Charnock on Providence

When a shifting political landscape forced him to go into hiding, Stephen Charnock continued to faithfully minister to God’s people. Today, Dr. Stephen Nichols discusses how this Puritan’s life and work bore witness to the providence of God.

Stephen Charnock was born in 1628 and he died in 1680. He was born and died in his beloved city of London. He is known as a puritan divine, puritan minister, and theologian. His father was a solicitor, and when he was of age young Stephen Charnock was sent off to study at Emmanuel College Cambridge, that epicenter of puritanism. While he was there as an undergraduate, he was converted and there he also felt the call to the ministry. When he graduated, he served as a private tutor, preparing to be a minister, and then took a church in Southwark, London. In 1649, he went to Oxford for further study and acquired a fellowship at New College Oxford. Then in 1655, his life changed. He was sent to Ireland to be chaplain to the governor, a post he would hold for five years. The governor was Henry Cromwell, the fourth son of Oliver Cromwell, and he was appointed governor there in Dublin. And Stephen Charnock as his chaplain, had the duties of preaching, which he did very much there in the city of Dublin, and also of advising him.

Well, then we have the restoration in 1660 as Charles II comes to the throne and restores the monarchy and restores the Church of England. And this meant that Henry Cromwell was out as Governor of Ireland, and so too was Stephen Charnock. For the next 15 years, under this time of the restoration, Charnock was not able to preach. He was not able to publish. He was not able to work in public. So, he worked quietly in private, committed himself to study, committed himself to preaching privately, committed himself to ministering and pastoring privately.

Then in 1675, he, along with the other great puritan, Thomas Watson, co-pastored a church at Crosby Square. This congregation met in the Crosby House Great Hall. It was built by John Crosby back in 1470. It passed through many hands and much of the mansion was lost in a great fire in London. Not the Great Fire of 1666, Crosby House actually escaped that, only six years later to have much of it lost to fire, except the main hall. It survived with its magnificent oak ceiling, and it became the meeting house for the Church of Stephen Charnock and Thomas Watson. He ministered there up until the time of his death, July 27th, 1680, he was 53 years old.

It was said of Stephen Charnock that he was filled with the fullness of God. Most of his preaching was on the character and attributes of God, and much of his writing was on the character and attributes of God. In 1680, the year of his death, his sermons on divine providence were first published. A brand new edition of this wonderful book and helpfully edited by my friend Carolyn Whiting has just been released. I want to read to you one small text from it: “Providence is mysterious in such a way that we shortsighted souls are not able to catch the spectacle of God's distant ends.”

As you look back over the life of Stephen Charnock, you see a mysterious providence at work. You see him flourishing under that Cromwell era, you see him being sent literally into hiding under the restoration. You see him being united with that great puritan Thomas Watson, and you see through it all these writings and these sermons that he preached on the fullness of God. And here we are centuries later, able to benefit from the life and labors of Stephen Charnock, himself a trophy of God's divine providence. Well, that's Stephen Charnock, his book, Divine Providence, and I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.