8. A willingness to give God the glory of any ability to do good.

"9. A joy when I am in Christian company, in godly conference.

[evening.

"10. A grief when I perceive it goes ill with Christians, and the contrary. 11. A constant performance of secret duties, between God and my self, morning and *12. A bewailing of such sins which none in the world can accuse me of. "13. A choosing of suffering to avoid sin."

But having thus mentioned the self-examination which this holy man. accustomed himself unto, I know not but this may be a very proper opportunity to observe, that the holiness of our primitive Christians, in this land, was more than a little expressed and improved by this piece of Christianity. And that I may serve this design of Christianity upon the devout reader, I will take this opportunity to digress (if it be a digres sion) so far, as to recite a passage I lately read in a paper, which a private Christian, one of our godly old men, who died not long since, (namely, Mr. Clap, once the captain of our castle) did at his death leave behind him. That godly man had long been labouring under doubts and fears about his interiour state before God. At last he was one day considering with himself what was his most beloved sin. Herewithal he considered whether, in case the Lord would assure him that all sin should be for ever pardoned unto him, and he should arrive safe to heaven in the issue, yet he should not in the mean time have that one sin mortified, and be delivered from the reign and rage of that one sin,—whether this would content him? Hereunto he found and said, before the Lord, "that this would not content him." And hereupon the Spirit of God immediately irradiated his mind, with a strange and a strong assurance of the divine love unto him. He was dissolved into a flood of tears, with assurance that God had "loved him with an everlasting love." And from this time the assurance of his pardon conquered his doubts and fears, I think, all the rest of his days.

Our too defective history of our Newman I will conclude, as Blahoslius did in his history of Johannes Cornu: Longum estet Elogia hujus viri narrare. Sed perfectior Historia, ut de aliis vires, ita et de osto, consummatur, et quotidie angetur in Vità eternâ; Quam da nobis, O Domine Deus, in gloriâ cum gaudio legendam. Amen.*

EPITAPHIUM:

Mortuus est NEANDER NOV-Anglus,

Qui ante mortem didicit mori,

Et obiit eâ morte, quæ potest esse, Ars bene moriendi.t

It would be too great a task to set forth all his praises. But a more perfect history of him, as of some other men, is in progress, and daily amplified into life eternal: which God grant that we may, when raised up to glory, read for ourselves with unspeakable joy. Amen!

+ The NEANDER of New-England is dead.

with him.

VOL. I.-28

Before death, he learned to die, and the art of dying well died

CHAPTER XVI.

DOCTOR IRREFRAGABILIS:* THE LIFE OF MR. SAMUEL STONE.

1. IF the church of Rome do boast of her Cornelius à Lapide,† who hath published learned commentaries upon almost the whole Bible, the Protestant and reformed church of New-England may boast of her Sam uel Stone, who was better skilled than the other in sacred philology, and whose learned sermons and writings were not stuffed with such trifles and fables, and other impertinencies, as fill many pages in the composures of the other.

§ 2. In his youth, after his leaving of the University of Cambridge, where Emanuel-Colledge had instructed him in the light, and nourished him with the cup of that famous university, he did, with several other persons that proved famous in their generation, "sit at the feet" of a most excellent Gamaliel; attending upon that eminently holy man of God, whom I will venture to call Saint Blackerby. That Reverend Richard Blackerby, whose most angelical sort of life you may read among the last of Samuel Clark's collections, was a tutor to Mr. Stone; and you may reasonably expect that such a scholar should have a double portion of the spirit which there was in such a tutor.

§ 3. Having been an accomplished, industrious, but yet persecuted minister of the gospel, in England, he came to New-England in the same ship that brought over Mr. Cotton and Mr. Hooker. A ship which, in those three worthies, brought from Europe a richer loading than the richest that ever sailed back from America in the Spanish Flota; even that wreck which had on board, among other treasures, one entire table of gold, weighing above three thousand and three hundred pound. Indeed, the foundation of New-England had a precious jem laid in it when Mr. Stone arrived in these regions.

But the circumstances of this removal, require to be related with more of particularities. The judicious Christians that were coming to New England with Mr. Hooker were desirous to obtain a colleague for him, and being disappointed of obtaining Mr. Cotton for that purpose, (who nevertheless took it very kindly that Mr. Hooker had sent them unto him) they began to think that a couple of such great men might be more serviceable asunder than together. So their next agreement was, to procure some able and godly young man, who might be an assistant unto Mr. Hooker, with something of a disciple also; and those three-Mr. Shepard, Mr. Norton, and Mr. Stone-were to this end proposed; and Mr.

• The Doctor whom none could confound.

† Cornelius Stone.

Stone, then a lecturer at Torcester in Northamptonshire, was the person upon whom at length it fell to accompany Mr. Hooker into America.

§ 4. From the New-English Cambridge he went collegue to Mr. Hooker, with a chosen and devout company of Christians, who gathered a famous church at a town which they called Hartford, upon the well-known river Connecticut. There he continued feeding the flock of our Lord fourteen years, with Mr. Hooker, and sixteen years after him; till he that was born at Hartford in England, now on July 20, 1663, died in Hartford of NewEngland; and went unto the Heavenly Society, whereof he would with some longing say, "Heaven is the more desirable, for such company as Hooker, and Shepard, and Hains, who are got there before me."

5. His way of living was godly, sober and righteous, and, like that great apostle who was his name-sake, he could seriously and sincerely profess, "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee." But there were two things wherein the "power of godliness" uses to be most remarkably manifested and maintained; and he was remarkable for both of these things; namely, frequent fastings and exact Sabbaths. He would, not rarely, set apart whole days for fasting and prayer before the Lord, whereby he ripened his blessed soul for the "inheritance of the saints in light." And when the weekly Sabbath came, which he still began in the evening before, he would compose himself unto a most heavenly frame in all things, and not let fall a word, but what should be grave, serious, pertinent. Moreover, it was his custom that the sermon which he was to preach on the Lord's day in his assembly, he would the night before deliver to his own family. A custom which was attended with several advantages.

6. Being ordained the teacher of the church in Hartford, he apprehending himself under a particular and peculiar obligation to endeavour the edification of his people, by a more doctrinal way of preaching: accordingly, as he had the art of keeping to his hour, so he had an incomparable skill at filling of that hour with nervous discourses, in the way of common-place and proposition, handling the points of divinity, which he would conclude with a brief and close application: and then he would in prayer, after sermon, put all into such pertinent confessions, petitions, and thanksgivings, as notably digested his doctrine into devotion. He was a man of principles, and in the management of those principles he was both a Load-Stone and a Flint-Stone.

his

§ 7. He had a certain pleasancy in conversation, which was the effect and symptom of his most ready wit; and made ingenious men to be as covetous of his familiarity as admirers of his ingenuity. Possibly he might think of what Suidas reports concerning Macarius, that by the pleasancy of his discourses on all occasions, he drew many to the ways of God. He might be inclined, like Dr. Staunton, who said, "I have used myself to be cheerful in company, that so standers-by might be the more in love

with religion, seeing it consistent with cheerfulness." Hence facetious turns were almost natural to him, in his conversation with such as had the sence to comprehend the subtleties of his reparties. But still under such a reserve, as to escape the sentence of the canon of the council of Carthage, Clericum scurrilem et verbis turpibus Joculatorem, ab officio Retrahendum

§ 8. Reader, what should be the meaning of this? our Mr. Stone, about or before the year 1650, when all things were in a profound calm, delivered in a sermon his pre-apprehensions that churches among them would come to be broken by schism, and sudden censures, and angry removes: and that ere they were aware, these mischiefs would arise among them; in the churches, prayers against prayers, hearts against hearts, tears against tears, tongues against tongues, and fasts against fasts, and horrible prejudices and underminings. Many years did not pass before he sai in his own church all of this accomplished. He little thought that his own church must be the stage of these tragedies, when he told some of his friends, "That he should never want their love." He did live to undergo what we are now going to signifie:

Towards the latter end of his time, this present evil world was made yet more evil unto him, through an unhappy difference which arose between him and a ruling elder in the church whereof he was himself a teaching elder. They were both of them godly men; and the true original of the misunderstanding between men that were of so good an understanding, has been rendred almost as obscure as the rise of Connecticut-river. But it proved its unhappy consequences, too, like that river in its great annual inundations; for it overspread the whole colony of Connecticut. Such a monstrous enchantment there was upon the minds even of those who were Christians, and brethren, that in all the towns round about, the people generally made themselves parties, either to one side or the other, in this quarrel; though multitudes of them scarce ever distinctly knew what the quarrel was: and the factions insinuated themselves into the smallest, as well as the greatest affairs of those towns. From the fire of the altar, there issued thundrings and lightnings, and earthquakes, through the colony. As once in Constantinople, a fire that began in the church consumed the senate-house: thus the fire which began in the church more than a little affected the senate-house in Connecticut: and the people also were many of them as fiercely set against one another, as the Combites in the poet were against the Tentyrites. A world of sin was doubtless committed, even by pious men, on this occasion, while they permitted so many things contrary to the law of charity, and so much mispending of their time and misplacing of their zeal, as must needs occur in their woful variance. Alas! how many of Solomon's wise proverbs were explained and instanced in the follies of these contests! Indeed, for the composing of these bran * We believe that a scurrilous clergyman, who deals in foul jests, should be dismissed from the pastoral office.

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.