Brief Biography - by Alexander Whyte
It was in my third year at the University that I first
became acquainted with Thomas Goodwin. On opening the 'Witness' newspaper one
propitious morning, my eye fell on the announcement of a new edition of Thomas
Goodwin's works. The advertised 'Council of Publication', as I remember well,
made a deep impression upon me, and it will not be without interest to you to
hear their honoured names even on this far-distant day. They were Dr Lindsay
Alexander, of this city; Dr Begg, of this city; Dr Crawford, of the University
of Edinburgh; Principal Cunningham, of this College; Mr Drummond, of St
Thomas's Episcopal Church; Dr William Goold, of Martyr's Church. I entered my
name at once as a subscriber to the series; and not long after, the first
volume of Goodwin's works came into my hands. And I will here say with simple
truth that his works have never been out of my hands down to this day. In those
far-off years I read my Goodwin every Sabbath morning and every Sabbath night.
Goodwin was my every Sabbath-day meat and my every Sabbath-day drink. And
during my succeeding years as a student, and as a young minister, I carried
about a volume of Goodwin wherever I went. I read him in railway carriages and
on steamboats. I read him at home and abroad. I read him on my holidays among
the Scottish Grampians and among the Swiss Alps. I carried his volumes about
with me till they fell out of their original cloth binding, and till I got my
book-binder to put them into his best morocco. I have read no other author so
much and so often. And I continue to read him till this day as if I had never
read him before.
Thomas Goodwin was born October 5, 1600 at Rollesby, a
little village in Norfolk. He was brought up with great care by his Puritan
parents, who had from his birth devoted him to the Christian ministry. He was
educated at Cambridge where he attained a great proficiency in Hebrew, Greek
and Latin. He kept up his reading in those three languages to the end of his
life, and to the lasting enriching and adorning of his pulpit work. 'By an
unwearied industry in his studies', says one of his biographers, 'Goodwin so
much improved those natural abilities that God had given him, that, though so
very young, he gained for himself a great esteem at the University. But all the
time', adds the biographer, 'he walked in the vanity of his mind, and ambitious
hopes and selfish designs entirely possessing him, all his aim was to get
applause and raise his reputation, and in any manner to advance himself by
preferments. 'But', adds his biographer, 'God, who had designed Goodwin to
higher ends than those he projected in his own thoughts, was graciously pleased
to change his heart and to turn the course of his life to the divine service
and to the divine glory'. After his conversion, Goodwin attached himself openly
and boldly to the Puritan party in the University, and he remained one of the
great pillars of that party as long as he lived. He was wont to say that it was
his deep reading of his own heart, taken along with his deep reading of his New
Testament, that made him and kept him an evangelical Puritan through all the
intellectual and ecclesiastical vicissitudes of his after life.
Owing to
Archbishop Laud's persecution of the Evangelical party in the English Church,
Goodwin was compelled to resign all his ecclesiastical appointments and to take
refuge in Holland. By this time his scriptural and historical studies had made
him a convinced Independent, both in politics and in church government. After
Laud fell Goodwin was able to return to England. He settled in London where his
unparalleled power in the pulpit soon gathered a large and influential
congregation around him. In the porch of the City Temple there is a monumental
tablet to the memory of the first minister of that famous congregation, which
runs thus: 'The church assembling here was founded by the Reverend Thomas
Goodwin, D.D.: Preacher of the Council of State; President of Magdalene
College, Oxford; Member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines; and chaplain to
Oliver Cromwell . . . This tablet is erected by this church to perpetuate the
Hallowed Memory of her venerable and illustrious founder'. And his Latin
epitaph, in Bunhill Fields Cemetery has been translated thus: 'Here lies the
body of Thomas Goodwin, D.D. He had a large acquaintance with ancient, and
above all, with Ecclesiastical History. He was exceeded by no one in the
knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. He was at once blessed with a rich invention
and a solid and exact judgment. He carefully compared together the different
parts of Holy Writ, and with a marvellous felicity discovered the latent sense
of the divine Spirit who indited them. None ever entered deeper into the
mysteries of the Gospel, or more clearly unfolded them for the benefit of
others ... In knowledge, wisdom and eloquence he was a truly Christian pastor
... Till having finished his appointed course, both of services and of
sufferings' in the cause of his Divine Master, he gently fell asleep in
Jesus in February 23rd, 1679 in the eightieth year of his age.
Works
Goodwin's works, in their original editions, occupied five massive folio
volumes. 'And', says Andrew
Bonar, in one of his learned notes to Rutherford's Letters, 'they are five
invaluable volumes'. In the Edinburgh edition the whole works fill twelve
closely-printed octavo volumes. The first volume of the Edinburgh reprint is
wholly occupied with thirty-six sermons on the first chapter of Paul's Epistle
to the Ephesians. Ephesians was Goodwin's favourite Epistle. I know nothing
anywhere at all to compare with this splendid exposition, unless it is Bishop
Davenant on the Epistle to the Colossians, or Archbishop Leighton on First
Peter. Goodwin cannot be said to have the classical compression, nor has he the
classical finish that so delight us in all Leighton's literature. But there is
a grappling power; there is 'a studying down' of the passage in hand; and
withal, there is a height and a depth, and a fertilizing suggestiveness in
Goodwin that neither Davenant nor Leighton possess. I never open this great
volume that I do not recall the words of my dear old friend, John More of
Woolwich, who said on one public occasion that he owed all his divinity to
Goodwin on the Ephesians.
Goodwin's second volume contains his famous
sermon on what he calls 'the strangest paradox ever uttered'. That strangest of
paradoxes is the passage in which the Apostle James tells the twelve tribes to
count it all joy when they fall into divers trials or temptations. Goodwin's
loss of his valuable library in the great fire of London was the occasion of
his remarkable discourse entitled 'Patience and her Perfect Work'. In that
great calamity our author lost £500 worth of selected and cherished
books; a greater loss to such a student than any number of pounds could
calculate. 'I have heard my father say that God had struck him in a very
sensible place. But that since he lost his books much too well, so God had
sharply chastised him by this sore affliction'. This recalls to my mind what
Dr Duncan of
this college was wont to say: 'My Semitic books', he said, 'are my besetting
sin' But, as God would have it, out of the red-hot ashes of Goodwin's burned-up
books there sprang up a sermon that has been the calming and the consolation of
multitudes amid crosses and losses such that, but for Goodwin's teaching and
example, would have completely crushed and overwhelmed them.
The third
volume contains 'An Exposition of the Book of Revelation,' which is followed by
'Three Select Cases Resolved.' And Goodwin's Three Cases are as lastingly
valuable to me as his Revelation is worthless. Goodwin warns his readers that
some of them may find his Revelation somewhat 'craggy and tiresome.' And I am
fain to confess that I am one of those readers. The true key to the Book of
Revelation had not been discovered in Goodwin's day. And, therefore, I
thankfully accept his offered permission to leave his Revelation alone. But if
his Revelation is 'craggy and tiresome' to me, his 'Select Cases 'are
everything but that. The truth is, there is no part of Goodwin's twelve volumes
that has been more thumbed by me from my youth up than just his 'Three Select
Cases.' 'Likewise, at the same time,' says
James Fraser of
Brea, 'I received much knowledge and much comfort from Mr. Goodwin's works,
especially from his 'Growth in Grace'. 'The Heart of Christ in Heaven towards
Sinners on Earth' is the gem of the fourth volume. And it is a gem of the
purest water, if I am any judge. Happily for the evangelical faith, Goodwin's
fifth volume is full of the purest and strongest and sweetest New Testament
truth. Christ the Mediator is the all-comprehending title of this massive and
most scriptural book. And throughout, this grand subject is grappled with, and
is handled, as only Goodwin can grapple with and handle Paul. And then every
chapter is carried down into the hearts of his hearers and readers with that
powerful, and at the same time tender, homiletic of which Goodwin is such a
master.
The chapters in the sixth volume to which I oftenest turn are those
on True Spirituality; on true and pure scriptural and evangelical spirituality;
what it is; and why and how it is what it is; on spiritual persons and
spiritual things; and on the supreme blessedness of the truly spiritual mind.
The chapters on conscience in the sixth volume are simply masterly, even to
this day. Let the great treatise in his seventh volume, 'Of the Creatures, and
the condition of their state by Nature,' be read in proof of this eulogium.
Even in these Darwinian days, when Adam has been dissolved and distributed into
so many protoplasms, and potencies, and preludes of the human being who was to
come in the far future, I am bold to recommend Goodwin's seventh volume to all
serious-minded students of Moses, and of Paul, and of themselves.
Editing
the eighth volume, Goodwin's dutiful son says of it: 'In this book of my
father's you have the infinite mercy of the divine nature displayed as far as
human thought and human language can reach. And what you here possess in my
poor English does not at all reach the rich eloquence of his Latin.' So far
Goodwin's grateful son. 'I write this book,' says its author, 'for the use of
thoroughly humbled and thoroughly broken hearts.' The great acknowledgment I
have to make concerning Goodwin's eighth volume is this. I had often read the
thirty-fourth of Exodus before ever I came upon Goodwin's exposition of that
great fountain-head of Old Testament grace and truth. But from the day when I
first read Goodwin's epoch-making discourses on that wonderful chapter, it has
been a source of daily salvation and of daily song to me. 'Thank you, sir,'
writes one of our ministers to me; 'thank you for urging us to study Goodwin.
Nowadays he is never out of my hands.' After you have read his ninth volume,
'On Election,' you will confess that amid much that is somewhat craggy and
tiresome 'to you, at the same time you have come upon chapters that only
Goodwin could have written, notably those chapters on the election of Christ
Himself, and on your election in Him. As also the specially Goodwinian Book iv.
on 1 Peter v. 10. Indeed, I will stake all I have ever said about Goodwin on
this book: that is to say, when the book comes into the hands of the prepared
and proper reader.
His tenth volume is a comprehensive treatise on the
Prophetic, Apostolic, and Puritan anthropology. It cannot be denied that this
treatise is somewhat sombre and even solemnising and overawing reading. But it
would not be true to mankind if it were not both sombre and solemnising and
overawing. The whole volume is an exhaustive and a conclusive answer to the
Catechism question: 'Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto
man fell?'And once mastered by the true student this massive treatise will
remain a quarry of scriptural and experimental material both for his personal
religion and for his pulpit work.
The eleventh volume contains an elaborate
treatise on 'The Constitution, Right Order, and Government of the Churches of
Christ.' As to the manner in which Goodwin's defence of Independency, and his
assault on Presbytery and Episcopacy is conducted, I will let the author's son
speak: 'Here,' says young Goodwin, 'is no pride nor arrogance. Here are no
reproaches, no base and sly insinuations, none of those invidious reflections
with which controversies are usually managed. But here are sober thoughts, calm
reasonings, and the truth showing itself in such a mild and lovely aspect as
may create inclinations to it in the souls of all persons whom passion or
interest have not too much prejudiced.' And thus it comes about that book after
book, and chapter after chapter, is but another example and illustration of
that endlessly interesting method of his. It cannot be too much signalised, for
it is his outstanding and honourable distinction over all the great divines of
his own and every other day, that every head of doctrine, every proposition of
divinity, every chapter and every sentence and every clause of creed or
catechism is taken up and is discussed down to the bottom by Goodwin, not as so
many abstract, dogmatical propositions, but as so many fountain-head passages
of Holy Scripture.
All his work, throughout all his twelve volumes, is just
so much pulpit exposition and pulpit application of the Word of God. The
Fathers, Greek and Latin; the Schoolmen; the Reformers, the Remonstrants, the
Anglicans, the Arminians, the Antinomians, the Socinians, the Quakers, the
English and American Puritans, the Scottish Presbyterians, they are all laid
under pulpit contribution, and they all get their generous meed of praise, or
their regretful word of passing blame. Till it must have been a Biblical and a
theological education to sit under Goodwin, not only to his Bible students, but
to all his hearers. And till I can see the Bible-loving Protector and all his
preaching officers rubbing their hands with holy glee as they crowded round
Goodwin's pulpit, now in the House of Commons, and now in the camp, and
congratulated evangelical England and themselves that they had such a 'trier'
as Goodwin was, by whom to waken up the sleeping incumbents of the parish
pulpits all over the land.