* Bruised Keed, c. xvii. t Bruised Reed, c. xvii.
X ' Sweet-natured to a fault.' Brook (' Lives of the Puritans,' ii. 419) remarks : ' This reverend divine was eminently distinguished for a meek and quiet spirit, being always unwilling to offend those in power.' This is too general, for however gentle, . Sibbes, when roused, spoke out with no thought of who might be, or might not be, offended. For, says he, ' It argues a base disposition, either for frown or favour, to desert a good cause in evil times ' (' Bowels Opened,' 1st edition, 1639, 4to, p. 45). Brook continues, from Calamy (Calamy's Account, vol. ii. pp. 605, 606) : ' This trait in his character will appear from the following anecdote : — A fellowship being vacant in Magdalen College, for which Archbishop Laud recommended his bell-ringer at Lambeth, with an ardent design of quarrelling witii
Ixii MEMOIR OF RICHARD SIBBES, D.D.
he takes care to guard himself from misconstruction, by adding : — * Which must not be understood, as if men should dissemble their judgment in any truth where ther6 is just cause of expressing them- selves ; for the least truth is Christ's, and not ours : and therefore we are not to take liberty to affirm or deny at our pleasure. There is a due in a penny, as well as in a pound ; therefore we must he faithful in the least truth, when season calleth for it! But again, so gentle and unpolemic was he, he continues finely : — ' But in some cases peace, by keeping our faith to ourselves, Rom. xiv. 22, is of more consequence than the open discovery of some things we take to be true : considering the weakness of man's nature is such, that there can hardly he a discovery of any difference in opinion, tvithout some estrangement of affection. So far as men are not of one mind, they will hardly be of one heart, except where grace and the peace of God, Col. iii. 15, bear great rule in the heart. Therefore, open show of difference is never good hut when it is necessary ; however some, from a desire to be somebody, turn into by-ways, and yield to a spirit of contradiction in themselves.'* And then, Leighton-like, he turns away from the distractions around him, and thinks of the ' rest that remains.' ' Our blessed Saviour, when he was to leave the world, what doth he press upon his disciples more than peace and love ? And in his last prayer, with what earnestness did he beg of his Father that they might be one, as he and the Father were one ! John xvii. 21. But what he prayed for on earth, we shall only enjoy perfectly in heaven. Let this make the meditation of that time the more sweet to ws.'-f* Even so —
' Search well another worhl ; who studies this, Travels in clouds ; seeks manna where none is.' %
One wonders, and yet does not wonder, how such a peaceable and loveable man came to be thus harassed. But what has the dove done to make the serpent strike its fang into it ? Simply
them if they refused, or of putting a spy upon them if they accepted, Dr Sibbes, who was ever U7iwilling to provoke liis superiors, told the fellows that Lambeth-house would be obeyed ; and that the person was young, and niiglit in time prove hopeful. The fellows therefore consented, and the man was admitted.' This ' anecdote ' carries improbability in the face of it, and neither Calamy nor Brook adduce any authority. Sibbes could have no voice in ' Magdalen,' in the election or rejection of a ' fellow.' Nor is there the slightest memorial of such an appointment as is stated. Surely if it had been made, name and date would have been notorious. Amid the many charges against Laud, this has no place either in Prynne or elsewhere. Calamy is not guilty, ordinarily, of introducing mere idle gossip, but it would seem that in the present instance he has.
* aiid t Bruised Reed, c. xvii.
X Henry Vaughan, Silex Sciutillans. Edition by Lyte, 1847, page 17.
MEMOIR OF EICHARD SIBBES, D.D. Iliu
crossed its 'path. What the lamb, to cause the wolf to take it by the throat ? Again, simply crossed its jpath. Sibbes had done that with Laud. While the king, under his mitred councillor's tuition, was straining every nerve to un-Sabbath Sunday, Sibbes and his co-Puritans held fast its inviolable authority. While proclamations, unsanctioned by Parliament, were issued to sub- stitute the May-pole for the Cross, the Book of Sports for the Book of God, and the village green for the sanctuary, Sibbes held up the cross and summoned the people to the sanctuary. While all doc- trinal preaching, all declarations of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, was sought to be put down (precursor of the infamous 'Directions'), Sibbes avouched his Calvinism, and spoke with no bated breath of Arminianism. While churchmen of the school of Laud would have men regard transubstantiation as a ' school nicety,' bowing to the table of the Lord, as 'becoming reverence,' images in churches worthy * commemoration,' sacerdotal absolution and confession to a priest as 'proper things' the Lord's Supper not as a sacrament, but as a sacrifice, — Sibbes protested, and gave them their proper designa- tion, with no periphi'asis or courtly phrase, of papistical innovation and delusions of the devil. I ana not sure that I v/ould make all his and the Puritans' side-thrusts against ' the papist' my own. I fear I cannot acquit either them or him of ' upbraiding,' and even blameable uncharity for the men, in the honesty of his indignation against their doctrines and measures. But we must not forget the circumstances of ' the time.' He was old enough to remember the Armada, sent to his own Suffolk shore under a pope's blessing, and a ' bull ' being nailed to the palace-door with a pope's ban. He was cognizant of innumerable plots, not merely against our religious, but also our civil, liberties. He heard claims asserted, not for equality, but supremacy. And then there were those high in authority, coquetting with that popery that had incarnadined England with her best blood, and had been got rid of at a cost inestimable. He could not but speak, and, speaking as a patriot and Protestant, it was not easy to 'prophesy smooth things' Perhaps Laud would have endured Sibbes's bold and passionate rebuke of the prevailing sins of the age, and even, however galled, have winked at his full and fervid assertions of the principles of the reformation from popery, and clear and articulate condemnation of Arminianism, had he gone no further. But words were not only to be answered with words, be it granted unadvised words, with occasional kindredly unadvised words. Action was to be met with action, if ' the church ' were not to be only a masked re-establishmeut of popery,