agement we should resist our untowardness, and shake it off, and flee to God by prayer, even force our selves to pray for grace and fitness to pray; and being earnest, and praying in faith, we may be assured that we shall obtain life and grace. L. When the mind is distracted any way, unsettled, unquiet, or out of order, then get alone, and muse, and see what hath brought us to this pass; consider how irksome a state this is, and unprofitable; pray to God, and work with thy own heart, until it be brought in frame. An hour or two alone, shall do a man more good than any other courses or duties. LI. Aim (if it be possible) to spend one afternoon in a week in visiting the neighbour's houses; great use there is of it: their love to me will be much increased; much occasion will be ministered unto me for direction to speak the more fitly in my ministry. I am exceedingly grieved that I am so distracted with journeyings about, that I cannot bring this to pass. LII. I never go abroad, (except I season my mind with good meditations by the way, or read, or confer) but besides the loss of my time, neglecting my ordinary task at home, at my study, I come home weary in body, unsettled in mind, untoward in study, So that I have small cause to rejoice in my goings forth, and I desire God to free me more and more from them: so may I also attend my own neighbours more diligently, which is my great desire; and the contrary hath been and is my great burthen. LIII. I have ever observed that my journeyings and distractions of divers kinds, in these my later times, and by too often preaching in my younger years, I have been held from using means to get knowledge, and grow therein: which I counted ever the just punishment of God upon me, for the neglect of my young time, when I should and might have furnished my self. LIV. When I am in the best estate my self, I preach most zealously and profitably for the people. LV. It breeds an incredible comfort and joy when one hath got power over some such corruption, as in former times hath used to get the mastery over him, This is a good provocatiou to strive hard so to do, and a cause of great thankfulness when it so comes to pass. LVI. If we be at any time much dejected for sin, or otherwise disquieted in our minds, the best way that can be, is to settle and quiet them by private meditation and prayer. Probatum est. LVII. The humble man is the strongest man in the world, and surest to stand, for he goes out of himself for help. The proud man is the weakest man, and surest to fall: for he trusts to his own strength. LVIII. It is good in all the changes of our life, whatsoever they be, to hold our own, and be not changed therewith from our goodness; as Abraham, wheresoever he came (after his calling) still built his altar to the true God, and "called upon his name:" he changed his place, but never changed his God. LIX. Our whole life under the gospel should be nothing but thankfulness and fruitfulness. And if we must judge ourselves for our inward lustre and corruptions of pride, dulness in good duties, earthliness, impatience. If we make not conscience of, and be not humbled for these, God will and doth oft give us up to open sins, that stain and blemish our profession. LX. The more we judge our selves daily, the less we shall have to do on our sick-beds, and when we come to die. Oh, that is an unfit time for this! we should have nothing to do then, but bear our pain wisely, and be ready to die. Therefore, let us be exact in our accounts every day! Reader, having thus entertained thee with the memorials of the famous Mr. John Rogers, I will conclude them with transcribing a remark, which I find in a book published by Mr. Giles Firmin, 1681: "Some excellent men at home conformed, but groaned under the burden; as, I remember, Mr. John Rogers of Dedham, an eminent saint; though he did conform, I never saw him wear a surplice, nor heard him use but a few prayers; and those, I think, he said memoriter, he did not read them; but this he would in his preaching, draw his finger about his throat, and say, 'Let them take me and hang me up, so they will but remove these stumbling-blocks out of the church.' But how many thousands of choice Christians plucked up their stakes here, forsook their dear friends and native country, shut up themselves in ships, (to whom a prison for the time had been more eligible,) went remote into an howling wilderness, there underwent great hardships, water was their common drink, and glad if they might have had but that which they had given at their doors here (many of them): and all this suffering was to avoid your impositions, and that they might dwell in the House of God, and enjoy all things therein, according to his own appointment." CHAPTER XV. BIBLIANDER NOV-ANGLICUS: THE LIFE OF MR. SAMUEL NEWMAN. Nulla Tuas unquam Virtutes nesciet Etas; Non Jus in Laudes Mors habet Atra Tuas. † § 1. NONE of the least services which the pens of ingenious and industrious men have done for the Church of God, hath been in the writing of CONCORDANCES for that miraculous Book, where, Quicquid docetur est Veritas; Quicquid præcipitur, Bonitas; Quicquid promittitur, Felicitas.‡ The use of such concordances is well understood by all that "search the Scriptures," and "think thereby to have eternal life:" but most of all by those Bezaleels, whose business 'tis (as one speaks) "to cut and set in gold the diamonds of the divine word." And therefore there have been many concordances of the Bible since that Origen first led the way for such composures, and divers languages; whereof, it may be, the Maxima et absolutissimæ Concordantia,§ most compleat, have been those that were composed by the two Stephens, Robert the father, and Henry the son; these, as their name signifies a crown, so in this work of theirs, like Demosthenes in his oration, De Corona,] have carried away the garland from all that went before them. Now, in the catalogue of concordances, even from that of R. Isaac Nathans, in Hebrew, to all that have in many other derived languages imitated it, there is none to be compared unto that of Mr. Samuel Newman, in English. Indeed, first Marbeck in a concordance which pointed unto chapters, but not unto verses; then Cotton, who, though no clergyman himself, yet by his more, but not quite perfect concordance and his diligence, obliged all clergy-men; and afterwards Bernard, who yet (no more than his name's sake) "saw not all things;" and then Downham, Wickens, Bennet, and how many more? have "done vertuously;" but thou, Newman, "has excelled them all!" It hath been a just remark, sometimes, made by them, who are so wise as to observe these things, that the Lord Jesus Christ, in his holy providence, hath chose especially to make the • The author of a New-England Concordance. + Thy virtues shall be known to future story: Every thing taught is truth; every thing inculcated is goodness; every thing promised is felicity. | On the Crown. names of those persons honourable, who have laboured in their works, espe cially to put honour upon the sacred Scriptures. And in conformity to that observation, there are dues to be now paid unto the memory of Mr. Samuel Newman, who (that the Scriptures might be preserved for the memory, as well as the understanding of the Christian world,) first compiled in England a more elaborate concordance of the Bible than had ever yet been seen in Europe; and after he came to New-England, made that concordance yet more elaborate, by the addition of not only many texts that were not in the former, but also the marginal readings of all the texts that had them, and by several other contrivances so made the whole more expedite for the use of them that consulted it. § 2. The life of Mr. Samuel Newman commenced with the century now running, at Banbury, where he was born of a family more eminent and more ancient for the profession of the true Protestant religion than most in the realm of England. After his parents, who had more piety and honesty than worldly greatness to signalize them, had bestowed a good education upon him, and after his abode in the university of Oxford had given more perfection to that education, he became "an able minister of the New-Testament." But being under the conscientious dispositions of real Christianity, which was then called Puritanism, the persecution from the prevailing Hierarchy, whereto he therefore became obnoxious, deprived him of liberty for the peaceable exercise of his ministry. Whence it came to pass, that although we might otherwise have termed him a presbyter of one town by ordination, we must now call him an evangelist of many, through persecution; for the Episcopal molestations compelled him to no less than seven removes, and as many places may now contend for the honour of his ministry, as there did for Homer's nativity. But an eighth remove, whereto a weariness of the former seven drove him, shall bury in silence the claims all other places unto him; for after the year 1638, (in which year, with many others, as excellent Christians as any breathing upon earth, he crossed the water to America) he must be styled, “a New-England man." § 3. After Mr. Newman's arrival at New-England, he spent a year and half at Dorchester, five at Weymouth, and nineteen years at Rehoboth, which name he gave unto the town, because his flock, which were before straitned for want of room, now might say, "The Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land;" nor will it be wondered at, if one so well versed in the Scripture, could think of none but a Scripturename, for the place of his habitation. How many straights he afterwards underwent at Rehoboth, in the dark-day, when he was almost the only minister whose invincible patience held out, under the scandalous neglect and contempt of the ministry, which the whole colony of Plymouth was for a while bewitched into, it is best known unto the compassionate Lord, who said unto him, "I know thy works, and how thou hast born and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted." But no doubt the straits did but more effectually recommend Heaven to him as the only Rehoboth; whither he went July 5, in the year of our Lord 1663, when by passing through nine sevens of years he was come to that which we call, "the grand climaterical." Nor let it be forgotten, that in this memorable and miserable year, each of three colonies of New-England was beheaded of the minister from whence they had most of their influences; Norton went from the Massachuset colony, Stone went from Connecticut colony, and Newman from Plymouth colony, within a few weeks of one another. § 4. He was a very lively preacher and a very preaching liver. He loved his church as if it had been his family, and he taught his family as if it had been his church. He was an hard student; and as much toyl and oyl as his learned name's sake Neander employed in illustrations and commentaries upon the old Greek Pagan poets, our Newman bestowed in compiling his concordances of the sacred Scriptures: and the incomparable relish which the sacred Scriptures had with him, while he had them thus under his continual rumination, was as well a mean as a sign of his arriving to an extraordinary measure of that sanctity which the truth produces. But of his family-discipline there was no part more notable than this one, that once a year he kept a solemn day of humiliation with his family; and once a year a day of thanksgiving; and on these days he would not only enquire of his houshold what they had met withal to be humbled or to be thankful for, but also he would recruit the memoirs of his diary; by being denied the sight whereof, our history of him is necessarily creepled with much imperfection. But whether it were entered in that diary or no, there was one thing remarkable which once befel him, worthy of a mention in this history. He was once on a journey home from Boston to Rehoboth: but hearing of a lecture at Dorchester by the way, he thought with himself, "Perhaps I shall not be out of my way if I go so far out of my way as to take that lecture." There he found Mr. Mather at prayer; the prayer being ended, Mr. Mather would not be satisfied except he would preach. Accordingly, after the singing of a psalm, he preached an excellent sermon; and by that sermon a poor sinner, well known in the place, was remarkably converted unto God, and became a serious and eminent Christian. § 5. Hospitality was an essential of his character: and I can tell when he entertained angels not unawares. 'Tis doubtless, a faulty piece of insensibility among too many of the faithful, that they do little consider the guard of holy angels wherewith our Lord Jesus Christ wonderfully supplies us against the mischief and malice of wicked spirits. Those holy angels are, it may be, two hundred and sixty times mentioned in the sacred oracles of Heaven: and we that read so much in those oracles are so earthly-minded, as to take little notice of them. "Tis a marvellous thing that, as one says, the natives of heaven do not grudge to attend upon those who are only the denisons thereof; and that, as the ancient expresses it, we may see the whole heaven at work for our salvation, God the Father sending his Son to redeem us, both the Father and the Son sending their Spirit to guide us, the Father, Son and Spirit sending their angels to minister for us. Now, of the whole angelical ministration concerned for our good, there is, it may be, none more considerable, than the illustrious convoy and conduct which they give unto the spirits of believers, when, being expired, they pass through the territories of the "prince of the power of the air," unto the regions where they must attend until the resurrection. What Elijah had at his translation, "a chariot of angels," does, in some sort, accompany all the saints at their expiration; they are carried by angels unto the feast with Abraham, and angels do then "receive them into everlasting habitations." The faith of this matter has therefore filled the departing souls of many good men with "a joy unspeakable and full of glory;" thus the famous Lord Mornay, when dying, said, “I am taking my flight to heaven; here are angels that stand ready to carry my soul into the bosom of my Saviour;" thus the famous Dr. Holland, when dying, said, "O, thou fiery chariot, which camest down to fetch up Elijah, you angels, that attended the soul of Lazarus, bear me into the bosom of my best beloved!" thus we know of another, that when dying, said, "O that you had your eyes open to see what I see! I see millions of angels; God has appointed them to carry my soul up to heaven, where I shall behold the Lord face to face." And now, let my reader accept another instance of this dying and most lively expectation! Our Newman, towards the conclusion of his days, advanced more and more towards the beginning of his joys; and a joyful as well as a prayerful, watchful, and fruitful temper of soul, observably irradiated him. At length, being yet in health, he preached a sermon on these words in Job xiv. 14, "All the days of my appointed time will I wait, until my change come;" which proved his last. Falling sick hereupon, he did in the afternoon of a following Lord's day ask a deacon of his church to pray with him; and the pious deacon having finished his prayer, this excellent man turned about, saying, "And now, ye angels of the Lord Jesus Christ, come, do your office!" with which words he immediately expired his holy soul into the arms of angels: the spirit of this just man was immediately with the "innumerable company of angels." § 6. The believing sinner then has the "forgiveness of sin" effectually declared and assured unto him, when the holy spirit of God, with a special operation (which is called "The Seal of the Holy Spirit") produces in him a solid, powerful, wonderful, and well-grounded persuasion of it; and when he brings home the pardoning love of God unto the heart with such immediate and irresistible efficacy, as marvellously moves and meits the heart, and overwhelms it with the inexpressible consolations of a par |