THE REV. H. VENN ON CERTAIN STRICTURES ON THE LIFE OF HIS GRANDFATHER.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

A WORK recently published, under the title of "The Life and Times of Selina Countess of Huntingdon," contains some severe strictures upon the authors of "The Life and Letters of the Rev. Henry Venn." These strictures are a republication of certain statements which appeared, a few years ago, in a magazine called "The Evangelical Register;" and to which my attention was directed by a letter in the Christian Observer for April 1837. I at first thought of replying to those statements through your columns, trusting that you would admit my explanation, as the subject had been alluded to in them; but upon referring to the Evangelical Register, its strictures appeared so vague and inaccurate that I determined to seek some previous communication with the author of them. This I did by a letter to his publisher, pointing out various mistakes into which he had been betrayed, and offering to disprove by original documents some of the facts upon which he grounded his attack upon my work. I promised at the same time to make such alterations, in a new edition which I was then publishing, as he might satisfactorily shew to be fairly required. Notwithstanding this communication, to which I received no satisfactory answer, the charges against "Venn's Life" have been republished in Lady Huntingdon's Life and Times; and I am now induced to regret that I did not refute the charges made against my work, when I was challenged to do so by the correspondent in your journal.

The charges to which I allude are directed not only against myself, as the Editor of Venn's Life, but also against my father, the late Rev. John Venn, rector of Clapham, as the writer of the brief memoir of the Rev. Henry Venn, which is contained in that volume.

These charges may be reduced to two heads. First, that the late Rev. John Venn has given a false account of his father's mature and final opinion on the subject of ecclesiastical irregularities. Secondly, that I, as the Editor of the volume, have endeavoured unfairly to separate my grandfather's name from the reproach of Methodism.

Though I cannot but be anxious to repel such charges, both from the impulse of filial reverence, and from a desire to remove every suspicion of unfairness from a volume which has been most extensively circulated and blessed; yet I conceive that other and very important questions are at issue, which must plead my apology with you, Mr. Editor, for wishing to occupy your pages with matter which at first sight may appear somewhat too personal.

The questions at issue are,—how far the revival of vital religion (as it is popularly termed) in our Established Church during the last century, was brought about by impulses extraneous to the system of the Church, and by infractions of her constitution and discipline; and how far it was owing to the less obtrusive influence of enlightened and zealous parochial ministers. If the first-mentioned were the principal means, we not only owe a deep debt of gratitude to those who set Ecclesiastical discipline at defiance; but an inference will be easily drawn that similar conduct would be right and expedient at the present day. Such questions are obviously of great and general interest. And the author of Lady Huntingdon's Life, as well as several other

advocates of irregular ministrations, perceive too clearly the importance of such a counter-witness as my grandfather, to suffer his testimony to escape severe cross-examination and animadversion.

Before I endeavour to refute the charges brought against me, it will be well to inquire from what quarter they proceed, and to what credit they are entitled. But as the author of Lady Huntingdon's Life has concealed his name under the designation of "A Member of the House of Shirley and Hastings," I have no way of ascertaining this but by examining the work itself. The author has possession of a great mass of original documents, consisting of letters which passed between Lady Huntingdon and her friends. These documents he has unfortunately mixed up with a crude compilation from a multitude of printed biographies, magazines, &c., with no reference whatever to the sources from whence he has drawn his information, nor any mark of distinction between what is original and what is borrowed. He has moreover pursued a method quite unparalleled, I should think, in religious biography. He has not only borrowed without acknowledgment the language of others in its original application; but by altering proper names and even genders he has frequently applied it to totally different persons and occasions.

For instance, in the Memoir of the Rev. Henry Venn, occurs the following paragraph, descriptive of his usefulness as an occasional preacher in the metropolis.

"After he left Yorkshire, he generally spent a few weeks in each year in London. On these occasions he preached many times in the week, as well as on the Sundays. Numerous audiences were collected; his sermons were listened to with the deepest attention, and he received many testimonies of their usefulness. His own spirit was much refreshed by these visits, and his clerical friends were accustomed to hail his arrival amongst them, as a season of peculiar pleasure and advantage." In Lady Huntingdon's Life and Times the following paragraph

occurs:

"In the month of January 1756 there was another meeting at her Ladyship's. Mr. Chapman, &c. &c. &c. composed this little band. On these occasions there was frequent preaching. Numerous audiences were collected: the sermons were listened to with the deepest attention, and her ladyship received many testimonies to their usefulness. Her own spirit was always much refreshed by these meetings, and her clerical friends were accustomed to hail her arrival amongst them as a season of peculiar pleasure and advantage." (See "Venn's Life," p. 56, "Lady Huntingdon's Life," vol. ii. p. 6, note.)

That it may not be supposed this is a solitary vagary of authorship, I will cite two more out of many instances which I have casually detected. The quarter from which the author borrows in these cases is Dr. Haweis' Life of Romaine. I quote Dr. Haweis' words, and insert in brackets the alterations.

Mr. Romaine [Mr. Venn] not only wished Mr. Berridge [Lady Huntingdon] good luck in the name of the Lord, but supported him [her] in what some of his more strait-laced [timid] brethren might reckon very objectionable irregularities. Poor dear old man! [inestimable woman!] thou art gone to thy rest; and whether thy great Master will blame or praise thee for doing good to the souls of men, regularly or irregularly, is now no longer dubious." (Haweis' Life of Romaine, p. 108. Lady Huntingdon's Life, vol. i. p. 294.) A third specimen will be given presently.

Upon these specimens of the author's very peculiar mode of composition, I only remark that they betray, to say the least, such a loose

style of writing, and such an incapacity of expressing his own ideas, as cannot but throw suspicion upon every statement in the book.

Yet this is the author who has not scrupled anonymously to charge the late Rev. John Venn with having given a false account of his father's sentiments, upon a point of which he must have been fully cognisant.

The Rev. John Venn, who was nearly forty years old at his father's death, has stated that his father "was no advocate for irregularity in others; that when he afterwards considered it in its different bearings and connections, he lamented that he had given way to it, and restrained several other persons from such acts by the most cogent arguments." (Venn's Life, p. 177). These words the author of Lady Huntingdon's Life quotes; places after them a note of admiration; then gives a loose account of what he conceives to have been Mr. Venn's conduct and motives; and adds, "This view of Mr. Venn's conduct being considered as offensive, his descendants have put forth their own representations of these matters. Both accounts cannot possibly be true. To what then can such contradictions tend?" (Lady Huntingdon's Life, vol. i., p. 292.) I agree, that both these accounts cannot possibly be true; but if an unauthenticated and anonymous statement is to stand against the testimony of a well-known and most competent witness, the truth of history is a farce.

It is not for me to eulogize the character for accuracy of style and moral integrity of the late rector of Clapham. Least of all will the Editor of the Christian Observer require it to be done. I shrink from even appearing solicitous to corroborate my father's testimony; yet I cannot withhold one remarkable confirmation which it has received since the publication of my book. In Mr. Berridge's Life (p. 445) a letter is given from Mr. Berridge to John Thornton, Esq., in which, in his quaint language, he reports Mr. Venn's disapproval of the late Mr. Simeon's conduct in preaching in a barn, in which Mr. Venn had been accustomed to preach, and ridicules his sense of ecclesiastical propriety by styling him "the Archdeacon of Yelling."*

I trust that the charge against my father's accuracy may now be regarded as disposed of for ever.

The charge against myself, as the Editor of Venn's Life, is one of inferior importance in every respect. Reduced to a tangible form, from the second-hand language in which it is conveyed, it amounts to this;—that I have suppressed Mr. Venn's early connection with Whitfield, the Wesleys, Fletcher, Howel Harris, Capt. Scott, and other irregular labourers, and especially that I have not given a fair representation of his regard for Lady Huntingdon (vol. i. p. 294).

The severest part of the censure passed upon me is composed of a borrowed paragraph from similar strictures fifty years ago, directed by the late Dr. Haweis against the late Hon. and Rev. N. B. Cadogan's Life of Romaine. I again give the original, marking the adaptation

Yet Mr. Berridge himself at a late period was shaken in his favourable opinion respecting irregular ministrations. I have the authority of one of Mr. Venn's surviving daughters for asserting that in Mr. Berridge's last visit

to London he made use of this remarkable expression to her :“Ah, N., you have always been at the top of the steeple; and I am climbing up after you as fast as my old limbs can carry

me!"

in brackets. "Hypocrisy itself must be ashamed of the supposition that Mr. Romaine [Mr. Venn] ever disapproved or discountenanced the immensely blessed and successful efforts of this great itinerant Apostle [the Countess of Huntingdon.] (Lady H.'s Life, vol. i. p. 294. Haweis' Life of Romaine, p. 108.) If I must be exposed to censure in its worst form-namely, uncharitable insinuation,—it is some comfort to be assailed by shafts which have first been cast against so venerable a name as that of Cadagon, and to reflect how completely that name has outlived and outshone their assaults.

In reply to the charge, as to the suppression of the correspondence alluded to, I have a short answer to make. I never had a single letter of my grandfather's to any one of the persons enumerated; excepting one to Captain Scott, which I have printed, and which occupies thirteen octavo pages of my volume. As to the vague charge of my having given an unfair representation of his intimacy and co-operation with these persons, it would appear, I am persuaded, to all candid minds, a sufficient reply, to observe that in the compilation of my book, I only profess (as I state in the work itself) to give my father's memoir &c. and a selection of letters calculated to illustrate the character of my grandfather. It would have been quite beyond the scope I proposed to myself, to have entered into the details of all his familiar and ministerial connections. I did not pretend to write the " Life and Times" of the Rev. Henry Venn. Nevertheless, if it should be urged that the reader of my volume would suppose that the elder Mr. Venn held in much more moderate estimation the character and conduct of irregular preachers, than the reader of Lady Huntingdon's life would suspect; I am quite willing to allow that such a contrariety does exist between the two works, but I shall have no difficulty in proving that the charge of unfairness does not lie against my representations. I conceive it will be generally allowed that a biographer who has the full advantage of knowing, both from private papers and from living witnesses, the opinions of the man whose life he professes to publish; who knows also what changes those opinions may have undergone in the course of years, should give the mature and ultimate judgment rather than its successive variations. If, however, he does this, some one who is less fully acquainted with the subject of the biography, meeting with immature and accidental expressions of opinion, which bear a different complexion from that ultimate judgment, may too hastily conclude that he has discovered "contradictions ;" and so the biographer may be charged with unfairness, nay, with "hypocrisy!" Such has been my misfortune. One resource however remains for establishing the truth; though I regret that I am driven to the necessity of resorting to it-namely, to bring forward the abatements, in opposition to the exaggerations, of my grandfather's favourable opinion of the parties in question. I shall confine myself to the case of Lady Huntingdon.

I find, amongst Mr. Venn's writings, the following less favourable allusions to her character and conduct. Writing to Mr. Elliott, (30th June 1791) he says, "I find that on the very day I came from you, Lady Huntingdon died, and entered, there is no doubt, into mansions prepared for the children of God. All the hay, the straw, and the stubble, and much indeed there was, will be burnt up." In a letter to James Ireland, Esq., (17 April 1783), Mr. Venn thus speaks, re

specting her proceedings. "I grieve and lament for the Countess. This event confirms me still more in what I have always held, that the work in the church, and the regular way, is infinitely preferable to the way out of the church."

Now, had I published such extracts as these, without any encomiums gathered from other letters, I should have acted very unfairly towards Lady Huntingdon's reputation. Had I, on the other hand, suppressed these notices, and published any high and unqualified encomiums, written before her character and proceedings were fully developed, I should have been equally chargeable with unfairness. I conceive, therefore, that I best consulted the interests of truth and charity by publishing only such moderated panegyrics as I believe my grandfather would have himself selected, as a record of his deliberate sentiments.

I trust that after this explanation of Lady Huntingdon's case, I shall be allowed credit for having exercised a legitimate discretion in other similar cases. The lights and shades of her character have been so prominently brought out in the volumes which occasion this letter, that I have no hesitation in publishing the extracts I have just given respecting her ladyship. But I should be very sorry to be compelled to adopt the same line of self-justification with respect to all other names which I may be accused of passing over with too little notice. And now having, I trust, freed myself from the charges alleged against me, I have a further duty to perform towards all those who may place any reliance on the judgment and integrity of my father, or myself; namely, to warn them against giving credit to the account of my grandfather contained in Lady Huntingdon's life. Soon after his death a life of him was published anonymously (but by a wellknown author), which his son, the late rector of Clapham, characterizes as "full of misrepresentation, and calculated to produce a most injurious impression respecting his character and principles," (see preface to Venn's life, page 5); yet nearly the whole of this spurious production is inserted in Lady Huntingdon's life. Besides this, disjointed parts of at least four different biographies of my grandfather are so jumbled together as to produce, when accurately examined, the most absurd statements. Above all, the author has not scrupled, in several material points, directly to contradict the assertions of my father upon mere uncertain surmises and inferences of his own.

It is with the deepest regret, that I have felt myself compelled to write as I have done. I have forborne, till I could no longer resist the appeals from several different quarters, to vindicate the integrity of the volume I had published, and the views which it incidentally gives of the progress of the religious revival in the church. In the compilation of that book, I kept in view, as my main object, the delineation of a Christian character, calculated to commend itself to the consciences of all men. Itherefore studiously omitted every thing which might lead to controversy; nevertheless, as it has incidentally thrown considerable light upon an important question, and as some have endeavoured to fasten a controversial character upon it, I feel myself called upon to follow up the subject alluded to in the preface to my volume; and if God be pleased to afford me opportunity, I purpose to do this in a separate work, and I take this occasion of soliciting from those who may think me worthy of such confidence, any authentic CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 29. 2 M