“It is now more than forty years since my first acquaintance with Mr Romaine commenced. . . . . His stature was of the middling size, his visage thin and marked; the lines of his face were strong; and, as he advanced in age, deeply furrowed; his eye was ijuick and keen, yet his aspect benign, and frequently smiling; his manners were plain; I thought his address rather rough than polished; he dressed in a way peculiar to himself; he wore a suit of blue cloth always, a grey wig without powder; his stockings were coarse and blue as his clothes.”
“He rose during the last fifty years at five o’clock, breakfasted at six, dined at one on some plain dish, and often (as I have seen) on cold meat and a pudding, drank little or no wine, supped at eight, and retired at nine.”
“His elocution was free and easy; his voice, though not sonorous, clear; and his articulation distinct. His sermons were neither so long, nor delivered with the same exertions, as those of many of his brethren; and I impute to this a measure of his uncommon health, as his bodily health was by this means less impaired Towards the end of his life I thought his voice somewhat lower, but he was exceedingly well heard to the last — preserved his teeth, spoke as distinctly as ever; his intellect and memory appeared not the least impaired, and except the wrinkles of his face, his body bore no mark of infirmity; he walked faster and more vigorously than I could.”
In his younger days he had been unfriendly to dissenters; but maturer consideration, though it did not change his own opinions, made him respectful to theirs. “Sir,” said he to a dissenting minister of Bristol, “I have been very high-church in the former years of my life, but the Lord has brought me down; and now I can rejoice in, and wish well to, the ministers of my Master, of whatever denomination.”
The following epitaph is in the church of St Anne’s, Blackfriars:—
In a vault beneath lies the mortal part of
The Rev. William Romaine, A.M.,
Thirty years Rector of these United Parishes,
and forty-six years Lecturer of St Dunstan’s-in-the-West.
Raised up of God for an important work in His Church,
a scholar of extensive learning, a Christian of eminent piety,
a preacher of peculiar gifts and animation,
consecrating all his talents to the investigation of Sacred Truth,
during a ministry of more than half a century,
he lived, conversed, and wrote, only to exalt the Saviour.
Mighty in the Scriptures, he ably defended, with eloquence and zeal, the
equal perfections of the Triune Jehovah, exhibited in man’s redemption,
The Father’s everlasting love,
the Atonement, Righteousness, and compleat Salvation of the Son,
the regenerating influence of the Eternal Spirit,
with the operations and enjoyments of a purifying faith.
When displaying these essential Doctrines of the Gospel
with a simplicity and fervour rarely united,
his enlivened countenance expressed the joy of his soul.
God owned the Truth,
and multitudes, raised from guilt and ruin to the hope of endless felicity,
became seals to his ministry,
the blessings and ornaments of society.
Having manifested the purity of his principles in his life
to the age of 81, July 26, 1795,
he departed in the Triumph of Faith, and entered into Glory.
The grateful inhabitants of these parishes, with other witnesses of these facts,
erected this monument.
