Modern evangelical sentiments often suggest a sharp division between biblical faithfulness and aligning ourselves with history. Outside the church, our culture sneers about being “on the right side of history,” suggesting that the things of the past ought to be left behind. Even in the church, the cherished doctrine of sola Scriptura has been abused to justify hosts of doctrines that run full force against the ways that God’s people have traditionally interpreted God’s Word.

Matthew Poole (1624–1679) was an English Presbyterian during the seventeenth century whose work shows how foreign those modern sentiments would be to committed Christians of past generations. Throughout his career, he held thorough exegesis together with a commitment to the historical tradition, as well as a priority on the pastoral value for these studies.

Poole’s biography is quickly sketched, since not much scholarship has investigated his life and work beyond what is available in the main reference works and databases. He was born likely in 1624 in York to Francis and Mary Pole, although he was not baptized until December 6, 1626. He began his education at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1645. When he graduated in 1649, he succeeded Anthony Tuckey, one of the Westminster divines, in the rectory of St. Michael-le-Querne. He took an MA from Cambridge in 1652 and was incorporated as an MA at Oxford in 1657—an event overseen by Richard Cromwell, who would become the second Lord Protector in the following year when Oliver Cromwell died­­­. Poole resigned the rectory of St. Michael-le-Querne in 1662 at the passing of the Act of Uniformity and later moved to the Netherlands after working for some time toward the re-inclusion for non-conformists in England. He died October 12, 1679, and was buried in the vault under the church belonging to English merchants in Amsterdam.[1]

Poole’s earliest publication tackled the problem of Socinianism,[2] especially concerning the deity of the Holy Spirit.[3] John Biddle (1615–62) was a primary leader of anti-trinitarian thought as it emerged in mid-seventeenth century England.[4] Although he received a prestigious education and became a schoolmaster, he began espousing unitarian theology that prompted the fierce response of leading clergy in England.[5] Poole was among the Presbyterian respondents.

Poole was heavy on biblical argumentation in the refutation of Biddle’s position, which would foreshadow his later, more well-known works. He noted how Biddle and other Socinians prioritized human reason over Scripture.[6] Poole added more thorough exegetical discussion in the second edition, for example in his treatment of John 1 as part of his same anti-rationalist argument.[7] Still, even with all his logical and exegetical contentions, Poole ultimately concluded that the dividing line between orthodox trinitarians and anti-trinitarians was in their presuppositions. If they did not want to resort to legislative enforcement against unorthodoxy, he knew that the orthodox had to contend for the value of typological and figurative exegesis over against the rationalist premises of Socinian biblicism.[8]

Poole’s efforts at refuting Socinianism with exegetical force were the first public notice of his commitment to stand with holy Scripture and align with the historic Christian tradition. In this instance, he used exegesis to demonstrate that the traditional position on the Spirit’s deity was biblically grounded. Further, he also saw this endeavor as part of his pastoral duties, since he explained in the second edition’s preface (when his role as the author of this book had become known) that, “I have employed part of that time, which I have spent among you, in endeavouring to establish you in some of those truths, that are most opposed in our dayes.”[9] Although he had not taken up the Spirit’s deity directly with his congregation of St. Michael-le-Querne, he used this book as an opportunity to compensate for that lack. For Poole, history, exegesis, and pastoral care held together.

Poole’s concern for good pastoral care came to the fore in his next publications. In 1658, he published a plan for funding university students who promised to go into the ministry.[10] This plan received commendation from John Worthington and Anthony Tuckney, John Arrowsmith, Ralph Cudworth, William Dillingham, and Benjamin Whichcote.[11] Continuing the trajectory of concern for a credentialed ministry, his next work defended the idea that only ordained ministers should undertake the task of preaching, thus refuting the practice of lay preaching.[12] Even his 1659 letter to Lord Fleetwood seems motivated to protect the Presbyterian cause from government overreach.[13] So his more directly theological efforts did not crowd out Poole’s concern for the proper care for the church.

That concern became more explicit in Poole’s 1660 sermon before London’s mayor where he pled that simplicity of worship would be upheld. Richard Cromwell had resigned as second Lord Protector in 1659. Charles II then returned to London as king in May of 1660, which precipitated the execution of nine of the fifty-nine commissioners who had called for Charles I’s execution in 1649. In light of these events, Poole clearly sensed the return of Laudian policies concerning ceremonies in worship, which were contrary to the simplicity the non-conformists believed Scripture warranted. His concerns would come to fruition in the Clarendon Code, which set forth four penal laws to squelch non-conformity. The second of those laws, the 1662 Act of Uniformity, prompted Poole’s resignation from St. Michael-le-Querne.

Poole published the sermon in question because he thought that interpreters had misconstrued his original delivery. It seems they took it as a direct attack on the baseline Anglican positions. Poole stated that he “intended not to meddle with Common-Prayer (of which I spake not one word, however I am traduced) nor Ceremonies considered in themselves, but only as some endeavour that they may be pressed with an Aegyptian rigour, and violently imposed upon the Consciences of their Brethren.”[14] This careful parsing, however, still left room for his attacks to apply to exactly what his opponents suspected.

The difference was that Poole saw the bare principle as having far more minimal application than the Laudian Episcopalians. After all, Poole emphasized in expositing John 4 that worship “In spirit is opposed unto a bodily or carnall worship of God.” The application “respects the subject of worship, and that is opposed unto those who worship God only with their bodies, whose hearts and souls do not concurre with them, who draw nigh to God with their lips, when their hearts are farre from him.”[15] Although a seemingly obvious prod against hypocrisy, Poole’s prong stabbed at one prevailing sentiment among the High Church ceremonialists. Peter Lake summarizes that the establishment champion Richard Hooker had contended that

regular, decorous, and fervent participation in the style of public worship laid out in the Book of Common Prayer—centered as it was (at least on Hooker’s rendition), on public prayer and the sacraments, rather than on the Word preached—would do nicely. Thus, Hooker concluded, ordinary believers were not wrong if they believed that, having ‘virtuously . . . behaved themselves’ during public worship and been “fervent” both in their “devotion and zeal in prayer” and in “their attention to the word of God” (read as well as preached), “they have performed a good duty.”

This focus on what seemed to be simply outward, if happy, conformity to external worship had ired non-conformists since Hooker’s day.[16]

Those concerns only increased during the Laudian period. Poole may well have targeted exactly this basic outward participation that had become the point of high contention under Laudianism. Moreover, this sermon revealed that Poole saw English Presbyterians as still part of the establishment and that he perceived that moderate Episcopalians agreed with their concerns about the direction of English worship.[17]

Poole’s succeeding publications focused in polemical fashion on these churchly concerns. He published a Latin tract in 1666 that was a scathing critique of the current ecclesiastical landscape.[18] That he wrote this work in Latin, however, shows that he was trying not to stir public unrest as he voiced his concerns, since Latin was the language of the academy rather than the populus. He continued his polemic works in two treatises against Roman Catholicism.[19] His concern for matters of good religion remained as even his final publication during his lifetime was a defense of right religion, which contained material from two sermons.[20]

The crowning work of Poole’s career that most effectively demonstrates our thesis about his effort to hold exegetical, historical, and pastoral concerns together was his four-volume, Synopsis of Critical and Other Commentators on Sacred Scripture, published in Latin in 1669.[21] Many notable figures from across the ecclesiastical spectrum—including Thomas Barlow, John Owen, and Westminster divine John Lightfoot—voiced advance support for this work’s publication.[22] This work was a massive scholarly endeavor, collecting a tremendous amount of biblical commentary into a sort of early-modern compilation. Although this work brought together an incredible number of sources, including rabbinic and Roman Catholic commentators, Poole noted his use of Reformed sources.[23] Interestingly, he justified excluding John Calvin’s commentaries from this work because Calvin focused on pastoral and theological rather than critical and exegetical matters.[24] This move shows how Poole was stressing a certain academic rigor as he held exegetical and historical trajectories together. Even still, this work made it, in 1693, to the Roman index of banned books.[25]

The more pastoral side of Poole’s concerns for the issues that motivated his Latin Synopsis showed in how he began to prepare an English-language resource. This oft-reprinted book was a series of annotations on Scripture, seemingly aiming to be a whole-Bible commentary.[26] In composing this work, Poole drew upon his vast historical research of biblical interpretation to produce direct expositions of Scripture. The application of his crowning achievement was then to bring to bear his commitment to exegesis, understood in light of the tradition, so that God’s people could appropriate it. Poole reached Isaiah 58 before he died, and other scholars completed and published the work after his death.[27]

Even in his day, Poole’s death resounded among his appreciators. One published poem lamented, “Our LAMP is out!” Although his death was mourned, this poem also drew attention to his published work, emphasizing explicit attention on his Synopsis. It closed reflecting, “for whither sure, Should Sick Men go, but to the POOL for Cure.”[28] In his own day, Poole’s work that most forcefully united historical and exegetical labors was his most prominent legacy. That mark is a testament to the Reformed commitment both to the premise of sola Scriptura and to reading Scripture in alignment with those who have gone before us. Poole modeled that traditional exegesis as the foundation of pastoral practice. His pattern, at least in this respect, is one worth our reflection today as an exemplar to emulate.

Harrison N. Perkins is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), a Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards, online faculty in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, and visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary.

Endnotes

[1] “Matthew Poole,” A Cambridge Alumni Database University of Cambridge (accessed on August 23, 2024 at https://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search-2018.pl?sur=&suro=w&fir=&firo=c&cit=&cito=c&c=all&z=all&tex=PL645M&sye=&eye=&col=all&maxcount=50); Nicholas Keene, “Poole [Pole], Matthew (1624?–1679),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessed on August 23, 2024 at https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-22518?rskey=X5nBPG&result=2).

[2] Socinianism was a sixteenth and seventeenth century movement that claimed allegiance to Scripture while denying the deity of Christ and consequently the doctrine of the Trinity.

[3] Matthew Poole, Βλασφημοκτονία: The Blasphemer Slaine with the Sword of the Spirit: Or, A Plea for the Godhead of the Holy Ghost. Wherein the Deity of the Spirit of God is Proved in the Demonstration of the Spirit, and vindicated from the Cavils of John Biddle (London: John Rothwell, 1653).

[4] Paul C. H. Lim, Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012), 17.

[5] Lim, Mystery Unveiled, 38–68.

[6] Poole, Βλασφημοκτονία, 33–36.

[7] Matthew Poole, Βλασφημοκτονία: The Blasphemer Slaine with the Sword of the Spirit: Or, A Plea for the Godhead of the Holy Ghost. Wherein the Deity of the Spirit of God is Proved in the Demonstration of the Spirit, and vindicated from the Cavils of John Biddle, 2nd ed. (London: John Rothwell, 1654), 40–43; see Lim, Mystery Unveiled, 158.

[8] Lim, Mystery Unveiled, 158–59.

[9] Poole, Βλασφημοκτονία (2nd ed.), sig. A4r.

[10] Matthew Poole, A Model for the Maintaining of Students of Choice Abilities at the University, and Principally in order to the ministry (London: Sa. Thomson, 1658).

[11] Keene, “Poole [Pole], Matthew (1624?–1679).”

[12] Matthew Poole, Qua Warranto; Or, A Moderate Inquiry into the Warrantablenesse of the Preaching of Gifted and Unordained Persons (London, 1659).

[13] Matthew Poole, A Letter from a London Minister to Lord Fleetwood (London: Sa. Thomson, 1659).

[14] Matthew Poole, Evangelical Worship is Spiritual Worship, as it was discussed in a sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Maior, at Pauls Church, Aug. 26. 1660 (London: Sa. Thomson, 1660), sig. A3v.

[15] Poole, Evangelical Worship is Spiritual Worship, 6.

[16] Peter Lake, “‘Puritans’ and ‘Anglicans’ in the History of the Post-Reformation English Church,” in The Oxford History of Anglicanism Volume I: Reformation and Identity, c.1520–1662, ed. Anthony Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 368.

[17] Anthony Milton, England Second Reformation: The Battle for the Church of England 1625–1662 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 452.

[18] Matthew Poole, Vox Clamantis in Deserto as Ministros Angliae (London, 1666).

[19] Matthew Poole, The Nullity of the Romish Faith, Or, A Blow at the Root of the Romish Church being an examination of that fundamentall doctrine of the Church of Rome (Oxford: Ric. Davis, 1666); Matthew Poole, A Dialogue between a Popish Priest and an English Protestant wherein the Principal Points and Arguments of both Religions are Truly Proposed and fully Examined (London, 1667).

[20] Matthew Poole, A Seasonable Apology for Religion Being the subject of two Sermons lately delivered in an Auditory in London (London, 1673).

[21] Matthew Poole, Synopsis Criticorum Aliorumque S. Scripturae Interpretum, 4 vols. (London, 1669).

[22] Matthew Poole, A Brief Description of a Design concerning a Synopsis of the Critical and Other Commentators (London, 1667), 3–4. Interestingly, this support was seemingly needed to overcome the perception of what we might consider copyright issues, since Poole’s work collated the comments of previous biblical interpreters; John Maynard and William Jones, A Just Vindication of Mr. Poole’s Designe for Printing of his Synopsis of Critical and other Commentators (London, 1667). Poole himself addressed this criticism from printer Cornelius Bee in his published preface; Poole, Synopsis, II.

[23] Poole, Synopsis, III.

[24] Poole, Synopsis, III (Calvini commentaria non tam critical sunt…quam Practica; nec tam verba & phrases enucleant…quam materias Theologicas solide tractant).

[25] Keene, “Poole [Pole], Matthew (1624?–1679).”

[26] Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible wherein the Sacred Text is inserted, and various readings annex'd, together with parallel scriptures, the more difficult terms in each verse are explained, seeming contradictions reconciled, questions and doubts resolved, and the whole text opened (London, 1683).

[27] Keene, “Poole [Pole], Matthew (1624?–1679).”

[28] Anonymous, On the Death of Mr. Matthew Pool. Anagram, Matthew Pool, O the Lamp Out (London, 1679).

Harrison N. Perkins is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), a Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards, online faculty in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, and visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary. Ordained Servant Online, October, 2024.