Jackals Among Ruins

Thus, as the center collapsed, the fringes were set free. Seventeenth Century Puritanism came into ascendancy as sectarian groups such as the Quakers, the Levelers, the Ranters, the Diggers and other mystical, heretical groups began to emerge. These groups were usually either neo Montanists, advocating extra-biblical, continuing revelation, which led them into heretical claims about the Trinity or the end times, or they were anarchists, who used the kingship of Jesus to advocate the overthrow of all governments. It is not an overstatement to say these groups came upon the land like locusts.

In the era when the unsurpassed Westminster theology was being taught, heresy and anarchy seemed unstoppable. Out of this mixed-up mess of false teaching and pristine biblical theology came a man named Vavasor Powell. This Welshman was possessed of natural gifts as a teacher. An Oxford man, this former schoolmaster was also gifted in leadership and vision. When he was converted under the preaching of the godly Walter Craddock (1610-1659) and the writings of Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) and William Perkins (1558-1602), he began an itinerant ministry that led him ultimately to becoming rector at Holy Trinity in Dartford. There he also became a chaplain to Parliament during the English Civil War.

When the Westminster divines set up a committee to study how to get the gospel to Wales and to do what we would call “church planting” the committee looked to this extraordinarily gifted man, Vavasor Powell. The committee met on Sept. 11, Session 704, and 18 divines signed Powell’s certificate to preach in Wales. The number included no less than Jeremiah Burroughs (1600-1646), whose devotional works on contentment and worship rank as first class contributions to the Church from this era as well as Powell’s fellow Welshman, the famous Presbyterian pastor of St. Lawrence Jewry in London, Christopher Love (1618-1651). So Powell was sent out by the Assembly to do both church planting and revitalization in Wales.

But alas, as he was separated from the orthodox Presbytery of London and set free to earn the title of “the metropolitan of Wales,” Mr. Powell became influenced by the sectarian movements of his day. The one association that most scholars have linked him to was the Fifth Monarchy Movement. This movement believed that they were fulfilling the cause of Christ by supporting anarchy, removing all human governments, and thus ushering in Daniel’s fifth and final kingdom, or monarchy, of Jesus Christ Himself. They were a millenarian group whose theology became mixed up in politics, always a dangerous and combustible mixture. And if Powell wasn’t one of them, Powell was friendly to them; of that there can be no doubt. Indeed, on one of his return trips to London, when he was filling the pulpit at Blackfriars Church, the pulpit of the late, venerable William Gouge (1575-1653), the oldest member of the Westminster Assembly when they convened, Powell gave a sermon. It was Dec. 16, 1653, the day that Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was named Lord Protector of all of the British Isles. Vavasor Powell preached to old Mr. Gouge’s congregation and asked them to go home and ask themselves if they wanted Jesus Chris to rule over them or Oliver Cromwell.