Puritans Using Rods in Worship

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Hamalas

Hamalas

whippersnapper
So a common story you hear is that Puritans used to have deacons with rods going around poking/thwacking people to keep them awake during their services. Any truth to this story? :pilgrim:
 
We have some people at my church who have sleep trouble that drift off to sleep, setting still o long is makes it hard to stay awake.
 
Now that would be a reason I would want to be a deacon. I personally have to resist closing my eyes durning many sermons and my wife , who plays the deacon, has a finger as strong as a rod. She usualy does this if I start to snore.
 
I think that Chad (van Dixhoorn) said that they did this to members of the Westminster Assembly who dozed off; called them, I think, divin[e]ing rods.

Peace,
Alan
 
Every church needs a coffee pot on site! We have both traditional drip and Keurig style and they receive good use on the Lord's Day!
 
I wonder if back in the day of the rod they let folks carry beverages into the sanctuary? Water bottles are pervasive now as well as coffee cups.
 
Google, "beadle rod sleep sermon" and you will find anecdotal evidence. I will have to check CVD's Minutes to see if he talks about the practice at the Assembly.
 
I believe when I was touring Jamestown, or somewhere similar, that we were told there was a long rod with a bonker on one end and a feather on the other.

The bonker end was used to bonk most sleepers; I am assuming infants or small children would be excepted. But the feather was to tickle the nose of the elderly who nodded off.

I have no citation to give and can't know if it is true or not; also I am assuming this a a puritan worship service. But anecdotally, that's what we were told.
 
Rev D. Fountain in his book , "The Mayflower Pilgrims & their Pastor," wrote, "they had an ancient widow
for a deaconess, who did them service many years, though she was sixty years of age when she was
chosen........She honoured her place, and was an ornament to the congregation, with a little birchen
rod in her hand, and kept the little children in great awe from disturbing the congregation......She
was obeyed as a mother in Israel."
 
I think we've lost a lot as a society in general when we got rid of corporal methods to get people's attention.
 
Alan D. Strange said:
I think that Chad (van Dixhoorn) said that they did this to members of the Westminster Assembly who dozed off; called them, I think, divin[e]ing rods.

Peace,
Alan
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It probably didn't help that, according to the records, all the Westminster Divines drank 5-7 pints of beer per day. Since they were funded by the British Parliament, their daily accounts are on record... A beautiful fact, and another reason to love the Westminster Divines. It probably helped make the final product so brilliant and licid!
 
I believe that if I have to get deacons to walk around threatening to hit people with a stick in order to keep them awake... I must be doing something wrong on multiple levels.

But that's just little old me talking.
 
Under the Gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper: which, though fewer in number, and administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory, yet, in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence, and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the New Testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations.
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I meditate on this prior to any sermon. The preacher could be dull; nevertheless, it makes me want to listen carefully to what is being said.
 
This only relates to this thread as it talks about sleeping in a service. I had a friend who had read of some preacher "calling out" a sleeper by stopping & talking to the man with some sentence like this, "Sir, if this were some political stump or general lecture you might sleep away---but this is the Word of God being opened unto life for sinners, so you must awake!" (Think of some dialogue in those terms.) So, when a man fell asleep during a service, my friend thought he would try such a line. The man approached him after the service and apologized because the new medicine that he took for his congestive heart failure made him drowsy. Needless to say, my friend decided not to "call out" sleepers any longer. I will leave off my thoughts on the matter, but I think they are akin to Ben's.
 
Bill The Baptist said:
I usually just throw a hardback edition of the ESV study Bible at people who fall asleep.
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Glad to know I'm not the only one who has been tempted toward this...ha!

To the OP: Ben, I've only heard the apocryphal tales about the rod with a feather on one end and a ball on the other, as already cited by our sister; but I've never seen any legitimate documentation.
 
I'm sure it was safer than the water; where can one find this report?
FenderPriest said:
It probably didn't help that, according to the records, all the Westminster Divines drank 5-7 pints of beer per day. Since they were funded by the British Parliament, their daily accounts are on record... A beautiful fact, and another reason to love the Westminster Divines. It probably helped make the final product so brilliant and licid!
Click to expand...
 
NaphtaliPress said:
I'm sure it was safer than the water; where can one find this report?
FenderPriest said:
It probably didn't help that, according to the records, all the Westminster Divines drank 5-7 pints of beer per day. Since they were funded by the British Parliament, their daily accounts are on record... A beautiful fact, and another reason to love the Westminster Divines. It probably helped make the final product so brilliant and licid!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Yeah, it could have been Small beer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
In the Virginia colony, dissenting preachers -- I.e. Presbyterians and Congregationalists -- had to seek a special dispensation to preach, so I wouldn't take a practice from Jamestown as normative for the puritans.
 
FenderPriest said:
It probably didn't help that, according to the records, all the Westminster Divines drank 5-7 pints of beer per day. Since they were funded by the British Parliament, their daily accounts are on record... A beautiful fact, and another reason to love the Westminster Divines. It probably helped make the final product so brilliant and licid!
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Deliberate on, brother Gillespie! :cheers2:
 
NaphtaliPress said:
I wonder if back in the day of the rod they let folks carry beverages into the sanctuary? Water bottles are pervasive now as well as coffee cups.
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We had a pretty big battle for several years between those of us who wanted to knock them out of folks hands, and those who wanted to be welcoming. The compromise was to put up signs at the entrances to the room, but not further enforce the request.

Andres said:
Every church needs a coffee pot on site! We have both traditional drip and Keurig style and they receive good use on the Lord's Day!
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WHAT? No Starbucks in the food court? (Yes, there were folks who actually advocated a Starbucks when we renovated the facility a few years ago. Fortunately, that was a non-starter.)
 
Colonial Crimes and Punishments : The Colonial Williamsburg Official History & Citizenship Site

Consider the scrutiny given to observance of the Sabbath. The law usually required churchgoing, and someone was always checking attendance. In early Virginia, every minister was entitled to appoint four men in his fort or settlement to inform on religious scofflaws.

In the early seventeenth century, Boston's Roger Scott was picked up for "repeated sleeping on the Lord's Day" and sentenced to be severely whipped for "striking the person who waked him from his godless slumber."

Virginia law in 1662 required everyone to resort "diligently to their parish church" on Sundays "and there to abide orderly and soberly," on pain of a fine of fifty pounds of tobacco, the currency of the colony. Colonial strictures on deportment in the pews long applied, even to children, such as in 1758 when young Abiel Wood of Plymouth was hauled before the court for "irreverently behaving himself by chalking the back of one Hezekiah Purrington, Jr., with Chalk, playing and recreating himself in the time of publick worship."

In l668 in Salem, Massachusetts, John Smith and the wife of John Kitchin were fined "for frequent absenting themselves from the public worship of God on the Lord's days." In l682 in Maine it cost Andrew Searle five shillings merely for "wandering from place to place" instead of "frequenting the publique worship of god."

And woe to the man who profaned the Sabbath "by lewd and unseemly behavior," the crime of a Boston seafaring man, one Captain Kemble. He made the mistake of publicly kissing his wife on returning home on a Sunday after three years at sea, a transgression that earned him several hours of public humiliation in the stocks.
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Colonial Sense: Society-Lifestyle: Signs of the Times: Church Customs

"The most grotesque, the most extraordinary, the most highly colored figure in the dull New England church-life was the tithingman. This fairly burlesque creature impresses me always with a sense of unreality, of incongruity, of strange happening, like a jesting clown in a procession of monks, like a strain of low comedy in the sober religious drams of early New England Puritan life, so out of place, so unreal is this fussy, pompous, restless tithingman, with his fantastic wand of office fringed with dangling foxtails,- creaking, bustling, strutting, peering around the quiet meeting-house, prodding and rapping the restless boys, waking the drowsy sleepers; for they slept in country churches in the seventeenth century. This absurd and distorted type of the English church beadle, this colonial sleep banisher, was equipped with a long staff, heavily knobbed at one end, with which he severely and pitilessly rapped the heads of the too sleepy men, and the too wide-awake boys. From the other end of this wand of office depended a long foxtail, or a hare's foot, which he softly thrust in the faces of the sleeping Priscillas, Charitys, and Hopestills, and which gently brushed and tickled them into reverent but startled wakefulness."
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The Sabbath in Puritan New England, Chapter 6 | The Reformed Reader


So glad I didn't live back then.
 
I recall being told also that services could be several hours long; if so I'd be hard put not to sleep. What a terror we make of the Lord's Day sometimes. Imagine being put in the stocks for kissing your wife. :(
 
SolaScriptura said:
I believe that if I have to get deacons to walk around threatening to hit people with a stick in order to keep them awake... I must be doing something wrong on multiple levels.

But that's just little old me talking.
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Sounds like the Apostle Paul could have learned a thing or two from "little old me". ;)
(Acts 20)
 
Hmm, I'm just waiting for someone to note a practice in Maryland as normative for "puritan" ecclesiastical practice. Or perhaps that great defender of colonial reformed faith: Nathanial Hawthorne.
 
nicnap said:
This only relates to this thread as it talks about sleeping in a service. I had a friend who had read of some preacher "calling out" a sleeper by stopping & talking to the man with some sentence like this, "Sir, if this were some political stump or general lecture you might sleep away---but this is the Word of God being opened unto life for sinners, so you must awake!" (Think of some dialogue in those terms.) So, when a man fell asleep during a service, my friend thought he would try such a line. The man approached him after the service and apologized because the new medicine that he took for his congestive heart failure made him drowsy. Needless to say, my friend decided not to "call out" sleepers any longer. I will leave off my thoughts on the matter, but I think they are akin to Ben's.
Click to expand...

Calling someone out in the middle of a sermon for nodding off is never a good idea (unless they're snoring loudly). If someone doses off during my preaching, I give it little mind. If however, they make a regular habit of it, I will bring it up to them in private; most likely in the regular course of pastoral visitation. I have had to address this on more than one occasion. Sometimes (often with young people) they are not adequately preparing themselves for the Lord's Day by getting to bed at a descent hour. Gentle correction and instruction are then appropriate. However, I have also had cases (often among the elderly) where medication and physical infirmity was the cause of their nodding off in worship. In such cases I address that to the Lord on their behalf that he would give them the strength needed to remain vigilant in the preaching of the Word that they may profit from it.
 
I am the Rod if my kids fall asleep unless I do. And I have. I have bowed to sincerely to pray during the sermon to awake. Only to know I have missed the important part. The most boring sermon my Pastor thought he preached became the most important sermon to my son Samuel this year. It brought great repentance. God is amazing. God uses means.
 
BTW, one of the most most funniest things that my kids speak about is when we visited Ruben's Zwartman's Church. Their pews are all wood and stretch the whole row. Samuel Rutherford fell asleep so hard the back of his head bounced off the back of the pew and made a loud bonk sound. His head had been bobbing a few before as I was watching. He was trying to stay awake. The sound was so loud everyone heard it. We just snickered inside at that moment and out loudly afterwards for years since. We still laugh about it. He was just a wee boy.
 
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