Queen Mary and Westfield College London University PhD Thesis ...

gods blessing and good means' and 'delivered [i.e. discharged] thence with praise to God'74.
Not surprisingly, the hand of judgment continued to figure in the annual Spital sermons, given
on the subject of the London hospitals, well into the eighteenth century, where the didactic
was linked directly to the fund-raising needs of charities. The mad of Bethiem continued to
be regarded as defacing 'the Image' of their 'Maker' and preachers continued to praise 'Divine
Providence' for their relief. In 1681, for example, Edward Stillingfieet, Dean of St. Paul's
and the King's chaplain (later Bishop of Worcester) instructed his congregation and readers
when counting the blessings of their 'Reason and Understanding', to 'pity the poor Creatures
[in Bethiem] whom God bath deprived of it', and to remember 'how easily, how justly, how
suddenly may God cast you into their condition' 75 . lie was echoed nearly 60 years later by John
Gilbert, Bishop of Landaff 76. Indeed, Gilbert made overt reference to the hordes who must
have been visiting the hospital during the same Easter, demanding 'is it possible any rational
Creature should look on such moving Objects as these as an unconcer'd spectator'. It may even
be that the Enlightenment drove home the providential lesson of madness more forcibly than
ever before. Pious provincials, especially those with dissenting sympathies, )ike the Lancashire
doctor, Richard Kay, despite touring Bethlem as one of the sights during August of the same
year, might exclaim with as much vehemence as their forbears, 'Lord May Thy Goodness to
us and kind Preservation of us aiwayes be had in thankful Remembrance by us' 77 . It was as
if Kay had heard Gilbert's sermon, as he had subsequently heard Wesley's78 . Wesley and the
Methodists themselves, with their 'bantering-booths' set up just outside the hospital walls in
Moorfields, did not miss the opportunity afforded them to substantiate the workings of divinity
in the world by example. Paragons of enligltenment thought, like Daniel Defoe, continued to
See snpra, Chap. 2.
Stillingileet, Pro festan g Charity. A Sermon Preached at S. Sepslchrea Cknrck, on Tneaday in Eas g er Week,
AD. 1681 (London, 1681), 28 & 47.
76 Gilbert declared:- 'That reason which they have lost, should excite us to shew our Thankfulness to God
for the Continuance of this Blessing to ourselves, by contributing all in our Power towards restoring, in these
most deplorable objects of our Compassion, that Faculty which stamps upon us all the Image of God, and alone
enables us to answer the great End of our Creation, by serving and honouring our great and merciful Creator'.
A Sermon Preached hfore...in Eaaer- Week 1743 (London, 1743).
The Diary of Richard Ka 1716-51 (eds), W. Brockbank and F. Kenworthy (Manchester, Manchester
University Press, 1968), 68-9, 83.
Kay heard both John Wesley and Peter Goodwin preach at upper Moorfields, in 1743, with some reverence,
responding to the former's sermon from Lam 1.12 with 'Lord, Give me a suitable Capacity for Improvement'.
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