy Fawkes in the cellars underneath the House of Lords on 5th November 1605. The Observance of 5th November Act (passed in 1606 and in force until 1859) mandated church services to be held on the anniversary each year to celebrate the Gunpowder Plot’s failure. Following the Glorious Revolution, the official liturgy for the commemoration also included prayers giving thanks for the landing of William of Orange at Brixham on 5th November 1688, thanking God for ‘bringing His Majesty King William, upon this day, for the Deliverance of our Church and Nation from Popish tyranny and arbitrary power’. Hallett’s sermon brings these anniversaries together along with other perceived divine deliverances of Protestant England or Britain from Catholic tyranny. Although the Act of Parliament applied to the established Church of England and Dissenters such as Joseph Hallett III were not required to observe this anniversary, Hallett argues that it is fitting for Dissenters to celebrate the day as faithful English Protestants, especially as the Glorious Revolution led to the Act of Toleration the following year granting freedom of worship to Protestant Dissenters.
[2] I.e. ‘first place’.
[3] ‘Popery’ is a derogatory term used in the period for Roman Catholicism, especially when seen as a political as well as religious system. English Protestants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often associated Catholicism with royal absolutism (which they saw typified by the kings of France and suspected in the case of the Catholic King James II). For instance, the Church of England liturgy for the 5th November gives thanks for ‘the Deliverance of our Church and Nation from Popish tyranny and arbitrary power’.
[4] I.e. new or emerging generation.
[5] Psalm 44:1–2. This psalm celebrates how God brought the Israelites out from slavery in Egypt into the promised land and enabled them to defeat the Canaanites who were in the land and drive them out. Political readings of the Bible often equated God’s providential care of England with that of Israel in the Old Testament.
[6] In the passage of the sermon just preceding this, Hallett III recounts the biblical story in Joshua 4:1–10 of how the Israelites set up twelve stone pillars in the River Jordan to commemorate how God stopped the river flowing to allow the Israelites to cross into the promised land. The pillars are described as a memorial to remind for the Israelites to tell their children about God’s deliverance – Hallett III sees the commemoration of 5th November as fulfilling a similar purpose.
[7] A derogatory term for Roman Catholics often used by Protestants in this period.
[8] I.e. vexed – annoyed or frustrated.
[9] I.e. unsuccessful, cut short.
[10] I.e. devilish. ‘Diabolical’ literally refers to the devil (Latin diabolus) as well as having a looser meaning of ‘evil’.
[11] Providence = God’s ruling and guiding of events.
[12] Darling = cherished, favourite.
[13] I.e. in time, at the right time.
[14] Two of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators (Robert Catesby and Thomas Percy) were shot dead while evading capture on 8th November 1605, and posthumously exhumed and beheaded. The other conspirators were executed on 30th and 31st January 1606.
[15] I.e. new or emerging generation.
[16] Flood.
[17] English Protestants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often associated Catholicism with royal absolutism and tyranny.
[18] Referring to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the events leading up to it.
[19] I.e. James II of England (James VII of Scotland), who reigned from 1685 until he was deposed in 1688. Popish = Roman Catholic.
[20] James II’s use of the royal prerogative to exempt individual Catholics from the Test Acts against the will of parliament to allow them to hold public office was seen by his opponents as leaning dangerously close to the exercise of tyranny and arbitrary power.
[21] William of Orange (1650–1702), who became William III, was Prince of Orange and Stadtholder (ruler) of the Netherlands. He was the son-in-law of James II, having married James’s daughter Mary (later Mary II), but both William and Mary were Protestants, in contrast to James’s Catholicism. In 1688, seven high-ranking Englishmen (six nobles and a bishop) invited William to land in England to defend the Protestant religion. The subsequent events, which became known as the Glorious Revolution, led to the deposition of James II and William and Mary taking the throne as joint monarchs in 1689.
[22] I.e. intervention.
[23] James II fled to France in December 1688 and was thus deemed by parliament to have abdicated the throne, leaving it free for William and Mary.
[24] I.e. established, made certain.
[25] The Act of Toleration in 1689, passed the year after William and Mary came to the throne, gave freedom of worship to Protestant Nonconformists who held to the doctrine of the Trinity, though specifically exclude Roman Catholics and those who denied the Trinity. (Technically this would exclude Hallett III and his congregation from the provisions of the Act, but the authorities turned a blind eye in this instance, as they did with many non-Trinitarian Dissenters, particularly if they were relatively discreet about their denial of the Trinity.)
[26] Molest = harm or trouble.
[27] Edward VI (son of Henry VIII) came to the throne aged 9 in 1537 and reigned until his death aged 15 in 1553. Edward was a precocious youth who ruled under the oversight of Protestant regents and in his reign the Church of England, which had broken away from the authority of the Pope under Henry VIII, became much more strongly Protestant in its belief and practice, including the adoption of a prayer book in English and not Latin as before.
[28] Okehampton is a Devon town around 20 miles west of Exeter. It was in fact in Sampford Courtenay, a small village five miles from Okehampton, that this incident is reported to have taken place in sixteenth-century sources.
[29] John Hooker’s account (as expanded and revised by Samuel Izacke and others) reports the parishioners ‘charging the Priest to use and say the same Service as in Times past he was wont to do. At length he yielded to their Wills, and forthwith put on his old Popish Attire, and said Mass, and all the Service as in Times past accustomed’ (Hooker et al. 36).
[30] Victuals – food.
[31] Cleave – stick.
[32] This detail appears to be taken from Hooker, who writes that the citizens of Exeter were ‘living mostly on Bran […] mixt up with a little Meal, which they were obliged to mould up in Cloths, as otherwise it would not stick together’ (Hooker et al. 50).
[33] Popery – Roman Catholicism.
[34] Catholic statues of Christ and the saints and religious artifacts like crucifixes were considered idols by many Protestants.
[35] Interpose – intervene.
[36] Hallett III applies to Britain the words applied to Israel in the Old Testament: ‘Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord’ (Deuteronomy 33:29).
[37] I.e. the war between Britain and Spain that took place between 1739 and 1748, named the War of Jenkins’ Ear by Thomas Carlyle in 1858 after Robert Jenkins, a British sea captain whose ear was allegedly cut off by Spanish coast guards in 1731, an incident used by members of parliament seven years later as justification for war with Spain.
[38] Alluding to 2 Corinthians 1:10: ‘Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us’.
[39] I.e. Roman Catholic.
[40] ‘Crying sins’ are particularly heinous sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance (see, for instance, Genesis 4:10, Genesis 18:20–21, Exodus 3:7–9, Exodus 22:21–24, Deuteronomy 24:14–15, and James 5:4).
[41] The Spanish Armada of 1588 was a Spanish fleet that was intended to land an invasion force in England to overthrown the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I and re-establish Catholicism. Its defeat by the English fleet, aided by the weather, was celebrated as a key instance of God’s providential deliverance of Protestant England from Catholic invasion.
[42] See Exodus 34:14: ‘For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God’. (See also Exodus 20:5.)
[43] See Isaiah 42:8: ‘I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images’.
[44] The Spanish Inquisition was a legal tribunal that investigated departures from Catholic orthodoxy in Spain and territories under Spanish rule from 1478 to 1834. Punishments for those deemed heretics ranged from mild to severe penances for those who retracted, but for those who were impenitent or relapsed could include handing over to the secular authorities for execution by burning at the stake. Though only a minority of those who appeared before the Inquisition were executed, the Spanish Inquisition became notorious among Protestants as a symbol of Catholic cruelty and persecution.
[45] The Spanish West Indies were Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. In the following section of the sermon (omitted here), Hallett III includes a lengthy quotation recounting Spanish atrocities from the writing of Bartolomé de las Casas (c.1484–1566), a Spanish Dominican Catholic priest (slightly inaccurately called ‘a Popish Bishop’ by Hallett III), who severely criticised the exploitation and enslavement of indigenous peoples by Spanish colonisers.
[46] Heathens – pagans, i.e. people of non-monotheistic religions rather than Christians, Jews or Muslims.
[47] ‘Mahometans’ (later ‘Mohammedans’) was a name commonly used in this period for Muslims, after the prophet ‘Mahomet’ (Mohammed). It is generally considered inaccurate or offensive today as it may give the misleading impression that Muslims worship Mohammed.
[48] See Genesis 4:10, where God tells Cain, who has murdered his brother Abel, ‘the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground’.
[49] Providence = God’s ruling and guiding of events.
[50] The Lord’s Day = Sunday, understood as a sacred day dedicated to Christian worship, akin to the Old Testament Sabbath. Dissenters and puritans were often strict on observing Sunday and thought it should be kept free from secular business and pastimes, which were seen as ‘profaning’ the day.
[51] The Lord’s Supper is the name for the Eucharist or Holy Communion (in which congregants take bread and wine signifying the body and blood of Christ) often preferred by Dissenters. Puritans and Dissenters often believed that only those who showed credible signs of conversion or a godly life should be allowed to receive the Lord’s Supper, and felt that the reception of the Eucharist in the Church of England by those who were not visibly godly tarnished or ‘prostituted’ the Lord’s Supper. The phrase could also refer to the legal requirement for individuals to receive communion in the Church of England to qualify for public office by demonstrating religious conformity (required by the Test Acts and Corporation Act). This could be seen as cheapening communion by making it a mercenary act for secular worldly ends.
[52] I.e. anger and hostility/enmity.
[53] I.e. fleshly.
[54] ‘Extraordinary light’ refers to the truth of divine revelation found in the Bible that, from a Protestant and particularly from a Dissenting viewpoint, has been available to the general population in Britain since the Protestant Reformation and the spread of English Bible translations.
[55] I.e. particular or special favours.
[56] ‘Flee from the wrath to come’ is the call given by John the Baptist to his hearers in Matthew 3:7 and Luke 3:7. Drawing on this, at the beginning of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), the main character Christian is given a ‘Parchment-Roll’ containing the words ‘Fly from the wrath to come’.
[57] I.e. particular or special favour.
[58] I.e. deliverance in this world (in comparison with the salvation of the soul after death).
[59] Drawing on Galatians 6:9: ‘And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not’.