The life of the Rev. Thomas Coke, D.C.L.

Preface

The example of a life like that delineated on the following pages is too precious to be allowed to fade into oblivion; and, in recalling attention to it in this new narrative, the curators of the Methodist press believe that they are fulfilling a duty to the church and to the world.

It is true the present volume is not the first or only biography of Doctor Coke. A servant of God so distinguished would not need, in an age like ours, a heart or a hand to record his virtues ; but it is believed that this last essay will be found more complete than its predecessors, and will be on that account not unwelcome even to those who have already learned to understand and revere his character.

The first attempt at a biography of Dr. Coke was made by the Rev. Jonathan Crowther, sen., in a volume in which, amidst a large amount of useful information on ecclesiastical and missionary subjects, there is too little found about the personal subject of the memoir itself to give satisfaction to the reader. This book was followed by a short but elegant sketch from the pen of the Rev. Joseph Sutcliffc, M.A., which is prefixed to a volume of

A 2

IV PREFACE.

the Doctor's works ; and will always be read with pleasure and profit by the few who may meet with it. But a more authentic life of the great missionary was undertaken, at the request of his executors, by the late Samuel Drew, M.A., a man every way qualified for the task, not only by his own eminent abilities, but by those habits of intercourse with Dr. Coke himself which had given him an intimate acquaintance with his " doctrine, manner of life, faith, purpose, and charity/' Yet even the respectable production of Mr. Drew, which has now been long years out of print, has defects and blemishes which, were a new edition of it contemplated, it would be desirable to repair. The writer of the present pages has had the advantage of Mr. Drew, and of each of the former biographers, in having access to documentary and other means of information to them unattainable or unknown ; and the volume is humbly offered to the Christian public with the confidence that, though the manner of execution be imperfect enough, the materials unfolded will not be found unworthy their regard.

In the department of religious biography we may certainly claim for Methodist literature a very high consideration. The Magazine alone has chronicled, for a century of years, a multitude of memorials illustrative of the power of religion to beautify our life, and turn death itself into gain ; while the more elaborate histories of the saints and evangelists of our communion have taken a standard and classic rank in the literature of the church at lar°-e. Such are, the Lives of the "Wesleys and Whitefield ; the

PREFACE. V

sanctified Fletcher ; the fervid Benson ; the erudite Adam Clarke ; Richard Watson, of lofty genius, but lowly, reverential piety; Robert Newton, eloquent as Apollos; and Jabez Bunting, the Aristides of modern Methodism*

It is with these servants of the Most High God, who showed to millions the way of salvation, that Coke has taken his abiding place. The rank he holds among them will be determined by a survey of the actions of his life.

In looking heavenward toward constellations like these, one is reminded of the angel's word : " They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." May He from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed, increase such men in all churches, till their line shall have gone out through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world !

The author begs to express his grateful obligations to the friends who have favoured him with the use of manuscripts and books, of no small service in giving firmness to his work. To the Rev. Dr. Hoole, the Rev. Dr. Stevens of New- York, the Rev. John Mason, the Rev. Messrs. Maunder, John Harding, Isaac Gould, Alex-

* We could add many others : Henry Moore, Bramwell, Hare, Isaac, John Smith, David Stontir, William Dawson, "Richard Treffry, and William Grimshaw ; not to mention an engaging array of female excellence in the biographies of Mary Fletcher, Hester Ann Rogers, Agnes Buhner, Darcy Maxwell, Mary Clarke, Elizabeth Mortimer, and other ladies who have adorned the church which cherishes a holy affection for their names.

V1 PREFACE.

auder M'Aulay, J. Gilchrist Wilson, M.A., and Thomas II. Squance, the companion of Dr. Coke on his last and fatal voyage; the Rev. William Toase of Boulogne-sur-mer, and the Rev. S. Romilly Hall ; to Mrs. Richard Smith, Miss Tooth of Clapton, and Mrs. Thompson of Leamington, whose fathers were long-tried friends of the Doctor; to G. F. Urling, Esq., of London, and Thomas Percival Bunting, Esq., of Manchester ; these acknowledgments are especially due.

Truro, May, ] 860.

Chapter I. Preliminary Labours in England and Ireland 54

II. Outgoings of the Gospel 73

III. The Rise of Methodism in America 89

IV Organization of the Methodist Episcopal

Church in America 97

Y HolyOrders 117

YI. Labours in America 131

YII. First Interval in England 150

YIII. Second Voyage out t 159

IX. The WesteriTlndies 165

X. Second Interval in England 176

XI. Third Voyage out ISO

XII. Third Interval in England 196

Vlll CONTENTS.

Chapter page-

XIII. Fourth Voyage out 202

XIV Fourth Interval, iu England and Trance ... 218

XV Fifth Voyage out 234

XVI. Fifth Interval, in England and Holland ... 252

XVII. Africa, and the Sixth Voyage out 262

XVIII. Sixth Interval, in Scotland, Ireland, England 280

XIX. Seventh Voyage out 286

XX. Seventh Interval, iu England, Ireland, and

the Norman Isles 295

XXI. Ireland and America : Eighth Voyage out . 306

XXII. Eighth Interval in England 311

XXIII. Ninth Voyage out 317

XXIV Personal and Domestic 321

XXV Literature 328

XXVI. Last Years in England 339

XXVII. Last Years in England — Continued 347

XXVIII. Last Years in England — Concluded 354

Book III. Repose

Chapter I. The last Design 366

II. The Essay 378

III. The Divine Decision , 390

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES 425

THOMAS COKE, D.C.L.

We dedicate these pages to the memory of a man whose name has become a tradition of benevolence and peace ; — a servant of the Most High, who through many years of a long life, in much labour, and with apostolic grace, showed to myriads the way of salvation ; and whose grand ministry, in its sublime example, and far-reaching and imperishable effects, still speaks to passing generations. Doctor Coke was one of those men whose personal career forms an episode in the age in which they live, and gives a theme to history. They themselves vanish from the eyes of the living, and yet still live and move among us, in the permanence of their character, and the continual development of the purposes for which they existed. In telling how they lived and died, Biography concentrates great thoughts, inculcates great principles, pays a debt to the past, and sows for good harvests in futurity.

The annals of his life unfold characteristics which with greater or less vividness will awaken reminiscences of men who have won not fading Olympian wreaths, but crowns immortal. They will claim for Doctor Coke a place among

B the heroes of mercy and justice who have led the van in the great conflict of humanity with ignorance and error, depravity and oppression : — a Wilberforce in deed and word, not in polished senates or courtly halls, but side by side with the lacerated and iron-bound children of slavery themselves; a Xavier, with more legitimate aspirations and a purer faith ; an apostle, called by the grace of the Eternal Spirit, and endued with the " yearning pity for mankind," the " burning charity," which constrained Saint Paul to labour and suffer, in fulfilling in a life of toil, and a martyrdom of glory, the decree of Him who " will have all men to be saved." And though our pages, through the incompetency of the writer for an undertaking so great, should fail in doing justice to the theme, yet the design itself, as it springs from veneration for his character, and a devout desire that its study may conduce to promote the ends for which he lived, will coincide, we are sure, with the feelings of the good, and be regarded with candour by all.

We shall have to recite how Divine Providence fitted him for the task to which it called him ; what toils he encountered in its accomplishment; and under what impressive circumstances he finished his course, and entered on eternal repose.

THE LIFE

OP THE

REV. THOMAS COKE, D.C.L.

Book I. The Preparation

CHAPTER I.

FIEST YEARS.

Oub, history opens in a beautiful and qniet scene, where, in South Wales, among towering hills, well-cultured plains, and overhanging woods, the waters of the Honddu and the Usk blend at the pleasant little town of Brecon ; an ancient and sequestered neighbourhood, in which, with some few tokens of the spirit of modern progress, the traveller is more impressed with the relics of antiquity both feudal and monastic, in what yet stands of the baronial castle, and the mouldering cloisters of the Benedictine and Dominican priories, — those dead, mutilated effigies of the religion and learning of the past, — veiled with svlvan shrouds, in the woods that cast their solemn shadows in the transparent stream. Prom the junction of the Usk with the Honddu Brecon derives its primaeval British name of Aberhonddi. The Honddu, a wild rapid rivulet, by confluence with the Usk swells into a goodly and majestic river. Altogether, Brecon is surpassed by few towns for the pic-

B 2

LIFE OF THE [BOOK I.

turesque. The ivy-mantled walls of the ruined chateau, the remains of the priory, a Benedictine cell to the abbey of Battle in Sussex, embosomed in luxuriant groves, and the mountainscenery which stretches in the distance, throw over the landscape a romantic charm.

In the town-hall of this old ecclesiastical borough there might have been seen on many a day within the second and third quarters of the last century a grave sagacious man, dressed in the insignia of the bench, dispensing as chief magistrate the blessings of the law to such of the scanty population as were deemed to need them. This worthy alderman was Bartholomew Coke, the father of the future apostle of Methodism.* Bartholomew spent a life of seventy-two years in Brecon ; at first in business as an apothecary, and, according to the usage of those days, a medical practitioner as well; and then, with a comfortable fortune from his family connexions and the gains of his profession, at the mellow evening of life, in the public service of his native town. He was a man of a serene disposition, and religiously moral; widely read in pharmacopoeias, for the simples and compounds required for the diseases of the living frame, and full of wise saws and modern instances culled from Burn and Blackstone for the rectifying of such matters as were going wrong in the social body over which he seems to have exercised a sort of patriarchal care. His epitaph in the chancel of the Priory Church describes him as a gentleman " of a most amiable temper, beloved of all who knew him." It tells us that " his great benevolence, generosity, and hospitality could not be forgotten ;" that " he filled the office of chief magistrate of the borough several times, t with universal approbation ; " and that " his great medical knowledge was so well known in the county, that very rarely did any one under his care employ a physician." %

Anne, the wife of this worthy man, was descended from a

* Note 1. f Note 2. + Note 3.

Chap. I.] Kev. Thomas Coke, D.c.l. 5

respectable family in the same county, of the name of Phillips. She has been described to me, by one who knew her, as a plain, motherly woman, well suited to promote the comfort of her husband. Their domestic life had been troubled by no care, nor afflicted with any other sorrow than that caused by the death of their two children, Bartholomew and John; a bereavement which overcast Mr. Coke's mind with the apprehension that their old age might be childless, and that when they should have passed away their house would be desolate, and their lineage extinct. But these gloomy presentiments cleared away at the birth of one more son, in whom they saw the pledge of hopes which shed a gladdening ray over the vista of the future. Him, in that spirit of sincere piety which seems to have actuated the whole conduct of this tranquil pair, they dedicated at an early age to tlie service of the altar of God. Mr. Coke lived to see his son in holy orders, both as a deacon and a priest. He died one year after the latter ordination in 1773. To Mrs. Coke it was granted to witness the development of the Divine purpose in the vocation of her sou to a service and ministry which she could not have forecast, but with which the grace of God enabled her to concur in perfect harmony of mind and heart ; since we find her in after-years, when her son had become identified with the glory and shame of " Methodism," taking a part with himself in the one and the other. After removing from Brecon she spent her latter days in London, a member of the Methodist Society, admired by them, and revered in life and in death.

Thomas, who was born on the ninth of October, one thousand seven hundred and forty-seven, grew up a dark-haired child, low indeed in stature, but bright and beautiful in aspect, vivid in temper, and, though not remarkable for precocity of genius, gifted with mental powers sufficiently strong to master without much trouble the requirements necessary to a liberal education. He passed through his scholastic training in " the college" at Brecon, one of those old "grammar-school" foundations which have greatly contributed to the perpetuity of

B 3 classical learning among us, and which, adapted to the advanced wants of modern education, should never be suffered to fall into decay. The endowment at Brecon had its original locality at Abergwilly, where, under the name of "the College of the Church of Christ," it had been founded in 1541 by Henry VIII., for the encouragement of "preaching and teaching, and good literature, and dedication of youth." It was afterwards transferred by Bishop Barlow to the town of Brecon, and gifted with the privilege of presenting young men for ordination without going to the university. At the time to which our narrative belongs, it was under the rectorship of the Rev. Mr. Griffiths, for whom Dr. Coke entertained an affectionate veneration all his life. Among his schoolfellows was one who in after- v ears made some figure in the literary circles of the time, Walter Churchey,* who, together with Coke, became a friend of Mr. Wesley, and shared in the mercies of salvation in communion with the Methodists. Churchey was intended for the law ; but Thomas Coke prosecuted the routine of juvenile study usual to boys who are preparing for the universities, till towards the close of his fifteenth year. We are not able to report anything extraordinary as to his scholastic attainments, or to hold him up as a wonder of genius. He could not affirm of himself, like the learned Bishop of Avranches, that " he had scarcely left his mother's breast, when the sight of a person reading a book would fill him with envious desire." f Nevertheless, Thomas loved his books well enough ; and the ease with which we find him going through the curriculum at Oxford sufficiently shows that learning had found in the boy a willing votary, and that the advantages of the old grammar-school had not been misapplied.

* Note 4. t lluctiana, p. 3.

Chapter II. The University

The decision which marked his parents' resolve about the destination of their son reveals itself in the circumstance that he had no sooner arrived at the age when matriculation is permitted by the statutes, than the scene of his education was transferred from Brecon to Oxford. His father took him thither in his sixteenth year, and at the Paschal term * he was duly entered a gentleman-commoner of Jesus College ; a house that ever since its foundation in 1571, by Dr. Hugh Price, himself a native of Brecon, has been the favourite resort of students from the Principality. Nor lias Jesus College failed to contribute its share to the honour of the university, in having given to the world such men as Bishop Lloyd, Archbishop Usher, Wynne, Bishop of St. Asaph, the antiquary Powel, Davies the lexicographer, the pious and eloquent Richard Lucas, D.J)., and the learned theologians William Worthington, Henry Owen, and Dr. James Bandinel, the first Bampton lecturer. The principal of Jesus College, when Thomas matriculated, was Dr. Humphrey Owen.

Among those who were then passing through their undergraduate course at Oxford, there were not wanting men whose names now stand identified with the history of their country : — Jenkinson, afterward Earl of Liverpool ; and Addington, who, as Lord Sidmouth, administered like him the highest trusts of the Government ; with both of whom Dr. Coke was often brought into official intercourse. Scott, also, a young man of Methodist parentage, was then acquiring the first elements of that legal erudition which raised him to the

* Matriculated 11th of April, 1764. Note 5.

'8 LIl?E OF THE [BOOK I.

earldom of Eldon and the chancellorship of England; and William Jones at University College was already deep in those philologic studies which gave him rank with the greatest Oriental scholars of the age. At that time the university of Oxford was adorned by the presence of a number of persons distinguished as well by their high standing in literature, as by scholastic or ecclesiastical dignities. At Christchurch Dr. Bagot held the office of dean, which he exchanged for the bishopric of Bristol. Of the Jacksons, Cyril and Thomas, the former was Bagot's successor in the deanship, a man of lofty character; * and the latter, then a junior tutor in mathematics, afterwards became Bishop of Oxford. One of the Randolphs was devoted to the Uteres liumaniores, and for some years professor of poetry ; the other, a stern theologian, who wielded in after-days with good effect the crozier of the metropolitan see. Newcome, whose critical works on the Prophets and the Gospel Harmony have given him a more enduring fame than even his subsequent elevation to the primacy of Ireland, was still a tutor of Hertford College. Home, vice-chancellor of the university, and the future Bishop of Norwich, was meditating in the shades of Magdalen his Commentary on the Book of Psalms, with the recorded prayer that He who had the key of David would open to his soul, and to others through him, their treasures of truth and grace; and Kennicott, at Exeter College, surrounded with Oriental manuscripts, toiled day and night in preparing the great Variorum edition of the Hebrew Bible ; while at Trinity the younger Wharton brought costly gifts to the shrine of Apollo in his preelections on the poetic art, and his admirable History of the poetry of England. Doctor Johnson, too, had not yet ceased to make his occasional visits to Oxford to groan over the memories of the dead, and to receive, when too late to make him happy, the well-earned homage of the living. " Gigantes erant in terra in diehns illls ; poientes in sceculo, viri famosi."

* Note 6.

CHAP. II.] REV. THOMAS COKE, D.C.L. 9

Our young student from the quiet valley of the Usk found himself here in a new world, whose scenes and personages made impressions on his soul which no after-years could wear away. Tew minds can be insensible to the solemn charms of this beautiful and venerable city. Its picturesque and imposing structures, combining the grandeur of palaces with the sanctified air of monastic tranquillity ; its shrines of devotion, its sylvan retreats, its historic memories, its grand revelations of the supremacy of intellect and the claims of religion, altogether impart to this world-renowned metropolis of learning a majesty entirely its own. A youth of a temperament like his, with a heart that already beat with the stirrings of ambition, and an innate love of literature which prompted him in later life to make the generous sacrifices we shall have to record, would be powerfully moved to essay the career which spread itself before him, whose fulfilment would grace his name with the honours of learning, and endow him as an ecclesiastic with dignity and fortune.

"When first the college-rolls receive his name, The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame ; Resistless burns the fever of renown, Caught from the strong contagion of the gown ; O'er Bodley's dome his future labours spread, And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head : Are these thy views? Proceed, adventurous youth, And Virtue guard thee to the throne of Truth." *

This last wish of the poet has a significaTice not without a bearing on the subject of our history. In the instance of many a young man who has commenced his university course with the noblest tendencies, vice, in the disguise of pleasure, has met him in the way, and destroyed by her unholy spells those hopeful yearnings after the beautiful and true, and changed the aspirant for whatever things are lovely and of good report into the wavering imbecile, or the reckless reprobate. To these insidious snares young Coke was not long in

* Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes. Compare Juvenal, sat. x., 114, et seq.

becoming exposed. The public standard of morals in those days was lower than in our own, and the universities themselves were in lamentable keeping with the grossness of the times. Contrasted, indeed, with the frightful profligacy which disgraced the Continental seats of learning in the middle ages* the morals of Oxford in the eighteenth century appear to great advantage ; but, compared with those of the present day, they reveal a lowness of principle, and a scandalous disregard of the decencies of life, which rendered the time of a young man's residence there an ordeal of virtue through which few passed unscathed. Nor were things much changed for the better a quarter of a century later. Southey was an undergraduate at Balliol College in 1794; and, describing in one of his letters the life then led by the men around him, he mentions that " the college was in a flagitious state of morals." f " Temperance/' says he, " is much wanted ; the waters of Helicon are far too much polluted by the wine of Bacchus ever to produce any effect. "With respect to its superiors, Oxford only exhibits waste of wigs and want of wisdom ; with respect to undergraduates, every species of abandoned excess. As for me, 1 regard myself too much to run into the vice so common and destructive. I have not yet

been drunk, nor mean to be so Never shall child of mine

enter a public school or university. Perhaps I may not be able so well to instruct him in logic or languages, but I can at least preserve him from vice." % Let us add, however, that at the present day the improved tone of the public mind at large, and the judicious measures of the enlightened men who now administer its government, conduce to render the outward life of the university far less liable to reproach ; while its

f Life, vol. iv.j p. 1S6. % Ibid., vol. i., p. 177.

CHAP. II.] EEV. THOMAS COKE, D.C.L. 11

inward life, as we earnestly trust, is becoming more and more religious.

Eut to the temptations which beset his path Thomas Coke was soon in danger of falling a victim. The easy course of study at that time in vogue, and a relaxed economic discipline, left him ample time for amusement, and for too much beside. His standing in the university, as a gentleman-commoner, introduced him to the society of several young men of rank and fortune whose purses were bettn' filled with money than their heads with wisdom, or their hearts with virtuous principle; and, under the influence of these bad associates, the pure and good feelings in which Thomas had been nurtured by his gentle mother, though never entirely extinguished in his bosom, were subjected to a debasing change. He was at first shocked and disgusted by the vices of his companions ; but, where the most resolute opposition to its encroachments is not maintained, or, rather, where the power of temptation is not altogether shunned in avoiding the presence of the agencies by which it acts upon the mind, the love of guilty pleasure, like a swelling and defiant tide, will carry all before it. Yet, in the midst of this seductive dissipation, there was a Power present with him, " girding him, though he knew it not," which kept him from utter moral ruin. His heart, though unregenerate, was awakened again and again by the monitory voice of the Spirit who convinces of sin, and tells men of judgment to come. So, at the midnight revel, where, as he told a friend in after-years, he frequently witnessed scenes of depravity which were not to be described, his soul recoiled with abhorrence from the wickedness of his companions, and his will was endued with sufficient vigour to abstain from a literal participation in their crimes. It may be thought that even in these perilous trials his moral education was being carried on ; but far wiser and infinitely more safe will be the conduct of the youth who in like circumstances shuns the danger altogether, with the vow of him whom Heaven ennobled as a prince with God and men : " My soul, come not thou into their secret ; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united."

Yet, shrinking from these unveiled and ghastly apparitions of sin, he was nevertheless disposed to tamper with it when it came beneath the mask of conventional usage, or of pleasure indulged in by the many. Timorous of the sneers of the vicious, he tolerated vice itself; or, in quest of gratification, sought it in the enervating drama, the fascination of the ballroom, and the unnatural spells of the gaming-table ; sought it, but found more frequently dissatisfaction and remorse.

Nor was corruption of morals the only evil which menaced him. There was another, and if possible a greater one, inasmuch as subjection to it would have completed his undoing by cutting him off from the only means of a sinner's return to peace. That other evil was corruption of principle in an apostasy from the faith of the Bible. They who descend within that lower depth leave hope behind. Some of Thomas Coke's associates had already thrown off not only the fear of God, but all belief in His word ; and these reprobate spirits, as if moved by the inspirations of the first apostate, were restless till they had involved him in their own ruin. Coke, who had hitherto been a stranger to all exercises of the mind about the truth of Christianity, content with a merely traditional and acquiescent belief, now found himself but ill prepared to repel attacks upon his creed, in objections and arguments which both surprised and silenced him. Discussion led but to defeat ; the mortification attending which was aggravated by sarcasm, or turned to the advantage of his opponents by the opportune persuasion to free himself from the trammels which they had succeeded in breaking, and rise to an equality with themselves in the true liberty of mind and manhood. Beguiled by such sophistry, or allured by deceptive glimpses of release from the restraints of moral obligation, and an investiture with the fancied license of the libertine, he unhappily forsook the guides of his youth, and threw off the covenant of his God. His steps in this fatal direction were at first uncertain and

CHAP. II.] REV. THOMAS COKE, D.C.L. 13

faltering; but they gained strength as he advanced. It would appear, too, that this unhappy tendency was encouraged, or rendered more decisive, by the sanction of authority. From a quarter from which help should have been promptly rendered in this time of need, in counsel and orthodox instruction to an inexperienced youth thus wavering under the temptations of doubt, he received impressions which confirmed his bias to unbelief, and consigned him to the full mastery of error. We would fain hope that this may be disproved; but the statement made by one who in subsequent years was his intimate friend, and fellow-labourer in the service of God, stands unequivocally written, — that the subject of our memoir " was infected with infidel principles at the university, in which he was unhappily strengthened by his ungodly tutor." *

They who call to mind the religious, or rather irreligious, state of Christendom at that time, will not regard such representations as at all incredible. Infidelity had become the fashion of the public mind. Its evil influences, like the apocalyptic smoke from the abyss, had ushered in an unnatural night upon the European world, compared with which the gloom of the so-called dark ages was sunshine. Faith was dying out from men's hearts all over the Continent. Voltaire's Satanic gibes, the dismal rant of Jean Jacques Bousseau, Lessing's astute scepticism, the God-denying blasphemies of Holbach, and even the poetic rationalism of Herder, — and the effect of the example of kings and queens, the mass of the nobility, and the leaders of fashionable life, upon the multitude who did not read, — were all telling upon various orders of minds in bringing about the same disastrous consummation. The priest at the altar, the monarch on the throne, the doctor in the college chair, the dramatist on the stage, the wit in the salon, the soldier in the ranks, the trader in the shop, and the peasant at the plough, blasphemed God,