# Puritans Using Rods in Worship



## Hamalas

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?


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## Bill The Baptist

I usually just throw a hardback edition of the ESV study Bible at people who fall asleep.


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## clark thompson

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.


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## earl40

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.


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## Alan D. Strange

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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## Andres

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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## NaphtaliPress

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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## Hamalas

So does this mean there is, or is not, documented evidence of this practice?


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## NaphtaliPress

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.


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## Miss Marple

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.


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## Cymro

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."


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## Semper Fidelis

I think we've lost a lot as a society in general when we got rid of corporal methods to get people's attention.


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## FenderPriest

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



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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## SolaScriptura

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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## chuckd

> 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.



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.


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## nicnap

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.


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## reaganmarsh

Bill The Baptist said:


> I usually just throw a hardback edition of the ESV study Bible at people who fall asleep.



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.


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## NaphtaliPress

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!


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## Semper Fidelis

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...


Yeah, it could have been Small beer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## jwithnell

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.


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## Gforce9

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!



Deliberate on, brother Gillespie!


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## Edward

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.



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!



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.)


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## Pergamum

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.





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."



The Sabbath in Puritan New England, Chapter 6 | The Reformed Reader


So glad I didn't live back then.


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## Miss Marple

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.


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## kodos

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.



Sounds like the Apostle Paul could have learned a thing or two from "little old me". 
(Acts 20)


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## jwithnell

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.


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## C. M. Sheffield

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.



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.


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## One Little Nail

Semper Fidelis said:


> I think we've lost a lot as a society in general when we got rid of corporal methods to get people's attention.



That sorta scares me a bit when an ex-marine says that


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## PuritanCovenanter

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.


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## PuritanCovenanter

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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## Reformed Roman

I had a hard time staying awake for awhile. I take muscle relaxers for headaches. When I have an awful headache I take one, and if I haven't taken a muscle relaxer in awhile it really knocks me out all day.


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## PuritanCovenanter

Hamalas said:


> 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?


 You should hear the stories I have heard about Puritan couples courting each other. Sown nap sacks, Listen tubes, and all.


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## Don Kistler

It is true that they did this, and they saw it as evangelistic. If faith comes by hearing, and a person is asleep, they can't be hearing. So there were men with long poles and a small ball at the end so that they could reach people in the middle of the pews and tap them on the head to wake them up.


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## earl40

One Little Nail said:


> Semper Fidelis said:
> 
> 
> 
> I think we've lost a lot as a society in general when we got rid of corporal methods to get people's attention.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That sorta scares me a bit when an ex-marine says that
Click to expand...


My uncle says if one of our kids wants to join the marines we are to beat their head agaist a brick wall till they change their mind. He was at Iwo Jima and said he would never exchange his experience but that he never would want any of his children to experience such.

Salute to Rich.


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## Backwoods Presbyterian

Former Marine.


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## Unoriginalname

I work nights so when I am coming off a night shift and going into service I usually tell the person next to me to give me an elbow to the ribs if I nod off. I sometimes find it hard going from being on my feet all night in the emergency department to sitting for the sermon


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## Pergamum

Sometimes if sleeping is a problem in church just the preacher needs to be beaten.


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## SolaScriptura

Pergamum said:


> Sometimes if sleeping is a problem in church just the preacher needs to be beaten.



And other times perhaps the entire session.


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## One Little Nail

Pergamum said:


> Sometimes if sleeping is a problem in church just the preacher needs to be beaten.



So your saying it's better to deal with the root rather than the fruit!


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## Reformed Covenanter

PuritanCovenanter said:


> 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.



Randy, since you are Samuel Rutherford's father does that make you about 450 years old? I hope that I am as fresh when I reach your age. BTW, I hope Samuel was not reading _Lex, Rex_ at the time.


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## kvanlaan

I have read this as well, but that it was the young bucks in the back row beaten by a deacon at the back of the church for sleeping and/or inattention, not that he was ranging about with snath and scythe like some sort of grim reaper...


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