Who Was Thomas Manton? The Puritan Behind 190 Sermons on Psalm 119
Thomas Manton was an English Puritan preacher who lived from 1620 to 1677. He was rector of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, in London, a chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and one of the leaders of the Presbyterian ministers who helped bring Charles II back to the throne. Two years later the new laws drove him out of his pulpit, and he spent the rest of his life as a nonconformist, preaching in private houses and once going to prison for it.
Today he's best known for two huge works of Bible exposition: a verse-by-verse commentary on the Epistle of James, and 190 sermons on Psalm 119. Both are in TheWay Library. Here's the story of the man behind them.
Somerset, Oxford and Devon
Manton was born in 1620 at Lydeard St. Lawrence, a village in Somerset in the west of England. His father and both his grandfathers were ministers. He went to school at Tiverton in Devon and was ready for university at fourteen, which was very young even then. He entered Wadham College, Oxford, in 1635, and gave himself to the study of divinity.
He was ordained young, by Bishop Joseph Hall, a well-known devotional writer, who is said to have predicted that he would prove an extraordinary man. Manton himself later thought he had started too soon. Preaching years afterward on "Be slow to speak" in James 1, he told his hearers with tears that he had been in the ministry ten years and was not yet thirty, and asked the Lord to forgive his "rash intrusion."
Those were the years of the English Civil War. Manton was in Exeter when the king's army besieged it. He preached his first sermons around Exeter and gave a weekly lecture at Colyton in Devon before he had a settled church.
Stoke Newington and the Epistle of James
About 1645 he became minister at Stoke Newington, a village just north of London, under the patronage of Colonel Alexander Popham. He stayed seven years. Besides preaching twice every Sunday, he gave a weekday lecture, and it was there, week after week, that he worked through the Epistle of James. The lectures became his Practical Commentary on James, first published in the 1650s. The memoir printed with his Psalm 119 sermons says good judges thought it one of the best models of a commentary.
He chose James on purpose. In the preface he says the letter is full of practical matter and corrects a careless faith that talks but doesn't obey. He also defends it against those who called it "a right strawy epistle," and shows how James and Paul agree:
Faith is not an idle grace; wherever it is, it fructifieth in good works.
A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of James, Prolegomena, or a Preface
He also served as one of the clerks of the Westminster Assembly, the gathering of ministers that wrote the Westminster Confession and catechisms, and he wrote a preface for a later edition of the Confession. He was asked to preach before Parliament more than once.
Covent Garden and the Protector
In 1656 Manton moved to London as rector of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, taking the place of the aged Obadiah Sedgwick. His preaching drew large crowds, including many people of rank.
He was no flatterer of the government. He had attended the Presbyterian minister Christopher Love on the scaffold when Love was executed in 1651. Yet Cromwell respected him. On the morning in 1653 when Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector, a messenger fetched Manton to Whitehall, where Cromwell told him to open the ceremony with prayer and gave him half an hour in his study to get ready. Manton later served as one of Cromwell's chaplains and as one of the "triers" who examined men entering the ministry.
Restoration and ejection
When the Protectorate fell apart, Manton was among the Presbyterian ministers who worked for the return of Charles II in 1660. For a short time he was in favor at court. He was offered the deanery of Rochester and turned it down. He sat at the Savoy Conference in 1661, where Presbyterian and Episcopal ministers tried, and failed, to agree on changes to the Prayer Book.
Then came the Act of Uniformity in 1662. Manton could not in conscience accept its terms. He preached his last sermon at Covent Garden in August 1662 and left his living, along with some two thousand other ministers in what is called the Great Ejection.
Preaching without a pulpit
For the rest of his life he preached where he could. At first he gathered his family and a few neighbors on Sunday evenings at his house. When more came, he knocked two rooms into one. In 1670 constables came in at the end of a Sunday sermon. They waited until he finished praying, took the names of the hearers, and soon after committed him to the Gatehouse prison for about six months. His jailer turned out to be kind to him, and friends visited him there.
When the king's indulgence of 1672 allowed more freedom, the merchants of London set up a weekday lecture at Pinners' Hall, and Manton was one of the first six lecturers. He kept preaching until his health failed. The night before he took to his bed, he prayed that if God had no more work for him in this world, He would take him to Himself. He died on October 18, 1677, at fifty-seven, and was buried at Stoke Newington. His friend William Bates preached his funeral sermon and, for years afterward, wept when he spoke of him.
The Psalm 119 sermons
Manton preached through Psalm 119 one verse at a time, often giving a verse two sermons, in his ordinary round of three sermons a week. Bates published them after his death. Bates admired how Manton found something fresh in every verse of a psalm that says much the same thing again and again. Each sermon follows the Puritan pattern: the sense of the verse, a doctrine drawn from it, reasons, and then "uses," pressing it on the hearer's conscience.
He was a man who loved the Bible and wanted ordinary people to love it too. Preaching on verse 130, he said the plain truths needed for salvation are open to everyone, while the deeper places reward long study:
In the waters of the sanctuary, in some places the elephant may swim; in others, the lamb may wade.
Sermons on Psalm 119, Volume 3, Sermon CXLIII (verse 130)
And in his best-known sermon on suffering, on verse 71, he wrote:
The hot furnace is Christ's workhouse: the most excellent vessels of honour and praise have been formed there
Sermons on Psalm 119, Volume 2, Sermon LXXIX (verse 71)
For more of his sayings, see our collection of Thomas Manton quotes.
What kind of man he was
The memoir of Manton printed with the sermons paints a careful pastor. He wrote out his sermons, sometimes twice. If one didn't come right, he would set it aside even on a Saturday night and sit up preparing another. He led worship at home every morning and evening and had his children and servants repeat part of the chapter read. He wouldn't take a collection from his hearers. When someone pointed out the coaches outside his door on lecture days, he said with a smile that he had "coach hearers, but foot payers."
Bates said his style was not polished for show but "natural and free, clear and eloquent, quick and powerful." That's still a fair description.
Why he's still read
Manton's collected works fill twenty-two volumes in the nineteenth-century edition, and J. C. Ryle and C. H. Spurgeon both praised him highly. Spurgeon especially valued the James commentary and the Psalm 119 sermons. Manton isn't brilliant in a flashy way. He's steady, searching and full of Scripture, and he always asks what a verse means for the way you live. If you want to know how the Puritans preached, he's one of the best places to learn. Our guide to the best Puritan books puts him beside others of his kind.
Where to start
TheWay Library has four volumes of his. Start with A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of James. It's clear, practical and the cleanest text of the four. Then turn to the Sermons on Psalm 119. The first volume opens with a memoir of Manton's life. The second volume has his sermons on affliction and on the word as a lamp, and the third finishes the psalm. These three were restored from old scans and still have misread words, especially in the verse headings, so read them with a little patience.
Our guide to Thomas Manton's books explains how they fit together. You'll find all of them on the Thomas Manton author page.