yet the great worth of that renowned man, will render it inexcusable to say nothing at all.

All that I shall say is, that if learning ever merited a statue, this great man, has as rich an one due to him as can be erected; for it must be granted, that hardly ever a more universally learned person trod the American strand.

Live, O rare LEE! live, if not in our works, yet in thy own; ten or twelve of which, that have seen the light, will immortalize thee. But, above all, thy book "De Excideo Antichristi"* shall survive, and assist the funeral of the monster whose nativity is therein, with such exquisite study calculated; and thy book entituled, "Orbis Miraculum; or, The Temple of Solomon," shall proclaim thee to be a miracle for thy vast knowledge, and a pillar in the temple of thy God!

In his return for England, the French took him a prisoner, and uncivilly detaining him, he died in France; where he found the grave of an heretick, and was therein (after some sort, like Wickliff and Bucer) made a martyr after his death.

CHAPTER VII.

A GOOD MAN MAKING A GOOD END.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE REV. MR. JOHN BAILY.

COMPRISED AND EXPRESSED IN

A SERMON, ON THE DAY OF HIS FUNERAL, THURSDAY, 16 D. 10 M. 1697.

Pulchra sunt Verba ex Ore

Ea Facientium.-ADAG. JUDAIC.

READER: We are not so wise as the miserable Papists! Among them, a person of merit shall at his death be celebrated and canonized by all men agreeing in it, as in their common interest, for to applaud his life. Among us, let there be dues paid unto the memory of the most meritorious person after his decease; many of the survivers are offended, I had almost said enraged at it: they seem to take it as a reproach unto themselves (and, it may be, so it is!) that so much good should be told of any man, and that all the little frailties and errors of that man (and whereof no meer man was ever free!) be not also told, with all the unjust aggravations that envy might put upon them. This folly is as inexpressible an injury to us all; as it cannot but be an advantage unto mankind in general for interred vertue to be rewarded with a statue.

• Concerning the cutting off of Antichrist.

Sweet are words from the lips of the doers of them.-Jewish Proverb.

+ The wonder of the world.

If ever I deserved well of my country, it has been when I have given to the world the histories and characters of eminent persons which have adorned it. Malice will call some of those things romances; but that Malice it self may never hiss with the least colour of reason any more, I do here declare, let any man living evince any one material mistake in any one of those composures, it shall have the most publick recantation that can be desired. In the meantime, while some impotent cavils, nibbling at the statues which we have erected for our worthies, take pains to prove themselves the enemies of New-England and of religion, the statues will out-live all their idle nibbles; "the righteous will be had in everlasting remembrance," when the wicked, who "see it and are grieved," shall "gnash with their teeth, and melt away."

A GOOD MAN MAKING A GOOD END.

UTTERED, THURSDAY 16 D. 10 M. 1697.

I bring you this day a text of sacred Scripture, which a faithful servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, lately gone unto him, did before his going order for you as his legacy. Give your attention: "Tis that in Psal. xxxi. 5: "Into thine hand I commit my spirit."

THAT holy and worthy minister of the gospel, whose funeral is this day to be attended, having laboured for the conversion of men unto God, at length grew very presagious that his labours in the evangelical ministry drew near unto an end. While he was yet in health, and not got beyond the fifty-fourth year of his age, he did, with such a presage upon his mind, (having first written on this wise in his diary, "Oh! that Christ's death might fit me for my own!") begin to study a sermon on this very text, "Into thine hand I commit my spirit." But his great Master, who favoured him with such a presage, never gave him an opportunity to finish and utter what he had began to study. His life had all this while been a practical commentary upon his doctrine; yea, it was an endeavour to imitate our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who is said [Acts i. 1,] first to do, and then to teach: and now, behold! his death must expound and apply the doctrine which he would have preached unto us. He must show us how to do that important work of "committing a departing spirit into the hands of God," no otherwise than by the actual doing of that work himself. While therefore he lay dying, he asked one of his dearest relations, "Dost thou know what I am doing?" She said, "No;" he then added, "I am rendring, I am rendring!" meaning, I suppose, his own spirit unto the Lord. But while he was doing of that work, and with humble resignation "committing his own spirit into the hands of God," he desired of me that I would preach upon the text about which he had been under such intentions. Wherefore (if at least I may be thought worthy of such a character!) you are now to consider me-shall I say-as "executing the will of the dead?" or, as "representing a man of God, whom God hath taken." The truths

which we shall now inculcate, will be such as you are all along to think, "these are the things which a saint now in glory would have to be inculcated." And when we have briefly set those truths before you, we will describe a little that excellent saint, as from whom you have them recommended: we will describe him chiefly with strokes fetched from his own diaries, out of which, in the little time I have had since his death, I have collected a few remarkables.

Our Psalmist, the illustrious David, now, as we may judge, drew near unto his end: and we may say of the Psalm here composed by him, "These are among the last words of David, the man who was raised up on high." The sighs of the Psalmist here collected, seem to have been occasioned by the sufferings which he underwent when his own subjects took up arms against him. Nevertheless, as our psalter is all over "the-Book of the Messiah," so this particular Hymn in it is contrived elegantly to point out the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ unto us. In the text now before us, the Psalmist, apprehending himself in danger of death, does the great work of a dying man: which is, "to commit a surviving spirit into the hand of God." But in doing this, he entertains a special consideration of God, for his encouragement in doing it: this is, "Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth." It is the Messiah that hath redeemed us; it is the Messiah whose name is the Truth; David, upon a view of the Messiah, said, "This is the man, who is the Lord God." Wherefore, in "committing our spirits unto God," our Lord Christ is to be distinctly considered; and he was, no doubt, by David considered. The power of God is called his hand; the wisdom of God is called his hand; but, above all, the Christ of God, who is the power of God, and the wisdom of God, he is the hand of God; by Him it is that the God of heaven doth what he doth in the world: and he is for that cause also styled, "The arm of the Lord." It is therefore to the power and wisdom and goodness of God, in Christ, that our expiring spirits are to be committed.

There was indeed a wonderful time, when our Lord Jesus Christ himself made a wonderful use of this very text. We read in Luke xxiii. 46, "When Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit;' and having said thus, he gave up the Ghost." Sirs, God uttered his voice, at this rate, and the earth trembled at it! And well it might, for never did there such an amazing thing occur upon the earth before. Now, our Lord having said, "Into thy hands I commend my Spirit," stopped at those words; for he was himself the "Redeemer, the Lord God of Truth." But as for us, we are to consider God, as in our Lord Jesus Christ, when we commit our spirits into his hands. As Luther could say, Nolo Deum Absolutum-I tremble to have to do with an absolute God; that is to say, a God without a Christ-so, we may all tremble to think of committing our spirits into the hands of God, any otherwise than as he is "in Christ reconciling the world unto himself."

We are truly told in Heb. x. 31, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Our spirits are by sin become obnoxious to the fearful wrath of God; and wo to us, if our spirits fall into his hands, not having his wrath appeased! Sirs, we commit briars and thorns, and wretched stubble to infinite flames, if we commit our spirits into the hands of God, not in a Christ, become our friend. We deliver up our spirits unto a "devouring fire," and unto "everlasting burnings," if we approach the "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty" any otherwise than through the Immanuel, our Mediator. We are to "commit our souls unto our faithful Creator;" but if he be not our "merciful Redeemer" too, then "He that made us will not have mercy on us." When Hezekiah was, as he thought, a dying, he "turned his face to the wall:" I suppose it was to that side of the upper chamber, the praying chamber, where he lay, that had "God's window" in it, the window that opened it self towards the ark in the temple. When we commit our spirits into the hand of God, we are to turn our face towards that ark of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. We have this matter well directed by the words of the dying martyr Stephen, in Acts vii. 59. He said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."

And now there is a weighty CASE that lies before us:

After what manner should we commit our spirits unto our Lord Jesus Christ, that so the eternal safety and welfare of our spirits, may be effectually provided for? If our faithful BAILY were now alive, I do not know any one CASE that he would more livelily have discoursed among you: but I know that he would have discoursed on this with a soul full of inexpressible agonies. He was a man who had, from a child, been full of solicitous cares about his own soul; and from hence in part it was, that when he became a preacher of the gospel, he preached nothing so much as the cares that all men should have about the conversion of their souls unto God, and the sincerity of their souls before him. There were many great points of our Christian faith which he still treated with shorter touches, because his thoughts were continually swallowed up with the vast concern of not being deceived about the marks of a regenerate and a sanctified soul, and hopes of being found in Christ at a dying hour. He was none of those preachers, Qui ludunt in Cathedra, et lugent in Gehenna.* Those two words, a soul and eternity, were great words unto him; and his very soul was greatly and always under the awe of them. Hence the very spirit of his preaching lay in the points of turning from sin to God in Christ, and the tryal of our doing so, and the peril of our not doing it. Wherefore, as far as, alas! one of my sinful coldness in those dreadful points can do it, I will set before you in a few minutes what I apprehend my dead friend would have to be spoken, upon these points, in relation to the case that is now to be considered.

Who play in the church and weep in hell.

I. Let every mortal man be very sensible that he hath an immortal spirit in him, and prize that spirit exceedingly. How shall we commit a spirit into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, if this thing be not realized unto us, that we have a spirit, which will be horribly miserable to all eternity, if the Lord Jesus Christ look not after it!

Could that mouth, which is this day to be laid in the dust, once more be opened among us, I know what voice would issue from it: with a very zealous vivacity, I know this voice would be uttered: "Man, thou hast a soul, a soul within thee; a soul that is to exist throughout eternal ages. Oh! prize that soul of thine at the greatest rate imaginable."—I say, then, we must be sensible that we have spirits which are distinct from our bodies, and which will out live them: spirits which are "incorporeal substances, endued with rational faculties; and though inclined unto our humane bodies, yet surviving after them." An infidel Pope of Rome once, lying on his death-bed, had such a speech as this: "I shall now quickly be cer tified and satisfied whether I have an immortal soul or no!" Woful man, if he were not until then certified and satisfied! God forbid that there should be so much as one Epicurean swine among us, dreaming, that man is nothing but a "meer lump of matter put into motion." Shall a man dare to think that he has not a rational soul in him, which is of a very different nature from his body? Truly, his very thinking is enough to confute his monstrous unreasonableness: meer body cannot think; and, I pray, of what figure is a rational atom? The oracles of God have therefore assured us that the fathers of our bodies are not the fathers of spirits; no, these have another father! And, that the spirits of men may go from their bodies, and be caught up to the third heaven too! Well; but when our bodies crumble and tumble before the strokes of death, are not our spirits overwhelmed in the ruines of our bodies, like Sampson, when the Philistian temple fell upon him? No; they are "sparks of immortality" that shall never be extinguished; they must live, and move, and think, until the very heavens be no more. Among other evidences that our spirits are immortal, there is no contemptible one in the presages which the spirits of such good men as he which is anon to be interred have had of their speedy passage in a "world of spirits." Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave his own blood for the purchase of our souls, and can tell, sure! what it is that he has purchased; he has expressly told us in Matth. x. 28, "They which kill the body, are not able to kill the soul." Our blessed Apostle Paul, a mighty student and worker for souls, was not fed with fancies, when he took it for granted, in Phil. i. 21, that when he should "be dissolved," he should "be with Christ" immediately. Do try, thou fool-hardy creature, to perswade thy self, that thou hast not an immortal soul: thou canst not, for thy soul, render thy self altogether and evermore perswaded of it: with very dreadful suspicions of its immortality will thy own conscience, a certain faculty of thy soul, terrify thee, when God