"Thou shouldest be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen of stagnant waters…"
Elizabeth Heywood was the wife of Oliver Heywood. She was born in 1634 and died May 26th, 1661 – just one year before the Ejection Sunday. Although "absent from the body and present with the Lord" before that fateful day of '62 her spirit pervaded the manse as Coley in Yorkshire still, and her dying counsels are found in those words of stern resolve that fell from those lips of Oliver Heywood.
"She could read some of the hardest chapters in the Bible when but four years of age," Oliver Heywood tells us in his memoirs of her; "and at six years of age she was able to write down passages of sermons she had heard, in church, by continual us, in process of time she arrived at great perfection, so that she could repeat a sermon very methodically and distinctly. This evidenced not only her natural genius, but that 'by reason of use, she had her senses exercised to discern both good and evil.'" How significant that last phrase! Elizabeth Heywood was "exercised" in the things of the Lord and could readily read "the signs of the times" in which the church of Christ existed.
She was a godly woman given to much prayer, and yet, "the Lord's ways are in the seas," and from her earliest days she was afflicted with bodily ill-health. As her earthly life drew to a close she began to set her "house in order." "She bought no clothes but for present use," her husband records in his diary, "because, as she said, she was shortly to take her leave of us all. She provided necessaries for us, that we might have nothing to buy for some time." But it was her "SPIRITUAL" provision that was to see her family through the dark days that were to come. "Two things she particularly urged on me," says her husband; "first, that I would be much in secret prayer, and look chiefly to the frame of my heart therein; secondly, that I would never pray without mentioning the church of God, 'if it be but,' said she, 'in two or three words, yet let Jerusalem come into your mind.'"
How much the thought of Christ's church lay on Elizabeth Heywood's heart at this time. "Keep close to God and his truths," she told her husband and her father as she lay on her deathbed; "Do not forsake him," she urged them both; "and he will not forsake you. Do not fear men, but choose the greatest affliction before the least sin: if you should be put to the hardest trial, and if they should take away your lives, it will but send you sooner to your reward, and that will be no injury to you. If God do suffer those lordly-spirited men to afflict his church for a time, I believe it will not be long: the church is dear to our Lord, and he will not suffer it always to be trampled upon. O sirs, let the church of God lie near your hearts; it lies near God's heart: 'They shall prosper that love Zion;' prefer Jerusalem before and above your chief joy."
And to her children she spoke: "Labour to be real christians," she told them; "it is not to go to church, and to hear, and come away, and no more: but, if you would be christians indeed, you must hide the Word in your heart, meditate upon it, and get the sweetness out of it…Labour to watch over the heart, pray for grace, and spend time well."
"That night she poured out her soul to God," we are told; "O what heart-melting expressions did she use for that purpose! Then she prayed for me … she prayed for her dear father and the ministers of the gospel (her father was also ejected in '62 and suffered greatly for the testimony of Christ)...then for the family… and then for the church of God, that the Jews might be converted, and that the gospel might be preached to the remainder of the Gentile nations."
She died just as the storm clouds were gathering for the Lord's servants. "Mr. John Harrison of Ashton, who preached our marriage sermon," Oliver Heywood tells us, "preached also her funeral sermon on that ext of which she had felt the sweetness and which she desired might be taken – 'Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.'"
"Being dead, " Elizabeth Heywood "yet spoke." The "victory" – even in the foreboding days ahead - reside in Christ the Lord of His Church. She spoke, though dead, in that manse from which her dear husband was expelled; surely she speaks to any with a christian conscience in these dark days in which we live.
This Page Title – Elizabeth Heywood — Christian Wife and Mother The Wicket Gate Magazine "A Continuing Witness". Internet Edition number 56 – placed on line September 2005 Magazine web address – www.wicketgate.co.uk |