Puritan of the Week: Daniel Dyke (died 1614)

Daniel Dyke is a fairly unkown Puritan. In fact, his greatest claim to fame may be that he falls directly in front of Jonathan Edwards alphabetically in Meet the Puritans. However, his only publication, Michael and the Dragon, is noted to be as helpful if not more so than Thomas Brook’s Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices in the Christians fight against sin and temptation.

Dyke grew up in Essex, England and later became a minister there, but John Aylmer, the bishop of London, suspended him from his pulpit in 1583. The story goes something like this:

Alymer had infuriated the Puritans by bowling on Sundays and promoting lax Sabbath observances. His grounds for dismissing Dyke were that Dyke refused to be ordained as a priest, resisted wearing the surplice, promoted conventicles, and pushed for further reformation in the church.

Dyke was defended by one of his parishioners as being peaceable and dutiful in his life and doctrine.  I was reminded as I read this of the ads on ESPN, Sunday is for Bowling.  I think Aylmer would have liked those ads.  I am convicted as I continue to read of many of the non-conformist of the cost they paid for preaching and living the gospel.  In a day and age where we seemingly care so little for what the church across the street is doing, these men were being imprisoned for living holy lives, preaching the gospel, and defending the misuses of the gospel.  Here it appears that Dyke lost his pulpit because he cared that another pastor was lax in his personal piety.  It is a reminder that the gospel is bigger than our own life, or even our church, it is a necessity for the world.  Everyone who claims Christ is a reflection of the gospel and either makes it shine or mares it.  We must guard it, and we must proclaim it, regardless of the personal costs, but in such a way that it may be said of us as was of Dyke, “he carried himself so peaceably and dutifully among them, both in his life and doctrine, that no man could justly find fault with him, except of malice.”