“Patiently To Suffer For Christ’s Sake”: Hercules Collins As An Exemplar Of Baptists During The Great Persecution (1660-1688) -- By: G. Stephen Weaver, Jr.
Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 18:1 (Spring 2014)
Article: “Patiently To Suffer For Christ’s Sake”: Hercules Collins As An Exemplar Of Baptists During The Great Persecution (1660-1688)
Author: G. Stephen Weaver, Jr.
SBTJ 18:1 (Spring 2014) p. 81
“Patiently To Suffer For Christ’s Sake”: Hercules Collins As An Exemplar Of Baptists During The Great Persecution (1660-1688)1
G. Stephen Weaver, Jr. serves as the senior pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, Kentucky. Dr. Weaver is also an adjunct professor of church history at Boyce College and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He completed his Ph.D. dissertation on Hercules Collins at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the co-editor of Devoted to the Service of the Temple: Piety, Persecution, and Ministry in the Writings of Hercules Collins (Reformation Heritage Books, 2007), The Pure Flame of Devotion: The History of Christian Spirituality (Joshua Press, 2013), and a modernized edition of Hercules Collins’ An Orthodox Catechism (Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2014).
In 1682, in a work provocatively titled, Some Reasons for Separation From the Communion of the Church of England, London Baptist pastor Hercules Collins declared to the state church, “If you do persecute us for our Conscience, I hope God will give us that Grace which may inable us patiently to suffer for Christ’s sake.”2 Apparently God granted this desire for John Piggott, in his funeral sermon for Collins, affirmed that he “continued faithful to the last. He was not shock’d by the Fury of Persecutors, tho he suffer’d Imprisonment for the Name of Christ.”3 In fact, Collins was imprisoned at
SBTJ 18:1 (Spring 2014) p. 82
least twice for his principled commitment to the idea of a believer’s church during the period labeled in a recent work by Raymond Brown as a “Period of Repression” for English nonconformity.4 During this period all Dissenters, including the Baptists, were persecuted.5 As a result a rich body of literature was produced that reflects a vibrant spirituality of persecution and suffering for the sake of the gospel. As Brown has observed, new forms of communication were opened up to those imprisoned for the gospel: “The writing of books, pamphlets, and collections of letters for distribution in printed form extended the ministry of those who had preached earlier at the cost of their freedom but were now ‘silenced’ prisoners.”6 One such prisoner who made use of his time in prison to expand his ministry was Hercules Collins.7 His prison w...
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