The Life of Dr. Thomas Goodwin

Thomas, the eldest son of Richard and Catharine Goodwin, of the family of Collingwood, was born Oct. 5lh, A.D. 1600, at Rolseby, a little village in Norfolk. His parents devoting him to the ministry, gave him a learned as well as a religious education, and placed him in Christ’s College, Cambridge, A.D. 1613; where he continued about six years; and from this College, which flourished in learning, (the number of its students also being then about two hundred,) he removed to Catharine Hall; of which he was chosen a fellow, and a lecturer, A.D. 1 620. Though so young, his unwearied industry and improvement of talents gained him great esteem in the University: yet all this time he “walked in the vanity of his mind,” under the entire influence of ambitious hopes and designs, aiming at applause and reputation, so as to rise, and in any manner to advance himself, by preferment. But God had destined him to higher ends, and was graciously pleased to turn the thoughts of his heart and the course of his life to his own service and glory. Being “born out of due time,” he Was naturally of a weak constitution; and though not likely to live, be was preserved, “when he yet hung upon his mother’s breasts,” as one in whom God meant to manifest his grace in the miraculous conversion of his soul to himself. Sparks of conscience kept his childish years from gross sins, and set him upon the performance of common duties. He had some workings of the Spirit of God at six years of age, weeping for his sins, when he set himself to think of them, and having flashes of joy at the thoughts of divine things; he was also aflected with good motions of love to God and Christ for their love to man, and with grief for sin as displeasing them: but all this goodness of assisted nature reached not to true sanctifying grace; yet he concluded it was grace; for he reasoned with himself, That it was not of nature. At fourteen years of age he received the sacrament, preparing himself as he was able, by examining whether he had grace; all the signs of which, according to Ursin’s catechism, he thought he found in himself: the love of God to such a sinner, and Christ dying for him, affected him greatly; and he had much inward joy and comfort at this his first sacrament, while the usual Ps. ciii. was sung during the administration: his heart was wonderfully cheered, thinking himself sure of heaven, and judging all these workings as infallible tokens of God’s love to him, and of his grace in him; not considering it as mere stronger fits of nature’s working. But hereby God made way for the greater advancement of the power of his grace in him, by shewing him how far he may go, yet deceive himself; grace being a thing surpassing the power of nature; and therefore God suffered him to fall away, not from these good motions, which he could raise at pleasure, but from the practice of them; till his heart began to suspect them as counterfeit. For the next sacrament at Whitsuntide he made great preparations, attending Dr. Sibb’s lectures at Trinity Church, and reading Calvin’s Institutes; some parts of which were very sweet to him, and the solid delivery of truth therein very pleasing: He now was greatly affected at the thoughts of his going to heaven with the holy men in Christ’s College, looking with special joy on Mr. Bentley, (a dear child of God, and fellow of the College,) as one with whom he should live for ever: When ready to receive the sacrament, (being then and for several years after the least in stature of the whole University,) his tutor, Mr. Power, obliged him to desist, and to go out before the whole College; which damped him much, and made him greatly pity himself, that his soul was disappointed of its expectations of being so confirmed, from that

sacrament, as never to fall away again: Hereupon he left off praying, not knowing how to go to God, through discouragement; he also left off going to hear Dr. Sibbs; and no longer studied sound divinity, but gave himself up to such studies as should enable him to preach after the flattering manner of Dr. Senhouse.

It now fell out that Arminianism was set on foot in Holland, and the rest of those provinces; and it continued hottest at the very time our author was wrought upon as above. Being inquisitive, he perceived that their doctrine acknowledged a work of the Spirit, moving and stirring at first; but the freedom of the will, assisted by such aids and helps, was to carry it: This they called grace, sufficient at first in exciting the will to turn to God, and helping it with power to turn when a man would thus set himself to work; affirming withal, that such converts by the freedom of the same will may, and often do, either fall away totally, or repent again: he observed, however, that several holy youths in his College,(whohad made known to him the workings of God on them in humiliation, faith, and change of heart,) continued their profession stedfast without falling off again. Now though the Arminian doctrines suited his own experience, in those natural workings of conscience off and on in religion, yet the example of these godly youths in their constant perseverance, made so strong an impression on him, that in his very heart and judgment he thought those doctrines untrue; and he was fixed under a conviction that his state was neither right nor sound; but yet he could not imagine wherein it failed and was defective. Notwithstanding his thus falling away, he still set himself upon every sacrament, to examine himself anew, to repent, and to turn to God; after that, returning to neglect of prayer, and to his former ways of unregenerate principles and practices, and living in hardness of heart and profaneness. Thus given over to the strength of his lusts, and further than ever from all goodness; despairing of God’s grace to convert him, he resolved to follow the world, and its glory and honor, by all possible means. In his way to a merriment at his former College, on hearing a funeral-bell, one of his companions pressed him to go to the sermon; and though he loathed that kind of preaching that good men used, yet seeing many scholars go in, he thought it was some eminent man, or he would come out again; but his loathing was diminished on finding the preacher to be Dr. Bambridge, a witty man, the first words of whose sermon on Luke xix. 41, 42, (which he had heard once before,) pleased him so well, as to make him very attentive all the “while: The danger of deferring repentance, That every man had his day of grace offered to him, called by our Lord “this thy day,” which being neglected God justly hides from a man’s eyes the bestowing of his peace, (as every man may be made for ever in this world by minding his opportunity,) That the neglect of this time of salvation was followed by impenitency, blindness, obduracy, from which we should ever pray to be kept — all this was vehemently urged, without deferring longer to turn immediately to God, lest that day’s opportunity should be let slip, and lest the day of grace and salvation should be past, and the door of mercy shut for ever. To his companion who pressed him to turn in to hear that sermon, he expressed his hope to be the better for it as long as he lived, and refused to go with the rest to the place of engagement, (being on monday, Oct. 2nd, A.D. 1620,) for he was at once struck down by a mighty power: his grosser sins came in upon him; which he then wondered at, as being unseasonable; and so the working began, and was prosecuted still more and more, higher and higher: in his endeavouring not to think the least thought of his sins, he was passively held under the remembrance of them, asd affected; so as he was rather passive all the while in it, than active; his thoughts being held under, while this work went on.

About two years after, preaching at Ely minster for Dr. Hill, a prebend ary, master of his College; he told the auditory, (meaning himself in the person of another,)” That for a man to be converted, who is ordinarily ignorant of what conversion should be, and of what particular passages it consists; and yet to be guided through all its dark comers and windings,

IV

would be a wonder to think of; as if one were to go to the top of that hint horn, to bring him into all the passages of the minster, in-doors and out, without knowing a jot of the way, and in danger every step of treading awry and falling down:” So it was with him: he knew no more of the work of conversion, than these two general heads; that a man is first troubled for sin, and then comforted by the manifestation of God’s favor to him. Thus the reviewal of his having been so strangely guided in the dark, became an evidence of the truth of the work of grace upon him. In this and everv following intercourse, ho was acted by the Spirit of God upon him, and his thoughts passively held fixed, until each head and sort of thoughts were finished; and then a new thought begun and continued; so that he looked at these as so many conferences God had with him, by way of reproof and conviction. His thoughts were kept fixed and intent on tho consideration of the next immediate causes of those past gross acts of sinning; and abundant discovery was made to him of his inward lusts, and how all sorts of concupiscences had wrought in him; so that he was amazed to see how greedily he had sought the gratification of every lust. Natural conscience is ready to discover gross acts of sin against knowledge; (as in the dark we more readily see the furniture in a room, than flies and motes,) but the new sort of illumination now vouchsafed him, discovered his heart, in all his sinnings, and carried him down to see his inwards, as by the searching of candles, bringing to light the violent eagerness and insatiableness of his lusts. He found, under the dispensation of this new light, the apparent difference of his former experience, wherein he had indeed enlightcnings, and great strivings of the Holy Ghost, both unto and in the performance of holy duties, prayers, hearings, &c. without discovering the sinful inordinacy of his lusts, as the root and ground of all his other sinnings: and those devotions differed also from the present sight of his inward corruption; for this secret thought ran along with them, That God could not but accept such real services as he thought lie performed; so that the opinion of merit prevailed over the commonly received doctrine which taught him otherwise; but the clear sight of his heart-lusts made that notion vanish, for his former thoughts of which he now detested himself: the sinfulness of these lusts he perceived to be chiefly in ungodliness, as their spring; and that having been “a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God,” (according to Jer. ii. 13, “My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water,”) he had acted them in things that were most lawful, but where in even “the plowing of the wicked is sin,” Prov. xxi. 4. Thus the sinfulness of his sins was exceedingly enlarged, through the light accompanying every action which he could cast his remembrance on, or go over in his view; and thus a new horrid vein and course of sin, lying at the bottom of his heart, in the rising and working of all his lusts, was also revealed to him; so that his heart was kept in a continual course of ungodliness, wholly obstructed from acting towards God in any way, or from having any holy or good movings at all. God, “with whom (only and immediately) he had to do,” and not with his own bare single thoughts, having proceeded thus far in “humbling him under his mighty hand,” continued orderly to possess his thoughts with a further progress herein, holding him intent to consider and pierce into the first causes of so much actual sinfulness, and presenting to him, as in answer, (for this was transacted as a conference by

God with him,) the original corruption of his nature, and the inward evil constitution and depravation of all his faculties, and the inclinations and dispositions of his heart unto all evil, and his averseness from all spiritual good and acceptableness to God: he was convinced that in these respects he was flesh; as if this was the definition of man, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh:” And here he stood astonished at the sight and workings of his heart, as if in the heat of summer, by a clear light and piercing eye, he had discerned millions of crawling things in a sink of liquid corruption. When holy Mr. Price heard Mr. Chatterton preach, it was as the shining of the sun of righteousness on a dunghill; but our authors apprehensions of his own heart were, That it was utterly without Christ. He was deeply impressed that all the sins that were ever committed, proceeded from the same root of the corruption of men’s nature; and that if tempted thereto he should himself have committed the same. But what affected him yet more, was a sight and sense that his heart was empty of all good; as the apostle saith, “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing,” whereas in the righteous, “there is some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel:” Thus all his boasted ingenuity and goodness was naught before the goodness of God. He was next led to inquire into, and consider, the original cause at the bottom of all this said sinfulness of heart and life; and from Rom. v. 12, (” By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, in that all have sinned,”) he debated thus with himself: That it was in Adam all sinned; for infants sin not “after the similitude of Adam’s transgression,” (which is cautiously added to shew that they are simply involved in his act of sinning, without actually sinning themselves;) whence we become guilty “by the disobedience of one, whereby we are all made sinners;” for disobedience notes an act of sinning, not a sinful nature or habit. Thus was his spirit so strongly convicted of this great truth, That Ihe guilt VI

of demerit of one mans disobedience had corrupted our nature, that once at midnight he rose, and fell on his knees before God, formally assuming and taking on him, the guilt of Adam’s sin, as truly as any of his own actual sins.

While thus engaged in heart-conclusions about his own sinfulness and the utter corruption of all his actions, and that he was nothing but flesh, as born of flesh; it came in full upon his mind that he should wrong himself to end in such a conclusion, for he thought he had abundance of experience of the workings of true grace, enlightenings, and ravishments of spirit, and of faith in Christ, especially on sacramental occasions. He recollected the course of his spirit until he was thirteen years of age; and how when he was seven years old, a servant of his grandfather, (with whom he lived,) reproved him very vehemently for some sin as leading him to hell-torments; from which time he began to be affected with thoughts of God and religion, though in a childish way; for he began to weep and mourn on fresh convictions of fresh sins; but though for a while abstaining from them, he found himself weak and overcome again: still as he could weep for his sins in secret, when he could weep for nothing else, he concluded it was not hypocrisy; for God noticed Hezekiah’s turning to the wall with tears: and having known the Scriptures from a child, like Timothy, he waxed confident, from the promise of obtaining whatever he asked of the Father in Christ’s name; which he would be sure to do for all he would have of God. Thus renewing his repentance for relapses into sins, he “thought as a child,” That what ever was more than nature must be grace; and that his religious fits and affections, of which he was once destitute, must be the work of God, (who came to him, only as a way-faring man tarries for a night and departs:) but as the Holy Ghost moved on the waters, and sustained the chaos that was created, so he excites good motions in carnal hearts; as in a frost, the ice-drops and snow melt, and the earth becomes slabby, only where the sun shines; yet there is no general thaw: so these lighter impressions, and slighter workings, made him so presumptuous as to think he had more grace, though but a school-boy, than his relations or any of the town-folks he knew. Having been admitted a junior-sophister of his College a year before the usual time of standing, he obtruded himself among the rest of his form, as a communicant, being ashamed to go out of the chapel alone: he had exercised himself on this occasion in self-examinations, and meditations on the sufferings of Christ, which he presumed to apply to himself with much thankfulnes to God. His devotions were the more kindled by the residence of six fellows, who were chief tutors of his College, and called Puritans, because of their strict godliness; (and besides, Cambridge was still lull of talk of the jpowcr of Mr. Perkin’s ministry; and also, Dr. Ames, professor of divinity at Franeker, who wrote “Puritanismus Anglicanus,” had by the urgency of the master, not long before our author’s time, been driven from his fellowship of Christ’s Church and from the University itself; but the worth and holiness of that man was sufficiently known by what he afterwards did in the Low Countries:) These fellows had several godly pupils, whose ways he observed; and he took the opportunity of acquainting himself with Ursin’s renowned summary of the orthodox religion, which was explained to them at their saturday-night’s chamber-prayers. The powerful and steady examples of these, and especially of one of their tutors, Mr. Bentley, (whose innocent, meek, and humble spirit, was proved amidst dangerous fits of apoplexy to which he was subject J had decided him in respect to the Anninian controversy: still the stirring affections he felt at the prayers, and the ravishing elevations of his animal spirits, were but as the morning dew; and at the end of a week he left off private prayer, and all his other

godly exercises; till the return of another sacrament, when he fell to loving the godly tutors and pupils again, so as to continue more constant in duties for a longer time together. The University church of St. Mary vied in all the florid sermons and strains of wit, from which he was withdrawn for eight weeks, accompanying the godly of his College to hear the plain and wholesome preaching of Dr. Sibbs, keeping to private prayer, and getting more acquainted with those holy students; so that he longed for the next sacrament to confirm him by the body and blood of Christ in his new way, and to keep him from falling again in love with scholastic divinity: But on occasion of his tutor’s restraining him from the Lord’s table, (as before mentioned,) he suddenly left off his begun courses, and again constantly attended at St. Mary’s, and returned to his lusts and pleasures, (though kept from gross sinsj and to the ambition of vain-glory and applause; and with a lower kind of enmity against good men and things, he resolved to preach against those at Lynn Regis and their ways, (where the eminent Mr. Price was afterwards minister,) and to take part with the whole town against them, which his wicked spirit, through the studies he had pursued, was too eager and fitted to do: till it came to this, That if God would give him the pleasure he desired, and the preferment he sought, and not damn him at last, he might keep heaven to himself; and as for the powerful preaching of Mr. Rogers, of Dedham, and such others, he deiied their troubling his conscience.

When God by a true work of grace effectually converted him to himself, the vanity of his former religion, and the deficiency of the root of all his de ft 2 votions, was abundantly manifested; and as he reflected on certain passages of scripture, God vouchsafed him a new and further light into the bottom of his heart, to discern, That self-love and self-flattery, acted to the utmost by wordly motives, were but the roots of all these gaudy tulips he counted for grace: thus the flowers of all his former devotions withered to nothing, as in the parable of the stony ground, where the heart wanted moisture to nourish it. He was surrounded by the prospect he lay under of all these heads of sinning, and so shut up as to see no way of escape; and together with the sight of this sinfulness, hell opened its mouth upon him, threatening to destroy and devour him for ever and ever. Though subjugated and bound over to these apprehensions, he was kept however from the soreness of God’s wrath piercing him through and through; and though he had a solid and strong and just conviction of sin abiding on him, as in his unbelief, yet he suffered not the terrors of the Almighty, bound as he was hand and foot, and subacted under the pressure of the guilt of wrath and subjection to the just judgment of the Lord. It was not many hours before God, faithful to his word of promise in not suffering the regenerate to be tempted above what they are able, in his pity made a way for him to escape, that he might be able to bear it; and loving him with the same love as his own dear elect children, suffered not a destroying apprehension to continue long upon him previous to his believing. In Ezek.xvi. the election of grace are compared to a still-born child, covered over with the blood of its birth, its navel uncut, itself unwashed, but cast out as a carcase in the open field, till the compassion of God bid it, with earnest vehemence, “Live, yea live:” So God in an instant was pleased to alter the whole course of his former dispensation towards him, after all that heap amassed from the continual ebullitions of original sin: no eye pitied him or could help him; till he who created the world and the matter of all things by a word, put a new life and spirit into his soul by the whisper of his promise. As is the still yet certain sound of a distant voice; or as the gospel, whispered out of Zion, sounded over the whole earth; so this speaking of God to his soul, though so gentle a sound, made a noise over his whole heart, and filled and possessed all his soul, while God took him aside, and as it were privately said to him, “Do you turn to me, and I will pardon all your sins, though never so many, as I forgave and pardoned my servant Paul; and I will convert you unto my self, as I did Mr. Price,” (a notable convert in Cambridge, and a most striking example of a singular conversion, and the holiest man without exception, and then preacher at King’s Lynn, whither our author’s parents had removed from Rolseby:) These secret whispers and speeches of God to him he related a year-and-half after to Mr. Price, and since

IX

then frequently to others, in declaring this his conversion; for they ever stuck in his mind: examples set before us by God, being written and propounded to us for our hope, (Rom. xv. 4,) and alleged not only to illustrate and explain rules, but to prove and confirm them: That God pardoned such a man in such a condition, is often brought home as implying a secret promise to another man in the same condition. Preaching at Ely two years after, he urged Paul’s instance as an example to win others, (in allusion to his own experience,) and that such examples were flags of mercy to win a company of rebels: that of Paul was full and pertinent to the purpose for which God held it out to him; he considering with himself the amplitude of his pardon, that it involved all sorts of sins of the highest nature, in which Paul had so walked, that he was even upon the narrow brink of sinning against the Holy Ghost: and God had suggested to him, that he would pardon him for all his sins, though never so great, (for boldness, hardness of heart, and heinousness of sinning,) as he had done Paul, and would change his heart, as he had Mr. Price’s. The confirmations whereby he judged the said instructions and suggestions to come immediately from God, were, First, The posture and condition of his spirit when they took him, his heart being at the time hnmoveably fixed in the contrary persuasions of his being in a damned state, without hope of a remedy for the guilt of those sins in which he had continued: and it was when God had set a guard upon him as the prisoner of hell, that the contrary apprehensions and impressions came in so instaneously, and so deeply rooted in his heart, that he remembered them ever since. Secondly, It was a word in season, (which Christ himself was taught to speak to distressed souls, Isa. 1. 4,) like that to Abraham the father of the faithful, which became a Jewish proverb, “In the mount the Lord will (provide or) be seen;” which “Jehovah-jireh” the Jews apply to the immediate remedy God out of pity affords a man in such distress and straits as none but himself can remedy; and it is a word fitted and proper to such an occasion, and peculiar to the case in hand; a word quick and sudden, and interrupting all contrary expectations and fears, as when God spake in haste, calling, “Abraham, Abraham.” Thirdly, What was suggested to him was not an ungrounded fancy, but the pure word of God, the ground ol faith and hope; it was the promise and performance of God’s forgiving Paul the most heinous sins that ever any committed who was saved; Paul confessing himself the chiefest of sinners; and his example being the most pertinent that could be found in the book of God. Fourthly, He was powerfully persuaded that the said suggestions were of God, from the fulfilment of God’s words to him; for, 1st, He felt all the powers of his soul in an instant clean altered, and changed in the disposition of them; as the discourses of our English divines set forth the manner of conversion in the effects of it. 2ndly, He found the works of the devil dissolved in his heart, from that time, in an eminent manner; his understanding enlightened; his will melted and softened; the stone made flesh, disposed to receive and to turn to God: and, 3dly, He found his spirit cloathed with a new nature, inclining him to good instead of evil. It was not merely such good motions from the Spirit of God, as formerly incited him to flushings and streamings of transitory affections, exciting joy in his animal spirits, when he applied himself to a holy duty; but he found a new in-dwelling or habitual principle of opposition to in-dwelling sin, and a hatred of it; so that he concluded with himself, That this new workmanship wrought in him, was of the same

kind, as to matter of holiness, with that image of God, expressed in Eph. iv. 24, and Col. iii. 10. Thus he was at first comforted in seeing and finding two contrary principles; the Spirit as truly lusting against the flesh, as the flesh against the Spirit; and ha found apparent the difference of the opposition of conscience only against a lust, and that of the Spirit or new work of grace in the heart; (the Spirit not contradicting and checking, but making a real natural opposition as of fire to water;) and this difference he found not by reading or hearingit spoken of; but like Augustin, he perceived it of himself, and wondered at it: his was a combat proper and peculiar to the regenerate; not found in God or Christ who are fulness of holiness, or in devils who are all sin, or in angels who are entirely holy, or in sinners who have no grace in them to fight with their corruptions in such a manner. 4thly, The consequence of what took place in his heart was, an actual turning from all known sins, and an entertaining the truth of all the principles of godliness, as far as he received them from the word of God, and the best examples of godly men with whom he lived. Assisted by God’s direction, he looked back on his sinful state, and took a summary survey of his chief sins and lusts; which he found to be, love of pleasure more than of God, corrupt ends, and especially such vain -glorious academic praise as he sought with his whole soul: and God was pleased to direct him to take up, as his rule of turning to him, a sincere aim at his glory, as the scope of all his inward thoughts, words, actions, designs, and ends whatsoever; assisting him to consider severally all the sorts of actions he had gone through in his life, and to take them asunder, especially the most principal, in particulars, every one in order. And here in the first place he compared the aim and drift of his studies, (upon svhich he had spent his whole time,) with what served most to the glory of God in the work of the ministry: this overturned all the dearest hopes and piojects and designs of his heart; for

XI

the interests of these were more than life to him. The University was addicted to a vain-glorious eloquence, wherein the wits strove to exceed one another; and that which he most of all affected in his foolish fancy, was to have preached like Dr. Senhouse, of St. John’s, (afterwards made bishop,) a few of whose sermons were in print, being the greatest farrago of all sorts of flowers, similitudes, or elegancies of art, found in any of the fathers, poets, or historians: not that he expected to attain all the accomplishments wherein this man abounded, but he studied his collections so as to imitate him all he could, when he should come to preach. But this way of his soon received a fatal wound from Dr. Preston’s opposition to it, as vain and nnedifying; whose catechetical sermons in the chapel of that College he happened while unregenerate to hear, though unmoved thereby to alter his studies; nor could all the world, or angels, or men, have moved him; but on this turning to God, and setting up God’s glory as the resolved end of all his actions and ways, he soon discovered the unprofitableness of such a design, and resolved to leave all, and to preach nothing but sound wholesome words; in which principle and practice he continued for three-score years, without once attempting to introduce any of his own withered flowers, that he had gathered, and had valued more than diamonds; nor did these even tempt him or offer them selves to his memory; but he preached what was most edifying, either for conversion of souls, or for bringing them up to eternal life. Thus his master-lust was mortified. There was nothing of constraint or force in this work of God on his soul, but he was carried on with the most willing and ready mind; and what he did was what he chose to do. He parted with his sins, (once so dear to him as the apple of his eye, yea as his life,) with the greatest freedom, resolving never to return to them any more, and deliberately counting the cost of so great a change. Though he considered the opinion the world had of the true convert, and sincere to God, who walked in such ways of purity and holiness, yet it hindered him not at all: he swam and broke through the weeds that entangled him in these waters, with as much ease as Samson did his withs; for he was made a vassal and perfect captive to another binding, (as when Paul went bound in the Spirit up to Jerusalem,) and he said within himself of all his old companions, “What do ye breaking my heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but to give up my life, so as I may serve God with jov in those ways.” He looked not back, (as Lot’s wife,) but with his whole soul’s desire to return no more to the enjoyment of any lust, all his childish imaginations of preferment were cast down, and fell like bubbles vanishing into air: rvrvv strong hold and high thing, (such as scholars makr the card of thciv li!> to sail by.) was rjiptivatrd to thr obedience of Christ, 2 Cor. x. 5. He was brought to be content with the meanest condition all his days, so he might fulfil ever so mean a course of life with uprightness and sincerity towards God. He took his leave for ever of all ecclesiastical preferments; and though afterwards president of Magdalen College in Oxford, the motive of his heart was the fair opportunity of his ministry doing good in the University, and that he might bring in godly young men, fellows and students, to serve God in the ministry in after-times; and he accordingly inquired and sought after such jewels, and was grieved when he failed of his aim: and this principle he brought with him from his first sttreon in Catharine Hall, Cambridge, (where he was instrumental in Dr. Sibb’s election to the mastership of that College, and in Dr. Arrowsmith, Mr. Pen of

Northamp tonshire, &c. becoming fellows;) and he was confirmed therein, in that after seven years absence from Cambridge, on his return from Holland he received, almost monthly, for some years, serious and hearty acknowldgments from several young men, who had the light of their conversion by his ministry at Cambridge. This encouraged him to return again to a University; and his success at Oxford is left to Christ till the latter day. But the most eminent property of his said conversion was, That the glory of the great GOD was set up in his heart, as the square and rule of each and every particular practice both of faith and godliness; and of all signs of sincerity, there neither is nor can be any clearer than this witness, “He that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him,” (John vii. 18;) Christ speaks this of himself, out of his own experience of what He did, who is the truth itself; as the glory of God is God Himself, who doth all things for Himself: and therefore he that thus acteth for God predominantly above all other ends, must necessarily be judged truly righteous. None can extract out of man’s heart what is not in it; and there is not the least spark of regard for the glory of God, as the chief end, in the heart of the unregenerate: sparks will come from a flint struck against iron or steel; but not from a piece of ice, for there are none in it, nor the least disposition towards any. True conversion is, when upon the change of a man’s last end, there is a change made upon the whole man and all the powers of his soul; if a man changes but to one particular end, the effect is answerably limited and partial; as when a prodigal thus becomes sparing and covetous, the only effect is, a care to keep his money and not spend it lavishly: but godliness, respecting the glory of God above all, hath a general and universal end, extending its influence upon all things. Hence our author’s task was to survey, and go over, every particular kind of act, both as to what he must forbear, and for what end, and with what heart; as also to observe each particular practice of godliness, which he had for a long time wretchedly neglected: so that he fixed on this summary of his whole life, That he had made lusts and pleasures his only end, and done nothing with aims at God’s glory; and therefore he would begin his turning to God by making God’s glory the measure of all for the time to come.

The above account of the work of the Holy Ghost on our author’s soul, in his own conversion to God, was designed to give, from his own experience, (as himself said,) a testimony of the difference between the common grace by some thought sufficient, and special saving grace, which is alone sufficient, and which always invincibly and effectually prevails, as it did in him, enduring through a long life and course of various temptations and trials unto the end. In the first enlightenings and workings of conscience, he experienced how far common grace might go, and yet fail at last so as utterly to wither and decay: in the other lasting work on his soul, which was victorious to eternity, he felt an extraordinary divine power changing it, and entirely subduing it to God. In reading the acts of the Synod of Dort, and reviewing the first workings of common grace in him, he found them consistent with the Arminian opinions; but on comparing his own experiences of efficacious grace with the doctrines of the orthodox protestant divines, he found the one perfectly to agree with the other. A man cannot be disputed out of such an inward sense of things as established him in the truths of the gospel and possessed him with a due tempered warmth and zeal to assert and vindicate them with such arguments and reasons, as the truth is never destitute of, to resist gainsayers. It was however many years before he came to have a clear know ledge of the gospel, and a full view of Christ by faith, with joy and peace in believing. “A blessed age this, said he in his latter years; now the time of faith is come; and faith is principally insisted on unto salvation: in my younger years we heard little more of Christ, than as merely mentioned in the ministry, and in printed books: I was diverted from Christ for several years, to search only into the signs of grace in me: it was almost seven years ere I was taken off to live by faith on Christ, and on God’s free love, which are alike the objects of faith.” For so long a time were his thoughts intent on the conviction God had wrought in him of the heinousness of sin, of his own sinful and miserable state by nature, of the difference between the workings of natural conscience though enlightened, and the motions of a holy soul changed and acted by the Spirit in an effectual work of peculiar saving grace: accordingly he kept a constant diary of observations of the case and posture of his mind and heart towards God, with suitable pious and pathetic meditations: His sermons being the result of these, had a great deal of spiritual heat in them, and were blessed by God to the conviction and conversion of many young scholars who flocked to his ministry. He maintained great intimacy of Christian friendship with Mr. Price, of Lynn, as the greatest man for experimental acquaintance with Christ he ever met with; and as he poured into his bosom his spiritual complaints, so his conference with him, by letter and discourse, was blessed by God to lead him into the spirit of the gospel, to live by faith in Christ, deriving from him life and strength, for sanctification and all comfort and joy through believing. In answer to Mr. Price, (who had poured the balm of the gospel into his wounded soul, to its healing and comfort,) he thus wrote, “I am come to this pass now, that signs will do me no good alone; I have trusted too much to habitual grace for assurance of justification: I tell you Christ is worth all, to whom coming my weary soul finds that rest, which in all its unquiet motions it could not find elsewhere.” And his own account of this work of faith is thus:” It fell out that soon after my being humbled for sin, the doctrine of justification through Christ by faith came into my thoughts; but my spirit was turned

off from it by this prejudice, That it had been the deceit of carnal men for continuing in their sins, and so 1 might be deceived in that way and course, remembering how I had been deceived in believing on Christ crucified with joy and ravishment in my carnal state: which from time to time was a hinderance to me from going to Christ: and I was pitched on this great principle, That if I found myself sanctified, (as I certainly did,) I then was justified; the one being only the evidence of the other: and thus my mind was set on examining the inherent work wrought in me by the Spirit; and I pursued after mortification of lusts, and inward holiness, thinking thus to have the comfort of my justification, yet being thus kept from going to Christ actually, though dealing with God and his mercy in Christ, as having done all on his part to be done in redeeming and reconciling us: so that I dealt immediately with God and his pure mercv and free grace. But it fell strongly into my mind, that there was a necessity of Christ’s righteousness to justify me, as well as of his grace which had sanctified me; and God took this course to convince me of it, and to set me a work about it: He used the very conviction I had of original sin from Adam, in its two branches, in the guilt of Adam’s actual transgression imputed to me, and the corruption of my nature thence derived: I had had a mighty and large conviction and deep sense of these; and that all lusts were sins; which greatly helped me clearly to take in the absolute necessity of justification by Christ’s righteousness, and to glory in it, discerning the perfect difference of it from sanctification: I began to reflect, That Christ, was the head for salvation, as Adam had been for sin and condemnation; and that therefore as there were two brandies of sin and condemnation derived to me from Adam; (the one an imputation of his fact to me, the other a violent and universal corruption of nature inherent in me;) just so it must be in Christ’s salvation of me: and hence I must have an imputation of his righteousness for justiiication, as well as a holy nature derived from him for sanctih’cation; the former being perfect, the latter not: The notion of this did mightily and experiment ally enlighten me.” This experience of the refreshing comforts of the knowledge of Christ and free justification by his righteousness alone, made him now zealous of preaching for the consolation of afflicted consciences, and not for conviction and terror as heretofore: so Dr. Sibbs once told him, That if ever he would do good, he must preach the gospel and the free grace of God in Christ Jesus. The only copy of his sermons on the glory of the gospel, called his Primitiee Evanylica, or Evangelical First-fruits, was thus remarkably preserved: The portmanteau in which they were, was cut off from his horse by a thief in the evening, just against St. Andrew’s church-yard in Holborn; the clerk or sexton, coining on the Lord’s day morning to ring the bell, found a bundle of papers tied up with a string, at the foot of a great tree, in which were some acquittances of a Cambridge bookseller, who accompanied him to London; which led to the discovery.

He was chosen A. D. 1628, to preach the lecture to the town of Cambridge, at Trinity Church. Dr. Buckridge, Bishop of Ely, made some difficulty at first about admitting him to it, unless he would solemnly promise, in pursuance of the King’s proclamation, not to preach about any controverted points in divinity: but as the most essential articles of the Christian faith were controverted by one or other, and as such a promise would scarce leave him any subject to preach on, he alleged, That it was not his Majesty’s intention to inhibit him or any other from preaching against the gross errors of Popery. He continued lecturer till A. D. 1634, when dissatisfied in his conscience with the laws of conformity, he left the University and his preferments. Asheacted herein with all sincerity, according to the light given him, and the full persuasion of his own mind, apart from all worldly motives which would have swayed him contrariwise; so he expressed himself with great joy of faith and thankfulness and praise lor the faithful love of Jesus Christ to him, in the performance of the promise in Luke xviii. 29, 30. Having cheerfully parted with all for Christ, he was abundantly compensated not only in the comforts and joy of his love, (which are incomparably above all other things,) but in that love and esteem of good men which God gave him, who alone also made his ministry acceptable and successful to the conversion and comfort of many souls. He married Elizabeth, daughter of alderman Prescott, A.D. 1638; of so sweet a temper, lively wit, and sincere piety, as endeared her to all who knew her: her two sisters were married, one to Sir William Leman, and the other to Sir Nicholas Crisp: He had by her an only daughter, Elizabeth, (married to Mr. John Mason, acitizen of London,) who was a living image of her parents, in natural endowment of mind, as well as in grace and piety; she lost her mother when about ten years of age, and died two years before her father. The persecution growing hot in England, our author resolved on removing into some foreign country, where he might exercise his ministry and enjoy Christ’s ordinances, agreeably to his conscience. Accordingly he went over into Holland, A. D. 1639, and settling at last at Arnheim, was pastor of the English Church in that city: while there some differences arising in the English Church at Rotterdam, he and the elders of the Church of Arnheim went thither; and God was pleased by their brotherly advice and counsel to compose the difference, and to re-establish the disturbed peace of that Church. On returning to England and becoming pastor of a Church in London, he was appointed, by an ordinance of Parliament, A. D. 1643, a member of the venerable Assembly of divines at Westminster. He took a brief account of every day’s debates about church-government and discipline which arose in that Synod; of which his son possessed about fourteen volumes of his manuscripts: his way of arguing was with such modesty and Christian meekness, as procured the esteem of them who differed from him and the other dissenting brethren in his judgment. He had an invitation, A. D. 1647, from the Rev. John Cotton, (in whom grace and learning were so happily conjoined,) and others in new England, to come over to them; to which he was so much inclined, that he had put a great part of his library on ship-board; but he was over-persuaded by some, to whose counsel and advice he paid a great deference. He was married again, A. D. 1649, to Mary, a descendant of the ancient family of the Hammonds, in Shropshire; whose ancestor was an officer in the army of William, Duke of Normandy, when he invaded England, A. D. 1066. Though not seventeen years of age, she had the gravity and prudence of a matron: her conjugal

affection, her tender care, her wise administration of the affairs of her family, the goodness of her disposition, and above all her grace and piety, left an honorable remembrance of her. By her he had two sons, (Thomas, who compiled this memoir of his father; and Richard, who died in a voyage to the East Indies, where he was sent as one of the Company’s factors a year after his father’s death,) and also two daughters who died in their infancy. In the same yrar of his second marriage he was admitted President of Magdalen College in Oxford, where his zeal to promote piety and learning, his candour, his ingenuity, his catholic charity for all good men of every persuasion, won the hearts of those who were most averse to him. In disposing of any place of preferment, he was not biassed by party-affection but by goodness and merit. Messrs. Brown and Byfield, and Dr. Fairfax, who continued fellows many years after he left the College, retained an affection and esteem for him, ever speaking of him with most honourable mention. Several persons of piety and learning belonged to the church of which he was pastor; as Messrs. Thankful Owen, President of St. John’s; Francis Hovel, Master of Jesus College; Theophilus Gale; Stephen Charnock; Blower, Barron, Terry, Lowman; and others. On the revolution, A. D. 1660, he resigned his Presidentship to Dr. Oliver, and removed to London, where he was pastor of the same church which he had gathered in Oxford, a great part of the members of it following him to that city. In the faithful discharge of this office and labour in the Lord Jesus Christ he continued till his death.

It was at this time he lived a retired life spent in prayer, reading, and meditation. He read much; and the authors he valued and studied, were Augustin, Calvin, Musculus, Zanchius, Paroeus, Waloous, Gomarus, Attingius, and Amesius; among the school-men, Suarez and Esthius; but the scriptures were his chiefest study, (in which he was assisted by the best collection of commentators;) and as they are an inexhaustible treasury of divine knowledge, so by an eager search into and comparing of them, he discovered those truths which are not to be found in other authors. His mind soared with greatest delight, (not of merely speculative pleasure,) in the love and free-grace of God, and the excellencies and glories of Christ; which were the life and food of his soul; and as his heart was affected with them, he wrote them with a spiritual warmth better felt than expressed. Though he read much,yethe was more intense in thinking; whereby he made himself master of the subject of his discourse. In that deplorable calamity of the dreadful fire of London, A.D. 1666, reducing a considerable part of the city to ashes, he lost about half his library, to the value of five hundred pounds: that part of it however which was lodged very near where the fire began, which he accounted irrecoverably lost, was by the diligence of his friend, Mr. Moses Lowman, preserved from the flame with extreme hazard; while the other part, which he thought might have been timely secured, being lodged at a distance in Bread-street, was all burnt through the negligence of the persons sent to take care of them: God thus struck him in a very sensible part; for he loved his library too well: yet he blessed God that the rebuke of his affliction fell not on his divinity -books, but on those of human learning. As the exercise of faith, and of its fruits, relieved him; he hereupon meditated and wrote a discourse of “Patience and its perfect work,” printed soon after. A fever seized him in Feb. 1679, putting an end to his life in a few davs; in all the violence of which he discoursed with that strength of faith, that assurance of Christ’s love, that holy admiration of free-grace, that joy in believing, and with such thanksgivings and praises, as extremely moved and affected all that heard him. Mr. Collins, (then pastor of the same church of which he had formerly been pastor, and with the reluctant consent of which he removed to Oxford, A.D. 1649,) praying earnestly for him, “That God would return into his bosom all those comforts which he had by his ministry of free-grace poured into so many distressed souls, “he felt the prayer answered in the abundant comforts and joys with which he was filled.” I am going said he, to the Three Persons which whom I have had communion; they have taken me, I did not take them: I shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye: I shall be rid of all my lusts and corruptions, which I could not be here; these croaking toads will fall off in a moment.” On mentioning those great examples of faith in Heb. xi. he said, “All these died in faith: I could not have imagined I should ever have had such a measure of faith in this hour; no, I could never have imagined it: My bow abides in strength: Is Christ divided? no: I have the whole of his righteousness; I am found in him, not in my own righteousness, which is of the law, but in the righteousness which is of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, who loved me and gave himself for me: Christ cannot love me more than he doth; I think I cannot love him more than I do: I am swallowed up in God.” He thus exhorted his two sons to value the privilege of the Covenant:” It hath taken hold of me: my mother was a holy woman, she spake nothing diminishing of it: it is a privilege which cannot

be valued enough, nor be purchased with a great sum of money, (Acts xxii. 28:) Be careful of provoking God to reject you: Now I shall be ever with the Lord.” With such assurance of faith, and such fulnesss of joy, his soul left this world, and went to see and enjoy the reality of that blessed state of glory, which in a discourse on that subject he had so well demonstrated. He died in the eightieth year of his age.

The following is an abstract taken from the testimony of Messrs. Thankful Owen and James Barren, to this great person’s eminent fitness for, and happy performance of such an undertaking as was his Exposition on the Epistle to the Ephesians, which he was chosen to interpret after his return to England:” The special light God so clearly gave him in the mysteries of corrupt nature and of the gospel, shone through all his works, and particulary this Comment; which could be best understood by one, who had the Apostle’s sense, (that Guslua Spirit ualis Judicii,) temptations, and experience; for our author was a man of inward conflicts and of outward sufferings. Cheery of the light he attained, he lived over the truths he knew, even to the hazard of what was most dear to him; and thus he abounded as he knew, according to John vii. 17, Matt. xiii. 12. His genius dived into the bottom, and waded through the depths of the points treated of; which he ‘studied down,’ as lie used to say; consulting all the weightiest authors on these subjects, and valuing every rav of light, in aid of the fresh lustre added thereto by his own experience; besides the advantages he had from the converse of most eminent Christians, those living and walking bibles: he thus became peculiarly qualified to treat also of cases of conscience, and practical points. Being a man mighty in prayer to that God, with whom he had high and intimate communion; and addicted to retirement and deep contemplation, he filled his head and heart with spiritual notions, as the sand of the sea. He delighted in searching into points neglected by others, and in opening difficult texts; and he discovered ‘the depths of Satan,’ by anatomizing ’ the old man ’ in himself and others. He was much exercised in the controversies of his day; and having an insight into the covenant of grace, he was a witness to the Greek Fathers’ ignorance of that grace, and the consequent rise of Pelagian and other errors in the church, as Jansenius obseives: But before undertaking such a province, he had gone over the grand points of religion before intelligent auditories, who helped to draw out his gifts. Touching his Expositions, we know no man so happy in pitching on the true, genuine, and full scope of a text; and he delighted to exhibit the most comprehensive sense of the Holy Ghost, in the various references and aspects one passage had upon others. By ’ comparing spiritual things with spiritual,’ he was enabled to open dark scriptures by means of such as were less obscure; fetching light, as in optics, by various positions of the glass; bringing gospel-truths from types and prophecies, and reflecting back light again on these shadows from gospel-truths: thus small rays concentrated by him, emitted a glorious light, while he left no difficulty unassailed and unvanquished: He valued the least iota, and showed what momentous things depended on the least of God’s words. His observations being clear, genuine, and natural, as well as scriptural, the highest controverted points and sublimest gospel mysteries, were brought down by him in a plain and familiar way, without the affectation of hard and scholastic terms; for what had first been stated in his own heart, he made easy to the sense and experience of others. While he brings not scripture to his learning, there is a variety of learning included under what he brings to bear upon scripture; and a vein of

XX

strong spiritual reason, carrying its own light and evidence with it, runs through all his discourses. In breaking open the mines of the glorious grace of God and the unsearchable riches of Christ, according to the divine decrees, (into which the further we search the greater treasures we find, Pleiiius Responsura Fodienti,) none could more clearly resolve the plot of salvation into pure grace. His discourses, being so evangelical, cany the soul on to a higher holiness from a higher and nobler spring of action than was found in man before the fall: and when he steps out of the beaten track, and beyond the elevation of writers in general, he doth it with regard to ’ the analogy of faith,’ and to a just veneration for the reformed religion; wondering greatly at the daring attempts of persons unskilful in the word of righteousness, against those great and momentous points of our religion, which are the glory of our reformation, and which will prove ’ gold, silver, precious stones,’ when their * wood, hay, and stubble ’ will be burnt up. On the whole, we consider him as a person raised up by God for such eminent service in his age, as Augustin and others were in their times: and therefore we are not a little astonished at the unworthiness of some in this age, who use all their arts and interest to suppress the light of this and other great luminaries of the Church, and to eclipse stars of the first magnitude, for such little niceties and nothings as the best and purest times were unacquainted with. We need add no more, than that the writings of such an author cannot but carry with them his own signature, he having drawn to the life the picture of his own heart by his own hand.”

AN