Disability Didn’t Stop 18 Year Old James Parnell, the first Quaker Martyr
Sculpture at Colchester Quaker Meeting Hall depicting Parnell in jail
Courageous faith isn’t just for special, brave people. Some of God’s heroes had to overcome serious limitations, even to get started. One such was James Parnell (1636-1655), from Retford in Nottinghamshire. He was a delicate lad, short for his age and sensitive. He loved Jesus and felt there must be more than going to the parish church.
In 1653, when he was 16, he heard of George Fox, the leader of the Quakers, who was in prison in Carlisle. Weak as he was, James walked the 150 miles and, fainting with exhaustion, was allowed to visit Fox. We have no record of their conversation, but Parnell was filled with the Holy Spirit and commissioned by Fox to be an evangelist.
He had just two years of life left, but they were amazingly fruitful. A colleague at the time, Stephen Crisp, subsequently wrote of him: ‘He was of a poor appearance, a mere youth, coming against giants; yet the wisdom of man was made to bow before the Spirit by which he spoke. He was a vessel of honour indeed and was mighty in the power and Spirit of Emanuel, breaking down and laying desolate many strongholds and towers of defence, in which the old deceiver had fortified himself with his children. Much might be spoken of this man, and a large testimony lives in my heart, to his blessed life, and to the power and wisdom that abounded in him.’
Disinherited and turned out of home by his parents, Parnell set about the work of the gospel. Sometimes with a partner, sometimes alone, he went from house to house, ‘preaching, praying, exhorting, and turning the minds of all sorts of people to the light of Jesus.’ He was ridiculed for his short stature, and often after preaching he was exhausted. Faith kept him going.
The cell in Colchester Castle where Parnell was held
Hearing that two Quakers had been whipped at Cambridge, he went there and preached himself. Far from keeping a low profile, he published two tracts, against the corruption of the magistrates and of the priests. He was imprisoned until a court hearing, where the jury was unable to prove his authorship of the tracts. So Parnell was given a magistrates’ pass branding him “a rogue” and escorted out of the town by soldiers and a mob armed with staves.
He continued to preach in the area of Ely, Cambridgeshire. In a letter he records: “There is a pleasing people [congregation] arising out of Littleport. I remained there a sufficient time among them. There are about sixty people who meet together in that town alone.” He was often set upon by angry crowds. On one occasion, he records, “the power of God was wonderfully seen in delivering me, so that I can’t remember if they hit me.”
He continued in the east of England, strengthening existing Quaker assemblies and planting new ones at . Finally, Parnell was arrested after preaching (heckling) in St Nicholas’ Church in Colchester and accused of blasphemy. At his trial, he was acquitted of the most serious charge but fined £40, a hefty sum equivalent to c. 570 working days’ wage for a skilled labourer at that time. Parnell refused to pay.
So he was imprisoned, in a cell at Colchester Castle that can still be visited today. He was able to write letters, some of which have survived. “I am committed to be kept a prisoner, but I am the Lord’s free-man,” he wrote in one. In another, he counselled a recent convert to the Quaker message: ‘Lie down in the will of God, and wait on His teaching so that He may be your head. By such you will find the way to peace and dwell in unity with all the faithful; and though you are hated by the world, yet in God is peace and well-being.’
His jailers starved him for days at a time, then let him climb down a rope to get food. The jailer’s wife and daughter used to beat him, and on occasions he was locked outside in mid-winter. It was too much for his weak constitution. One day he had no strength left to climb the rope but fell to the concrete below, and died of his injuries. He was buried in an unmarked grave, the first of several hundred Quaker martyrs. He was just 18 years old. His message to all of us is summed up in the last words he sent to the Quaker believers in Essex: “Be willing that self shall suffer for the truth, and not the truth for self.”
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Faith, Beer and Public Health: the Story of Arnold of Soissons
Arnold of Soissons (1040-1087) was a Belgian career soldier in the service of Henri I of France. At some point he experienced a religious awakening and joined the Benedictine abbey of St Medard at Soissons, France. Here he must have shown considerable potential, as he was made abbot in his thirties – a role of great responsibility. For a short time he was even bishop of Soissons, though against his will, and when an opportunity came, he withdrew and founded a new monastery at Oudenburg in Flanders.
The Benedictine order already had a long history of brewing beer. There were several reasons for this. The founder, Benedict of Nursia, stipulated in his early 6th century Rule for the life of monks that they should not live off charity but rather earn their own keep and donate to the poor by the work of their hands. So monasteries produced cheese, honey, beeswax, wool and much else, selling what they did not need themselves. Besides, they were to practise hospitality, so beer was available to serve to guests and pilgrims.
Another reason was the health-giving property of beer itself. It was cheaper than wine and could be produced in colder climates. It required water to be boiled before fermentation, making beer safer to drink than water, since drinking water at the time could be unsanitary and carry diseases. The beer normally consumed during the day at this time in Europe was called small beer, having a very low alcohol content, and containing spent yeast. The drinker had a safe source of hydration, plus a dose of B vitamins from the yeast. It has been estimated that the average monk drank more than 20 pints a week!
That’s where Arnold came in. He encouraged local peasants to drink beer instead of water. This meant more sales for the monastery, but it is likely he shared the recipe with them, for the sake of public health. And, when a cholera epidemic (spread by water) ravaged the region, the Oudenburg area stayed safe while thousands elsewhere died. On another occasion, he prayed to God to increase the beer supply of a monastery after part of its roof had collapsed and destroyed the majority of the barrels. The prayer was answered and the supply of beer supernaturally restored. A neat take on Christ’s miraculous multiplication of loaves and fish that fed the 5,000?
These (and other signs) were interpreted as miracles, and after his death he was quite rapidly canonised by the Roman Catholic Church. St. Arnold is traditionally depicted with a hop-pickers mashing rake in his hand, to identify him as patron saint of brewers. He is honoured in July with a parade in Brussels on the “Day of Beer.”
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Samuel Chadwick Burned his Sermons and Caught Fire Himself
Samuel Chadwick (1860-1932) was born in the industrial north of England. His father worked long hours in the cotton mill and, when he was only eight, Samuel went to work there, too, as a means of supporting the family. Devout Methodists, they attended chapel three times on Sunday, and as a young boy, Chadwick gave his heart to Christ. Listening to God’s word week by week, he often felt the inner call to serve Jesus. It seemed impossible, as he was poor and uneducated, but in faith he made preparations. After a twelve-hour factory shift he would rush home for five hours of prayer and study.
At the age of 21 he was appointed lay pastor of a chapel at Stacksteads, Lancashire. He found the congregation self-satisfied, but Chadwick threw himself into the work with great optimism. He had been trained to prepare well-researched and interesting sermons as the sure way to bring in the crowds. He recalled later: “This led unconsciously to a false aim in my work. I lived and laboured for my sermons, and was unfortunately more concerned about their excellence and reputation than the repentance of the people.”
Soon, however, his sermons were exhausted and nothing had changed. Staring defeat in the face and sensing his lack of real power, an intense hunger was kindled within him for more of God. At this point he heard the testimony of someone who had been revitalised by an experience of the Holy Spirit. So, with a few friends he covenanted to pray and search the scriptures until God sent revival.
One evening he was praying over his next sermon, when a powerful sense of conviction settled on him. His pride, blindness and reliance on human methods paraded before his eyes as God humbled him to the dust. Well into the night he wrestled and repented, then he got out his pile of precious sermons and threw them on the fire!
Chadwick in later years
The result was immediate – he was baptised with the Holy Spirit and with fire [Luke 3:16].
“I could not explain what had happened, but it was a bigger thing than I had ever known. There came into my soul a deep peace, a thrilling joy, and a new sense of power. My mind was quickened. I felt I had received a new faculty of understanding. Every power was vitalised. My body was quickened. There was a new sense of spring and vitality, a new power of endurance and a strong man’s exhilaration in big things.”
The tide turned. At his next service, seven people were converted (“one for each of my barren years”), and he called the whole congregation to a week of prayer. The following weekend most of the church was filled with the Holy Spirit and revival began to spread through the valleys. In the space of a few months, hundreds were converted to Jesus, among them some of the most notorious sinners in the area.
The pattern was repeated over the next few years as Chadwick moved to various places. 1890 saw him in Leeds, where the power of God was so strongly upon him that the chapel was full half an hour before the service began, and police had to control the crowds. Chadwick records: “We were always praying and fighting [the devil], singing and rejoicing, doing the impossible and planning still bigger things. The newspapers never left us alone, and people came from far and wide.” Within a few years, the chapel had to be demolished and a substantial Mission Hall built.
Always a man of the people, Chadwick would spend his Saturdays mixing with local workers. Once, when his wife was away, he teasingly invited anyone who was lonely to come for Saturday tea. He expected about a dozen. 600 turned up! Yet God had already catered: one church member was a baker and had been awoken by the Lord with the order to bake for all he was worth!
Chadwick was a man of prayer and urged others to it too. “The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying,” he wrote. “He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom – but trembles when we pray!”
The final phase of Chadwick’s life was spent as Principal of Cliff College, a Methodist training school for preachers, and it was here that he wrote his famous book, The Way to Pentecost, which was being printed when he died in 1932. In it we read:
“I owe everything to the gift of Pentecost. For fifty days the facts of the Gospel were complete, but no conversions were recorded. Pentecost registered three thousand souls. It is by fire that a holy passion is kindled in the soul whereby we live the life of God. The soul’s safety is in its heat. Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, make for a Church without power.”
Mining for Gold 