Black St. Bartholomew's Day

The Pastor's Letter August 1977

 
Dear Friends,

If you care to look in your diary for 24th August, you will find that it is listed as “St Bartholomew's Day”. In the diary of the Church of Christ, however, we find 24th August, 1662, listed as “Black Bartholomew's Day”. * On that day, almost 2000 sermons were preached by almost 2000 ministers of the Church of England, and the nature of those sermons and the men who preached them is well summarised in the words of one of them …

The 24th August, 1662, is the date of what church History has called “The Great Ejection”. It was on that day that almost 2000 ministers of the Church of England were ejected from their churches, and pulpits, and homes, because “for conscience sake”, as they put it, they could not bring themselves to submit to “An Act of Uniformity” drawn up by Charles II and his bishops. Like everything else in the history of the Church, however the 24th August, 1662, was merely the climax of a state of affairs that reached back in this case almost 100 years, to the years just following the Reformation in the Church of England, when Henry VIII was on the throne of England.

Under Henry, the Church in England had been “reformed”, but it wasn't long until many were beginning to question whether or not the reform had gone far enough. These people became knows as “Puritans”. It was the Puritans' desire to move the Reformation right to the point where everything that had been added to the Church during the middle ages by the Popes of Rome would be cast out, and not only the doctrine of the Church, but the practice and discipline of the Church be “purified”; so they were called the Puritans.

The main body of opinion in the church at this time was that “things indifferent, which are neither contrary to Scripture, nor forbidden by it, may be imposed by the Church or some lawful power!” The “things indifferent” referred to were things such as candles, crosses, vestments, and altars. The Puritans held that nothing that was not entirely consistent with the teaching of the Bible should be maintained; “for, if they be kept in the Church as things indifferent”, said John Hooper, who has been called “the father of Puritanism”, “they will at length be maintained as things necessary”. These were the two parties that first drew their swords right back in the reign of Henry VIII.

During the reign of Queen Mary - “Bloody Mary” - the martyr fires of Smithfield began to burn. Many of the leading Reformers were put to death; but many more managed to escape to the continent of Europe where they came more and more under the influence of the Swiss Reformers, Calvin and Bullinger. When Elizabeth ascended the throne of England at the death of her sister, Mary, Protestantism was re-established in the realm, and the Puritans who had fled to Europe began to make their way back to England. But, what were Elizabeth's intentions? Let me quote Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones here. “there is no question”, he says, “but that this whole trouble and dispute which lasted for the 100 years ending in 1662 is mainly to be attributed to that headstrong woman, Queen Elizabeth I. She caused an Act of Uniformity to be passed in the year of her accession to the throne, 1558, and in that, assent to the Prayer Book and its teaching was made obligatory. But – and this is an important point – at first this was not rigidly enforced, so the Puritans felt that they could honestly and conscientiously still stay in the Church of England. They felt that they had to but bide their time, and that the inevitable logic of their teaching would eventually become evident to all. So there was no thought in their minds of leaving the church; they remained within, determined to develop their teaching and influence others. It cannot be emphasised too frequently that the main body of the Puritans persisted in that attitude right down to 1662”.

This was the position then, that the Puritans returned to; Elizabeth's church, in theory, said that all had to conform to the Prayer Book; in practice, however, this was not the case, and so the Puritans remained within its ranks in the hope that reformation would soon be complete through their efforts.

During Elizabeth's reign, however, some of the Puritans began to see that this state of affairs held out little hope, and there sprang up a strong Presbyterian group under a man called Thomas Cartwright, and a third group – the Separatists – under Robert Browne. The watchword of this latter party was “reformation without tarrying for any”, and they were sorely persecuted by Elizabeth. In the reign of James I (VI of Scotland), things at first appeared to be favourable towards those of Puritan sympathies, but by 1620 the famous voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers in the Mayflower was a direct outcome of the opposition still held out towards the Reformers. James's right hand man was Archbishop Laud, and between them, they tried to impose the rule of Bishops, not only in England, but in Scotland as well. This led to the drawing up and signing of “The Solemn League and Covenant”, and the emergence of “The Covenanters” - the Scottish Puritans.

Civil war followed and the “monarchy” was abolished in the kingdom. Under Cromwell, who ruled the nation during its 'Commonwealth' period, religious liberty was granted to all Protestants, but, at the death of Cromwell, no equal successor was forthcoming, and the “royalists” in Parliament recalled Charles II to occupy the throne of England. He returned in May 1660, with the promise that he would grant “a liberty to tender consciences … in matters of religion”. The Puritans asked the king to recognise their position; the king “replied” when his chosen Parliament met in May, 1661, and publicly burned a copy of The Solemn League and Covenant. Puritans were expelled from lecturing posts in the universities etc., and the Episcopal form of church government was fully restored. A year later the Act of Uniformity became law. “The principal terms required by the Act were a Declaration of 'unfeigned assent and consent' to everything contained in the Book of common Prayer, re-ordination for those not episcopally ordained, and a renunciation of the Solemn League and Covenant”. It laid down “that all ministers in the church of England must conform to the demands of this Act by St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1662”.

The death knell had sounded for the Puritans; they had lived for a long time side-by-side with what they discerned to be the marks of an unreformed church in the hope that they could reform it. But now the cry was 'conform'; this they could never do! And so, on 'Black Bartholomew's Day, 2,000 of them left all that they had “for conscience sake”. There was to follow the “Conventicle Act”, forbidding them to meet together for worship; then the “Five Mile Act”, forbidding them to live within 5 miles of their old congregation. They were imprisoned and abused; Bunyan spent 12 years in jail for his non-conformity. “Those great preachers whose name we remember”, says C. H. Spurgeon, “were men who counted nothing their own; they were driven out for their benefices, because they could not conform to the Established Church, and they gave up all that they had willingly to the Lord. They were hunted from place to place, they wandered here and there to preach the Gospel to a few …. Those were foul times; but they promised they would walk the road, fair or foul, and they did walk it, knee deep in mud; and they would have walked it had it been knee deep in blood too”.

They were forbidden to preach, and yet they preached more than they might have done had they not been ejected, for when they were silenced, they wrote, and their words are speaking yet.