An Old-Time Sabbath Witness by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 16, 1916

An Old-Time Sabbath Witness

By W. A. S.

In the sixth edition of Pagitt’s “Heresiography, or a Description of the Heretickes,” published in London, in 1661, there are given some facts regarding Mrs. Trask, a Sabbatarian witness, which had not appeared in earlier editions. In this supplement, prepared by a hand other than that of the original author of the book, the “gentle reader” is informed that further information has been furnished by those having personal knowledge of the experiences of Mrs. Trask, “who lay prisoner in the Gatehouse many years for keeping the Jewish Sabbath and for working on our Lord’s day.”

Readers of the “History of the Sabbath” will recall the fact that John Trask, the husband, was put in the pillory at Westminster, and then whipped from Westminster to the old Fleet prison, where, after a time of imprisonment, he yielded his convictions and was released. His wife, however, maintained her faith to the end. Her case interested influential religious people. One of these wrote to her:—

“Your long imprisonment comes oft into my mind. Much have I thought how I might do you some little good; but to effect it my weak capacity could never find out. Your constant suffering would be praiseworthy were it for truth; but being for error, your recantation will be both acceptable to God and laudable before men. I hope you are not so stupid and obstinate in your opinions that you will therefore continue in them because you once held them.”

The writer went on to urge her to consider the great good she could do by mingling among other women if she would only give up the Sabbath, urging many of the arguments against the Sabbath which we hear nowadays. We can well understand that in those dark times, when witnesses to the Sabbath were few, and there was no great movement on to cheer the hearts of those who were standing for the truth, it took a stout faith in the Word of God to resist sophistry

and ridicule and hold on to the truth. This appeal to Mrs. Trask to turn from heresy, and to resign all understanding to the true church, was dated the day after Christmas, 1634.

Another person interested in Mrs. Trask wrote an account of her imprisonment as follows:—

“Mistress Trask lay fifteen or sixteen years a prisoner for her opinions about the Saturday Sabbath, in all which time she would receive no relief from anybody, notwithstanding she wanted much; alleging that it was written, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ Neither would she borrow, because it was likewise written, ‘Thou shalt lend to many nations, and shalt not borrow.’ So she deemed it a dishonor to her Head, Christ, either to beg or borrow.

“Her diet for the most part during her imprisonment, that is, until a little before her death, was bread and water, roots and herbs; no flesh nor wine nor brewed drink. All her means was an annuity of forty shillings a year; what she lacked more to live upon she had of such prisoners as did employ her sometimes to do business for them. But this was only within the prison, for out of the prison she would not go. [The reader will understand why she would not go out of the prison; because there was no release for her except by the recantation which was urged continually upon her by those who could not understand her loyalty to God and his holy law.]

“So she there sickened and died. She charged the keeper of the prison not to bury her in church nor churchyard, but in the fields only; which accordingly was so done. And in her person we see expressed to the life not only the strange and inflexible obstinacy of a perverted spirit, but also the miserable and unhappy condition of all heretics, worse than that of other common transgressors. . . .

“So there was an end to her sect in less than half a generation. ’Tis true, it begins of late to be revived again; but only faintly. The progress it makes is not observed to be much, so that of all those gangrenes of spirit with which the times are troubled as yet it spreads least; and therefore ’tis hoped a short caveat (such as this is) may suffice against it.”

— Pages 196, 197.

In this supplement yet another testimony is quoted from one who evidently felt somewhat more kindly toward this prisoner for the faith of Jesus. This writer says of Mrs. Trask:—

“She was a woman endued with many particular virtues, well worthy of imitation of all good Christians, had not error in other things, and especially a spirit of strange unparalleled opinionativeness and obstinacy in her private conceits spoiled them. She lived at Fleetbridge, and there taught children to read. She would teach them only five days in the week; for upon Saturday she would not teach them, because she esteemed that the Sabbath day, and upon Sunday (which is the Christian’s sabbath) I suppose she durst not.

“And unless parents would cause their children to come precisely at seven of the clock in the morning, and send them their breakfasts at nine, she would not teach them.

“Her price was fourpence a week, and under that she would not teach; yet if any of their parents were poor, she would sometimes send them somewhat of the price back again; as she would likewise do at times when she thought that for some scholars she deserved not so much. This she professed to do out of conscience, as believing that she must one day go to be judged for all things done in the flesh. Therefore she resolved to go by the safest rule, rather against than for her private interests.

“She taught a son of mine who had only learned his letters in another place, at the age of four years or thereabouts, in the space of nine months so that he was fit for the Latin, into which he was then also entered.

“She had a maidservant of her own opinion, who helped her to teach, and their course was never to receive above their fixed number of children, so that by reason thereof sometimes in two or three months’ space a child could hardly be admitted into their school.

“At last, for teaching only five days in the week and resting upon Saturday, it being known upon what account she did it, she was carried to the new prison in Maiden Lane, a place then appointed for the restraint of several other persons of different opinions from the English Church. Here she lay until the Parliament called November the third, 1640, dissolved that prison, after which she was carried to Gatehouse, where she continued to her death.”

Just where Maiden Lane prison stood it seems difficult to determine. But the Gatehouse prison was obliquely across the street from Westminster Abbey. Doubtless during the long years of her imprisonment she often watched the throngs pass in and out of that ancient church. Churchmen of the period considered it not at all inconsistent with their worship of God to shut up in prison one of his children whose only offense was that she kept the fourth commandment, which Sunday by Sunday was repeated in the service across the street, accompanied with the prayer, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.”

This writer repeats the assertion that Mrs. Trask would neither beg nor borrow. He says:—

“She would eat her own bread, she said, meaning what she earned by sweeping some rooms of the prison and helping some certain prisoners, which, with an annuity of forty shillings at the most, was all her maintenance. She ate no flesh, nor drank wine, but water only, for many years together. She lay prisoner about sixteen years.”

The writer says that in visiting her toward the end of her life, he found her very ill, and at last persuaded her to accept from him ten shillings, only with the understanding that it was to be returned to him later. She had one of her own friends with her, upon whom she relied to make good the promise in case she failed, for this writer says:—

“Her nurse, one of her own opinion, was not less careful to return me the money; for coming back to London, the poor woman rested not until she had found me out and delivered back the ten shillings. Although she were a poor woman, and had a poor lame child, I was yet not able to fasten half a crown upon her so much as for the child, so little do they value earthly riches.”—

Pages 209-211.

This is the picture of fidelity to God that comes to us in the pages of this old book. Somewhere through all the centuries the Lord has had his witnesses to the Sabbath truth for which the apostles stood in the New Testament times. In the dark days of old they saw not what we see,—the dawn of the Sabbath reform movement, the lifting up of the standard of God’s holy Sabbath, after it had been trodden underfoot through centuries. But the old-time witnesses were loyal to what they saw. They heard the commandment of God in his own Holy Word, they saw the example of Jesus, and in loyalty to him they followed in the path of righteousness, no matter at what cost, and no matter though they stood alone against a frowning world.

W. A. S.