Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

5th day I preached at John Hey’s to a full assembly, God wonderfully helped in prayer, such tears, groans, that sometimes my voice was scarce heard for the noise of people’s cries. I have seldom heard the like – a good sign.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

Unfortunately 17th century charismatic Presbyterian preachers didn’t use YouTube. What rather puzzles me is Heywood’s use of “melt”. Is it OED’s 3.c. – “transitive. To overwhelm, touch, or soften (a person, a person’s feelings, etc.), esp. by appealing to pity, love, etc.; to persuade, bring round; to delight, thrill” – or its 3.e. – “intransitive To become ecstatic; to yield to rapture or delight; spec. to experience sexual orgasm”? OED doesn’t seem to have the noun form, “melting.” Private and public examples in diverse functional contexts ex op. cit.:

1. God wonderfully melted my heart when Jo Lister and myself were at prayer
2. God sweetly melted my heart, helped me in discoursing extempore on Psalm 56.8
3. God helped my heart, melted several others
4. God wonderfully assisted my head in my Lord’s work, melted some hearts when speaking of this work in young men
5. God melted my heart in secret prayer in the morning
6. In the afternoon, my son, wife and I spent some time in prayer, all excercised, wonderfully melted, oh what a flood of tears!
7. Eliezer prayed sensibly, but John exceeded in self-abasings, meltings, tears

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Original

5th day [i.e. Thursday] I preached at John Hey’s to a full assembly, God wonderfully helped in prayer, such tears, groans, that sometimes my voice was scarce heard for the noise of people’s cries. I have seldom heard the like – a good sign.

48 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Altered state of consciousness (1) ·
• 📌Gisburn (2), Lancashire village and civil parish, previously situated in the West Riding of Yorkshire and sometimes referred to as Gisburn in Craven ·
• Heywood, Oliver (1630-1702) (34), Bolton-born nonconformist minister and diarist, active in the West Riding, resident at Northowram, ejected for his beliefs ·
• Lancashire (34) ·
• Nonconformism (47) ·
• Prayer (6) ·
• Presbyterianism (20) ·
• Religious ecstasy (1) ·
• Ribble Valley (2) ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (147) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 23 August 1681: John Heywood’s is ordained at John Hey’s in Craven
• 5 April 1674: An anonymous message to a preacher
• 2 April 1683: A domestic dispute at the Heywoods’ in Northowram (Halifax)
• 27 June 1669: The vicar of Morley fails to persuade the local JP to prevent Oliver Heywood speaking from his pulpit
• 14 March 1670: The itinerant Presbyterian, Oliver Heywood, is arrested for preaching in a private house at Little Woodhouse, Leeds
• 12 February 1677: Heavy snow leaves Oliver Heywood unsure whether to cross the Pennines into Lancashire
• 2 January 1673: Despite Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence, Presbyterians Oliver Heywood and Christopher Richardson are detained while preaching at Lascelles Hall (Kirkburton)
• 24 June 1679: The world’s oldest wool carders?
• 24 January 1680: Miners rob, murder and burn a pit-owning nonconformist minister and his mother and maid at Beeston (Leeds)
• 5 February 1691: Approaching 60, Oliver Heywood contemplates his place in the cosmos