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Petty Babylons, Godly Prophets, Petty Pastors and Little Churches: The Work of Healing Babel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

D.J. Lamburn
D.J. Lamburn*
Affiliation:
University of York
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Extract

On 14 February 1608, William Crashaw, who three years earlier had been vicar of St John’s Church in Beverley, preached a sermon at St Paul’s Cross. He took as his text a verse from Jeremiah—‘We would have cured Babel but she would not be healed; let us forsake her, and go every one to his own country.’ Yet Crashaw was no schismatic. His own career, beginning with his fellowship at St John’s College, Cambridge, had always been within the mainstream of the Established Church. In his will he set out the positions he had held as ‘the unworthy and unprofitable servant of God’. He had been ‘Preacher of God’s word first at Bridlington then at Beverley in Yorkshire. Afterwards at the Temple since then pastor of the Church at Agnes Burton in the diocese of York, now Pastor of that too great parish of White Chapel in the suburbs of London.’ There was much else besides; he had been one of the official editors of William Perkins, a writer of numerous works, whose sermons and catechisms were much sought after, one of the founders and shareholders in the New Virginia Company, with good connections at Court. At Paul’s Cross Crashaw condemned Brownists ‘who forsake our Church, and cut off themselves and separate themselves to a faction, and fashion, or as they call it, into a covenant or communion of their own devising’, just as much as those who ‘be such as refuse public places in the Church, and commonwealth, and retire themselves into private and discontented courses and will not be employed for the public’. In common with mainstream puritans he deeply disapproved of schismatics and was not above attacking them with the same vehemence he normally reserved for papists. It is ‘unthankful’ he wrote, to desert our Church. ‘There is indeed a true ministry of the word amongst us… We have the word truly preached.’ When Crashaw referred to the forsaking of Babel he had something very different in mind, for the solution this early seventeenth-century cleric offered concerned the Church’s ministry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 26: The Ministry: Clerical and Lay , 1989 , pp. 237 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989

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References

1 Crashaw, William, A Sermon Preached at the Crosse, 14th February 1607 Google Scholar (second impression reviewed by the author, H. L[ownes] and F. M. Lownes, 1609). Dates in the text are given new style. All spellings in quotations have been modernized; names have been standardized.

2 The text is from Jeremiah 51 v. 9, Geneva Bible.

3 His will was proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 16 October 1626, Prob. 11/149 f. 97. A transcript appears in P.J. Wallis, William Crashawe, the Sheffield Puritan, reprinted with addenda and Index from Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society, Vol. 8 parts 2–5 (1960-63), 1, pp. 5–13.

4 See Wallis, William Crashaw, pp. 15–26 and 27–51, and the DNB.

5 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, pp. 26 and 34.

6 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, p. 29.

7 Wallis, William Crashaw, pp. 5–6.

8 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, p. 167.

9 Crashaw, Epistle Dedicatory to First Treatise of William Perkins, Of the Calling of the Ministerie, 1606 (3 impression, Thomas Creede for William Welby), p. 9.

10 Ibid., p. 10.

11 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, p. 168.

12 Crashaw, Epislle Dedicatorie to second Treatise of Perkins Of the Calling of the Minuterie. It is not paginated.

13 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, pp. 169–70.

14 Ibil.p. 171.

15 Crashaw, The Parable of Poyson, 1618 (Thomas Snodham for Richard Moore), pp. 8–25.

16 Crashaw, Epistle Dedicatorie.

17 Crashaw, Poyson, p. 37.

18 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, p. 172.

19 Ibid., p. 1.

20 Ibid., p. 13.

21 Crashaw, Milke for Babes, or a North-Countrie Catéchisme (6th impression, Nicholas Okes, 1633), p. 6.

22 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, p. 15.

23 Perkins, Of the Calling of the Minuterie, p. 9.

24 Ibid., pp. 1–4 and 14.

25 Perkins, A Codly and learned Exposition of the three first Chapters of the Revelation (3 edn., Adam Fflip, 1606), p. 58.

26 Perkins, A godly and learned Exposition, p. 184.

27 Ibid., p. 19.

28 Crashaw, Poyson, p. 84.

29 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, pp. 9 and 10.

30 Ibid., pp. 13 and 14.

31 Ibid., pp. 10 and 11.

32 Perkins, Of the Culling of the Minuterie, p. 9. 11 Crashaw, Sermon at the Cross, p. 13.

33 Ibid., p. 16.

35 Ibid., pp. 21 and 22.

36 Perkins, Of the Calling of the Ministerie, p. 2.

37 Crashaw, Poyson, p. 64.

38 Crashaw, A Sermon preached in London before the right honourable the Lord Lawarre, Lord Governour and Captarne Generali of Virgínea … (1610, London, William Hall for William Wclby) (not paginated).

39 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, p. 16.

40 Crashaw, Milk for Babes, p. 7.

41 Crashaw, Papon, p. 65.

42 Ibid., pp. 59–60.

43 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, p. 15.

44 Ibid., p.14.

45 Ibid., p. 12.

46 Ibid., pp. 12, 13 and 23.

47 Crashaw, Poyson, p. 80.

48 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, p. 165.

49 Crashaw, Sermon Preached before Lord Lamarre.

50 Crashaw, Sermon at the Crosse, p. 173.

51 A. Peel and L. H. Carlson, eds., Cartwrightiana (1951), p. 159.

52 Crashaw, Poyson, pp. 80—1. For a discussion of the significance of private household meetings leading to the breakdown of established forms of religion see Christopher Hill, Society & Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London, 1986), esp. chapters 12–15, and Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1985), pp. 249–52.