“Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a twoedged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints. Praise ye the LORD,” Psalm 149:6-9.
One old saintly soldier of Christ made this comment on these words of the Psalmist.
“Cromwell’s Ironsides were sneeringly called Psalm singers; but God’s Psalm singers are always Ironsides. He who has a ‘new song in his mouth’ is ever stronger, both to suffer and to labour, than the man who has a dumb spirit and a hymnless heart. When he sings at his work, he will both do more and do it better than he would without his song. Hence, we need not be surprised that all through its history the Church of God has travelled ‘along the line of music’.” —William Taylor.
Cromwell’s ‘Ironsides’ were providentially used to overthrow and punish the wickedness of Charles I and his evil regime.
Sadly the people of England preferred the degenerate ways of the Stuarts to the more devout ways of Oliver Cromwell. Consequently, after the death of the ‘Lord Protector’, at 59 years of age, in 1658, the people of the ‘ruling classes’ of England brought back the Stuart rule and Charles II, if anything a more wicked version of his father, was placed upon the throne!
So ended a very important era in the history of these Isles. The causes Oliver Cromwell espoused, dissenting preachers and their message, were virtually outlawed under Charles II. It was during his reign that the ‘Great Ejection’ took place!
The ‘Great Ejection’ followed the Act of Uniformity in 1662 in England. Several thousand Puritan ministers were forced out of their positions in the Church of England. It was largely a consequence of the ‘Savoy Conference’ of 1661.
That Conference was convened by Gilbert Sheldon, in his lodgings at the Savoy Hospital in London. The Conference sessions began on 15 April 1661, and continued for around four months. By June, a deadlock became apparent.
The conference was attended by commissioners: 12 Anglican bishops, and 12 representative ministers of the Puritan and Presbyterian groups. Each side also had nine deputies (called assistants or coadjutors). The nominal chairman was Accepted Frewen, the Archbishop of York.
The object was to revise the Book of Common Prayer. Richard Baxter for the Presbyterian side presented a new liturgy, but this was not accepted. As a result the Church of England retained internal tensions about governance and theology, while a significant number of dissenters left its structure and created non-conformist groups retaining Puritan theological commitments.
In 1662 the Act of Uniformity followed, mandating the usage of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and spurring the Great Ejection.
The Act of Uniformity prescribed that any minister who refused to conform to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer by St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August) 1662, should be ejected from the Church of England. This date became known as ‘Black Bartholomew’s Day’ among Dissenters, a reference to the fact that it occurred on the same day as the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572.
Oliver Heywood estimated the number of ministers ejected at 2,500. This group included Richard Baxter, Edmund Calamy the Elder, Simeon Ashe, Thomas Case, John Flavel, William Jenkyn, Joseph Caryl, Benjamin Needler, Thomas Brooks, Thomas Manton, William Sclater, Thomas Doolittle and Thomas Watson. Biographical details of ejected ministers and their fates were later collected by the historian Edmund Calamy, grandson of the elder Calamy.
Although there had already been ministers outside the established church, the Great Ejection created an abiding concept of non-conformity. Strict religious tests of the ‘Clarendon Code’ and other ‘Penal Laws’ left a substantial section of English society excluded from public affairs, and also university degrees, for a century and a half. (more…)
