Unless one is a reader of the works of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) or a student of modern Canadian Presbyterian history one might not know of Mariano DiGangi (1923–2008). One reason for his relative obscurity is because as minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, he succeeded Donald Grey Barnhouse (1895–1960), one of the more prominent American pastors of the first half of the twentieth century, and then was succeeded by James Montgomery Boice (1938–2000), one of the more prominent evangelical Presbyterian ministers in the second half of the twentieth century. DiGangi did his work on Vermigli about thirty years before the modern renaissance of post-Reformation scholarship.¹ According to Allen Guelzo, DiGangi served ably and stood up for civil rights, even if it was unfashionable at the time.² According to Chris Castaldo, DiGangi, as a matter of principle, rejected “the Confession of 1967 as inconsistent with commitment to Reformed and confessional orthodoxy.”³

DiGangi is not the first worthy minister to be eclipsed by a more famous pastor who served the same congregation. David Clarkson (1622–86) joined John Owen (1616–83) as an assistant in a small London congregation, at which he served with Owen and then succeeded Owen as pastor until his own death just a few years later.

Were Clarkson not eclipsed by Owen, his works would probably be more widely known and appreciated today. Certainly, the work under review is an excellent introduction to Clarkson and should serve as an inducement to read more of his work.

He was born in Bradford, Yorkshire. He earned his BA in Clare College, Cambridge, which was granted royal license to be formed in 1326.⁴ Hugh Latimer (1485–1555) became one of the most famous members of the college. While a student there, Latimer was ardently opposed to the Reformation. His Bachelor of Divinity theses attacked Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560).⁵ Of course, he would later become a martyr for the Reformation.⁶

After his BA, Clarkson was “admitted a fellow” in 1645.⁷ His most famous pupil was the notorious latitudinarian John Tillotson (1630–94).⁸ It was he who succeeded Clarkson as fellow when Clarkson left Clare College in 1650 to marry the daughter of Sir Henry Holcroft.⁹ He was given a “perpetual curacy” in which he served until he, along with many others, lost their positions as a result of the “Great Ejection” of 1662.¹⁰ He held various obscure positions for twenty years until he became Owen’s assistant in 1682.

The congregation Clarkson served seems to have been quite small. According to Crawford Gribben, by the end of 1666, Owen

“had formed a little church, based principally around the Fleetwood household, representing a regathering of many of the members of the congregation that had met in Wallingford House: Sarah Cook calculated that by 1673 sixteen members of the church were related by “long friendship, employment, blood, or marriage” with the Fleetwood family and the Wallingford House.¹¹

Gribben writes, “His church did not number more than 40 members.”¹² The congregation settled in Leadenhall Street, in the City of London (i.e., the financial district—think Wall Street in New York City).¹³The new location brought new hearers but not many new members.

This volume is composed of three sermons, the most famous of which was originally published under the title, “Public Worship to be Preferred Before Private.”¹⁴ This small volume is packed with insights that are sorely needed now as much as then. If it is true, as Gribben suggests, that in his last years of ministry, Owen despaired of the state of the congregational churches and retreated to a sort of anti-sacramental subjectivism (which remains to be shown clearly),¹⁵ then perhaps this volume was a reaction to turn, since in it Clarkson clearly guides the reader to the public worship of God, the public means of grace, and the objective truth of the gospel as the foundation of the Christian life.

Clarkson wrote before the formal rise of Pietism, which is usually traced to German schools at the end of the seventeenth century.¹⁶ In reality, however, Pietism was already affecting theology, piety, and practice before Spener and Franke. For example, Wilhelmus a Brakel (1635–1711) was in a pitched battle with the Labadists in the Netherlands, who had repudiated public worship in favor of private devotions in the seventeenth century.¹⁷ Whether Gribben’s contention about Owen is true, we should not doubt that the centripetal forces pulling people away from the Christ-confessing covenant community and the due use of the divinely ordained means of grace were sweeping across Europe and the British Isles. Clarkson’s approach to piety and the Christian life was in sharp contrast to that of the Pietists.¹⁸

On this end of history, we can see the wreckage left by Pietism. Far more Americans tell pollsters that they love Jesus and believe the faith than attend to public worship. It does not take a great deal of imagination or experience to suspect that few modern Christians, even those in confessional Reformed congregations, have much idea about the “means of grace.”¹⁹

The volume, as presented by the editor, is presented in ten chapters. Clarkson is as easy to read and follow as Owen is difficult. He argues that God himself prioritizes public worship over private devotions.²⁰ He cites Psalm 87:2: “The lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.” The temple, he reminds us, was “built on or near the hill of Zion. And this, you know, was in particular the settled place of His worship. It was the Lord’s delight in and affection for His worship, for which He is said to love the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.”²¹

He proceeds to demonstrate the superiority of public worship over private under both the typological administration of the covenant of grace and the new covenant.²² Indeed, Clarkson’s account of the superiority of the new covenant alone makes this book worthwhile.

According to Clarkson, public worship has three necessary features: 1) “Such ordinances as do require or will admit of public use” (e.g., prayer, praises, “the Word read, expounded, or preached, and the administration of the sacraments”);²³ 2) There “must be an assembly, a congregation joined in the use of the ordinances” (he added, the “worship of one or two cannot be public worship”);²⁴ 3) There “must be an officer.²⁵

Whereas John Piper says that God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in him, Clarkson argued the “Lord is most glorified when His glory is most declared and it is most declared when it is declared by most, by a multitude.”²⁶ He makes his case in twelve points.

The rest of the book consists of answers to practical objections to the priority of public worship and the divinely ordained use of the means of grace. Clearly, Clarkson was a pastor who had to try to guide his sheep back to the sheepfold as they were being pulled away from it by the siren song of subjectivism and Pietism. He enjoins us to search our hearts chiefly—if I may summarize his case in one clause—to see whether we believe. For Clarkson, disinterest in the public worship is a symptom of serious spiritual sickness, the worst of which is unbelief itself. He was not pastor of a large church with a lot at stake. He wrote like a man who had been in the wilderness, as it were, and feared no man. This is not to say that Clarkson is anything but gracious and warm. This is a pastoral book.

This book will make an excellent study for adult classes, Christian high schools, undergraduate courses, and seminary courses. it would also be suitable for use as a devotional.

Pastors, sessions, and consistories should buy this book in lots and give it away to their congregations.

Notes

1. His dissertation was published as Mariano DiGangi, Peter Martyr Vermigli: 1499–1562: Renaissance Man, Reformation Master (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993).
2. Allen C. Guelzo, “City Church Again,” chapter 4 in Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2004), 107; cited in Chris Castaldo, “Thank God for Mentors: The Life of Mariano DiGangi,” Chris Costaldo (blog).
3. Castaldo, “Thank God for Mentors.”
4. J. R. Wardale, Clare College (London: F.E. Robinson and Co., 1899), 1.
5. Wardale, Clare College, 33.
6. Wardale, Clare College, 33, says that Thomas Bilney (c. 1495–1531) was among the first Protestants in Clare College, but the entry in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v., “Bilney, Thomas,” associates him with Trinity College, Cambridge. It was Bilney who helped to persuade Latimer of the truth of the Reformation. For more on Hugh Latimer’s martyrdom, see R. Scott Clark, “Ridley, Latimer, And Cranmer: The Oxford Martyrs.”
7. Wardale, Clare College, 118; Stephen Leslie, ed. Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 10 (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1887), s.v., “Clarkson, David.” A fellow is a tutor or a teacher. He meets with students in his rooms—the lodgings of Oxford and Cambridge dons were fairly Spartan. There is an interior bedroom and an out room for meeting with pupils.
8. For more on Tillotson, see Julius J. Kim, “The Rise of Moralism in Seventeenth-Century Anglian Preaching,” in R. Scott Clark ed., Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry: Essays by the Faculty of Westminster Seminary California (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 365–97.
9. Dictionary of National Biography. Holcroft sat as a member of Parliament and seems to have been a courtier, who received certain income from the crown. He was knighted, but it is unclear to me if he was landed or actually wealthy. See more in this history of Parliament. Perhaps his income was sufficient to help support his daughter and son-in-law.
10. The 1662 Act of Uniformity ejected all ministers of the Church of England who refused to conform to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. This is known as the “Great Ejection.”
11. Crawford Gribben, John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 227–28.
12. Gribben, John Owen, 271.
13. The most outstanding feature near Leadenhall Street is an architectural monstrosity known as “The Gherkin.”
14. Cruse, “Introduction,” in Clarkson, Prizing, x. Hear also this episode of the Heidelcast.
15. Gribben, John Owen, 271. The author makes several strong claims about the direction of Owen’s theology in his last years but the evidence he cites is not persuasive. One turns to the endnotes expecting to find clear primary source evidence only to find a few citations of some secondary literature and reference literature.
16. E.g., Mark A. Noll’s entry, s.v., “Pietism,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Daniel J. Treier and Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017), 668.
17. On this point, I am indebted to the good work of my student, Matthew W. Eisele, “Moeder Kerk: Wilhelmus à Brakel and the Unity of the Church,” M. A. Thesis (Escondido: Westminster Seminary California, 2015).
18. E.g., Clarkson, Prizing 21–22.
19. See R. Scott Clark, “The Evangelical Fall From The Means Of Grace.”
20. Clarkson, Prizing, 3–34.
21. Clarkson, 3.
22. Clarkson, 4–8. NB: When Clarkson wrote of the Law and the Gospel, he was writing in historical, not theological terms. Thus, in this sense, “law” refers to the types and shadows and “gospel” refers to the New Testament.
23. Clarkson, 9. Italics original.
24. Clarkson, 10. Italics original.
25. Clarkson, 10. Italics original.
26. Clarkson, 12.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

David Clarkson, Prizing Public Worship, ed. Jonathan Landry Cruse, Puritan Treasures Today (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2023).

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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