The Life And Testimony Of John Kay

Gospel Standard 1860:

John Kay, Late Of Abingdon, Berks.

On the wrapper of our last No. we briefly mentioned the decease of our lamented friend and brother, John Kay, well known to most of our readers, and by many of them highly valued as a writer, at various times for many years, in our pages, under the signature of “J. K., Abingdon.”

As we enjoyed the pleasure of his acquaintance for more than 25 years, and much esteemed him as a friend and brother in the Lord, and have every reason to believe that not only by the immediate circle of his spiritual friends, but that by many of our readers also who never saw him in the flesh, he was greatly valued for his earnest contention for the “faith once delivered unto the saints,” and for his experimental papers in our pages, we have felt it to be but due to his memory to trace a brief record of his life, experience, and death.

In his case we have the advantage of his own account of the dealings of God with his soul from an early period of his life in a work published by him in 1842, but we believe now out of print, entitled, “The Inward Kingdom of God.” If in all points this record of his Christian experience has not the clearness that might be desirable, it is probably more owing to a confusedness of mind, and a rambling, wandering mode of thought and expression, which was one of his natural infirmities, than to a want of clearness in the work itself. But with many, if not most of his saints, the dealings of the Lord, both in providence and grace, are so intricate and mysterious, and though in themselves perfectly distinct, yet to our apprehension so involved with our own weakness and waywardness, sins and infirmities, that it needs a power of discernment given to few to disentangle them, and bring them forth plainly and clearly. Whether John Kay was favored with this inward discernment we cannot pronounce, though far more keen-sighted to distinguish between nature and grace than many; but the ability to express in plain, clear, simple language the varied dealings of God with his soul, such as was given to Bunyan, Huntington, Warburton, and other men, was not. we think, bestowed upon him. This confusedness of thought and expression has not escaped the notice of the readers of his papers in the “Standard;” and has in some, if not many cases so puzzled or prejudiced the mind, that they have failed to see or acknowledge the depth of feeling and experience really contained in them. How often oddities of voice, appearance, or manner so pre-occupy the mind, that nothing is seen of the sterling qualifications that lie underneath; but a gold digger would not reject a nugget because it was crooked and angular instead of being smooth and round, or because rough and rusted instead of being as bright as a new sovereign. This is what we always felt as regards the writings of J. Kay. Our natural taste, which we freely acknowledge is rather fastidious as regards literary style and composition, was often repelled by his peculiar expressions, and his strange, odd way of putting forward his thoughts and feelings; but these we were led to view at; but the rough shell of a sweet and oily kernel—as the rusty outside of a gold nugget. Well knowing the man, and loving the grace of God plainly and clearly manifested in him, we passed over this confusedness of thought and oddness of expression, which after all, when a little accustomed to it, stamped at times a peculiar force and emphasis on his words, and we fixed our eyes as far as we could on his general drift and spirit, which were always excellent, and sometimes shone through his papers as the sun through a mist. For his confusedness of thought and expression, and his rambling mode of writing, did not spring from any hesitancy about the truth, nor because he did not clearly see the grand leading points of Gospel doctrine, experience, and practice; for, on the contrary, his views of the truth, as it is in Jesus, were exceedingly clear, and were felt and expressed by him on all occasions with the greatest firmness and most unwavering decision. Nor, indeed, could it well be otherwise with him. Truth had been, as it were, burned into his conscience, and he had learned it for the most part by terrible things in righteousness. Sin and salvation were not with him mere words and sounds, but ever-present realities, for he seemed to live more or less in the sight and under the feeling of them; and this gave point and edge to both what he spoke and wrote. We have often heard him speak of divine things with singular force, and we may say, with much experimental feeling and a degree of heavenly wisdom, that would surprise persons who judged him merely from some singularities of dress, appearance, and manner of speech. On such points, for instance, as the depth of the fall, the vanity of every thing below the skies, the curse and spirituality of the law applied to the con­ science, the workings of sin in the carnal mind, and especially on the blood and imputed righteousness of the Son of God, he not only saw clearly and felt deeply, but expressed himself both by mouth and pen very forcibly and vividly, and in a way which we must say has often been much commended to our conscience.

Religion was with him his meat and drink. It was always upper­ most on his mind, and the chief, if not the only topic, of his dis­ course; and that not in a chattering way, as many professors al­ most bore you with their continued stream of religious small talk, the inward conviction of your soul all the time being that they are utterly destitute of vital godliness. John Kay’s conversation bubbled up out of a heart in which the fear of God lay deep as a fountain of life, and therefore refreshed and edified your soul. Letter men and their hearers would have seen nothing in John Kay but an odd-looking man, who said very odd things in a very odd way; but this odd man would have seen through all their dead profession in the twinkling of an eye, and would have had some solemn feelings in his own mind both of their state and their end. With very little of the usual religious phraseology, which any body with a memory can easily learn, and without a conscience can as easily repeat, John Kay had some deep and abiding views on the most solemn and important truths of our most holy faith. Union with Christ as a felt experimental reality; the dew and unction of the Holy Ghost on the soul and on the words of the lips; the fruits and effects of grace in the heart and life; the worthlessness of all mere letter knowledge; and the emptiness of a dead, formal profession,—all these were points for which he much contended, as having been wrought into his heart by a divine power; and, as far as we can judge, he lived much under their daily influence. He was naturally of a very kind disposition and peaceably disposed, though not one of those who are for peace at any price, holding truth in one hand and error in the other, and equally friendly with all men and parties, whether friends of foes of the Lord the Lamb. Compelled by conscience to flee out of the establishment in which he had been brought up, and of which some years he was a minister, he gave up every thing he had in the world for truth’s sake. Forsaken by his natural friends and relatives, having no house or home to go to, his parents having died many years previously, and going out not knowing whither he went, he was led to bend his steps to Abingdon, where the Lord provided him with a friend and a home for many years. Having many bodily infirmities, and not being blessed with ministerial gifts—at least not to that extent which could keep a congregation together, though acceptable as a supply at various little causes of truth—he had nothing to call his own in a worldly sense till the year 1848, when a maternal uncle of considerable wealth, who had taken no notice of him for many years, left him by will a handsome legacy, which provided him comfortably for the rest of his days. Nor was he slack to show his gratitude to the Lord for this providential interference in the right way, for he was blessed with a very liberal, sympathising heart, and gave a large part of his income away to the poor and needy of the Lord’s family; nor was he unmindful of them in death, for he left in his last will the sum of £200 to be distributed among the poor of the church and congregation at the chapel at Abingdon, where he had been so long a fellow believer and fellow worshipper with the minister and people.

We have said no more than we feel due to his memory as a personal friend, and now we shall content ourselves with a few extracts from the “Inward Kingdom of God,” in which he relates some of the Lord’s dealings with him in providence and grace.

Having given some account of his early days, and what he considered as the first beginnings of divine life in his soul, when apprenticed to a bookseller at York, he thus goes on:

“After being out of my apprenticeship, I went to London to a large wholesale warehouse as journeyman, where, among a host of evil examples, and through divers reasons, I fell away, I regret to say, into a gradual course of sin. The fear of God was in my heart, but the effrontery of my young companions in the warehouse laughed me out of my religious tenderness.

“And after having fallen into sin, then deadness, rebellion, and perverseness toward God set in on me with the most tremendous fury; and it makes me to tremble even to think of the amazing heights of the most abhorred pride and abomination towards God, as regarded religion, which I fell into then. O it makes me tremble to think of it!

“The judgments of God also fell on me with the greatest fury. One night I went to bed well, and before ever I awoke in the morning, God had struck my body while 1 was asleep with infirmities which have embittered my days.

“I thought of destroying myself, which Satan tempted Christ to do, by throwing himself off the pinnacle of the temple; and which Job was tempted to when he said, ‘I choose strangling rather than life;’ he be­ ing tempted also by his own wife to ‘curse God and die.’ (Job 2:9, 10.)

“Amid these amazing heats and heights of rebellion, confusion, and sorrow, I was enabled to leave the bookselling business.

“I had, while an apprentice, and when religion seemingly first touched my mind, wished and endeavored to become a Church clergyman, of which church my father, grandfather, and ancestors for generations had been all beneficed clergy: and in the year 1824 I was enabled to enter the University of Oxford for that purpose.

“I wished to be of some use before I died.”

At Oxford, where he was maintained by the kindness of two of his brothers, he describes himself as having experienced the following exercises:

“O the poor beginnings of the manifestations of my tremblings before God!

“I began to be frightened. Affliction stared me in the face; yea, afflictions have ever been my lot for twenty years. Judgments alarmed me; eternity dawned in my feelings; I was in a maze, and confounded, and was dismally torn, tossed, and distracted in my feelings. For any one to have religion in the University of Oxford, is something ‘like a torch lighted in a bucket of water, and yet not put out,’ for evil examples there, and the wickedness of the heart, mutually inflame.

“O, I say, the imperfections that cleaved to the beginnings,, the poor beginnings of my honestly-felt religion there! O what weeping times I have had there! O the general distress that I was in! I laughed to my companions, while sorrow corroded in my heart. Many afflictions of body stunned me. I kept up my noon-day prayer, as also sometimes at, perhaps, four o’clock in the afternoon, as well, as I have stated, at morning and evening. Sinning and repenting were my restless round. I would have smothered and strangled my religion if I could; but the awful cloud of God’s indignation secretly hung spiritually over my feelings. Thus, till the year 1830, I went on.

“Throughout those times I believe that I feared God through necessity, and had several times sweet breakings in of a supernatural light into my soul, which light surprised me, and made me pant after more. O how ignorant a soul dead in sin and unregeneracy, how ignorant a natural man is of this light. This was the light above the brightness of the natural sun, which streamed from Christ the Sun of righteousness, and knocked Paul down to the earth at his conversion.

“How, during those years, if I was walking with any one, or busy in the open air, when twelve o’clock (my noon-day hour of prayer) was come, have I taken off my hat, (the reason unknown to any but God and myself,) that I might adore and worship the God I feared and loved.”

“Thus, the kingdom of God, like a grain of mustard-seed, within me was striking its everlasting fibres through my feelings. ‘Fiery trials,’ the waters of tribulation, and the rivers of distress, according to scripture, set on me, through which I must pass. Throughout those times I entered into great strictness, more or less, about keeping the Sunday holy. I abstained, in some degree, from all worldly conversation strictly. I watched my words and thoughts; I shut myself up partly when not at places of worship. And I must say that I had periods of sweetness, be­ tween God and my soul, which the world knows nothing of. I at least tasted that the sweets of religion exceeded the sweets of sin. I gave alms; I prayed, sometimes even seven times a day, early in the morn­ ing, in the forenoon, thirdly at noonday, at four o’clock in the afternoon, and at other times. O the earnestness that I felt! O the pantings through affliction and after God’s favor! I read the Bible on my knees; I prayed always in reading it, which is a rebuke to the self-sufficient impudence of swarms of college-made and academy-made priests and their flocks in our days; and I am persuaded that none but the elect, under the Spirit’s teaching, (and they only in the measure as feelingly led by him,) can understand one word of the marrow of scripture: ‘Piercing even to the marrow.’ (Heb. 4:12.)”

We pass over a dream or vision of which he gives some details, to what he viewed as his full deliverance into the liberty of the gospel:

“Within a fortnight after I had that vision, those words (‘Being justified by faith, we have peace with God,’ &c.) being very powerfully, as I have stated, applied to my mind, I was enabled, after the tumultuous wrestling I have described, to feel myself delivered from my bondage, agonies, dismay, and the terrors of God. Those only know these things who experience them. At length I found myself married to Christ. (Rom. 7:4.) At length I was delivered from the law of works, destruction, and dismay: ‘For the law worketh wrath.’ At length the mild and blissful voice of Jesus (known by its effects) was felt and heard in my groaning conscience. At length the silver trumpet of the gospel and its jubilee of reconciliation sounded in my soul. O the blissful consequences! O the ravishing effect! Dismay and bondage, in which the law of works gendered me, gave way; pardon and reconciliation took possession of my panting feelings; my soul, into which the iron had entered, began to find my shackles slackening; and at length (I can compare it to no­ thing else) ‘out came’ (Gen. 25:25, 26; Gal. 3:23; 4:3, 4) ‘the new man’ from the bondage of the law’s womb, in which I had thus far been prevented seeing the Light of the day of the Sun of Righteousness. Well do I remember the time. The law of works seemingly, in its gendering spirit and its awful curse, retained its fist upon me till the predestined moment when the shout of divine power in my feelings made it let go its hold, and I sailed away (launched by the hand of God) on the sea of his love and free grace, without works on my part. O the transcendant feelings that took possession of me! Love, peace, joy, sweetness, hope, delight, and beams of a new world seemed to burst into my feelings, and I said, (or what was to the same purport,) Where am I? This is heaven. O matchless joy, when God takes possession of the heart! Well may it be called the peace of God which passeth all under­ standing, for I cannot describe it; for it is a kingdom that cannot finally ever be moved; for it is the kingdom of ‘peace.’ Royalty, a diadem, incomparably brilliant, the unsullied face of God (unsullied by a frown) lifted up upon one, the light wherein the blessed Potentate dwells, which no unregenerate man hath ever approached unto or can approach unto, rapture, ravishing joys, and the sweet meltings of divine fruition are the amazing consequences. And the person thus favored enters into a spiritual world as one of God’s witnesses, and declares before men, angels, and devils that he has found mercy.”

“After walking for some time in the enjoyment of manifested mercy, a new scene opened to his astonished view in his conflicts with sin, temptation, and Satan, and getting entangled in various snares spread for his feet. He thus describes this inward conflict:

“The stormy assaults of Satan, and the fiery rage of indwelling sin, aided by the remaining unsubdued pride and the worldliness in me, and the snares of the world, formed over me a threefold dark trying cloud under the government of the prince of darkness. ‘And the men of Ai smote the children of Israel, and chased them; and they fled before the men of Ai. Wherefore the hearts of the people melted and became as water; and Joshua rent his clothes and fell upon his face to the earth before the ark, he and the elders,, and put dust upon their heads.’ (Josh. 7) ‘And an angel of the Lord came up, and said, I made you go out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land I sware unto you; and ye have not obeyed,’ (fully) ‘my voice. Wherefore there shall be thorns in your sides and also a snare. And when the angel spake, Israel lifted up their voice and wept!’ (Judges 2) ‘Behold! Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you.’ (Luke 22:31.) ‘For lo! I will command and will sift the house of Israel as corn in a sieve; yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.’ (Amos 9:9.) O the dread-fulness and searchings of Satan’s sieve! It was inward trouble more than any outward snares that Satan assaulted my soul with ever after God came, in the forgiveness of sins, in my conscience. For instance, now I began to be tempted to curse all the Persons in the blessed Trinity; yea, I have been tempted many times to do so while on my knees! Such outlandish temptations of various kinds now used to beset me; such wiles, devices, plots, and counter-plottings of the adversary! Now I began to be tempted again very much to destroy myself in various ways. Now I began to be tempted to lead a loose life; for, says Satan, ‘You know that your sins are forgiven you. You are an elect soul, and you know by solemn and marvellous experience that salvation is not by good works at all, but by faith and grace alone. Therefore, you may live as you like.’ And I am sorry to say that I ignorantly fell in for some times in some small degree, with this awful temptation. Now I began to be tempted to curse and swear. (Behold, before God I lie not!) I had never sworn in my life; but inward blasphemy now began to rage like a tiger in me. It seems to me now as if Satan strove his utmost to swamp my religion; to plunge me into the unpardonable sin; to drive me beyond the reach of mercy. All my thoughts were riveted by affliction and joy, seemingly as by a spell. On the one hand gratitude, love, and prayer to God in some degree flourished in me; and, on the other hand, in my carnal mind and fleshly nature all the artillery of sin, filth, and Satan raged against God in me. Thus these two foes met in me, most worthless worm that I am; thus I was screwed in the bustle to my wits’ end. ‘I could not do the things that I would;’ ‘For the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; so that ye cannot do the things that you would.'”

In the year 1834, having been for some time convinced of the character and condition of the National Establishment, he fled out of it. He thus sums up his feelings on this point:

“But I forbear entering into particulars. Several good men have of late left the Church. I could mention a hundred different things wrong in the Church. Grievously was my conscience pained nearly all the time I was in it. I used to alter its forms to suit the fear of God and my conscience, until at last I broke away from it. And never can I forget when I knelt down, and, depending on God for strength, made a vow that I never would have anything to do with it any more; never shall I forget the stream of glory that shot through my heart while I was on my knees. The remaining bands of distance and bondage between God and me were snapped. I seemed like a bird that had escaped out of its miserably wired cage of artificial and horrid confinement. And I felt my soul at that very time to mount up, as it were, with liberated glee into a more genial atmosphere of God’s felt favor. Blessed be God that I dropped those shackles and fled out of the Church of England. For a spiritual man with a tender conscience in it is something like a dove with a hawk after it, in continual dread.”

Until some time in the year 1841 he was not led into the ordinance of believers’ baptism, and, indeed, had been tempted to think and speak slightingly of it—a temptation promoted in him and strengthened by his great esteem, and admiration of some deeply taught men and ministers, who either neglected or spoke disparagingly of it. But during a thunderstorm in that year his conscience smote him, not only for these slighting thoughts and words, but for his neglect of the ordinance, and he felt he must embrace the first opportunity to go through it; which he accordingly did at Walling- ford, Dec. 24,1841. When the Particular Baptist church was formed at the Abbey Chapel, Abingdon, under the pastoral care of his friend and brother, Mr. Tiptaft, he joined the church; and at the first election of deacons was chosen one to that honorable office.

His religion effectually separated him for many years from his worldly relatives; but even they were compelled to bear their testimony to the uprightness of his motives and the sincerity of his general conduct. After his decease, his elder brother, a beneficed clergyman, gave, in a letter lamenting his death, the following testimony. “However we may have differed upon many points, I always considered him sincere and honest, and I believe him to have been a good man.”

Though at times much favored in his soul, he was exceedingly tried and sometimes heavily borne down by bodily infirmities, some of which were of that nature as to make his life a continual burden, and which, were they known, would explain many things which, as viewed by the outward eye, tinged his words and actions with an oddness and eccentricity which much detracted from the real weight and worth of his character. These infirmities gradually increased, depriving him for the last few months of his life of the use of his lower limbs, till rather suddenly, at the last, death was despatched as a friendly messenger to bear him home. His funeral was a remark­ able one, from the numbers who attended it from all the surrounding country, besides his friends immediately at Abingdon; and as he had gone in and out among the friends of experimental truth there for many years, and had frequently spoken to them the word of life, and had always manifested great kindness and amiability, and, when enabled, much liberality and generosity, he was followed to the grave by many sincere mourners. Mr. Tanner, of Cirencester, interred him; and the head mourner, besides his bereaved widow, to whom he had been united only in the year 1859, was his kind benefactor during many years of real necessity, and always his warmly attached friend and brother, who, from long intimacy and a spiritual union, dropped over his grave the tears of Christian love and sincere affection.

We add an interesting account of his last days on earth from the pen of a friend who had been intimately acquainted with him for many years, and who penned the following lines in a letter to two Christian friends, when the subject was warm in his mind and memory:

My dear Friends,—As you knew and felt much interest in our late friend, Mr. Kay, of Abingdon, I write you word that the Lord has taken him to his eternal rest, on Sunday morning last, and we committed his mortal remains to the earth yesterday afternoon amidst a great con­ course of people, in sure and certain hope of a blessed resurrection. Many sincere mourners followed him, for he had been, indeed, a friend to the poor and needy in their distress. I was favored to be with him to the last from Saturday evening; and though he could not give utterance to his words, on account of his speech failing him from the effect of paralysis (of which he died), yet his end was so evidently peace, that I found it a solemn melancholy pleasure and satisfaction in being with him, with such a sweet assurance of his being in the very act of entering into that state of bliss and blessedness that awaits all the heaven- born family of God. I was with him on the Wednesday evening previous for some time, and as I saw a great change in him then for the worse, I feared his end might be near, so that I pressed matters home closely with him then as to his state of mind, which he most satisfactorily answered. He said that he had a solemn assurance in his soul that he be­ longed to the living family; that he was made a partaker through rich and sovereign grace of the new creation of God in Christ, and that he should surely be also a partaker of the bliss and blessedness belonging thereto hereafter, for he knew in whom he had believed; and though he did not at the time experience that sweet joy and sensible feeling of the Lord’s presence that he much desired, and which he had many times been favored with, yet he felt that it was all right with him between his soul and God; and (he said with much emphasis) I have published an account of the Lord’s gracious dealings with my precious soul, which will stand, alluding to his book of the “Inward Kingdom of God.” After this visit I had him so much impressed on my mind, that I went down again purposely to see him on the Saturday evening, and I found him evidently in a dying state. He drew me near to him, and said, “It will not be very long now; it will soon be over.” I said, “Do you feel Christ to be precious now?” He said distinctly, “Yes; precious, precious!” He was then attacked with such violent pains that he could not speak or be spoken with, and these violent pains continued at intervals during the night; after each paroxysm he sank into a state of great exhaustion and unconsciousness; yet, on asking him if he felt happy, he evidently said, “Yes, yes,” and appeared to have much to say, but the powers of expression failed him. Two or three times he pointed with his finger upwards in a most expressive manner, and tried to draw our attention by uttering with much vehemence, “Look, look!” and he drew my hand towards him in such a particular way, as though he wanted me to see with him, as he was evidently favored to see something of the realities of that invisible world before entering into it; but this was hidden from our eyes, how­ ever visible it may have been to his; he then clasped his hands together above his face, and looked intensely upwards so placidly that we could not but be struck with it. His agonies then came on again, and it was quite distressing to witness the fearful struggles of nature with the king of terrors in the solemn act of the dissolution of the frame.

During the intervals from pain, when he seemed favored with such a placid countenance and manner looking upwards, as if viewing more than mortal eyes can see, I felt much sweetness in the contemplation that he was actually entering into “the Mount Zion above—the city of the living God—the heavenly Jerusalem—the innumerable company of angels—the general assembly and church of the first-born, and to the spirits of just men made perfect;” and I trust I can say a little hope-sprang up that he was going before—that I was following after, as being through grace made a partaker of like precious faith. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”

Our dear friend, Mr. Tanner, of Cirencester, buried him. He made a most solemn address both in the chapel and at the grave, embracing the opportunity of speaking faithfully both to the living and to the dead assembled; and I do hope the Lord will make it manifold that it was not in vain. I trust the solemn occasion altogether was not unprofitable to my soul; and I can truly say my heart’s desire is, that it may conduce under the blessed Spirit’s influence to a more earnest seeking of the Kingdom of God and its righteousness, and to a greater loosening from all things here below.

With kind Christian love to all the friends I know and love, Believe me, sincerely Yours for Truth’s sake,

June 2nd, 1860.

J. C.