The Puritan Hope

Iain Murray

‘Old Mr. Hutcheson, minister at Killellan, used to say to Mr. Wodrow, author of the History of the Church of Scotland, “When I compare the times before the restoration [1660] with the times since their revolution [1688], I must own that the young ministers preach accurately and methodically; but there was far more of the power and efficacy of the Spirit and grace of God went along with sermons in those days than now: and, for my own part (all the glory be to God), I seldom set my foot in a pulpit in those times, but I had notice of some blessed effects of the Word”.’

JOHN GILLIES Historical Collections, 1754, vol 1, 315

‘Scotland has since the Reformation sent more saints to heaven than any country in Europe of the same population.’

DAVID BOGUE Discourses on the Millennium, 1818, 362

THE spiritual prosperity which accompanied the Puritan movement in England was paralleled by the revivals which occurred north of the Border during the same period. Here also the instrument was a powerful ministry stemming from colleges under the influence of faithful teachers of the Word. Andrew Melville, fresh from Geneva and twenty-nine years of age, led the way by reorganizing the moribund University of Glasgow in the years 1574—1580.

In 1583 Robert Rollock was appointed the first Principal of the Town’s College of Edinburgh, and under his leadership the college soon began to supply the churches with men well qualified for the gospel ministry. Rollock was a forceful teacher and not afraid to see some emotion in his classes. He would pray with his students daily, says an old writer, and once a week expound some passage of Scripture to them, ‘in the close of which he was frequently very warm in his exhortations; which wrought more reformation upon the students than all the laws which were made, or the discipline which was exercised’.’ Besides his college work, we read that ‘he preached every Lord’s day in the church, with such fervency and evident demonstration of the Spirit, that he was the instrument of converting many to God’.’ Robert Boyd was one student who, as he tells us, first began ‘to learn Christ’ under that ‘happy and glorious soul’, Robert Rollock. Others who were under him at this memorable period
include John Welch and Edward Brice — both greatly used in later revivals — and Charles Ferme and David Chalderwood, best remembered for their books. Ferme became a regent, or professor, under Rollock in 1589, and with his Logical Analysis of the Epistle of Paul to the Romans (a commentary which runs to 378 pages in the last-century reprint) he followed the practice which his mentor had commenced of preparing expository material to aid the pulpit. Rollock issued many commentaries, the worth of which was noted by J. C. Ryle when he wrote: ‘Of our old writers, Rollock, the Scotch divine, is incomparably the best. In fact, I do not know such a “buried treasure” as his Latin Commentary on St. John.’

Another factor which made Edinburgh a conspicuous centre of spiritual light at this time was the ministry of Robert Bruce, who in the late 1580’s came direct from studying under Melville at St. Andrews to John Knox’s old pulpit of St. Giles. At the very outset of his ministry there was an ‘extraordinary effusion of the Spirit when he first dispensed the Sacrament of the Supper’. Thereafter Bruce’s ministry was a constant witness to the fact that preaching does not depend upon the energy of human gifts for its success. Of this ministry Robert Fleming writes:

‘Whilst he was in the ministry at Edinburgh he shined as a great light through the whole land, the power and efficacy of the Spirit most sensibly accompanying the word he preached... his speech and his preaching was in such evidence and demonstration of the Spirit that by the shining of his face, and that shower of divine influence, wherewith the word spoken was accompanied, it was easy for the hearer to perceive that he had been in the mount with God… he preached ordinarily with such life and power, and the word spoken by him was accompanied with such a manifest presence, that it was evident to the hearers he was not alone at the work.., some of the most stout-hearted of his hearers were ordinarily made to tremble, and, by having these doors which formerly had been bolted against Jesus Christ, as by an irresistible power broke open, and the secrets of their hearts made manifest, they went away under convictions and carrying with them undeniable proof of Christ speaking in him.’

The freedom which the students of Bruce and Rollock enjoyed did not last long. By the 1590’s the conflict between King James and the Church was apparent, and the royal policy aimed at fettering the presbyterian system by the introduction of ‘commissioners’ (alias a new episcopacy) who would be a dependent upon the King’s favour as were the bishops south of the Border. The last free General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the sixteenth century met at Edinburgh in I596 and thereafter all such gatherings were either packed and bribed, or simply put down and forbidden, until the famous Assembly which met in Glasgow in 1638. Many set-backs were endured in these forty years. Rollock died in his forty-third year; it speaks much for the faithfulness of the men whom he trained that they were soon proved ready to endure so much. Robert Boyd departed an unwilling exile to France in 1597; John Welch, protesting against the silencing of Bruce in 1605 was himself imprisoned and banished for life in 1606. Charles Ferme was confined for some years, as also was David Calderwood. Andrew Melville was summoned to London in 1605 and, after four years in the Tower, was banished to France, where he died in 1622.

The list of sufferers could be greatly extended; yet the fact is that it was in this same period that the gospel spread far and wide in Scotland, constantly registering new successes until loyalty to the faith of the Reformation became characteristic of a great part of the land. The one explanation for this is that the Holy Spirit in revival power was sovereignly dissipating the darkness and building a Church whose testimony was to be a beacon for succeeding centuries. Often the old records give us no more than a glimpse of what occurred, but what they tell us is enough to make us understand why, despite the persecution, it was an age of great spiritual prosperity.

We hear, for example, of John Davidson preaching to fellow ministers at the General Assembly of 1596 on the need for repentance: ‘In this he was so assisted by the Spirit working upon their hearts, that within an hour after they had convened, they began to look with another countenance than at first, and while he was exhorting them to these duties, the whole meeting was in tears, whereby that place might have justly been called Bochim.’ Commenting upon this day’s work in St. Giles, which had repercussions throughout the land, the modern biographer of Bruce writes: ‘Unquestionably there was a profound religious revival afoot, and behind the strivings of parties there was operative a great spiritual work such as cannot be recorded in the bald narrative of history.’

Similarly we read of a great revival under John Welch’s preaching in the south-west, in Kirkcudbright and at Ayr, before his banishment. When Samuel Rutherford settled in the same area, at Anwoth, in 1627, the results of the spiritual harvest in the time of Welch were in plentiful evidence. Rutherford refers to the former pastor of Kirkcudbright as ‘that Apostolicke, heavenly, and Propheticall man of God’ and reports, ‘from the godly witnesses of his life I have heard say, of every twenty four hours, he gave eight to prayer, except when the public necessities of his calling did call him to preach, visit, I exhort in season and out of season.’

Even more remarkable was the effect which followed Bruce’s ministry in Inverness, in the wild and Catholic Highlands, when he was banished there for the second time in 1622. No great results appear to have marked his first stay there from 1605 to 1613, but during the second period in the northern capital a new day of blessing dawned in the North. Bruce sensed it even as he made the difficult and weary ride for the second time. On one of the last stages of the journey he stood so long, rapt in meditation, beside his horse one morning before mounting that his companion later asked him the reason for the delay. Bruce replied, ‘I was receiving my commission from my Master to go to Inverness, and He gave it me Himself before I set my foot in the stirrup, and thither I go to sow a seed in Inverness that shall not be rooted out for many ages.’ More than two centuries later Christians in the Highlands still spoke of the days when multitudes walked and took ferries from the counties of Ross and Sutherland to hear Bruce preach in Inverness. Speaking of Bruce’s ministry in general, his contemporary, David Calderwood, says he ‘gained to Christ many thousands of souls’. Kirkton mentions one instance: ‘A poor Highlander, hearing him, came to him after sermon and offered him his whole substance (which was only two cows) upon condition Mr. Bruce would make God his friend.’ This was the first of the many revivals which were to make north-east Scotland one oft the most Christian areas of the world.

Among others converted under Bruce was Alexander Henderson, when he was minister of Leuchars; he later took a leading part at the Westminster Assembly.

With the suppression of the General Assembly, the universities and colleges passed entirely under royal control, and the banishment of those best able to influence students was cleverly designed to prevent the training of such men as Edinburgh had produced in the late sixteenth century. But in 1614 King James misjudged his man when he appointed thirty-six-year-old Robert Boyd to be Principal and Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow. Boyd, as noted earlier, was a pupil of Rollock. He was of noble family, reserved, polished and a brilliant scholar. Having been long absent in France, and therefore uninvolved in the developing conflict between presbytery and episcopacy in Scotland James evidently judged that the man’s mildness and his dependence on the royal favour for his office would make him sufficiently pliable. It was one of the many mistakes which King James made, for within a few years the royal party in Scotland was complaining that Boyd had joined the ‘Puritans’.

In 1621 Boyd was compelled to lay down his post, but not before he had left his impress on a series of younger men whose calibre was not a whit less than those who trained under Rollock. One of these men was Robert Blair. Blair had recently been made a Master of Arts when Boyd took office at Glasgow, and in his Autobiography he tells us of the memorable first address which the new Principal gave. What moved him to take up this work, Boyd asked his hearers to consider, ‘seeing he was a gentleman of a considerable estate, whereupon he might live competently enough?’ ‘His answer’, writes Blair, ‘was, that considering the great wrath under the which he lay naturally, and the great salvation purchased to him by Jesus Christ, he had resolved to spend himself to the utmost, giving all diligence to glorify that Lord who had so loved him. I thought within myself, There is a man of God, there is one of a thousand Boyd’s great love was practical divinity and the study of matters pertaining to the conscience. He would take his pupils through such themes as the Christian’s conflicts with the Devil, and when they came to him to speak of their own spiritual experience he was a wise counsellor. Another of his students was John Livingstone, who says how Boyd was ‘one of an austere-like carriage, but of a most tender heart.... I always found him soe kind and familiar as made me wonder.’ Robert Baillie, one of the five Scots ministers appointed to the Westminster Assembly in 1643, was also at Glasgow under Boyd, and thirty years after his student days were over he spoke of the spirit of repentance and of joy sometimes stirred within them as their master prayed. For Baillie, who himself became Principal at Glasgow in brighter days, Boyd was among the most eminent of the Reformed Divines.

One more future leader who as a regent, or professor, in the university was associated with Boyd was David Dickson. It is to Dickson that the English-speaking world owes the conception of a whole series of commentaries which for many years served to make the study of the Bible a common household employment. Boyd produced a Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians of stupendous size; as James Walker writes, this ‘led to the calamitous result of a great divine being buried under his own erudition’. The series of popular volumes which Dickson envisaged avoided this pitfall as the subsequent reprinting of a number of them has proved. To the series Dickson contributed expositions of Hebrews, 1635, Matthew, 1647, and Psalms, 1653—1654. George Hutcheson followed with rich folios on The Minor Prophets, 1653—1655, John, 1657, and Job, 1669. James Fergusson, ‘after the pattern held forth by those reverend brethren, Mr. David Dickson and Mr. George Hutcheson’, added his Brief Exposition of the Epistles of Paul (Galatians to Thessalonians), and Alexander Nisbet supplied A Brief Exposition of the First and Second Epistles General of Peter. The manuscript of Samuel Rutherford’s work on Isaiah was lost and never printed. James Durham’s volumes on The Song of Solomon, Revelation, and Job, were not designed as part of the same series, being published posthumously, as was the fine work of John Brown of Wamphray on Romans. ‘Nor are Dickson and his fellow-interpreters to be despised,’ writes James Walker. ‘They want the scholarship of the present day, though they were scholars. But though they want our scholarship, they were, more than our equals in theology.’ C. H. Spurgeon reached a similar verdict in his Commenting and Commentaries.

In his own day, however, Dickson was best known as a preacher and few were granted more success. Giving up his professorship at Glasgow in 1618, he became minister of Irvine in Ayrshire. Soon persecution was again on the increase and he was deprived of his charge and banished to the Highlands in 1622. Yet the mood of Dickson and his brethren was one of great confidence. At a prayer meeting held near Edinburgh in 1621 such enlargement of heart was given as petitions were presented to God that the ministers separated from each other with the assurance ‘that yet hereafter the work of God would flourish in the land more than formerly’. Dickson himself prayed for two hours that day, so John Livingstone tells us, and in a manner which convinced all present that God was hearing the pleas for ‘the present sad case of the Church’. In 1623, through the intervention of the Earl of Eglinton, Dickson was permitted to return to Irvine, and about the same time a great revival commenced. Robert Fleming reports it in these words:

‘I must here instance a very solemn and extraordinary outletting of the Spirit, which about the year 1625, and thereafter was in the west of Scotland, whilst the persecution of the church there was hot from the prelatic party; this by the profane rabble of that time was called the Stewarton-sickness, for in that parish first, but after through much of that country, particularly at Irvine, under the ministry of famous Mr. Dickson, it was most remarkable, where it can be said (which divers ministers and Christians yet alive can witness) that for a considerable time, few sabbaths did pass without some evidently converted, and some convincing proofs of the power of God accompanying his Word; yea, that many were so choaked and taken by the heart, that through terror the Spirit in such a measure convincing them of sin, in hearing of the Word they have been made to fall over and thus carried out the church, who after proved most solid and lively Christians.... Truly, this great spring-tide, which I may so call of the gospel, was not of a short time, but for some years’ continuance, yea, thus like a spreading moor-burn the power of godliness did advance from one place to another, which put a marvellous lustre on these parts of the country, the savour whereof brought many from other parts of the land to see the truth of the same.”

Such was the hunger to hear the Word of God preached in these times that week-day services became common. Dickson, for instance, held a service on Monday mornings before the opening of the market which on that day drew many from the surrounding area to Irvine. For this market-day sermon, it is said, the church was even more crowded than on the Lord’s Day. About the same time, on Monday, June 21, 1630, to be precise, a service was held at Shotts, a parish midway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was at the conclusion of a week-end of communion services at which seventy-five-year-old Robert Bruce and others had been ministering the Word. By the Sunday evening, such was the sense of the presence of God that many were unwilling to go away, and thus, after a night spent by a number in prayer, a further service was held in the morning. The preacher was young John Livingstone and the occasion he later remembered as ‘the one day in all my life wherein I got most presence of God in public’. Thirty years after that communion Robert Fleming recalled the results of those four days at the Kirk of Shotts. A ‘down-pouring of the Spirit’, he says, accompanied the ordinances, ‘especially that sermon on the Monday, the 21st of June, that it was known, which I can speak on sure ground, near five hundred had at that time a discernible change wrought on them, of whom most proved lively Christians afterward: it was the sowing of a seed through Clydsdale, so as many of most eminent Christians in that country could date either their conversion, or some remarkable confirmation in their case from that day’.

Equally memorable was the work now done in the plantation of Ulster which became a haven for both English and Scots ministers of Puritan conviction. In the 1620’s several such men who had settled in Ireland began to work together with much unity and affection. In 1623 Robert Blair arrived, newly dismissed from his professorship at Glasgow, and he in turn encouraged another of Boyd’s former regents, Josias Welch, to come over to Ireland. This was the son of John Welch and as Blair noted, ‘A great measure of that spirit which wrought in and by the father rested on the son’. They were joined in the late summer of 1630 by John Livingstone.

The moral state of Ireland had been hitherto deplorable. Atheism and sin abounded and the ministry of a large part of the clergy was not only ineffectual but worse than nothing. As in Jeremiah’s day, ‘from the prophets of Israel profaneness went forth into all the land’. Livingstone was not the only newcomer to be dismayed at the ignorance of the people, and on his settlement in the parish of Killinshie, he said, ‘I saw no appearance of doing any good among them.’ Yet to a population so generally sunk in carelessness the power of divine grace was now manifested. The first ministry to be attended with evidence that an awakening was at hand was that of the eccentric James Glendinning of Carrickfergus. Blair, recognizing this man’s limitations, advised him to seek a less exacting charge. He also urged upon him the duty of dealing more plainly and directly with the consciences of his hearers and advised him to seek to awaken them by the searching style of preaching which had been so largely blessed in Scotland. This counsel brought a turning point in Glendinning’s ministry; he moved to Oldstone, near the town of Antrim, and, amidst a people characterized by their licence and indifference, he preached the law of God and the terror of the divine wrath. Glendinning’s limitations were now unnoticed by a people who could only think of the message they heard. Andrew Stewart, a contemporary who witnessed what happened at Oldstone, later wrote with amazement of the change which was wrought:

‘Behold the success! For the hearers finding themselves condemned by the mouth of God speaking in His Word, fell into such anxiety and terror of conscience that they looked on themselves as altogether lost and damned; and this work appeared not in one single person or two, but multitudes were brought to understand their way, and to cry out, Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved? I have seen them myself stricken into a swoon with the Word; yea, a dozen in one day carried out of doors as dead, so marvellous was the power of God smiting their hearts for sin condemning and killing. And of these were none of the weaker sex or spirit, but indeed some of the boldest spirits, who formerly fear not to put a whole market-town in a fray; yet in defence of their stubbornness cared not to lie in prison and in the stocks, and being incorrigible, were as ready to do the like the next day.”

This revival, which commenced about the year 1626, was known after the name of the nearby river, the Six-Mile Water, which flows through the towns of Ballynure, Ballyclare and Templepatrick. Soon, however, the work spread far beyond the locality in which it commenced. In the reaping-time which followed, Robert Blair, Robert Cunningham, James Hamilton, the elderly Edward Brice — whom we noted at Edinburgh in Rollock’s day — Josias Welch, and several others, were all engaged. At the suggestion of John Ridge, an English minister of Antrim of the Puritan school, a meeting was held at Antrim on the first Friday of each month and to this all the ministers engaged in the awakening came for prayer and conference.’ On these Fridays a great congregation would gather and generally two ministers would preach in the morning and two in the afternoon. Speaking of this gathering, Livingstone writes:

‘We used to come together on the Thursday night before, and stayed the Friday night after, and consult about such things as concerned the carrying on the work of God, and these meetings among ourselves were sometimes as profitable as either presbytries or synods.’ Some of Robert Blair’s words are worthy of quotation, particularly as he had so much of the leadership of the work:

‘This monthly meeting thus beginning, continued many years, and was a great help to spread religion through that whole country.’ After naming nobility and ministers who gave their aid, he continues: ‘So mightily grew the Word of God, and his gracious work prospered in the hands of his faithful servants. ... There were many converts in all our congregations. That blessed work of conversion was now spread beyond the bounds of Down and Antrim, to the skirts of neighbouring counties, whence many came to the monthly meetings, and the sacrament of the Lord’s supper. The Lord was pleased to bless his Word, the people had a vehement appetite for it that could not be satisfied: they hung upon the ministers, still desirous to have more; no day was long enough, no room large enough.’

John Livingstone tells us this about the spirit of those days:

‘Among all these ministers there was never any jar or jealousie, yea, nor among the professors, the greatest part of them being Scots, and some good number of gracious English, all whose contention was to prefer others to themselves; and although the gifts of the ministers was much different, yet it was not observed that the hearers followed any to the undervaluing of others. Many of those religious professors had been both ignorant and prophane, and for debt and want, and worse causes, had left Scotland, yet the Lord was pleased by his Word to work such change. I doe not think there were more lively and experienced Christians any where than were these at that time in Ireland, and that in good numbers, and many of them persons of an good outward condition in the world. Being but lately brought in, the lively edge was not yet gone off them, and the perpetual fear that the bishops would put away their ministers, made them with great hunger wait on the ordinances. I have known them that have come several myles from their own houses to communions, to the Saturday sermon, and spent the whole Saturday night in several companies, sometimes an minister being with them, sometimes themselves alone in conference and prayer, and waited on the publick ordinances the whole Sabbath, and spent the Sabbath night likewise. . . . In these dayes it was no great difficultie for ane minister to preach or pray in publick or private, such was the hunger of the hearers; and it was hard to judge whether there was more of the Lord’s presence in the publick or private meetings.’

‘That solemn and great work of God, which was in the church of Ireland,’ says Fleming, ‘was a bright and hot sun-blink of the gospel; yea, may with sobriety be said to have been one of the largest manifestations of the Spirit, and of the most solemn times of the down-pouring thereof that almost since the days of the apostles hath been seen, where the power of God did sensibly accompany the Word with an unusual motion upon the hearers, and a very great tack, ( Footnote: A Scots word for a draught of fishes,) as to the conversion of souls to Christ. . . . I remember amongst other passages what a worthy Christian told me, how sometimes in hearing the Word, such a power and evidence of the Lord’s presence was with it, that he hath been forced to rise and look through the church and see what the people were doing, thinking from what he felt on his own spirit, it was a wonder how any could go away without some change upon them.’

This day of exceptional visitation passed away in the 1630’s. Some of the ministers were called home by death. Josias Welch died in 1634, his friends Blair and Livingstone being present on that triumphant day in June when he passed over. The son of John Welch ‘clapped both his hands, and cryed out, “Victory! Victory! Victory for evermore!” and within a short while thereafter he expired’. Another who departed about this time was Edward Brice, who ‘in all his preaching insisted most on the life of Christ in the heart’. He died in 1636, having been in Ireland since 1613. The remainder of the evangelical leaders were silenced by the episcopal opposition which was at its height in these days when Archbishop Laud hounded many Puritan ministers out of their pulpits. Robert Blair, for instance, was excommunicated by the Bishop of Down in 1634. After the sentence was pronounced, Blair rose and cited the bishop to appear before the tribunal of Jesus Christ to answer for his deed. Upon this the bishop expressed his confidence that he would be able to appeal to the mercy of God, only to be told by the persecuted minister, ‘Your appeal is like to be rejected because you act against the light of your own conscience.’ (Fottnote: Shortly after this the bishop fell seriously ill. When his physician, Dr. Maxwell, came to enquire what was wrong, ‘he was long silent, and with great difficulty uttered these words, “It is my conscience, man”. To which the doctor replied, “I have no cure for that”.’)

Notwithstanding the comparative shortness of this ‘sun-blink’ in Ulster, and despite the terrible massacre which occurred in 1641, claiming the lives of some forty thousand Protestants, J. S. Reid could write of this time in his History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, published in 1833: ‘The Gospel shot forth its branches in Ulster with wonderful rapidity, till, like the grain of mustard, from being the least of all seeds, it became a great and noble tree, which after the lapse of two centuries and the beating of many bitter storms, stands, at the present day, more firm and vigorous than ever.’ Meanwhile in Scotland Bruce had died in 1631. Shortly before his death there had been one of those prayer meetings, in his home, which were so characteristic of the period, and from which much spiritual energy and confidence was derived. The aged Bruce prayed ‘with such an extraordinary motion upon the hearts of all present, and so sensible an outpouring of the Spirit, as scarce any present were able to contain themselves’.

In the years which immediately followed, the episcopal party made a last desperate attempt to stem the rising tide of allegiance to the evangelical faith. Robert Blair and his associates, Livingstone, Cunningham and Ridge, were harried out of Ireland by persecution, only to find a similar situation prevailing in Scotland. We are not surprised to learn that it was David Dickson and the people of Irvine who at risk to themselves sheltered these fugitives. The work of the two older men, Cunningham, the Scot, and Ridge, the Englishman, was done, and here at Irvine they died in peace. They had already proved in this world what Rutherford anticipated of heaven, ‘When we come up to our father’s house the higher Jerusalem, I trust we shall not stand in a vicinity to, or a distance from his face who sits on the throne and the Lamb, as English and Scottish’. Blair and Livingstone survived the storm and were leaders of the Scottish Church in the new age which was at hand.

It is against this background that the great political events of the late 1630’s in Scotland are to be understood — the rejection of Laud’s liturgy, the rallying of the people to sign the National Covenant, the abolition of Episcopacy at the General Assembly of 1638, leading in turn to the two Bishops’ Wars, so called because of Charles I’s intervention to support his falling party in Scotland. The story of the events between 1638 and 1660, with the Civil Wars, the Solemn League and Covenant uniting the Puritans in England and Scotland, the Westminster Assembly, and the work of Cromwell, has often been told. But with all the political confusion of that period it is often forgotten that for the churches these were years of peace and of much prosperity. The seed sown in tears was indeed reaped with joy. James Kirkton’s words on the spiritual state of Scotland before the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 are a fitting testimony with which to close this sketch of a great revival period:

‘At the king’s return every parish had a minister, every village had a school, every family almost had a Bible. . . . Every minister was a very full professor of the reformed religion, according to the large confession of faith framed at Westminster by the divines of both nations. Every minister was obliged to preach thrice a week, to lecture and catechise once, besides other private duties wherein they abounded, according to their proportion of faithfulness and abilities. None of them might be scandalous in their conversation, or negligent in their office, so long as a presbytrie stood; and among them were many holy in conversation and eminent in gifts... nor did a minister satisfy himself except his ministry had the seal of a divine approbation, as might witness him to be really sent from God. Indeed, in many places the spirit seemed to be poured out with the Word, both by the multitude of sincere converts, and also by the common work of reformation upon many who never came the length of a communion.... I have lived many years in a parish where I never heard an oath, and you might have ridden many miles before you heard any: Also, you could not for a great part of the country have lodged in a family where the Lord was not worshipped by reading, singing and publick prayer. No body complained more of our church government than our taverners, whose ordinary lamentation was, their trade was broke, people were become so sober.’