As the Preacher saith, “There is no new thing under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9). It seems that one of these things that is not new is episodes of contention and unbrotherly relations between preachers and congregants. In Spectator No. 468 (16 July 1714), Joseph Addison related the following amusing anecdote:
“I remember an empty pragmatical Fellow in the Country, who upon reading over the whole Duty of Man, had written the Names of several Persons in the Village at the Side of every Sin which is mentioned by that excellent Author; so that he had converted one of the best Books in the World into a Libel against the ‘Squire, Church-wardens, Overseers of the Poor, and all other the most considerable Persons in the Parish. This Book with these extraordinary marginal Notes fell accidentally into the Hands of one who had never seen it before; upon which there arose a current Report that Some body had written a book against the ‘Squire and the whole Parish. The Minister of the Place having at that Time a Controversy with some of his Congregation upon the Account of his Tythes, was under the Suspicion of being the Author…”
It is generally accepted that the “excellent Author” of the anonymously published work that Addison refers to, The Whole Duty of Man (1658), was Richard Allestree (1621/22-1681), a 17th-century Anglican clergyman. Though it may come as a surprise now, The Whole Duty of Man vied with The Pilgrim’s Progress as the most popular English devotional work of the 17th and 18th centuries. It went through countless editions. In my opinion, Whole Duty is much more deserving of that popularity than Bunyan’s tedious work. But it now goes largely unread.
I happen to have in my possession a 1675 edition of another
work of Allestree’s entitled The Government of the Tongue. Curiously,
the inscription of a former owner on the flyleaf reads as follows:
Ouch. Indeed, there is no new thing under the sun. Parish politics "hath been already of old time."
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