Protestant Exiles from France/Book First - Chapter 12 - Section X

by David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

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X. Rev. Joseph Sortain, B.A.

This eminent minister of the Countess of Huntingdon’s congregation in Brighton loved to speak of his Huguenot ancestry, but of the period of their settlement in England he has not informed us, the only indication being that his forefathers (spiritual certainly, and personal too, perhaps) were victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Therefore I place him in my Volume First. The second edition of Haag indicates that the true spelling of the name is Certain — which chronicles a refugee of that name, aged seventy-seven, relieved in London after 1685, and Gabrielle Certain, a native of Limousin, aged nineteen, daughter of Pierre, and a refugee in 1726 in the Canton de Vaud.

The family appeared in England as early as 1604 in London, in the parish of St. Mary Aldermary; the registrar seems to have been told to spell the name like the English adjective certain, which he did according to his idea; and so we find, on 26th August 1604, the baptism of Robert, son of John Serten. But twelve years thereafter the register describes a house in the parish as “Mr. Sertain’s, in Tornbase Lane.” In St. Antholin’s, another London parish, we find, on 1st October 1617, the marriage of another John Sertaine. Returning to St. Mary Aldermary’s, we read under the date 17th July 1618 the burial of the wife of John Sartayne, who remarried on 23d January 1620 (n.s.) as John Sartaine, and was buried on the 6th January following as “John Sartane,” who “dwelt in the Back Lane.” A posthumous daughter of “John Sartayne,” named Hester, was baptized on 8th April 1621, but she died, and was buried on 23d February 1623 (n.s.) as “Hester, daughter of Mist^s. Sertayne, dwelling in the Back Lane.” The last entry is the burial of a daughter by his first marriage, “1625, Aug. 11. Ann, dau. of John Sartaine.” Thus, as we have seen the name D’Ambrin anglicized by successive steps into Dombrain, Certain became Serten, and finally Sortain. I can quote no intermediate registrations until we come to 1809 at Clifton, where are recorded the baptisms of the two children of Samuel Sortain and Elizabeth, his wife — Joseph, born 20th July 1809, and Mary Ann, born 15th March 1811.

The grandfather of Joseph^[1] honoured his Huguenot ancestors as a noble army of martyrs, and continually prayed that their posterity might be worthy of them. He presented his grandson with a folio copy of “Fox’s Book of Martyrs,” with this inscription in gold letters:—

Joseph Sortain.
This book is the gift of his grandfather.
My son, remember thou the God of thy fathers.

The grandson obeyed the injunction. One proof of this was, that in after years, when at the head of a household, he was in the habit of reading the twenty-third Psalm at family prayers on the evening of every Saturday. If he was asked for an explanation, he would reply, “It was a custom of my Huguenot forefathers, and I wish to gain inspiration for my Sunday duties by the associations it thus calls up.” His grandfather also bequeathed to him some money to provide for his education for the Christian ministry.

Although a native of Clifton and a student of Cheshunt College, he had to repair to Dublin for his university education, the English Universities being then shut against him as a Nonconformist. The year of his matriculation at Trinity College was 1828. He left Dublin in 1831 with a view to his ordination at Brighton. He, however, returned occasionally to his University to attend examinations, and it was in the year 1833 that he took his degree. In the latter year he married Bridget Margaret, third daughter of (the then deceased) Sir Patrick M‘Gregor, Bart, sister of Sir William, who died in 1846, and of Sir Charles, who at the latter date succeeded to the baronetcy. Mr. Sortain had been bereaved of his father in 1830 and of his sister in 1832; his mother survived until 1838.

His ministry in Brighton was one of great fidelity, brilliancy, and celebrity. In the Examiner newspaper for 8th May 1856, there was this allusion to him:— “There is a chapel in Brighton which is always attended by a crowded congregation, because the attention is not exhausted before it is riveted by one of the most eloquent preachers of our time in the highest sense of the word — the eloquence of the earnestness of a pure, enlightened, and earnest spirit, for such is Sortain’s.” The gifted W. M. Thackeray characterized him as “the most accomplished orator I have ever heard in my life.” Mr. Justice Talfourd bore witness to his “eloquence, which, even to one who has heard Robert Hall, is wholly unsurpassed.” Sortain during his whole life enjoyed the friendship of that noble band of Nonconformist ministers known as The Clayton Family.^[2] He wrote to Rev. George Clayton on his mother’s death:—

“27 Bedford Square, Brighton, 18th January 1836.

My very dear Sir, — In the Globe last Saturday, I read an account of the death of the invaluable Mrs Clayton. . . . I have been thinking if it is possible to imagine a case in which death could have been more fully deprived of his wonted sting. Mrs Clayton has been spared so long [to the age of ninety], and meanwhile had the declivity of life made so gentle in its descent — has had the usual monotony of age so cheered and kept alive by the active events and usefulness of her sons’ lives — and has been so fully comforted with the consolations of hope and faith — that I can conceive of no more holy or pleasing an end. She has indeed been a shock of corn fully ripe. In some instances it would seem as if the seed was left too long after maturity, only to gather mildew and expend its healthiness. But this, though the ingathering has been long delayed, was still golden. . . .

Joseph Sortain.”

Seven years afterwards he had to condole with the same family on the death of their father in his eighty-ninth year. He said, “You and your whole family have the best sympathies of the entire Christian Church. I believe there never was a servant of Christ who, after a most honourable, dignified, consistent, and useful life, waited for the consolation of Israel with a more legitimate hope. It was his lot to be the link between the calm, sober-minded, judicious ministry of the former generation and the fervid, active one of the present. O would that we could with like patience possess our souls!”

With regard to the system of Mr Sortain’s ministry, it suggests the usual difference of opinion whether every sermon to an organised congregation should contain an offer of free pardon and salvation to sinners, or whether each sermon should be a fragment of progressive religious instruction. On the one system the conviction is that, considering that to one or more of the hearers any sermon may be his last, a minister should always have one paragraph in his sermon stating the Gospel offer. On the other system, a knowledge of the Gospel offer is distinctly assumed, and it is judged to be inexpedient to be always laying the foundation and abridging the time to be spent in building. The latter has often been the idea of young men, and may sometimes have seemed to be Mr Sortain’s idea, his stock of knowledge being extensive and always ready to his hand. This may have occasioned the criticism of the younger John Clayton, written when that venerable divine was eighty years of age. It was not Mr Sortain’s lot to reach the confines of old age. Of a delicate frame, and under the pressure of too abundant and continuous labours, he died in his fifty-first year, on 16th July 1860. What Mr Clayton wrote of him from Torquay, 5th September 1860, was as follows:—

“I am much afflicted by the death of Mr Sortain, whom I had known from his boyhood. He was a man and minister sui generis, and I could strongly sympathise with many who deplored the loss of the pastor in North Street Chapel. But some of his panegyrists, in the ardour of their love and zeal, gave him ample credit on some few points in which, I think, he did not excel. I am happy, however, to know from very good judges that for the past few years his ministry has been more fully evangelical than it was aforetime.”

I have quoted the above in order to give the reply of Mr Aveling, the biographer of the Claytons:—^[3]

“I am very happy to know, from very good judges as well as from personal observation, that Mr Sortain, with a pure eloquence, with great beauty of illustration and intense earnestness of manner, by manifestation of the truth commended himself to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. Some of the most stirring appeals ever addressed to crowded audiences, and some of the most full and faithful exhibitions of the cross of Christ ever presented by the heralds of the Gospel, were delivered from the pulpit of North Street Chapel, Brighton, by its departed minister, whose soul was too strong and vigorous for the fragile form in which it dwelt.”

Mr Sortain was buried in his favourite churchyard of Hove, near Brighton. On his tombstone is this epitaph:—

Sacred to the Memory of
The Rev. Joseph Sortain, B.A.,
for 28 years Minister of North Street Chapel, Brighton,
who died July 16th, i860, aged 50.
“Where I am, there shall also my servant be.” — John xii. 26.

In his own church a tablet was erected —

Sacred to the Memory of
The Rev. Joseph Sortain, B.A.,
who for upwards of 28 years proclaimed and vindicated “the truth as it is in Jesus” within this sanctuary with unwavering fidelity, rare eloquence, and marked catholicity of spirit.
He was born July 22d, 1809, and, after suffering prolonged affliction with cheerful resignation,
entered into rest July 16th, 1860, aged 50 years.
“Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

*⁎* Mr. Sortain’s serviceable literary career began with Reviews for the British Critic. He was the author of the article on “Bentham’s Deontology” in the Edinburgh Review (1835) and of the article on Lathbury’s “History of the English Episcopacy” in the same Review (1836). He published a “Funeral Sermon on Rev. Henry Mortlock,” 1837; “Lectures on Romanism and Anglo-Catholicism,” 1841; “Life of Lord Bacon” (Religious Tract Society); “Hildebrand and the Excommunicated Emperor,” a tale, 1850; “Count Avensberg and the Days of Luther,” a tale, 1852; “Sermon on the Death of the Duke of Wellington,” 1852. These varied performances were seasonable, having been suggested by the wants of the time. He had planned a work which should take a permanent place in literature, namely, “The Life of Grotius;” and in his search for materials, he had discovered twenty-three unpublished letters addressed by Grotius to Casaubon. This important work he did not live to execute.

I began this memoir with a reference to his printed allusion to his forefathers. It is in his last Lecture on Romanism:— “Shades of my forefathers ! shall the two dread days of St. Bartholomew in their shrieks, or in their prolonged patient suffering, awaken within me the feeling of revenge? Cursed — nay, Anathema Maranatha — be the persecutor, be his garb Protestant or Roman. Our retaliation is that of Christ, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Our retaliation is that of the protomartyr, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.

“Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter’d saints . . .
. . . Their martyr’d blood and ashes sow
O’er all th’ Italian fields,
that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learn’d Thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.”

1. I am mainly indebted to his published Memoir, 2d edition. London, 1862.

2. 	Rev. John Clayton, b. 1754, d. 1843, Minister of Weighhouse Chapel, London, Married in 1779 by Rev. Wm. Romaine.			$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	=		Mary Flower, died 11th January 1866, aged 90.
   Rev. John Clayton, jun. b. 1780, d. 1865, Member of the Eclectic Society, Minister at Kensington, ultimately at the Poultry. Retired in 1848.		Rev. George Clayton, b. 1783, d. 1862. Minister, first at Southampton, ultimately at York Chapel, London.						Rev. William Clayton, b. 1784, d. 1838. Minister at Saffron-Waldon, ultimately chaplain to the Grammar School, Mill Hill, Hendon.

3. “Memorials of the Clayton Family. With unpublished correspondence of the Countess of Huntingdon, Lady Glenorchy, the Revs. John Newton, A. Toplady, &c. By the Rev. Thomas V. Aveling.” London, Jackson, Walford, & Hodder, 1867.