February - the Free Presbyterian church of Scotland

The Great Ejection of 1662 51
upon any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the King; and that I do
abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his authority against his
person, or against those that are commissionnated by him”. 3 This was not a
mere profession of loyalty, which might have been easy enough to take; it
was a condemnation of all who had taken Parliament’s side in the Civil War.
On a practical level, the choice of date for enforcing the Act of Uniformity
had a cruel twist about it. Had the Ejection been left until Michaelmas, in
late September, the ministers would have received the tithes for the year; as
it was, they lost out on their entire remuneration for some 11 months. It must
have caused great hardship to many, and it was done deliberately. Yet on
24 August 1662 nearly 2000 men believed it was their duty to leave the ministry
rather than submit their consciences to an Act which, they knew, was
completely contrary to the mind of God.
Among them was Edward Lawrence, a Shropshire minister, who pointed
to his “11 arguments for conformity”, meaning his wife and 10 children. But
there was an altogether stronger argument on the other side, and that argument
he found irresistible: “Christ hath said, ‘Whoso loveth wife or children more
than Me is not worthy of Me”. Someone asked him how he expected to maintain
them all; Lawrence replied that his family must live on the sixth chapter
of Matthew: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye
shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on”. 4
Some good men did comply, including William Gurnall, author of The
Christian in Complete Armour, and over 172 ejected ministers conformed
at a later date. Few of the ejected – Philip Henry was one of the exceptions
– were wealthy; some took to secular work to support themselves, but one
obvious calling, to teach in a school, was forbidden them, by the Act of
Uniformity which sent them from the pulpits. We get a sense of the Anglican
spirit towards the Puritans from Archbishop Sheldon’s response to the
comment of a Dr Allen: “It is a pity the door is so strait” (in the sense of
narrow). Sheldon’s reply was unflinching, without a flicker of mercy for
those whom he clearly considered his out-and-out enemies: “It is no pity at
all; if we had thought so many of them would have conformed, we would
have made it straiter”. 5
Oliver Heywood had been minister at Coley, near Halifax, and was harassed
for a whole year before the Great Ejection took place. “At the close of one
Sabbath,” he wrote, “we can scarcely reckon on another . . . and yet danger
is kept off by God’s hand.” Heywood, conscious that the providence of God
3 History of the Presbyterians in England, pp 385-6.
4 Quoted in Iain H Murray, “The Last Summer”, in The Banner of Truth, issue 26, p 14.
5 J B Marsden, The History of the Later Puritans, Tentmaker Publications reprint, 2002, p 459.