Henry Smith
A Preparative for Marriage PP. 8-13
Before God made the woman (Genesis 2:21), it is said, that he cast the man into a sleep, and in his sleep he took a rib out of his side, and as he made the man of earth, so he made the woman of bone, while Adam was a sleep. This teaches us two things: as the first Adam was a figure of the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45), so the first Adam’s sleep was a figure of the second Adam’s sleep, and the first Adam’s spouse was a figure of the second Adam’s spouse. That is, as in the sleep of Adam, Eve was borne; so in the sleep of Christ, the Church was borne: as a bone came out of the first Adam’s side, so blood came out of the second Adam’s side. As Adam’s spouse received life in his sleep; so Christ’s spouse received life in his sleep: that is, the death of Christ is the life of the Church; for the Apostle calls Death a sleep, but Christ which died is called Life, showing that in his death we live (Ephesians 5:14; John 14:6). Secondly, this sleep which the man was cast into, while his wife was created, teaches us that our affections, our lusts, and our concupiscences, should sleep while we go about this action. As the man slept while his wife was making, so our flesh should sleep while our wife is choosing, least as the love of Venison won Isaak to bless one for another (Genesis 27:3), so the love of gentry, or riches, or beauty make us take one for another.
To honor marriage more yet, or rather to teach the married how to honor one another, it is said that the wife was made of the husband’s rib (Genesis 2:22; Ephesians 5:23): not of his head, for Paul calls the husband the wife’s head: nor of the foot for he must not set her at his foot: the servant is appointed to serve, and the wife to help. If she must not match with the head, nor stoop at the foot, where shall he set her then? He must set her at his heart, and therefore she which should lie in his bosom, was made in his bosom, and should be as close to him as his rib of which she was fashioned. Lastly, in all nations the day of marriage was reputed the most joyful day in all their life, and is reputed still of all, as though the Sun of happiness began that day to shine upon us, when a good wife is brought unto us. Therefore one saith, that marriage means ‘merry-age’, because a playfellow is come to make our age merry.
Solomon considering all these excellencies, as though we were more indebted to God for this than other temporal gifts, says, “House and riches are the inheritance of the fathers: but a prudent wife comes of the Lord” (Proverbs 14:14). House and riches are given of God, and all things else, yet he says, house and riches are given of parents, but a good wife is given of God: as though a good wife were such a gift, as we should account from God alone, and accept as if he should send us a present from heaven, with this name written upon it, the gift of God.
Beasts are ordained for food, and clothes for warmth, and flowers for pleasure, but the wife is ordained for man, like little Zoar, a City of refuge to flee to in all his troubles (Genesis 29:20), and there is no peace comparable unto her, but the peace of conscience.
Henry Smith
Henry Smith, who is described in Piers Penniless’s Supplication (1592) as Silver-tongued Smith, was a celebrated preacher in Elizabethan London at St. Clement Danes. On leaving Queens’ College, Cambridge, he continued his studies with Richard Greenham, rector of Dry Drayton, Cambridgeshire, who imbued him with Puritan principles as he did other leading men of the time. In 1575 he also entered Lincoln College, Oxford, graduating in 1579.
Though as the eldest son and heir of Erasmus Smith of Somerby and Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire, he was heir-apparent to a large patrimony, he prepared to enter the Ministry of the Church, but, owing to conscientious scruples on the matter of subscription, he determined not to undertake a pastoral charge, but to content himself with a Lectureship. Varied dates are given for his life. 1550-1591, 1550-1600 and 1550-1601.
Strype, in his Life of Bishop Aylmer, speaks of Smith as “ an eloquent and witty man who in 1587 became Reader or Lecturer at St. Clement Danes, at the desire of many of the parishioners, and by the favor of the Lord Treasurer who dwelt in the same parish and yielded contribution to him.Thomas Fuller also, in a Life of Henry Smith which he prefixed to the first Collected Edition of his works, said of him: “He was commonly called the Silver-tongued preacher, and that was but one metal below St. Chrysostom himself. His Church was so crowded with auditors that persons of good quality brought their own pews with them, I mean their legs, to stand thereupon in the alleys. Their ears did so attend to his lips, their hearts to their ears, that he held the rudder of their affections in his hands, so that he could steer them whither he was pleased.” Wood, too, tells us that Smith was “esteemed the miracle and wonder of his age, for his prodigious memory and for his fluent, eloquent and practical way of preaching.” (Athenae Oxon. 1:603). And in our own time Marsden, in his History of the Puritans, has described Smith’s Sermons as “noble examples of English prose and pulpit eloquence, and as being free in an astonishing degree from the besetting vices of his age—vulgarity and quaintness and affected learning.”
Owing to ill-health he resigned his Lectureship about the end of 1590, and retired to Husbands Bosworth, where he died the following summer, and was buried July 4th, 1591. (Some have his death at 1601).
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