"And thou, New-England, which art exalted in priviledges of the gospel above many other people, know thou the 'time of thy visitation,' and consider the great things the Lord hath done for thee. The gospel hath free passage in all places where thou dwellest; Oh! that it might be glorified also by thee! Thou enjoyest many faithful witnesses, which have testified unto thee the gospel of the grace of God. Thou hast many bright stars shining in thy firmament, to give thee the 'knowledge of salvation from on high, to guide thy feet in the way of peace. Be not high-minded because of thy priviledges, but fear because of thy danger. The more thou hast committed unto thee, the more thou must account for. No people's account will be heavier than thine, if thou do not walk worthy of the means of thy salvation. The Lord looks for more from thee than from other people: more zeal for God, more love to his truth, more justice and equity in thy ways: thou shouldest be a special people, an only people, none like thee in all the earth. Oh! be so, in loving the gospel, and the ministers of it, having them in 'singular love for their work's sake.' "Glorifie thou the word of the Lord, which has glorified thee. Take heed, least for neglect of either, God ‘remove thy candlestick' out of the midst of thee; lest being now 'as a city upon an hill,' which many seek unto, thou be left 'like a beacon upon the top of a mountain,' desolate and forsaken. If we walk unworthy of the gospel brought unto us, the greater our mercy hath been in the enjoying of it, the greater will our judgment be for the contempt." § 11. His first wife was the daughter of Mr. Thomas Allen, of Goldington: a most vertuous gentlewoman, whose nephew was the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Allen. By her he had nine sons and two daughers. After her death, he lived eight years a widdower, and then married 1 vertuous daughter of Sir Richard Chitwood; by whom he had three ons and one daughter. Age at length creeping on him, he grew much afraid of out-living his cork; and his fear he thus expressed in a short Epigram, composed March 15, 1657: Pigra senectutis jam venit inutilis ætas, Nil aliud nunc sum quam fere pondus iners. Da tamen, Alme Deus, dum vivam, vivere laudi Eternum sancti Nominis usque Tui. Ne vivam (moriar potius!) nil utile Agendo : Finiat opto magis, mors properata Dies. Seu vivam, moriarve, tuus sim, Christe, quod uni He was ill, as well as old, when he writ these verses; but God granted im his desire. He recovered, and preached near two years after this, nd then expired, March 9, 1658-9, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. 12. The Epigram newly mentioned, invites me to remember that he ad a competently good stroke at Latin poetry; and even in his old age fected sometimes to improve it. Many of his composures are yet in our ands. One was written on his Birth-day, June 31st, 1654: Ultimus iste Dies Mensis, mihi primus habetur ; ⚫ I've reached the evening of my mortal day; Nor have its mild returns been slow or few: Atque tot Annorum est Ultimus iste Dies. Whether within Thy holy courts below Of angel-quirings blend my raptured strain- Another of them was written on an Earthquake, October 29, 1653: Ecce Dei nutu tellus pavefacta tremescit, Terra Tremens mota est sedibus ipsa suis, Ipsa tremit Tellus scelerum gravitate virorum, The rest we will bury with him, under this EPITAPH. Obiit jam qui jamdudum abierat Bulklæus; CHAPTER XI. THE LIFE OF MR. RALPH PARTRIDGE. WHEN David was driven from his friends into the wilderness, he made this pathetical representation of his condition, ""Twas as when one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains." Among the many worthy persons who were persecuted into an American wilderness, for their fidelity to the ecclesiastical kingdom of our true David, there was one that bore the name as well as the state of an hunted partridge. What befel him, was as Bede saith of what was done by Fælix, Juxta nominis sui Sacramentum. This was Mr. Ralph Partridge, who for no fault but the delicacy of his good spirit, being distressed by the ecclesiastical setters, had no defence, neither of beak nor claw, but a flight over the ocean. The place where he took covert was the colony of Plymouth, and the town of Duxbury in that colony. This Partridge had not only the innocency of the dove, conspicuous in his blameless and pious life, which made him very acceptable in his con versation, but also the loftiness of an eagle, in the great soar of his inter lectual abilities. There are some interpreters who, understanding church officers by the living creatures, in the fourth chapter of the Apocalypse, The solid earth, before an angry God, The earth doth heave, with groanings of distress, He ne'er hath slept beneath this humble sod, In conformity with his christening. will have the teacher to be intended by the eagle there, for his quick insight into remote and hidden things. The church of Duxbury had such an eagle in their Partridge, when they enjoyed such a teacher. By the same token, when the Platform of Church Discipline was to be composed, the Synod at Cambridge appointed three persons to draw up each of them, "a model of church-government, according to the word of God," unto the end that out of those the synod might form what should be found most agreeable; which three persons were Mr. Cotton, and Mr. Mather, and Mr. Partridge. So that, in the opinion of that reverend assembly, this person did not come far behind the first two for some of his accomplishments. After he had been forty years a faithful and painful preacher of the gospel, rarely, if ever, in all that while interrupted in his work by any bodily sickness, he died in a good old age, about the year 1658. There was one singular instance of a weaned spirit, whereby he signalized himself unto the churches of God. That was this: there was a time when most of the ministers in the colony of Plymouth left the colony, upon the discouragement which the want of a competent maintenance among the needy and froward inhabitants gave unto them. Nevertheless Mr. Partridge was, notwithstanding the paucity and the poverty of his congregation, so afraid of being any thing that looked like a bird wandring from his nest, that he remained with his poor people till he took wing to become a bird of paradise, along with the winged seraphim of heaven. EPITAPHIUM. Avolavit.* CHAPTER XII. PSALTES. THE LIFE OF MR. HENRY DUNSTER. NOTWITHSTANDING the veneration which we pay to the names and works of those reverend men, whom we call the fathers, yet even the Roman Catholicks themselves confess, that those fathers were not infallible. Andradius, among others, in his defence of the Council of Trent, has this passage: "There can be nothing devised more superstitious, than to count all things delivered by the fathers divine oracles." And, indeed, it is plain enough that those excellent men were not without errors and frailties, of which, I hope, it will not be the part of a cham to take some little notice. Thus, Jerom had his erroneous opinion of Peter's being unjustly reprehended; and was fearfully asleep in the other matters, wherein he opposed Vigilantius. Augustine was for admitting the infants of Christians unto • He has flown away! The Psalmodist.. the Lord's Supper: and, alas! how much of Babylon is there in his best book, "De Civitate Dei."* Hilary denied the soul-sorrows of our Lord in his passion, if you will believe the report of Bellarmine. Clemens Alexandrinus affirmed that our Lord neither eat nor drank from the necessities of human life; and that he and his apostles, after their death, preached unto the damned in hell, of whom there were many converted. Origen taught many things contrary unto the true faith, and frequently confounded the Scriptures with false expositions. Tertullian fell into Montanism, and forbad all second marriages. How little agreement was there between Epiphanius and Chrysostom, Irenæus and Victor, Cornelius and Cyprian? And, indeed, that I may draw near to my present purpose, the erroneous opinion of rebaptism in Cyprian, is well known to the world. Wherefore it may not be wondred at if, among the first fathers of NewEngland, there were some things not altogether so agreeable to the prin ciples whereupon the country was in the main established. But among those of our fathers who differed somewhat from his brethren, was that learned and worthy man Mr. Henry Dunster. He was the president of our Harvard College in Cambridge, and an able man: [as we may give some account, when the history of that college comes to be offered.] But wonderfully falling into the errors of Antipædobaptism, the overserts of the college became solicitous that the students there might not be unawares ensnared in the errors of their president. Wherefore they laboured with an extreme agony, either to rescue the good man from his own mistakes, or to restrain him from imposing them upon the hope of the flock, of both which, finding themselves to despair, they did, as quietly as they could, procure his removal, and provide him a successor, in Mr. Charles Chauncey. He was a very good Hebrician, and for that cause he bore a great part in the metrical version of the Psalms, now used in our churches. But after some short retirement and secession from all publick business, at Scituate, in the year 1659, he went thither, where he bears his part in everlasting and cælestial hallelujahs. It was justly counted an instance of an excellent spirit, in Margaret Meering, that though she had been excommunicated by the congregation of Protestants, whereof Mr. Rough was pas tor, and she seemed to have hard measure also in her excommunication: yet when Mr. Rough was imprisoned for the truth, she was very serviceable to him, and at length suffered martyrdom for the truth with him. Something that was not altogether unlike this "excellent spirit" was instanced by our Dunster. For he died in such harmony of affection with the good men who had been the authors of his removal from Cambridge, that he, by his will, ordered his body to be carried unto Cambridge for its burial, and bequeathed legacies to those very persons. • The City of God. Now, I know not where, better than here, to insert that article of our church-history, which concerns our metrical translation of the PSALMS now sung in our churches. About the year 1639, the New-English reformers, considering that their churches enjoyed the other ordinances of Heaven in their scriptural purity, were willing that the ordinance of "The singing of psalms," should be restored among them unto a share in that purity. Though they blessed God for the religious endeavours of them who translated the Psalms into the meetre usually annexed at the end of the Bible, yet they beheld in the translation so many detractions from, additions to, and variations of, not only the text, but the very sense of the psalmist, that it was an offence unto them. Resolving then upon a new translation, the chief divines in the country took each of them a portion to be translated: among whom were Mr. Welds and Mr. Eliot of Roxbury, and Mr. Mather of Dorchester. These, like the rest, were of so different a genius for their poetry, that Mr. Shepard, of Cambridge, on the occasion addressed them to this purpose: You Roxb'ry poets, keep clear of the crime Of missing to give us very good rhime. And you of Dorchester, your verses lengthen, But with the text's own words, you will them strengthen. The Psalms thus turned into meetre were printed at Cambridge, in the year 1640. But, afterwards, it was thought that a little more of art was to be employed upon them: and for that cause, they were committed unto Mr. Dunster, who revised and refined this translation; and (with some assistance from one Mr. Richard Lyon, who being sent over by Sir Henry Mildmay, as an attendant unto his son, then a student in Harvard College, now resided in Mr. Dunster's house:) he brought it into the condition wherein our churches ever since have used it. Now, though I heartily join with those gentlemen who wish that the poetry hereof were mended; yet I must confess, that the Psalms have never yet seen a translation, that I know of, nearer to the Hebrew original; and I am willing to receive the excuse which our translators themselves do offer us, when they say: "If the verses are not always so elegant as some desire or expect, let them consider that God's altar needs not our polishings; we have respected rather a plain translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase. We have attended conscience rather than elegance, fidelity rather than ingenuity; that so we may sing in Zion the Lord's songs of praise, according unto his own will, until he bid us enter into our Master's joy, to sing eternal hallelujahs." Reader, when the reformation in France began, Clement Marot and Theodore Beza turned the Psalms into French meetre, and Lewis Guadimel set melodious tunes unto them. The singing hereof charmed the souls of court and city, town and country. They were sung in the Lovre it self, |