READING lately in the Catholic Presbyterian, a periodical now defunct, we lighted upon an interesting biographic sketch by Rev. Dr. Kuypers, of Holland. His subject is Alexander Comrie, an eminent Calvinistic minister who flourished in Holland between the years 1728 and 1774.
Alexander Comrie was a young Scotsman whose parents had sent him to pursue a commercial career in Holland that they might thereby divert his mind from an inclination towards the ministerial office. Unwittingly, however, they but paved the way for their son’s true life work, because through a wonderful providence Alexander became parish minister of Woubrugge, near Leyden, and was instrumental in doing notable service there both as a pastor and a witness for truth, in so much that while his fame lasted he seems to have been a Dutch edition of Dr. Kennedy, of Dingwall. His first introduction to this life work was on a certain evening in 1728 when, travelling by sea to a certain place, he was shipwrecked and cast ashore in straits. Lighting upon a certain farmhouse he desired shelter for the night, and was admitted with some degree of suspicion. He was accommodated in a room where his procedure could be watched. His first movement was to kneel down and give thanks in an audible voice for God’s good providence towards him and to invoke a blessing upon the farmer whose kindness was so opportune.
“Fancy,” says the biographer, “the farmer’s astonishment as he saw the poor wanderer, as soon as he imagined himself alone and unobserved, uncover his head, put off his coat, and, falling upon his knees, pour out his soul in a touching, fervent prayer to the Lord, giving thanks for his guidance and for the kindness he had met with. During his prayer there rose such a holy expression from the young man’s face that the farmer already felt quite ashamed of his unfavourable conjectures, a change of opinion ending in making him feel himself entirely his inferior, as placing his ear once more to the hole he heard the lad pleading most earnestly and fervently before the throne of grace that, if his entertainer might not be as yet converted to eternal life, the divine mercy might be bestowed upon him also and upon his family.”
It is related that this incident was the occasion of a gracious change on the farmer who had thus entertained “an angel unawares.” The object of Alexander’s journey to this place was to see with his eyes a work of revival that was in progress in the parish of Woubrugge. After a long interval of dead orthodoxy the Power from on High had visited that region and was raising up children to Abraham.
“There had been in this village for years and years, as Comrie himself afterwards told, nothing but a dead outward show of religion; there was much orthodoxy, and even knowledge leading to a historical faith, but the power of the Lord was not manifested, the operation of the Holy Spirit did not show itself. It was the stillness of the tomb, not the sparkling of life and the beaming of light such as should be in a Christian community. But then there came from Benthuizen, a little place two hours off, a God-fearing workman, who had been brought to know of the resurrection power of Christ by the faithful ministry of Van Noorden, a father in Christ for the whole neighbourhood. This plain workman felt as if the Lord had bound the whole village of Woubrugge upon his heart. He tried by every means to rouse the people from their lethargy, stirred up young and old to abandon their false trust, and never ceased to carry the souls of all around him before the throne of divine mercy in his prayers. Thus he went on for eight years, but without the least shadow of success, till finally, after nine years of quiet waiting, the Lord came down to answer his petition: now the seed had ripened, and Klaas Jansse Poldervaert—such was his name—hardly knew how to satisfy all the demands for spiritual direction that came to him day by day from different parts of the parish. So prominent and striking did this work of the Lord then appear that many came up every Sabbath from different places in the neighbourhood to witness the outpouring of spiritual blessing. And although the Rev. Mr. Blom, minister of the parish at that time, at first began by opposing the movement as throwing his ministry into the shade, still the revival proved so general and so continuous, and maintained such a high character that he finally gave way, became a partaker of the unspeakable blessing for his own soul, and until his death in 1734 bore public testimony from the pulpit to the great and glorious work the Lord had done in his parish in his days, though without his instrumentality.”
Being introduced to two of the principal men of the parish—men of social standing as well as religious eminence—they were much taken with the stranger’s gifts and graces, and resolved that these should not be buried in a counting-house. Mr. Comrie had already received a good classical education, and they made proposals that he should proceed further and complete his college course with a view to the pastoral office. To this Alexander gladly agreed, and the result was that he became pastor of this same parish of Wonbrugge, and in spite of calls to other places he remained there till his retirement through physical weakness in 1773.
“From miles and miles in the neighbourhood all God-fearing people came to hear this godly man. And when he left his manse on the 4th of April, 1773, to spend the rest of his life in Gouda, Woubrugge and all its environs felt that in Comrie there had been granted to the Reformed Church a great man before the Lord, not only for Rhineland, but the whole United Provinces; a man not likely to be soon forgotten or easily replaced. For a few months only was he to enjoy the sweet rest of retirement from office. His health had been already broken when he left his favourite village, and his weakness, as often happens, was soon aggravated by the want of his usual employment. Before the next year had reached its close, on the 10th of December, 1774, Comrie was borne away to the heavenly mansions in the 66th year of his age, sweetly resting his wearied soul on the bosom of his Saviour. In accordance with his wishes his burial was conducted in the simplest way. Not even an inscription was to indicate his tombstone in that huge city of Gouda, no doubt known to many of our readers for its uncommonly beautiful glass paintings. In his will he had expressly stipulated that no biographical notice should be entered in the “Church Review” after his death, so averse was he to all glorification of the creature and to the vanity of human pomp. And though we cannot but regret that, owing to this sober-mindedness, we are left in perfect ignorance of the further particulars of his life, still we submit not unwillingly to this deeply-felt want, glad as we are to find in Comrie once more the image of a genuine Calvinist—one who showed his detestation of all glorification of the creature, not merely in his sermons, but more severely still in what concerned his own life.”
His life was a lonely and studious one. He married in 1736 Miss Ivann de Heyde, a God-fearing woman, whose brother, Ian William de Heyde, was a favourite preacher at Rotterdam, but she died two years afterwards, and he did not marry again. A remarkable fact illustrating the power and spirituality of his ministration is the case of a criminal who was guilty of several acts of fire-raising in the village. It is reported that he was brought to public confession and true repentance by the fascinating and touching manner in which Comrie pled before the Lord, not against him, but for the salvation of his soul.
Mr. Comrie’s zeal for pure and undefiled religion is evidenced by the books which he was instrumental in circulating in Holland. He wrote several volumes himself on the subject of Justification and Saving Faith, and he translated or edited for the benefit of the Hollanders the following works:—Boston’s “Covenant of Grace,” “Marshall on Sanctification,” Shepherd’s “Ten Virgins,” Voetius’ “The Power of Godliness,” and “Chauncey’s “Westminster Catechism, Illustrated.”
The most strenuous element, however, of Comrie’s life work was his public controversy with a band of errorists in the high places of the Church, men who were bringing in pernicious heresies to the virtual undoing of the whole work of the Reformation. At first these novel opinions were circulated in Latin, and were accessible only to the learned. At last, however, they found their way into the pulpit, and the whole sound, God-fearing section of the people were alarmed. A second-rate preacher, Van den Os, was the first who broached the new views in the native tongue.
“He did not hesitate,” says Dr. Kuyper, “to attack successively, in his very first sermons, the eternal generation of the Son, the punishment of eternal death as the consequence of the first sin, the hereditary debt of Adam, and the judicial side of justification. All these questions, however, he treated more in an exegetical way, as if depending merely upon a correct understanding of such texts as—Micah v. 2, Ps. ii. 7, 1 John v. 26, Gen. iii. 22, and Rom. iii. 23; hence these extravagances did not rouse the suspicion of the people at large. But when at last he did not shrink from declaring that our justification before God was a mere consequence or result of our individual faith, the godly people at once perceived that their inexperienced pastor was slipping the poison of rationalism into the Confession of their fathers, and that the error of Pelagianism was again obscuring the true relationship between God the Saviour and the saved sinner; and they determined not to leave the decision of the conflict to science and dialectics, but to take it in hand as an ecclesiastical body. In a few weeks this apparently local conflict spread all over the country, and very soon divided almost the whole nation into two hostile camps. On one side were arrayed all the power and influence of the magistrate and State University, and on the other the real spiritual power of the godly amongst the people, the ministers, and the ecclesiastical government. The town council of Zwolle, the provincial council of Overyssel, and even Prince William IV. of Orange stood up, not so much for Van den Os himself, as for the unfettered progress of rationalism; while the Theological Faculty of Leyden apologised for the heterodoxy of the extravagant young minister, as not so much exceeding the boundaries of the articles of the Church. On the other hand the defence of the old Scriptural truth was conducted in a fair, vigorous, and decisive manner, first by almost all the colleagues of Van den Os; secondly, by the kirk-session of Zwolle; thirdly, by the classical and provincial synods or assemblies, and more powerfully still by the two sagacious and able theologians, Alexander Comrie and his friend Holtius.”
Dr. Kuyper relates that the agitation carried on by the sound party was successful in bringing about the suspension of Van den Os from the ministry. But the controversy, especially regarding the right place and office of faith in justifying the sinner, went on for a number of years in much the same manner as the contemporaneous Marrow Controversy in Scotland, and the Boston of the Dutch Church was Alexander Comrie. The point of this debate may be fine, but nevertheless the issues depending thereon are practical and important in the highest degree. The one party maintained that faith justifies because it is a commanded duty, and because it contains in itself the germ of a complete obedience to the law of God, and the other maintained that faith justifies not from any merit in itself as an act, but solely because it is the empty hand that receives the all-sufficient righteousness of Christ.
This position, and the related doctrines of Calvinism in connection therewith, were expounded and defended with great zeal and ability by Alexander Comrie and several of his associates during this campaign, and they procured to themselves a good degree, Comrie, as we stated, retired from active service in 1773 and died in 1774, aged 66 years. His fame endured for several generations, and by Dr. Kuyper’s articles in the Catholic Presbyterian twenty years ago, and this notice in the Free Presbyterian Magazine, is providentially rescued from oblivion, and some fulfilment is thus made of the word, “The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.”
J. M’N.