Thomas Madge

Thomas Madge (1786-1870) was originally from Plymouth. Though trained for the medical profession, he became a Unitarian largely through the ministry of John Rowe of Lewin’s Mead in Bristol. He studied for a time at Exeter and then at Manchester College, York, from 1804 to 1809. He commenced his ministry at Bury St. Edmunds in 1810 and the following year moved to Norwich and the Octagon Chapel, where he influenced the thinking of a young James Martineau. In 1825 he became assistant to Thomas Belsham at the Essex Street Chapel in London, becoming the senior minister in 1829, remaining in the capacity until 1859. He was a devoted admirer of Wordsworth and friend of Henry Crabb Robinson. Madge was “a Unitarian of the old school,” Walter Bagehot once wrote, “with as little mystical and transcendental in his nature as any one who ever lived” (Edith Morley, Life and Times of Henry Crabb Robinson [1935], 192). He was one of the few Unitarian ministers of his day who occasionally received praise from the usually vituperative orthodox reviewers.  In a February 1845 review of Madge’s Lectures on Puseyism, a writer for the Eclectic Review, though clearly at odds with Madge’s Unitarianism, was nevertheless grateful to hear Madge “speak as if all opinions were not exactly alike, refer with respect to Scripture, as possessing some authority, and as bold enforce the duty of thinking wisely as maintain the right of thinking independently, is no small treat after that to which we have been used as the teaching of not a few of his most gifted brethren.  Mr. Madge, however, is not ashamed of these old-fashioned ideas, and he clothes them in language clear, correct, elegant, and well adapted both to express and to commend them” (Christian Reformer [1845], 183). Madge’s “old-fashioned ideas” were evident in his funeral sermon for Aspland in 1845.  Madge argued that some within the Unitarian denomination (a reference aimed primarily at the American Theodore Parker) were preaching doctrines “subversive of the very foundations of our Christian faith.  I confess, my brethren, that I understand not the Christianity which is disrobed of its miraculous vesture … I avail myself of this solemn occasion strongly to protest against the justice, against the propriety, of placing under the same denomination, and of calling by the same name, parties differing so entirely and fundamentally as to the authoritative character of the Christian religion.… Take from Christianity that divine sanction and testimony which miracles alone can impart, and it is like taking the jewel from the casket, the soul from the body (Christian Reformer [1845], 163-64).