CHAPTER V.

ECCLESIASTICAL RELATIONS AT BEDFORD.

W

1770-1773.

HEN Howard returned from abroad after his wife's death, he could not at once settle down in his desolate home. Within a short time, he went to Southampton, where he felt so unwell that he requested the prayers of the congregation over which William Kingsbury, an excellent and distinguished pastor of the last century, presided. This circumstance led not only to a pleasant interview, but to a lasting friendship.

Travelling again became his resource; and from Bristol he visited part of Wales and the south of Ireland, accompanied by a servant named Thomasson,1 who seems to have paid him the most assiduous attention, and who in a MS. journal preserved several particulars respecting his master's life. Upon returning to Cardington, Howard was seized with severe ague, which lasted three-quarters of a year; owing, it would appear, in part at least, to "the low marshy situation of the village," a circumstance which rekindled the sufferer's zeal in promoting sanitary improvement, an object to which more than ever he

1 Much has been said about this man. I reserve any notice of him for the present.

devoted attention after his recovery. Other subjects occupied his thoughts at this period, for we find him, in the course of four years after his Continental journey, engaged in ecclesiastical, social, and political affairs which require our notice.

It had been his custom, since he went to live at Cardington, to attend divine worship at Bedford. The congregation with which he united had a remarkable history. A number of godly people in the days of the Civil Wars seceded from the parish churches at Bedford, and chose for their pastor a person named John Gifford. He was once a zealous Royalist, and being taken prisoner by the Parliamentarians, was sentenced to death; but he escaped through the intervention of his sister and the drunkenness of the guard. Becoming converted, he joined a few Puritans. The little band, in the year 1650, elected him to be their spiritual guide; and the effect of his teaching, followed by an epistle he addressed to them, "upon his departure out of the world," created in the minds of the next generation the most profound reverence for his saintly life and apostolic character. Gifford's epistle has been praised by Southey, who says it exemplifies a wise, tolerant, and truly Christian spirit; that spirit he infused into the community, as its subsequent history proves. He was the Evangelist, and the Greatheart of the Bedford pilgrims. His idea of Christian life was, that it springs from spiritual union with the Lord Jesus; and that the bond of union amongst His followers does not consist in oneness of theological or ecclesiastical opinion, but in religious sympathy and brotherly love. The Church he founded was neither exclusively Baptist

nor Pædobaptist; members of both kinds were admitted on the same terms.

John Bunyan was first a deacon and then the pastor of this unique Society. The humble annals contain several notices of the great allegorist; relating how, when he died, "the whole congregation met to humble themselves before God by fasting and prayer for His heavy and severe stroke upon them, in taking away their honoured brother, Bunyan, by death"; and how it was "agreed by the whole congregation, that care be taken to seek out for one suitably qualified to be chosen an elder among them," and such "care" was committed by all the rest to the brethren living in Bedford. The name of Bunyan continued a household word in that community, and was fresh in the memory and was often on the lips of the people with whom Howard worshipped. Bunyan's "Grace Abounding," and Bunyan's "Holy War," as well as Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," must have been books after Howard's own heart, for the ecstatic expressions contained in his Journals might be taken for echoes of that wonderful man's religious teaching.

The Church had, in Bunyan's time, several pastors. The Records mention no less than seven. One of them was Nehemiah Cox, "a very excellent, learned, and judicious divine." He appeared in court at the Bedford Assizes, to answer a charge of preaching contrary to the law of the land; and, oddly enough, "he first pleaded in Greek and then in Hebrew "a piece of pedantry which appeared the more remarkable, as in the indictment he bore the description of "Cordwainer." When the circumstance came to be buzzed about in Bedford, the townsfolk

"wound up what they counted a good story, by saying the Judge told the bar, 'Well, this cordwainer has wound you all up, gentlemen.'

A minister named Joshua Symonds undertook the pastoral office in the Bedford Church the year in which Howard's wife Henrietta died; and as Howard and he became intimate friends, and he was one to whom he wrote several letters, notice may be taken of him here. Born at Kidderminster, he lived in Birmingham as a young man, when he was encouraged to enter the ministry by the pastor of Carr's Lane congregation, by whose advice he went to the academy of Dr. Conder, at Mile End. There he approved himself to his instructors, and at the completion of his course visited Bedford. His preaching favourably impressed the congregation, and in due time he was ordained their minister.1 His stated labours were shortened by ill-health, and for some years he was quite laid aside. After his death, John Ryland, a celebrated Dissenting minister, remarked, in a funeral sermon for him, "Few knew where to find a man whose general conversation indicated more godly simplicity and godly sincerity. Having been put in trust with the Gospel, he spoke, not as pleasing man, but God, who trieth our hearts. He used to preach, not himself, but Christ Jesus the

1 I remember the old building, large and cumbrous; and the departed worthies who worshipped there would have been astonished at the appearance of the present edifice, with its magnificent bronze gates given by the Duke of Bedford. When they were opened, I had the pleasure of delivering an address before the Mayor and Aldermen and a large congregation of townspeople.

Lord; and he meant "-the good man had himself selected the preacher on this occasion-"that I should not preach upon the excellences of Joshua Symonds, but upon the excellences of Jesus Christ." "You have seen a poor, afflicted, dying man, that has lain, I may say, at the mouth of the grave for these several months, under a strong probability, from week to week, that that would be his dying week; who was yet supported, comforted, and enabled to wait patiently for his expected and much-desired change. You have seen a man who had nine strong ties to earth," -this alludes to Mr. Symonds' family,-" drawn by a far stronger tie toward heaven." He died in 1785.

Mr. Symonds had a daughter whose married name. was Emery, and who lived to a great age. She knew, when a girl, people who remembered Bunyan; and to indicate her recollections, it may be mentioned that she used to tell of her going to Bridge Street, Blackfriars, by her mother's special permission, "to stand in a chair at the window, that she might look at her uncle walking in the street with an umbrella over his head." She knew three generations of her ancestors, four of her descendants. Her great grandfather, whom she recollected, was born in the Revolution year, 1688. She was acquainted with Newton, Venn, Lady Austen, Andrew Fuller, the Rylands, and other worthies. She spoke of her father as "a good Hebrew, Greek, and Latin scholar," and as a particular friend of the celebrities just named, especially John Newton, who addressed to him some of the letters published in the Omicron. What Newton thought of him, appears from a letter written in 1776: "If I should outlive