Randall Peterson on Smith

Henry Smith (1560-1591) was one of the most influential and prolific Puritan divines during Elizabeth’s reign in England. He was known as “silver-tongued Smith” to his contemporaries, and, according to Thomas Fuller, he was “but one metal below Chrysostom.” Smith’s practical and experiential sermons were used for family devotions for over a century after his death, and went through numerous editions. He combined the force of language with the force of thought and preached the gospel in its primitive power and simplicity. Thompson Cooper, Oxford historian and editor of Athenae Cantabrigienses, wrote: “We are disposed to think that no English preacher has since excelled [Smith] in the proper attributes of pulpit eloquence.

”John L. Libesay, in his article, “‘Silver-tongued Smith,’ Paragon of Elizabethan Preachers,” wrote: “Here and there amidst the confusion of pulpit oratory and denunciation the patient reader [of Elizabethan literature] will discover an occasional bright rift in the fog of dullness. When he does, the sense of grateful relief may easily lead him to exaggerate the excellence of the particular sermon or preacher responsible for the unwonted gleam. In such circumstances he must look for the corroborative testimony of other readers before he feels free to trust his own benumbed judgment. But when the radiance persists through two fact octavo volumes, he may well spare the other witnesses, however numerous and competent.”

Born in Withcote, Leicestershire, in 1560 (or thereabouts), Henry Smith was the eldest son and heir of Erasmus Smith. He was descended from an honorable line of Smiths in Leicestershire, and was heir to a considerable estate. On July 17, 1573, he was admitted Fellow Commoner to Queens College, Cambridge, but did not stay long at the college. In 1575, when Smith was fifteen years old, he was admitted to Lincoln College, Oxford. It is uncertain whether or not Smith earned his Bachelor of Arts at Lincoln. Historian Anthony á Wood noted that Smith was absent from the college for quite some time, “having some ecclesiastical employment conferred upon him.” Cooper also noted that “for some reason with which we are not acquainted, [Smith’s] father refused to allow him to spend much time in the university.” Cooper, however, wrote that Smith earned his Bachelor of Arts from Lincoln on February 16, 1578-9.

After leaving the college, Smith lived and followed his studies with Richard Greenham, rector of Dry Drayton, Cambridgeshire, and sometime fellow of Pembroke Hall. Historians disagree whether or not Smith earned a Master of Arts, though it is probable that he did not. In either case, it is certain that Smith for a time sat under the tutelage of Greenham, the famous Puritan casuist, and was “imbued” with firm puritanical principles.

Some historians have conjectured that Smith was torn between the ministry and a large inheritance from his father, but Thomas Smith, editor of the 1866 edition of Smith’s sermons, noted that Smith was not torn at all—he simply predeceased his father. Had he lived he would have inherited his father’s estate, which, no doubt, would have been an asset in his ministry. Thomas Fuller, Smith’s first biographer, observed that several of Smith’s relatives encouraged him to study law, a profession suited to one with a large inheritance. He also had the option of poetry, which he practiced for some time, though none of his poems survive. Smith was also proficient in Latin and turned Microcosmographia into Latin Sapphics, which was translated into English by Joshua Sylvester.

Forsaking all other occupations, Smith devoted himself to the ministry of the Church of England, but upon considering his disagreement with various practices and ceremonies, he contented himself with the lectureship, a common Puritan practice.

For some time Smith was affiliated with the Husbands Bosworth Church, which was in his father’s patronage, though it is uncertain whether he became rector there.

In continuing his studies with Greenham, Smith’s anti-Episcopal leanings were strengthened. Both individuals shared, however, a strict stance in regards to church division; thus Smith, like Greenham, believed that sectarians, such as the Brownists and Barrowists , were enemies of the true church and liable to just persecution. Consequently, Smith sought to reform the English church from within, believing that it was utterly unlawful to make a separation.

At some point in 1582 Smith’s uncle, Bryant Cave, High Sheriff of Leicestershire, became acquainted with the deluded youth Robert Dickons, an apprentice at Mansell in Nottinghamshire. Dickons, though intelligent and knowledgeable, believed that he was the prophet Elijah, and that he had been visited by angels in a series of visions. Presumably, Cave arranged for his Puritan nephew to counsel Dickons. Smith opened the Scriptures to Dickons and was able to persuade Dickons of his error. Concerning this event, Fuller noted that Dickons “was reclaimed, renouncing his blasphemies by subscription under his own hand.” Upon the occasion, Smith preached the sermon “The Lost Sheep Is Found,” on 1 John 4:1, “Try the spirits whether they are of God.”

Subsequently, Smith preached in and about London with great success, and in 1587, upon Greenham’s recommendation, was elected lecturer at St. Clement Danes, London, by the rector and congregation. Smith’s sermons were highly blessed to his hearers; in fact, Fuller noted that “persons of good quality brought their own pews with them I mean their legs to stand there upon in the aisles, [and] their ears did so attend his lips, their hearts to their ears, that he held the rudder of their affections in his hand, so that he could steer them whether he pleased, and he was pleased to steer them only to God’s glory and their own good.”

Smith’s popularity as a preacher increased so much that he was called “the prime preacher of the nation.” Wood said that he was “esteemed the miracle and wonder of his age, for his prodigious memory, and for his fluent, eloquent, and practical way of preaching.” His character was such that he feared dissention among his brethren; he sought to maintain peace as much as plausible, thus the Nonconformist historian, Benjamin Brook, noted: “It may be truly said of him, that he was a man peaceable in Israel.”

The relative freedom of the Puritan lectures in the 1570s came to a dramatic decline in 1577, when Archbishop Grindal, a man somewhat sympathetic to the Puritan cause, fell into disfavor with the Queen. Consequently, the Bishop of London, John Aylmer made a series of investigations to ensure that “proper” conformity was being adhered to by its preachers. Furthermore, in 1583 the Puritans suffered greatly from Grindal’s death, as he was replaced by the vigorous and determined Archbishop John Whitgift, an opposer of Puritanism in all its forms.

In 1588 Bishop Aylmer was informed, though erroneously, that Smith had slandered the Book of Common Prayer in one of his sermons, and that he had not subscribed to Whitgift’s articles, which insisted on the supreme authority, under God, of the monarchy, the use and promotion of the prayer-book, and subscription to the Thirty Nine Articles of religion. Moreover, Smith was not licensed by Aylmer, his diocesan. Accordingly, Smith was suspended from preaching. He made a brief vindication of himself to Lord Treasurer Burghley, Elizabeth’s most trusted advisor and some time uncle of Smith himself, in which he stated that Aylmer had personally called him to preach at St. Paul’s Cross. Furthermore, Smith denied the accusation that he spoke against the prayer-book; he said that he had subscribed to all the articles of “faith and doctrine,” but had avoided the issue of discipline. The parishioners of Clement Danes also sent a testimonial and supplication on his behalf; thus combined with Burghley’s influence at court, Smith, in due course, was restored to the lectureship.

In the closing years of the 1580s, the rector of St. Clement Danes, William Harward, grew increasingly ill until his death some time in 1589. Strenuous efforts were made by the parishioners of St. Clement Danes to obtain Smith as their rector, but he refused the preferment and subsequently resigned his lectureship in 1590, due to failing health. He retired to Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire, and busied himself in preparing his works for the press and in revising his sermons. He dedicated his collected sermons to Lord Burghley, but died before the collection was published. According to Thompson Cooper, Smith was buried at Husbands Bosworth on July 4, 1591. He was universally lamented by both the Anglican and Puritan parties; in fact, even Thomas Nashe, the “hard bitten sinner,” and hater of the Puritans, saw in Smith’s death an occasion for “the general tears of the muses.”

So popular were the sermons of Henry Smith that they won for him not only the respect of the commoner, but also the admiration of the greatest literary geniuses of his age; in fact, by the early seventeenth-century Smith’s sermons had gone through more than eighty-five editions, and his fame as a preacher was known throughout the British Isles.

While many of Smith’s sermons were published in his lifetime (and a few of them without his consent), a complete collection was not printed until 1675 under Thomas Fuller’s editorship. In fact, Fuller supplied the first written biography of Smith in three and a half pages, drawing from Wood’s history and his correspondence with individuals who still remembered the “silver-tongued” Smith. Thomas Smith reissued Fuller’s edition in 1866 with minor linguistic changes and added several pages of commentary to Fuller’s account. The 1866 edition, printed in James Nichol’s Series of Standard Divines in two volumes, remains “the fullest, the most accurate, and the most elegant,” edition ever published.

A similar edition was likewise published in 1866 by William Tegg, which purports to be “an exact reprint of the edition which was printed according to the Author’s corrected copies in his lifetime,” though since it was not under Thomas Smith’s editorship it does not contain his extensive commentary on Fuller’s short biography. The editor of the Tegg edition, Edwin Davies, made minor linguistic changes in the text (for instance, “thorow” was changed to “thorough”), but left Fuller’s archaisms alone. That two London publishers would issue Smith’s sermons in the same year, under different editorships, is interesting, to say the least, though it does affirm the popularity that Smith had even in the nineteenth-century.

Nichol’s two volume set contains all of Smith’s extant works: 56 sermons with their original prefaces; Smith’s account to the Lord Justices concerning Robert Dickons; Smith’s treatise God’s Arrow Against Atheism and Irreligion; eight prayers for various occasions; “A Comfortable Speech, taken from a Godly Preacher lying upon his Deathbed; Written for the Sick;” “A Letter to One’s Friend in Sickness;” eight epigrams; the poem Microcosmographia: The Little World’s Description; or, The Map of Man, from the Latin Sapphics of Henry Smith, translated by Joshua Sylvester; the original biography of Smith by Fuller; eleven pages of notes by Thomas Smith; extensive indices and textual references.

It is impossible to ascertain the exact dates or chronological order for all of Smith’s sermons, though R B Jenkins, relying somewhat on the work of Thomas Ehret, attempts to do this. The following dates are a breviary of Jenkins’s work:

1. “The Lost Sheep Is Found,” is dated some time in 1582, shortly after Smith’s examination of Robert Dickons, and deals directly with that event.

2. The two sermons on “The Art of Hearing” are dated 1587 by Ehret, though Jenkins notes that it “is impossible to ascertain the year in which these sermons were preached, but certainly one followed the other.”

3. “The Sinful Man’s Search,” is dated on January 1, 1588 by Ehret, with Jenkins’s affirmation.

4. “Satan’s Compassing the Earth,” and “The Trial of the Righteous,” are both dated some time in 1588 because of their seeming reference to the Spanish Armada.

5. “The Dialogue between Paul and King Agrippa,” was preached, presumably, after July 29, 1588, the defeat of the Armada. Both Ehret and Jenkins place “The Ladder of Peace,” in the same time period as it too refers to the defeat of the Armada.

6. “The Godly Man’s Request,” a New Year’s sermon, is dated 1589.

7. The series of sermons on Nebuchadnezzar are dated in close proximity to the Armada incident.

8. The four sermons on Jonah are dated some time after July 1588, for Smith writes: “As surely as Jonah thought to arrive at Tarshish, so surely the Spaniards thought to arrive in England; but as Jonah’s company wondered at this tempest, so at these Spaniards’ destruction their fellows at home wondered, yea, were astonished, how their invincible power could be destroyed.”

9. “The Christian’s Sacrifice,” which Smith called the sum of “all the lessons together which ye have heard since I came [to St. Clement Danes],” is dated some time before Smith’s retirement, though its first printing was in 1589, after his retirement.

10. “The Petition of Moses to God,” is classified as Smith’s last sermon at St. Clement Danes, though it scarcely bears the mark of a farewell sermon. Near the end of the sermon, however, Smith states plainly enough: “Now it resteth that I should encourage Joshua, which succeedeth me.”The remaining 39 sermons are impossible to date, and neither Ehret nor Jenkins attempt to do so, though it is fairly certain they were preached during Smith’s lectureship at Clement Danes, with the possible exception of “The Trumpet of the Soul Sounding to Judgment.”

Quotation

Unless there be a joining of heart and a knitting of affections together, it is not marriage in deed, but in show and name, and they shall dwell in a house like two poisons in a stomach, and one shall ever be sick of another.

Final extract from The Monthly Christian Spectator 1858

Here is another extract, thoroughly Shakespearian. Who will not recall as they read it the oft quoted phrase 'All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players' but Master Henry Smith has a moral that is wanting if not ignored in Shakespere. The sermon is entitled The Magistrates Scripture and the text is I said ye are gods &c Psalm lxxxii 6 7 The sermon itself is marvellously faithful. We have only to remember the character of his audience and of his times to justify this strong expression. After a long exposition of the idea and function of a magistrate, this young but fearless preacher adds and his words fell on the ears of many that bore the sword.

Call us no more bishops or pastors or doctors or preachers but call us robbers and sleepers and giants and Pharisees whom we succeed. For why should they be called bishops who do not watch or pastors who do not feed or doctors who do not teach or justices who do not justice except this be the reason the idols were called gods though they were unlike God. If their bodies had grown as far out of square since Christ's ascension as their titles, pomp and honour have, they might stand in the main seas and not be drowned for their heads would crow out of the water.

But the passage to which we refer is the following. It is the peroration of the discourse and evidently finished with elaborate care and no doubt delivered with great effect We make no apology for its length.

Who would have thought that Jezebel. that beautiful temptation, should have been gnawed with dogs. Yet was she cast unto dogs and not an ear left to season the grave. What would he think that had seen Solomon in his royalty and after seen him in the clay? Oh world unworthy to be beloved, who hath made this proud slaughter? Age, sickness and death, the three great sumners, which have no respect of persons made them pay the ransom themselves and bow to the carth from whence they came there lie the men that were called gods. How soon the flower of this world is faded. Yesterday, the tallest cedar in Libanus, today like a broken stick, trodden under foot. Yesterday, the state lived upon earth; today, shrouded in earth, forsaken, forgotten, so that the poorest wretch would not be like unto him who yesterday crouched and bowed to his knees. Then woe to them which had the name of God but the sins of men for the mighty shall be mightily tormented. All their friends and subjects and servants forsake them because they go to prison to try the mercy of hell and to take what the spirits of darkness will heap upon them. Where are they who founded this goodly city, who possessed these fair houses, who walked these pleasant fields, who crected these stately temples, who kneeled in these seats and who preached out of this place but thirty years ago? Is not earth turned to earth? And shall not our sun set like theirs, when the night comes? Yet we cannot believe that death will find out us, as he hath found out them. Though all men die yet every man dreams I shall escape or at least I shall live till I be old. This is strange. Men cannot think that God will do again that which he doeth daily or that he will deal with them as he deals with others. Tell one of us that all other shall die, we believe it. Tell one of us that we shall die and we believe it sooner of all than of one, though we be sore, though we be weak, though we be sick, though we be elder than those whom we follow to the ground. So they thought which lie in this mould under your feet. If wisdom or riches or favour should have entreated death, those who have lived before us would have kept our possessions from us but death would take no bail. We are all tenants at will and we must leave this cottage whensoever the Landlord will put another in our room at a year's, at a month's, at a week's, at a day's, at an hour's warning or even less. The clothes which we wear upon our backs, the graves which are under our feet, the sun which sets over our heads and the meats which go into our mouths do cry unto us that we shall wear and set and die like the beasts and fowls and fishes which are now in our dishes and but even now were living in the elements. Our fathers have summoned us and we must summon our children to the grave. Everything, every day, suffers some eclipse. Nothing standeth at a stay but one creature calleth unto another, Let us leave this world. While we play our pageants upon this stage of short continuance, every man hath a part, some longer and some shorter and while the actors are at it, suddenly Death steps upon the stage like a hawk which doth separate one of the doves from the flight and so he shoots his dart and where it lights there falls one of the actors dead before them and makes all the rest aghast and they muse and mourn and bury him and then to the sport again. While they sing and play and dance Death comes and strikes another. There he lies and they mourn him and bury him as they did the former and then to their play again so one after another till the players be vanished like the accusers who came before Christ and death is the last upon the stage and so the fashion of this world passeth away. And therefore that we may be all like gods hereafter let us prepare before the account for none are in heaven but they that left the world before it left them.

A specimen of purer Saxon than the above it would be difficult to find, while the figure of death being last on the stage is worthy of any of our dramatic writers, Master Henry Smith may not be a great thinker or a profound divine but that he was a most earnest and godly preacher none who have read his sermons can for a moment doubt. We believe that the same kind of intensely practical preching (and this has impressed itself greatly on our minds while reading this volume and remembering the age of theological schiomachy in which it was written) would again fill our emptying places of worship, and again restore the pulpit to its rightful and legitimate monarchy over man's crowd governed soul and to its holy guidance through and safe victory over the temptations and struggles, the perils and sorrows, of this actual world in which and not in transcendental land, we live, move and have our being. With but little comment we will give a few more extracts next month, hoping thus we shall make an acceptable contribution to our theological literature but hoping more that we shall promote, by strengthening, our readers spiritual culture.

More from The Monthly Christian Spectator 1858

... But we are lingering on the threshold. As we have little to do but to quote let us proceed. Our next extract shall be from the Christian's Sacrifice in the course of which he says

Christ doth not bid them woe because they were Pharisees as we are not but because they were hypocrites as we are. God delights himself in giving and therefore he loveth a cheerful giver but he cannot give cheerfully which gives not his heart. Therefore, as Judas thought the oil spent which was poured upon Christ and wished the price of it in his purse so they grouch and grieve when they should do good and think, shall I give it, shall I spare it, what will it bring? So the good work dieth in the birth like the bird which droopeth in the hand while the head considers whether he shall let her go or hold her still. As easy to wring Hercules club out of his fist as to wring a penitent tear from their eyes, a faithful prayer from their lips or a good thought from their heart which cannot afford the heart itself. All is too much which they do and they think God more beholding to them for blurting out a Pater Noster or staying a sermon or fasting a Friday than they do for all his benefits and when they have done what is their reward? Woe be unto you like the Scribes and Pharisees because you give not your hearts but your mouths, therefore we do but vex ourselves and lose our labour thinking to make God believe that we pray when indeed our lips do but pray whereby it comes to pass, as we serve him so he serveth us. Our peace is not in deed but in word. Our joy is not in the heart but in the countenance, a false comfort like our false worship for he which giveth God his lips instead of his heart teacheth God to give him stones instead of bread, that is, a shadow of comfort for comfort itselfe.

We call this, and we are sure our readers will, good old English with the ring of the true metal in it, manifesting great power mingled with tenderness and the result of thoughtful preparation with devout fidelity. Here is another passage from the same discourse

Thus ye have heard what God requires for all that he hath given you and how all your services are lost until you bring your heart. What shall I wish you now before my departure? I wish you would give all your hearts to God while I speak that ye might have a kingdom for them. Send for your hearts where they are wandering, one from the bank, another from the tavern, another from the shop, another from the theatre. Call them home and give them all to God and see how he will welcome thein as the father embraceth his son. If your hearts were with God, durst the devil fetch them? Durst those sins come at them? Even as Dinah was defloured when she strayed from home so is the heart when it strayeth from God. Therefore, call thy members together and let them fast like a quest of twelve men until they consent upon the law before any more terms pass to give God his right and let him take your heart which he wooeth, which he would marry, which he would endow with all his goods and make it the heir of the crown. When you pray, let your heart pray; when you hear let your heart hear; when you give, let your heart give; whatsoever you do, set the heart to do it and if it be not so perfect as it should or ought to be, yet it shall be accepted for the friend that gives it.

In another sermon, on The True Trial of the Spirits after speaking of the ministry which is now so despised that from the merchant to the porter there is no calling so derided so that one saith Moses is Quis, that is the magistrate is somebody but Aaron is Quasi quis, that is the minister is nobody. He adds, in words that we fear will be little heeded though greatly needed even in some of our cleverly progressive congregations.

There is a kind of preachers risen up of late which shroud and cover every rustical and unsavoury and childish and absurd sermon under the name of the simple kind of preaching like the popish priests which make ignorance the mother of devotion. But indeed to preach simply is not to preach rudely (hear, hear) nor unlearnedly nor confusedly but to preach plainly and perspicuously that the simplest man may understand what is taught as if he did hear his name. Therefore, if you will know what makes many preachers preach so barely and loosely and simply it is your own simplicity which makes them think so as they go on and say something, all is one and no fault will be found because you are not able to judge in or out and so it is come to pass that in a whole sermon the hearer cannot pick out one note more than he could gather him self.

We give the above for the benefit of those who have one string and only one to their bow and that string is the simple gospel. Had they lived two hundred years ago they would have put Master Henry Smith out of the synagogue and that quickly while the British Standard of that day would have tabooed him as a negative theologian. Happily Smith is dead and gone to heaven and there we hope all these vexatious but mistaken souls will also find their way in due time.

Also from The Monthly Christian Spectator 1858

After the life by Fuller WGB continues with

That's the life of Master Henry Smith, the once famous preacher in St Clement's Danes. It does not run to seed in three painful volumes. We are not told when he rose in the morning nor how he thought upon his thoughts or felt about his feelings. Not a word is said of what he had for breakfast or dinner or whether he was a vegetarian or any other arian. Not a word about how he slept at night or what kind of an establishment he kept up. Not a word about anything that could by its narration serve first the paper and then the trunk makers. We are wiser in this biographical nineteenth century. We love to know all the particulars of the ins and outs of Brown, Jones and Robinson. Who would read a biography that did not extend to three volumes, two of which contain the diary and the other the interesting remarks of the biographer and perhaps his portrait? Who would care to read a pious life if it were not served up with little titbits of gossip, small talk and scandal by way of relief to over much devotion? We cannot help feeling a profound conviction of old Fuller's inferiority to the mass of amateur biographers of the present day in thus, by some hydraulic or other pressure, squeezing poor old Master Henry Smith's life who was but one metal below Chrysostom himself into the shabby and shallow proportions of three pages. This is what Fuller calls his life writ by me at large.

The first sermon is entitled a Preparative to Marriage in which we find quaint and good things which Matthew Henry did not despise, as any one may see who looks at his commentary on the making of woman or dust double refined as he calls her. From this sermon we need not quote more than a bit or two. Our ears are too polite to listen to this homely discourse which created quite a sensation amongst many noble gentlewomen who had but hitherto discharged only a moiety of their duty as mothers. Speaking for instance of the duty of a husband to correct his wife he says

As we do not handle glasses like pots because they are weaker vessels but touch them nicely and softly for fear of cracks, so a man must intreat his wife with gentleness and softness, not expecting that wisdom nor that faith nor that patience nor that strength in the weaker vessel which should be in the stronger but think when he takes a wife, he takes a vineyard and not grapes but a vineyard to bear him grapes. So he must not think to find a wife without a fault for all are defectives but as in space cometh grace so shall he rejoice when his vineyard beginneth to fructify. But this is far from civil wars, between man and wife in all his offices is found no office to fight. If a man cannot reform his wife without beating her he is worthy to be beaten for choosing no better. ... Her cheeks were made for thy lips not for thy fists.

Again, 'If a man wants a bad wife, he were best go to hell a wooing that he may have choice' was a plain way of putting a great truth, perhaps not wholly needless in our days. Of some women he says

As David exalteth the love of women above all other loves so Solomon mounteth the envy of women above all other envies, stubborn, sullen, taunting, gainsaying, outfacing with such a bitter humour one would think they were molten out of the salt pillar into whch Lot's wife was transformed. This is the folly also of some men to lay all their pride upon their wives they care not how they sloven themselves so their wives can jet like peacocks. Women do now some of them cover themselves with pride like Satan who is fallen down before them ruff upon ruff, lace upon lace, cut upon cut, four and twenty orders until the woman be not so precious as her apparel so that if any man would picture vanity he must take a pattern of a woman or he shall not draw her likeness. Whoever hath such a wife hath a fine plague.

Married life then appears to have been like married life now, little hitches and humours and petulances now and then. And so says Master Henry Smith.

A child is the real wedding ring that sealeth and maketh up the marriage. For when their father and mother fall out out, they perk up between them like little mediators and with many pretty sports make truce when others dare not speak to them.

Finally he adds and he shows there is nothing new in this department of duty and discipline under the sun.

The allurements of beauty, the trouble about riches, the charges of children, the losses by servants, the unquietnesse of neighbours cry unto him that is married that he hath entered into the hardest vocation of all other and therefore they who have but nine years to make them good mercers or drapers have nineteen years before marriage to learn to be good husbands and wives as though it were a trade of nothing but mysteries and had need of double time over all the rest.

From The Monthly Christian Spectator 1858

An article of 1858 by WGB begins

An uninviting old quarto lies on our table to which we are anxious to introduce our readers. It is not a book for review for it has been printed two hundred and fifty years but it is a book so eminently rich in thought and diction so full of aphorisms and antitheses, so abundant in illustration and withal so fervidly pious and so thoroughly evangelical that we hope we shall do good service in thus adding to the auditors of famous Master Henry Smith.

Do not turn away dear reader because of the name Smith so widely distributed a patronymic of the British Isles that it would seem to have had its origin in that first black or white smith who was the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron. This venerably ancient name going back to the days of Adam and Eve has since been inherited by Smiths of all trades and professions, pulpit Smiths, witness our author, and platform Smiths, doctor Smiths and music Smiths, poet Smiths and soldier Smiths, learned Smiths and stupid Smiths and in short by Smiths of all sorts, sizes, capacities and functions.

Some parents apparently ashamed of this ancientest English name with a thin fig leaf disguise of some poetical prefix have tried to hide the plebeian origin of an Adamic descent. And so an Albert or a Sydney or a Horace or an Alexander or an Algernon or a Vernon or a Pye or something else takes precedence of the honest monosyllable. But our Smith is plain Master Henry Smith and the old volume from which we are about to quote extensively, not clerically as many have done and are doing without acknowledgment is entitled The Sermons of Master Henry Smith gathered into one volume Printed according to his corrected copies in his life time Whereunto is added God's Arrow against Atheists At London imprinted by Felix Kyngston for Thomas Man dwelling in Paternoster row at the signe of the Talbot 1607.

Being long dead and by all but a few forgotten as a dead man out of mind, he shall again speak. We will furnish him with another pulpit than the old oak one with its hour glass at St Clement's Danes and a congregation as large and as reverent as used in the days of good Queen Bess to hang on our preacher's lips whilst he denounced the sins of the age in fearless Saxon or poured out streams of tender eloquence as he urged the claims of the gospel on the high and noble born of London city, on burly merchants addicted to usury and on the gallant prentice boys that crowded to hear this most popular because most faithful minister of the gospel.

With that silver voice of his he swayed his audience as he list sometimes preaching the terror of the Lord but only to persuade men to be reconciled to God at other times starting penitential tears from courtly eyes as thus with winning earnestness he implored his hearers to give their hearts to God. The master requires labour, the landlord requires service, the captain requires fight but He who requires the heart requires it for love, for the heart is love. Though he says Give it, yet indeed hath he bought it and that dearly with the dearest blood that ever was shed. He gave thee his heart before he desired thy heart, he asks a heart for a heart, a living heart for a heart that died. Thou dost not lose thy life as he did for thee but thou findest thy life when thou dost glorify him, thou dost not part from thy heart when thou givest it to Christ but he doth keep it for thee lest the serpent should steal it from thee as he stole paradise from Adam when it was in his own custody.

Old Thomas Fuller, whose life was writ in 1661, and of whom his biographer says that to him religion, piety, virtue and super-eminent learning were ever acceptable, placed Master Henry Smith in his list of Worthies of England but his notice of him there is very brief for says he, I refer the reader to his life writ by me at large and preposed to his printed sermons. To this life therefore we must go for all the information now to be gathered of the preacher who was commonly called silver tongued Smith, an epithet old Fuller takes care to impress by its repetition.

Walking up the Strand just lately, we stopped to look at St Clement's Danes whose nearness unto Temple bar every one knoweth and thought how seldom that great tidal wave of men and women whose noise is as the noise of many waters, that daily, aye hourly, rushes and roars through that one happily preserved gate of the city, all intent upon the grand business of this brief life and time ever glances at the now elaborate tower of the old church or ever realises the congregation that two hundred and sixty years ago crowded that famous sanctuary.

There would be seen, devout and attentive, the observed of all observers, that great and honourable man, William Cecil Lord Burleigh prime minister and treasurer of England, the envied of noble lords and the admired of noble ladies but ever the steadfast friend of the severely puritanical but tenderly compassionate and ever piously humorous preacher of that crowded church, knights of different orders and of chivalrous fame, gentlewomen ruffed and jewelled, whom our preacher describes as often dressed with ruff upon ruff, lace upon lace, cut upon cut, four and twentyorders until the woman be not as precious as her apparel, stout and wealthy citizens of that fair city wherein we dwell and which hath more prophets crying at once in her streets than were ever in the city of Jerusalem, prentice boys of different companies all hushed and devout as the preacher charms them with his eloquence or terrifies them with his faithful denunciations of the sins of the times.

After many weary and fruitless searches for the aforesaid Life of Smith with his portrait we at last succeeded in the library of Zion College, Cripplegate, in obtaining a copy but alas without the portrait for on the fly leaf was written and we hold up the fact referred to with intense disgust at such sacrilege "The portrait has been stolen out of this book". Oh you Englishman that did that dirty trick may the ghost of Henry Smith be your perpetual torment. The expected life is not writ so large as to forbid its quotation almost entire and as a good and perhaps new illustration of the racy pen, our favourite Fuller, we make no apology for transferring it to our pages. ....

Most of the life by Fuller then appears.

Thomas Fuller on Smith

What is true of the River Nile that its fountain is hid and obscure but its fall or influx into the mid land sea eminently known is applicable to many learned men the places of whose birth generally are either wholly concealed or at the best uncertain, whilst the place of their death is made remarkable. For as few did take notice of their coming out of their attiring house so their well acting upon the stage commanded all eyes to observe their returning thereunto. But this general rule takes not place in the present subject of our pen. Mr Henry Smith was born at Withcock in Leicestershire of gentile extraction which however shall not be insisted on, seeing that he who is rich of himself needs not to borrow any lustre from another, yet were it the more allowable for us to dwell awhile on the honour of his parentage seeing he himself would not sojourn there declining all notice of such accidental advantages.

He was bred in the famous University of Oxford where he was condus before he was promus that is he filled himself so that he might in due time pour out to others. Nor did he proceed to a divine per saltum as so many do nowadays, I mean leaping over all humane arts and sciences, but furnished himself plentifully therewith. On the other side he was none of those who in the university wither on the stalk they grow on and out of idleness, bury their talents in the ground putting them out because they will not put them out that is extinguishing their abilities because they will not employ them. But he was resolved to improve to his utmost in the ministerial calling for the glory of God and the converting of souls. There he triumphed over the temptation wherewith many had been overcome.

Plentiful was his estate for the present and for the future he was heir apparent to a large patrimony. (Sir Roger Smith of Emundsthorpe in the County of Leicester lately deceased was his younger brother). Preaching was presented unto him by some as fit for the refuge of a younger brother not for the choice of an heir and his rich relations might better advantage him in the lucrative profession of the law. But he was so far from falling or stumbling that he did not stop at these carnal considerations but easily trampled on them all. But a greater scruple troubled him as unsatisfied on the point of subscription and the lawfulness of some ceremonies. He was loth to make a rent either in his own conscience or in the church wherefore he resolved on this expedient not to undertake a pastoral charge but contented himself with a lectureship at St Clement's Danes without the Temple bar. It may truly be said of him "He was a peaceable man in Israel" for not withstanding his aforesaid scrupling at conformity and distasting the violent pressing thereof as by some passages in this book will appear he could unite with them in affection from whom he dissented in judgment. He disdained party and invectives, the symptoms of a sick wit, and if he chanced to fall upon a sharp reproof, he wrapped it up in such pleasing expressions that the persons concerned therein had their souls divided betwixt love and anger at the hearing thereof.

William Cecil, Lord Burleigh and Treasurer of England, to whom he dedicated his sermons, very favourably reflected upon him and he was often the screen who saved him from the scorching, interposing his greatnesse betwixt him and the anger of some episcopal officers. And it is an argument to prove the eminency of Mr Smith that so great a statesman as this Lord Treasurer set a character of such peculiar respect on him. Indeed, that lord was as thoroughpaced as any in England for the body of episcopal government but not for the wens thereof when some quiet Nonconformists were prosecuted to persecution by vexatious informers. In which cases, he often endeavoured to qualify the matter and rescued them from their violent adversaries.

To return to Mr Smith, he was commonly called the silver tongued Smith and that was but one metal below Chrysostom himself. His church was so crowded with auditors that persons of good quality brought their own pews with them, I mean their legs, to stand thereupon in the alleys. Their ears did so attend his lips, their hearts on their ears that he held the rudder of their affections in his hand so that he could steer them whither he pleased and he was pleased to steer them only for God's glory and their own good.

Take one instance of many, of the great prevalency he had with his auditory. He preached a Sermon on Sarah's nursing of Isaac and therupon grounded the general doctrine that it was the duty of all mothers to nurse their own children allowing dispensation to such who were unsufficienced by weaknéss, want of milk or any avouchable impediment. He pressed the application without respect of persons high and low, rich and poor, one with another taxing them for pride or laziness or both who would not do that office to the fruit of their own womb.

It is almost incredible how many persons of honour and worship, ladies and great gentlewomen, with whom his congregation was constantly crowded, were affected herewith so that I have been informed from such whose credit I count it a sin to suspect that they presently remanded their children from the vicinage round about London and endeavoured to discharge the second moiety of a mother and to nurse them whom they had brought into the world. I confess some conceived Mr Smith, because a bachelor, an incompetent judge hereof as unacquainted with feminine infirmities so that as St Augustine on another account was called durus pater infantum so Mr Smith might be termed durus doctor matrum. However, if all things be impartially considered, no just cause of exception can be found either with the doctrine or application. 

The words of the wise, saith Solomon, are as nails fastened in a sure place and certainly this Smith had as great dexterity as any in fastening them in the judgments of his hearers by his solid reasons, in their fancies by his proper similitudes, in their memories by his orderly method and in their consciences by his home application.

Some fifteen years since I consulted the Jesses, I mean such who were counted old men in the parish of St Clement's Danes but could recover very little from them either of the time or the manner of his death save that they conceived it to be of consumption. I perused also the church register and found it silent concerning the date of his death but by exactest proportion of the time, his death may be conjectured to have been about the year 1600.

Smith on Scripture 2

We should set the Word of God alway before us like a rule, and

believe nothing but that which it teacheth,

love nothing but that which it prescribeth,

hate nothing but that which it forbiddeth,

do nothing but that which it commandeth.

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