Henry Cole (b. 1792 - d. 28 June 1858, Islington) was an Anglican curate at Woolwich, Kent, Islington, and St. Mary's Somerset Church as Lecturer. He wrote extensively on many topics and also translated six works of Martin Luther and one each of Calvin and Melanchthon. Most of his own works show him to be a man who was passionately committed to contending for the truth (as he saw it), especially the truth of the Gospel and the Scriptures, against all kinds of subtle perversions of it.
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Henry Cole was born in about 1792. Little is known of his early years. His schooling or lifetime of "scholastic toil, trial and trouble" began sometime in 1809.[1] He commenced university studies at Clare Hall, Cambridge, in March 1817, but left before completing his training and was readmitted in January 1847, matriculating later the same year. He received the B.D. degree in 1848 and D.D. in 1854.[2]
In Norwich on December 18, 1814, Cole was ordained deacon, and four years later was made an Anglican curate. For several years up to 1823 he was "lecturer of Woolwich, Kent." Sometime before 1834 he took up residence in Islington.[2] Though a comment in his 1834 book on geology suggests that he was still a member of the Church of England,[3] shortly after moving to Islington he became the pastor of a Methodist chapel, the Islington Green Chapel. (In 1840 it was taken over by Baptists renamed Providence Chapel.) About 1840 Cole returned to a clerical position in the Church of England and from as early as 1841 until 1857 he was the "Sunday evening lecturer" and curate at the small St. Mary's Somerset Church, Upper Thames Street, London,' a task which involved him in "unceasing engagements in the instruction of youth."[4] Having struggled for much of his life with ill health, he died in Islington on June 29, 1858, at the age of 66, after two recent spells of paralysis.[2][5]
Cole’s most influential work as a scriptural geologist is his 136-page "letter" to old-earth creationist Adam Sedgwick, entitled Popular Geology Subversive of Divine Revelation (1834). This was a response to Sedgwick's Discourse on the Studies of the University, which along with extensive additional comments contained the sermon Sedgwick had preached in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, in December 1832.
Sedgwick had generalized in 1830 that scriptural geologists had promoted "a deformed progeny of heretical and fantastical conclusions, by which sober philosophy has been put to open shame, and sometimes even the charities of life have been exposed to violation."[6] Later in 1834 he added that,[7] "They have committed the folly and SIN of dogmatizing," and "of writing mischievous nonsense;" they have an "ignorance of the laws of nature and of material phenomena" and ideas "hatched among their own conceits;" they "have sinned against plain sense," displayed "bigotry and ignorance," and "assail[ed] with maledictions and words of evil omen" because of the "truth their eyes cannot bear to look upon;" so they invented "an ignorant and dishonest hypothesis."
While Cole expressed respect toward Sedgwick for his superior physical and mathematical knowledge, he replied in kind calling Sedgwick's ideas "unscriptural and anti-christian," "scripture-defying", and "revelation-subverting," "baseless speculations and self-contradictions," which were "impious and infidel" and would cause untold damage on the nation. Cole was confident that "the heart of every one that fears the God of heaven, reveres his eternal Word, and favours his righteous cause" would agree with his "refutation" of Sedgwick's Discourse and he triumphantly but naively declared that his book would be the final and sufficient response to the old-earth geological theories.[8]
Cole was not opposed to science generally or even to geology in particular. He did, however, object to speculative old-earth theories of origins and earth history which he believed were perverting science as well as being contrary to Scripture. He never called for an end to the study of geology or any other science. On the contrary, he said that "geology is a legitimate science"[9] and he believed that "God has blessed the human race" with the various sciences and that "surgery, chemistry, mechanism, and all branches of experimental philosophy, are advanced and pushed on to excellence . . . by comparisons, classifications, and combinations of, and improvements on, previous human productions."[10] What he criticized was Sedgwick's "account of the Creation of the world, and of man, and all the creatures therein," and "the dreams," "principles," and "popular doctrines" of geology, and "the infidel tendency of geological speculations" and "the revelation-subverting deductions of the new science."[11]