man in his writings does affirm, "I have heard this very thing, told more than once, with no small confidence concerning the Puritans."

Reader, thou shalt now see what sort of men they were: Zion is not a city of fools. As Ignatius, in his famous epistles to the Trallians, mentioning their pastor, Polybius, reports him, “A man of so good and just a reputation, that the very Atheists did stand in fear of him," I hope our POLYBIUS, will afford many deserving such a character.

It was mentioned as the business and blessedness of John Baptist, "To turn the hearts of the fathers to the children." After a deal of more ado about the sence of the passage thus translated, I contented my self with another translation, "to turn the hearts of the fathers WITH the children;" because I find the preposition, 'et, as well as the præfix 2, in Mal. iv. 6, whence the passage is taken, to be rendred with, rather than to. The sence therefore I took to be, that John should convert both old and young. But further thought hath offered unto me a further gloss upon it: "to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children," is to turn the children by putting the hearts of the fathers into them; to give them such hearts as were in Abraham, and others of their famous and faithful fathers.

Reader, the book now in thy hands is to manage the design of a John Baptist, and convey the hearts of the fathers unto the children.

Archilocus being desirous to give prevailing and effectual advice unto Lycambes, by an elegant Prosopopaia, brought in his dead father, as giving the advice he was now writing, and as it were put his pen into his father's hands. Cicero being to read a lecture of temperance and modesty unto Clodia, raised up her father Appius Caius from the grave, and in his name delivered his directions. And now by introducing the fathers of New-England, without the least fiction, or figure of rhetorick, I hope the plain history of their lives will be a powerful way of propounding their fatherly counsels to their posterity. A stroke with the hand of a dead man, has before now been a remedy for a malady not easily remedied.

THE THIRD BOOK.

DE VIRIS ILLUSTRIBUS.

IN FOUR PARTS.

CONTAINING

THE LIVES OF NEAR FIFTY DIVINES,

CONSIDERABLE IN THE CHURCHES OF NEW-ENGLAND.

Credunt de nobis quæ non probantur, et nolunt inquiri, ne probentur non esse, quæ malunt credidisse.-TERT. APOL.

HAVING entertained my readers with a more imperfect catalogue “Of many persons whose memories deserve to be embalmed in a civil history;" I must so far consider, that it is an ecclesiastical history which I have undertaken, as to hasten unto a fuller and larger account of those persons who have been the ministers of the gospel, that fed the "flocks in the wilderness;" and, indeed, New-England having been in some sort an ecclesiastical country above any in this world, those men that have here appeared most considerable in an ecclesiastical capacity, may most reasonably challenge the most consideration in our history.

Take then a catalogue of New-England's first ministers, who, though they did not generally affect the exercise of church-government, as confined unto classes, yet shall give me leave to use the name of classes in my mar shalling of them.

THE FIRST CLASSIS.

It shall be of such as were in the actual exercise of their ministry when they left England, and were the instruments of bringing the gospel into this wilderness, and of settling churches here according to the order of the gospel.

They [the people of Rome] believe of us [Christians] things that are not proved, and the truth of which they are reluctant to test, lest they should find that to be false which they love to believe.

Behold, one seven more than seven decads of persons, who, being devoted unto the sacred ministry of our Lord, were the first that enlightened the dark regions of America with their ministry! Know, reader, that it was by a particular diversion given by the hand of Heaven unto the intentions of that great man, Dr. William Ames, that we don't now find his name among the first in the catalogue of our New-English worthies. One of the most eminent and judicious persons that ever lived in this world, was intentionally a New-England man, though not eventually, when that profound, that sublime, that subtil, that irrefragable,—yea, that angelical doctor, was designing to transport himself into New-England; but he was hindred by that Providence which afterwards permitted his widow, his children, and his library, to be translated hither. And now, "our fathers, where are they? These prophets, have they lived for ever?" "Twas the charge of the Almighty to other Kings, "Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm?" But the King of Terrors, pleading an exemption from that charge, has now touched every one of these holy men; however, all the harm it has done unto them, has been to carry them from this present evil world unto the "spirits of just men made perfect." I may now write upon all these old ministers of New-England the epitaph which the apostle hath left upon the priests of the Old Testament, "These were not suffered to continue, by reason of death;" adding the clause which he hath left upon the patriarchs of that Testament, "These all died in faith." Wherefore we pass on to

THE SECOND CLASSIS.

It shall be of young scholars, whose education for their designed ministry

not being finished, yet came over from England with their friends, and had their education perfected in this country, before the College was come unto maturity enough to bestow its laurels.

Of these two sevens, almost all are gone, where to be is, by far, the best of all. But these were not come to an age for service to the church of God, before the wisdom, and prudence of the New-Englanders did remarkably signifie it self, in the founding of a COLLEGE, from whence the most of their congregations were afterwards supplied; "a river, the streams whereof made glad the city of God." From that hour Old England had more ministers from New, than our New-England had since then from Old; nevertheless after a cessation of ministers coming hither from Europe, for twenty years together, we had another set of them, "coming over to help us;" wherefore take yet the names of two sevens more.

We will now proceed unto

THE THIRD CLASSIS.

It shall be of such ministers as came over to New-England after the re-establishment of the Episcopal-church-government in England, and the persecution which then hurricanoed such as were non-conformists unto that establishment.

It is well known that, quickly after the revival of the English Hierarchy, those whose consciences did not allow them to worship God, in some ways and modes then by law established, were pursued with a violence which doubtless many thousands of those whom the Church of England, in its national constitution, acknowledges for her sons, were so far from approving or assisting, that they abhorred it. What spirit acted the party that raised this persecution, one may guess from a passage which I find in a book of Mr. Giles Firmius. A lady assured him that she, signifying unto a parliament-man her dislike of the "act of uniformity," when they were about it, and saying, "I see you are laying a snare in the gate," he replied, "Ay, if we can find any way to catch the rogues, we will have them!" It is well known that near five-and-twenty hundred faithful ministers of the Gospel were now silenced in one black day, because they could not com

ply with some things, by themselves counted sinful, but by the imposers confessed indifferent. And it is affirmed that, by a modest calculation, this persecution procured the untimely death of three thousand non-conformists, and the ruine of threescore thousand families, within five-and-twenty years. Many retired into New-England, that they might have a little rest at noon, with the flocks of our Lord in this wilderness; but setting aside some eminent persons of a New-English original, which were driven back out of Europe into their own country again, by that storm, these few were the most of the ministers, that fled hither from it. I will not presume to give the reasons why no more; but observing a glorious providence of the Lord Jesus Christ in moving the stars to shine where they were most wanted, I will conclude, lamenting the disaster of New-England, in the interruption which a particular providence of Heaven gave unto the designs of that incomparable person Dr. John Owen, who had gone so far as to ship him self, with intents to have taken this country in his way to his eternal rest: it must have been our singular advantage and ornament, if we had thus enjoyed among us one of the greatest men that this last age produced.

REMARKS,

ESPECIALLY UPON THE FIRST CLASS, IN OUR CATALOGUE OF MINISTERS.

I. All, or most, of the ministers that make up our two first classes, came over from England within the two first lustres of years, after the first settlement of the country. After the year 1640, that part of the Church of England which took up arms in the old cause of the "long Parliament," and which, among all its parliament-men-commanders, lord-lieutenants, major-generals, and sea-captains-had scarce any but conformists; I say, that part of the Church of England, knowing the Puritans to be generally inclinable unto those principles of such writers as Bilson and Hooker, whereupon the Parliament then acted; and seeing them to be generally of the truest English spirit, for the preservation of the English liberties and properties, for which the Parliament then declared, (although there were some non-conformists in the King's army also:) it was found necessary to have the assistance of that considerable people. Whereupon ensued such a change of times, that instead of Old England's driving its best people into New, it was it self turned into New. The body of the Parliament and its friends, which were conformists in the beginning of that miserable war, before the war was ended, became such as those old non-conformists, whose union with them in political interests produced an union in religious. The Romanizing Laudians miscarried in their enterprize; the Anglicane church could not be carried over to the Gallicane. This was not the first instance of a shipwreck befalling a vessel bound for Rome; nor will it be the last: a vessel bound such a voyage must be shipwrecked, though St. Paul himself were aboard.