gles, there was the help of council called in; but every council fetched from the neighbourhood was thought prejudiced; for which cause, at last, a council was desired from the churches about Boston, in the Massachusets Bay, whose messengers took the pains thus to travel more than an hundred miles for the pacification of these animosities; and a sort of pacification was thereby attained; but yet not without the dismission and removal of many vertuous people further up the river; whereby some other churches came to be gathered, which are now famous in our Israel. "Tis not easy to comprehend, and I wish no such faithful servant of God may experience it; how much the spirit of Mr. Stone, was worn by the continual dropping of this contention.-Gutta cavat Lapidem.* But the dust of mortality being thrown upon those good men, they have not only left stinging one another, but also they are together hived with unjarring love in the land that flows with what is better than milk and honey. As for Mr. Stone, if it were metaphorically true (what they proverbially said) of Beza, that "he had no gall," the physicians that opened him after his death found it literally true in this worthy man.

9. In his church-discipline, he was, perhaps, the exactest of that which we call Congregational, and being asked once to give a description of the Congregational church-government, he replied, "It was a speaking Aristocracy in the face of a silent Democracy."

§ 10. He was an extraordinary person at an argument; and as clear and smart a disputant as most that ever lived in the world. Hence, when any scholar came to him with any question, it was his custom to bid him take which part the quærist himself pleased, either positive or negative, and he would most argumentatively dispute against him; whereby having disputed one another into the narrow of the case, he would then give the enquirer the most judicious and satisfying determination of his problem that could be imagined. Yea, what Cicero says of one, might almost be said of him, Nullam unquam in Disputationibus rem defendit, quam non probarit; nullum oppugnavit, quem non everterit.†

§ 11. The world has not been entertained with many of his composures. But certain strokes of Mr. Hudson and Mr. Cowdry fetched one spark out of this well compacted Stone; which was, "A Discourse about the Logical Notion of a Congregational Church," wherein some thought that, as a Stone from the sling of David, he has mortally wounded the head of that Goliah, a national political church. At least, he made an essay to do what was done by the Stone of Bohan, setting the bounds between church and church, as that between tribe and tribe.

Moreover, I find in a book which a late author hath written on Freegrace, this passage: "Might the world be so happy as to see a very elaborate confutation of the Antinomians, written by a very acute and solid

• Continual droppings wear even stones.

+ In debate, he never defended any position which he did

not establish: he opposed none which he did not overthrow.

person, a great disputant, viz: Mr. Stone of New-England, a Congregational divine, it would easily appear that the Congregational are not Antinomian." And Mr. Baxter, in one of his last works, does utter his dying wishes for the resurrection of that buried manuscript.

But one of the most elaborate things written by Mr. Stone, or indeed in this land, is his "Body of Divinity;" wherein the reader has, in a Richardsonian method, curiously drawn up the doctrine of the Protestant, and Reformed, and New-English churches; and the marrow of all that had been reached, by the hard and long studies of this great student in theology. This rich treasure has often been transcribed by the vast pains of our candidates for the ministry; and it has made some of our most considerable divines. But all attempts for the printing of it hitherto proved abortive.

EPITAPHIUM.

Quem Nubila Victa Coronant.*

CHAPTER XVII.

THE LIFE OF MR. WILLIAM THOMPSON.

§ 1. THERE is no experienced minister of the gospel who hath not, in the cases of tempted souls, often had this experience, that the ill cases of their distempered bodies are the frequent occasion and original of their temptations. There are many men who, in the very constitution of their bodies, do afford a bed wherein busy and bloody devils have a sort of a lodging provided for them. The mass of blood in them, is disordered with some fiery acid, and their brains or bowels have some juices or ferments or vapours about them, which are most unhappy engines for devils to work upon their souls withal. The vitiated humours, in many persons, yield the steams whereinto Satan does insinuate himself, till he has gained a sort of possession in them, or at least an opportunity to shoot into the mind as many fiery darts as may cause a sad life unto them; yea, 'tis well if selfmurder be not the sad end unto which these hurried people are thus precipitated. New-England, a country where splenetic maladies are prevailing and pernicious perhaps above any other, hath afforded numberless instances of even pious people who have contracted those melancholy indispositions, which have unhinged them from all service or comfort; yea, not a few persons have been hurried thereby to lay violent hands upon themselves at the last. These are among the "unsearchable judgments of God!”

§ 2. Mr. William Thompson was a reverend minister of the gospel, who felt in himself the vexations of that melancholy which persons in his office

* Crowned by the clouds through which he passed.

do so often see in others. He was a very powerful and successful preacher; and we find his name sometimes joined in the title-page of several books with his countryman, Mr. Richard Mather, as a writer. Nor was NewEngland the only part of America where he zealously published the messages and mysteries of Heaven, after that the English Hierarchy had persecuted him from the like labours in Lancashire over into America; but upon a mission from the churches of New-England, he carried the tidings of salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ into Virginia: where he saw a notable fruit of his labours, until that faction there, which called it self, "the Church of England," persecuted him from thence also. Satan, who had been after an extraordinary manner irritated by the evangelic labours of this holy man, obtained the liberty to sift him; and hence, after this worthy man had served the Lord Jesus Christ in the church of our New-English Braintree, he fell into that Balneum diaboli, “a black melancholy," which for divers years almost wholly disabled him for the exercise of his ministry; but the end of this melancholy was not so tragical as it sometimes is with some, whom yet, because of their exemplary lives we dare not censure for their prodigious deaths. It is an observation of no little consequence, in our Christian warfare, that for all the fierce temptations of the devil upon us, there is a time limited-an hour of temptation. During this time, the devil may grow the more furious upon us, the more we do resist him. We must resist until the time which is prefixt by God, but unknown to us, is expired; and then we shall find it a law in the invisible world strictly kept unto, that if the resistance be carried on to such a period, though perhaps with many intervening foyle, the devil will be gone; yea, whether he will or no, we must be gone. There is a law for it, which obliges him to a flight, and a flight that carries a fright in it; a fear from an apprehension that God, with his good angels, will come in, with terrible chastisements upon him, if he presume to continue his temptations one moment longer than the time that had been allowed unto him. All this may be implied in that passage of the apostle, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." And as our Lord, being twice more furiously tempted by the devil, "drew near to God," with extraordinary prayer; but when the time. for the temptation was out, God by his angels then sensibly drew near unto him, with fresh consolations: to this, no doubt, the apostle refers, when he adds, "Draw nigh to God, and he shall draw nigh to you." Accordingly, the pastors and the faithful of the churches in the neighbourhood kept "resisting of the devil," in his cruel assaults upon Mr. Thompson, by continually "drawing near to God," with ardent supplications on his behalf: and by praying always, without fainting, without ceasing, they saw the devil at length flee from him, and God himself draw near unto him, with unutterable joy. The end of that man is peace! § 3. A short flight of our poetry shall tell the rest:

REMARKS ON THE BRIGHT AND THE DARK SIDE OF THAT AMERICAN PILLAR,

THE REVEREND MR. WILLIAM THOMPSON,

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH AT BRAINTREE, WHO TRIUMPHED ON DEC. 10, 1666.

BUT may a rural pen try to set forth

Such a great father's ancient grace and worth!

I undertake a no less arduous theme,
Than the old sages found the Chaldee dream.
"Tis more than Tythes of a profound respect,
That must be paid such a Melchizedeck.

Oxford this light, with tongues and arts doth trim;
And then his northern town doth challenge him.
His time and strength he center'd there in this;
To do good works, and be what now he is.
His fuigent virtues there, and learned strains,
Tall comely presence, life unsoil'd with stains,
Things most on WORTHIES, in their stories writ,
Did him to moves in orbs of service fit.
Things more peculiar yet, my muse, intend,
Say stranger things than these; so weep and end.

When he forsook first his Oxonian cell,
Some scores at once from popish darkness fell;
So this reformer studied! rare first fruits!
Shaking a crab-tree thus by hot disputes,
The acid juice by miracle turn'd wine,
And rais'd the spirits of our young divine.
Hearers, like doves, flock't with contentious wing,
Who should be first, feed most, most homeward bring.
Laden with honey, like Hyblæan bees,
They knead it into combs upon their knees.

Why he from Europe's pleasant garden fled,
In the next age, will be with horrour said.
Braintree was of this jewel then possest,
Until himself, he labour'd into rest.
His inventory then, with Johns, was took;
A rough coat, girdle with the sacred book.

When reverend Knowles and he sail'd hand in hand,
TO CHRIST espousing the Virginian land,
Upon a ledge of craggy rocks near stav'd,
His Bible in his bosom thrusting sav'd;

DECEMBER 10, 1666.

Apollyon, owing him a cursed spleen,
Who an Apollos in the church had been,
Dreading his traffick here would be undone.
By num'rous proselytes he daily won,
Accus'd him of imaginary faults,

And push'd him down so into dismal vaults:
Vaults, where he kept long Ember-weeks of grief,
Till Heaven alarm'd sent him in relief.
Then was a Daniel in the lion's den,

A man-oh, how belov'd of God and men!
By his bed-side an Hebrew sword there lay,
With which at last he drove the devil away.
Quakers too durst not bear his keen replies,
But fearing it half drawn, the trembler flies.
Like Lazarus, new raised from death, appears
The saint that had been dead for many years.
Our Nehemiah said, “Shall such as I
Desert my flock, and like a coward fly!"
Long had the churches begg❜d the saint's release;
Releas'd at last, he dies in glorious peace.
The night is not so long, but phosphor's ray
Approaching glories doth on high display.
Faith's eye in him discern'd the morning star,
His heart leap'd; sure the sun cannot be far.
In extasies of joy, he ravish'd cries,
"Love, love the Lamb, the Lamb!" in whom he dies.

But the Churches of New-England having had another instance of afflic tion like that which exercised our Thompson, I shall chuse this place to introduce it. Lives have been sometimes best written in the way of parallel. To Mr. William Thompson shall now therefore be paralleled our Mr. John Warham.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE LIFE OF MR. JOHN WARHAM.

WHEN the time of reformation was come on, one of the more effectual things done towards that reformation in England, about the middle of the former century, was to send about the kingdom certain itinerant preachers, with a license to preach the fundamentals of religion, instead of the stuff with which the souls of the people had been formerly famished. Upon this occasion, it is a passage mentioned by the famous Dr. Burnet: "Many complaints were made of those that were licensed to preach; and that they might be able to justifie themselves, they begin generally to write and read their sermons: and thus did this custom begin; in which, what is wanting in the heat and force of delivery, is much made up by the strength and solidity of the matter: and it has produced many volumes of as excellent sermons as have been preached in any age."

The custom of preaching with notes, thus introduced, has been decried by many good men, besides fanaticks, in the present age, and many poor and weak prejudices against it have been pretended. But hear the words of the most accomplished Mr. Baxter unto some gainsayers: "It is not the want of our abilities that makes us use our notes; but it is a regard unto our work, and the good of our hearers. I use notes as much as any man when I take pains; and as little as any man when I am lazy, or busie, and have not leisure to prepare. It is easier unto us to preach three sermons without notes, than one with them. He is a simple preacher that is not able to preach a day, without preparation, if his strength would serve." Indeed, I would have distinction made between the reading of notes and the using of notes. It is pity that a minister should so read his notes as to take away the vivacity and efficacy of his delivery; but if he so use his notes, as a lawyer does the minutes whereupon he is to plead, and carry a full quiver into the pulpit with him, from whence he may with one cast of his eye, after the lively shooting of one arrow, fetch out the next, it might be a thousand ways advantageous.

I suppose the first preacher that ever thus preached with notes in our New-England was the Reverend Warham: who, though he were sometimes faulted for it, by some judicious men who had never heard him, yet when once they came to hear him, they could not but admire the notable energy of his ministry. He was a more vigorous preacher than the most of them who have been applauded for "never looking in a book in their lives." His latter days were spent in the pastoral care and charge of the church at Windsor, where the whole colony of Connecticut considered him as a principal pillar, and father of the colony.