LIFE OF JOHN HOWE, A.M.

BY THE REV. W. URWICK, D.D., DUBLIN.

DURING the sixteenth century, the struggles connected with the Reformation stirred European Christendom from the slumber of the "dark ages," and in those great movements England had her share. But the awakening of her mental and moral strength became not general, till her own agitations, during the reigns of her first James and his son Charles, followed by the Commonwealth, rendered inaction of head or heart next to impossible throughout the land.

Lovers of tyranny have been wont to decry that period as one of the most humiliating and disastrous in British history; for the Dagon of their homage was then well-nigh prostrated and broken before the ark of God's providence. And that evils deeply to be deplored existed, is admitted. Unworthy persons and measures are often associated with what is, substantially, the cause of truth and righteousness; it has been so from the beginning with the glorious Gospel itself. But no enlightened and fair man will deny, that at the time we are speaking of, England had never been in higher respect among the nations, or had used her influence for better purposes. She had never been to the same extent enriched with knowledge and adorned with piety,—she had never so appeared-to use the words of Milton-" as a noble and puissant nation rousing herself as a strong man after sleep, or as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam." At that period the tree of civil and religious freedom, which, now flourishing and bear

ing fruit, is the blessing and boast of the empire, became firmly rooted in her soil.

If the time was one of fearful political convulsion, it was also one of gracious visitation from the Spirit of God. While "the potsherds of the earth" filled the country with their strivings, the King of Zion was raising up a host of " very able men" for his service,—men whose writings yet survive, and will while the world lasts, monuments of his favour to themselves and to his Church,-men far more worthy of study and veneration than the majority of the so-called “Fathers" among the Greek and Latin ecclesiastics of earlier days.

Important controversies were then afloat; the Gospel had to grapple with antagonists of no common nerve, furniture, and skill. These champions entered the lists, and the truth triumphed. The right of every one to search the scriptures, and his responsibility to God alone for his use of that right, had lately risen as into new existence. These expositors were honourably successful in clearing away obscurities and perversions from the sacred text, and in otherwise assisting the common reader to see profitably for himself, "what is the mind of the Spirit." As theologians they were independent, enlarged, and profound thinkers. Theirs was not the restless habit of some would-be wise ones, busying itself on this punctilio to-day, on another to-morrow, and happy only when carping at or extolling detached and insignificant items. Theirs was the genius of sound philosophy, which, as the lion ranges through his forest and the condor soars above her Andes, sweeps through the earth and the firmament, aiming as far as may be to grasp the knowledge of creation. Nor were these men less distinguished as preachers and pastors. In the study, in the pulpit, and from house to house, with singleeyed purpose they watched for souls.

To their superiority in the respects named, their scholarship doubtless contributed. In learning they were not behind other Rabbis of their day. They had graduated at universities; had become fellows, and some of them heads of colleges, in Cambridge and Oxford; and had, by untiring industry, acquired a habit of energetic action, which accompanied them through life as a second nature. But their crowning excellence-the spring and plastic soul of their greatness-was their piety. They brought the fruits of their studies as divines, to bear upon their own hearts as christians. They daily maintained converse with God in private; and kept their seasons of special devotion. Thus

they acquired a calmness and power, a freedom and unction, which no talent, or literary acquirement, or strength of natural character, could impart. Most of them, indeed, had a parentage and a training which prepared for this. They were the offspring of sufferers for the truth. They had been cradled in persecution. The loud and fierce cry of the oppressor had often drowned the soft and soothing tones of their mother's lullaby. The homage of all things to conscience, and of conscience in all things to God, was one of the first lessons given when their minds opened to receive thought. Effeminacy and sentimentalism belonged to another sphere, if not to another age. All their youthful associations combined to cherish masculine honesty and magnanimity, with intrepid though humble resolve. And when arrived at maturity, they were "men full of faith and of the Holy Ghost." There were, however, varieties among them. "Star differeth from star in glory," in the firmament of the church, as in that of nature, even when it is most brilliantly lighted up. As an orb of the first magnitude, and with a radiance peculiarly his own, shone JOHN HOWE. By the consent of all to whom superior mind, sanctified by the truth and charity of the gospel, is dear, he ranks among his contemporaries as a prince among chiefs, Even Wood, who can hardly pen a kind or candid expression for a non-conformist, in his Athenæ Oxonienses, says that Howe, when in London during the Commonwealth, was "known to the leading men of those times for his frequent and edifying preaching,” and adds, " He is a person of neat and polite parts," who "hath applied himself wholly to beneficial and practical subjects, in which undertaking he hath acquitted himself so well. (his books being penned in a fine, smooth, and natural style) that they are much commended and read by very many conformists, who generally have him in great esteem."

For some unassigned cause-perhaps modesty, perhaps prudence, perhaps a combination of the two-Mr Howe, by what appears to have been his last act, deprived his friends of the principal materials for his biography. He had passed through a checquered and eventful course; and he had not neglected to observe, or to put his observations upon record. In reply to enquiries made about his manuscripts after his death, his son, Dr George Howe, stated that his "honoured father" had collected" large memorials of the material passages of his own life, and of the times wherein he lived, which he most industriously concealed till his last illness." The "honoured father,"

however, after he had lost his speech, unexpectedly recovered it, and, to use his son's words, " called me to him, and gave me a key, and ordered me to bring all the papers (which were stitched up in a multitude of small volumes), and made me solemnly promise him, notwithstanding all my reluctance, immediately to destroy them, which I accordingly did." Thus all were at once irrecoverably lost. Seldom has a more precious treasure been sacrificed; or filial obedience to a revered parent's dying injunction, been put to a severer test; or posterity had forced upon them an occasion of more just complaint against a man whom, on every other account, they held in unqualified esteem. Mr Howe's close connexion with Cromwell, and his standing with the leading persons of the religious parties of his day, together with his own integrity and judgment, must have made his statements first-rate authorities for the historian and the biographer. Nor, considering the union of sound sense with devotional feeling which distinguished him throughout, would his "memorials" have been less precious for use in the closet, as helps to spiritual edification. Indeed the more we reflect on the "manner of man he was," the more is our regret increased that a regard to what was due to others did not prevail to spare, in opposition to the fatal sudden impulse to destroy them, "the multitude of small volumes" which he had prepared for the benefit of survivors.

The leading facts to be put down in an account of Mr Howe are contained in his " Life" by Dr Calamy. Nearly the whole of this, with some additional matter and much able and excellent remark, appeared about ten years ago in "The Life and Character of John Howe, M.A., with an Analysis of his Writings. By Henry Rogers." Professor Rogers' volume leaves little further to be hoped for of information respecting Mr Howe. From these sources, with occasional resort to others, the materials for the following sketch have been obtained.

Mr Howe was born May 17, 1630, at Loughborough, in Leicestershire; a place then, as it is still, only second in importance to the county-town. Whether valued or not by its inhabitants, it is no trifling distinction that their town was the birth-place of the author of "The Living Temple." He was named after his father, who was minister of the parish; and he was baptized, according to the entry in the parish-register, yet extant, on the third day after his birth. The father had been appointed to his charge by Archbishop Laud. Unfortunately, as some would think, John Howe the senior was "puritanically" inclined, while

Laud's predilections were "papistical." Matters, therefore, soon came to a crisis between the patron and the patronized.

Besides scrupling the prescribed "ceremonies,” the worthy minister committed what was, in the arch-prelate's reckoning, a heinous crime. King Charles and his hierachy required the working clergy to encourage among the people the desecration of the Lord's day, by dancing, archery, may-games, whiston ales, or morrice-dances, " or any such harmless recreations." But the pastor of Loughborough dared to pray in his pulpit, as Laud himself reported it," that God would preserve the prince in the true religion, of which there was cause to fear." This was a flagrant outrage upon all the loyalty and piety then in vogue. The case was brought into the High-commission court, and on the 6th of November 1634, Mr Howe was sentenced to be "imprisoned during his Majesty's pleasure, suspended from every part of his ministry,, fined five hundred pounds, required to make a public recantation before the court, and condemned in costs of suit." Happily he made his escape.

Ireland often became an asylum for the English puritans. Walter Travers, expelled from being joint-lecturer with Hooker at the Temple, and forbidden by Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, to preach any where in England, was invited to Ireland. He became provost of Trinity-College, Dublin, and tutor to the afterwards celebrated Archbishop Usher, who probably was much indebted to him for sound views of doctrine and liberal opinions on church order. To this country Mr Howe fled, taking with him his son John, then a child about four years and a half old. When thirty-five years more had rolled by, the son, persecuted for non-conformity, again found a home in Erin. Here the father and the child continued till the breaking out of the Rebellion in 1641. The father does not appear to have exercised his ministry during his stay, which may have been owing to the circumstance that Laud's influence was beginning to be felt there. His place of sojourn is not named; but from the statement that "it was besieged by the rebels for several weeks together, though without success," it appears to have been Drogheda, a considerable sea port town, about thirty (English) miles north of Dublin, and then a place of strength. When the siege was abandoned, Mr Howe, fearing that he could not longer remain safely in Ireland, returned with his boy to England, and settled in Lancashire.

It is to be presumed that during their exile in the sister-land the