RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Clark Clarke
Manual of Unitarian Belief (1884); Every Day Ueliqion (1886); Vexed Questions in Theology (1886); The Problem of the Fourth Gospel (1886). He edited The Western Messenger at Louisville 1836-39 and printed in it tiie first poems of Emerson; with W. H. Clianning and R. W. Emerson he prepared the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (3 vols., 1852)- and pubhshed many magazine articles, addresses, sermons, and pamphlets.
Bibliography: J. F. Clarke, Autobiography, Diary, and Correspondence, ed. Edward Everett Hale, Boston, 1891.
CLARKE, JOHN: Early American Baptist, with Roger Williams founder of Rhode Island; b. probably in Suffolk, England, Oct. 8, 1609; d. in Newport, R. I., Apr., 1676. He was a highly educated physician who left England as a persecuted separatist and arrived at Boston Nov., 1637, just as drastic measures were being taken by the Massachusetts government against Anne Hutchinson and John Wheelwright (see Antinomianism and Anti- NOMiAN Controversies, II., 2). Whether from sympathy with Mrs. Hutchinson's views or from his aversion toward intolerance, he cast in his lot with the banished party and became a leader in the search for a home where liberty of conscience could be enjoyed. The climate of New Hampshire having been found too severe, the party led by Clarke and William Coddington secured, through the good offices of Roger WiUiams, the right to settle on Rhode Island; and in March, 1638, the nineteen male members entered into a covenant to subject their persons, lives, and possessions to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to do his will as revealed in Holy Scripture. Yet they guarded jealously the principle of liberty of conscience by providing that " none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine provided it be not directly repugnant to the government of laws established." In 1641 the law establishing liberty of conscience was reiterated and fortified. Clarke had much to do with the uniting of the Rhode Island settlements with Providence under a charter procured by Williams, and is thought to have drafted the law-book, which provides for democracy and liberty of conscience. If not an antipedobaptist before he left England, he became such probably as early as 1641, certainly by 1644, when Mark Lukar, an antipedobaptist, became associated with him in a church at Newport, of which Clarke had been pastor from about 1641. While visiting Lynn, Mass., in 1651, Clarke and two fellow workers were arrested and fined, and one of them was whipped. Thereupon Clarke published III Newes from New England (London, 1652), in which he vindicated the principles of liberty of conscience and believers' baptism. The next twelve years he resided in England as representative of his colony. In 1663 he secured from Charles II. a charter which provided for complete civil and religious liberty. To the Newport church many Baptist churches owe their origin.
Albert H. Newman.
Bibliography: Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Prcmidence Plantations in New England, vol. i., Providence, 1856; J. Callender, An Historical Discourse on the Civil and Religious A ffairs of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Boston, 1739; S. G. Arnold,
Hist, of the State of Rhode Island, vol. i.. New York, 1859; I. Backus, Hist, of New England, with particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians called Baptists, Newton, Mass., 1871; H. S. Burrage, Hist, of the Baptists in New England, ib. 1894; A. H. Newman, Hist, of the Baptist Churches in the U. S., ib. 1898; DNB, x. 432.
CLARKE, SAMUEL: The name of four prominent English theologians.
1. English non-conformist; b. at Wolston (22 m. s.w. of Leicester), Warwickshire, Oct. 10, 1599; d. at Isleworth (11 m. s.w. of London), Middlesex, Dec. 25, 1683. He was educated at Coventry and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, was ordained about 1622, and held charges at Knowle, Warwickshire, Thornton-le-Moors and Shotwick, Cheshire, but his Puritan tendencies soon exposed him to the rebuke of his ecclesiastical superiors. He held a lectureship at Coventry, but was inhibited by the bishop from preaching, only to give offense by a similar course at Warwick. In 1633 he was presented to the parish of Alcester, Warwickshire, whence he went, seven years later, to protest to the king against the et cetera oath. In 1642 he went to London and was chosen curate of St. Bennet Fink. There he was a governor and twice president of Sion College, and was also a member of the committee of ordainers in 1643. He was one of those who protested against the execution of the king, and opposed the lay-preaching permitted by the Independents. After the Restoration he took part with his close friend Richard Baxter in the Savoy Conference, and was ejected from his living in 1662. He removed to Hammersmith in 1666 and later went to Isleworth, where he spent the remainder of his life. Among his numerous works, valuable on account of the sources used, which are now frequently almost inaccessible, special mention may be made of the following biographical collections : The Saints Nosegay (London, 1642) ; A Mirror or Looking-Glass both for Saints and Sinners (1646); The Marrow of Ecclesiastical History (2 vols., 1649-50); General Martyr ology (1651); English Martyr ology (1652); and Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in the Later Age (1683). He also published, among other works, England's Remembrancer (London, 1657); A Discourse against Toleration (1660); and Book of Apothegms (1681).
Bibliography: His autobiography was prefixed to the Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, 1683; a Memoir by G. T. Clarke, a descendant, was prefixed to the reprint of the Saints Nosegay, London, 1881; DNB, x. 441-442.
2. Orientalist; b. at Brackley (16 m. s.w. of Northampton), Northamptonshire, 1625; d. at Oxford Dec. 27, 1669. He entered Merton College, Oxford, in 1640, but left the university during its occupation by the royal troops. After the surrender he returned (M.A., 1648). In 1649 he was appointed the first architypographus of the university and was also upper bedell of the civil law. ^ In 1650 he was master of a school at Islington, where he assisted Brian Walton in his Polyglot Bible, his attention being directed chiefly to the Hebrew text, the Aramaic paraphrase, and the Latin translation of the Persian version of the Gospels. He returned to Oxford in 1658 and was reelected to both his former positions. In addition to his work for
Clarke
Claudianus Mamertus