p. 7 | Deliverance of a Sabbath-Keeper in Olden Time

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 15, 1912

Deliverance of a Sabbath-Keeper in Olden Time

By W. A. S.

THERE were three generations of Sabbath-observers in the Stennett family, of England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Edward Stennett was a non-conformist Sabbatarian preacher, who studied medicine in order to gain a livelihood in those troublous times. His son, Joseph Stennett, born in 1663, was well known in London as a writer and preacher. And Joseph’s son, Samuel Stennett, followed in the steps of his father, as pastor of the Sabbath-keeping congregation in London, and as a writer and poet. His pen it was that gave us the Sabbath hymn,— “Another six days’ work is done, Another Sabbath is begun;”— and also that other familiar hymn,— “Majestic sweetness sits enthroned Upon the Saviour’s brow.”

Edward Stennett kept the Sabbath in the olden days when non-conformity with the state church brought persecution. Of Joseph, his son, it was said that he had learned to love liberty as he “attended his father a considerable time in prison for the cause of conscience and religion,” in the reign of Charles II.

To the published “Works of Joseph Stennett” (London, 1732), some writer prefaces an account of Edward Stennett’s life. “While I speak of his sufferings,” says the writer, “it may not be amiss to preserve an account of one very extraordinary deliverance he met with, which I have heard his son relate in the following manner:” —

He dwelt in the castle of Wallingford, a place where no warrant could make forcible entrance, but that of a lord chief justice; and the house was so situated that assemblies could meet, and every part of religious worship be exercised in it, without any danger of a legal conviction, unless informers were admitted, which care was taken to prevent: so that for a long time he kept a constant and undisturbed meeting in his hall.

A gentleman who was in the commission of the peace, and his very near neighbor, being highly incensed at the continuance of an assembly of this kind so near him, after having made several fruitless attempts to get his emissaries

admitted into the house in order to a conviction, in the rage of disappointment, resolved, together with a neighboring clergyman, upon doing it by subornation of witnesses.

They accordingly hired some persons fit for their purpose, to swear they had been at those assemblies, and heard prayer and preaching there, though they had never been in the house on those occasions. The clergyman’s conduct in this affair was the more censured because he had professed a great friendship for Mr. Stennett, and was under considerable obligations to him, having often had his assistance in the way of his profession, as a physician for his family, without any reward.

Mr. Stennett, finding an indictment was laid against him on the Conventicle act, founded upon the oaths of several witnesses, and being well assured that nothing but perjury could support it, was resolved to traverse it, and accordingly did so.

The assizes were held at Newbury; and when the time drew near, there was great triumph in the success the gentlemen proposed to themselves: when on a sudden the scene was changed.

News came to the justice that his son, whom he had lately placed at Oxford, was gone off with a player: the concern whereof, and the riding in search of him, prevented his attendance in the court.

The clergyman, a few days before the assizes, boasted much of the service which would be done to the church and the neighborhood by his prosecution, and of his own determination to be at Newbury to help carry it on: but to the surprise of many his design was frustrated by sudden death.

One of the witnesses, who lived at Cromish, was also prevented by being seized with a violent and sad disease, of which he died. Another of them fell down and broke his leg, and so was hindered.

In short, of seven or eight persons engaged in this wicked design, there was but one left who was capable of appearing. He was a gardener, who had been frequently employed by Mr. Stennett at day labor, but never lodged in his house, nor was admitted to the religious assemblies held there. They thought to make him, as he was a servant to the family, a very natural evidence, and kept him in liquor for several days for that purpose.

But coming to his reason just as the assizes drew on, he went about the town exclaiming against himself for his ingratitude and perjury, as well as against those who had employed him; and absolutely refused to go. So that when Mr. Stennett came to Newbury, neither prosecutor nor witness appearing against him, he was discharged.

Many a time in those days of oppression, witnesses for truth and liberty of soul were constrained to sing with the psalmist: “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us: then they had swallowed us up quick.” Ps. 124:2, 3. But God was on the side of truth, and through dark days the torch of truth was kept burning in faithful hands. Now it falls to the last generation of believers to bear the light onward to the end of the way. And with forces of oppression gathering to repress and obscure the light, we gather courage and inspiration from the story of delivering mercies through the ages long past. The living God is still our God, and will be our guide unto the end. W. A. S.