Matthew Henry

Life

Matthew Henry was born on October 18, 1662, the second son of Philip and Katherine Henry. His birthplace was Broad Oak, his mother's family farmhouse on the border between Flintshire in Wales and Shropshire in England. His father, Philip Henry, was a clergyman of the Church of England (the Anglican Church), but he lost his position that same year when the Act of Uniformity took effect. The Act removed clergy who would not conform to the established church's forms of worship. Protestants who stood outside the established church in this way are called Nonconformists.

Because Nonconformists could not take degrees at Oxford or Cambridge, Henry was educated chiefly by his father, and from 1680 to 1682 he studied at a Nonconformist academy run by the Presbyterian scholar Thomas Doolittle. In the mid-1680s he studied law at Gray's Inn in London, but instead of becoming a lawyer, he began to preach.

In 1687 James II's Declaration of Indulgence permitted Nonconformist worship. That year Henry was privately ordained in London, and from June he took charge of a Presbyterian congregation in Chester, where he served as pastor for about twenty-five years. He is credited with building a Presbyterian meeting house on Trinity Street in Chester. In 1712 he moved to a congregation in Hackney, London. On June 22, 1714, while traveling from Chester to London, he died of a stroke at Nantwich.

Ministry and Work

His principal work is the six-volume Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, commonly known in Korea as Matthew Henry's Commentary. He began writing it in November 1704, and by the time of his death he had completed the entire Old Testament and, in the New Testament, the Gospels and Acts. The portion from Romans through Revelation was completed after his death by thirteen Nonconformist ministers, who drew on Henry's manuscripts, notes of his sermons taken down by his hearers, and other materials.

The commentary is not a work of textual criticism (the comparison of manuscripts to recover the original text). It is a devotional commentary that expounds Scripture verse by verse and applies it to Christian living and meditation. Henry himself recommended Matthew Poole's Synopsis Criticorum for scholarly analysis. His other writings include A Church in the House, on family worship and household religion; The Communicant's Companion, on preparation for the Lord's Supper; and A Method for Prayer, a guide to prayer.

Influence on the Korean Church

Beginning in the late 2000s, Christian Digest (now CH Books) translated and published the commentary volume by volume. In 2015 these volumes were collected into a twenty-one-volume set, which uses the New Korean Revised Version for the biblical text. Other translations also exist, such as the edition published by the Peniel Bible Institute. Publishers present the commentary as useful not only for sermon preparation but also for lay readers' quiet time and devotional life. His writings on prayer have also been translated into Korean, including Matthew Henry's Prayers (2018) and Matthew Henry's All-Day Prayer (2023).

Assessment

George Whitefield is said to have read through the commentary four times. Charles Spurgeon urged that every minister should read it carefully through at least once. The commentary has long been regarded as the finest English commentary for devotional reading. Because it was written in the early eighteenth century, however, it differs in character from scholarly commentaries that treat the original languages and historical background in depth. In addition, the portion from Romans onward is often quoted as Henry's own work, although it was in fact written by other ministers.