The

and cholic together, with very great extremity. means that had been used to give him relief in his illness, were altogether ineffectual: He had not the least intermission or remission of pain, neither up nor in bed. He had said sometimes, "That GoD's Israel may find Jor"dan rough; but there's no remedy, they must go through "it to Canaan;" and he would tell of a good man that 'He was not so much afraid of death as of dying. We know they are not the godly people, part of the description of whose condition it is, that there are no bands in their death, and yet their end is peace, and their death gain, and they have hope in it.

used to say,

It was two or three hours after he was taken ill, before he would suffer a messenger to be sent to Chester for his son, and for the doctor, saying, "He should either be "better or dead before they could come:" But at last he said, as the prophet did to his importunate friends, Send. About eight o'clock that evening they came, and found him in the same extremity of pain, which he had been in all the day. And nature, being before spent with his constant and indefatigable labours, now sunk under its burden, and was quite unable to grapple with so many hours incessant pain. What further means were then used proved fruitless. He apprehended himself going apace, and said to his son when he came in, "O son, you are "welcome to a dying father: I am now ready to be of"fered, and the time of my departure is at hand." His pain continued very acute, but he had peace within. "I

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am tormented, (said he once;) but, blessed be Gon, "not in this flame;" and, soon after, "I am all on fire," (when at the same time his extreme parts were cold) but he presently added, "Blessed be Gop, it is not the fire "of hell."

Towards ten or eleven o'clock that night, his pulse and sight began to fail; of the latter he himself took notice, and inferred from it the near approach of his dissolution. He took an affectionate farewell of his dear yoke-fellow, with a thousand thanks for all her love, and care, and tenderness, left a blessing for all his dear children, and their dear yoke-fellows and little ones that were absent. He said to his son, who sat under his head, "Son, the Lord "bless you, and grant that you may do worthily in your "generation, and be more serviceable to the church of "GOD than I have been." Such was his great humility to the last. And when his son replied, O Sir, pray for me, that I may but tread in your steps; he answered,

66 Yea,

"Yea, follow peace and holiness; and then let them say "what they will."-More he would have said to bear his dying testimony to the way in which he had walked, but nature was spent, and he had not strength to express it.

His understanding and speech continued almost to the last breath; and he was still, in his dying agonies, calling upon GoD, and committing himself to him. One of the last words he said, when he found himself just ready to depart, was, "O death where is thy" with that his speech faultered, and within a few minutes (after about sixteen hours' illness) he quietly breathed out his precious soul into the embraces of his dear Redeemer, whom he had trusted, and faithfully served in the work of the ministry about forty-three years. He departed betwixt twelve and one o'clock in the morning, on June the 24th, Midsummer-Day, A. D. 1696, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. Happy, thrice happy he, to whom such a sudden change was no surprize, and who could triumph over death, as an unstrung, disarmed enemy, even when he made so fierce an onset! He had often spoke of it as his desire, that, if it were the will of GoD," he might not "outlive his usefulness;" and it pleased GOD to grant him his desire, and to give him a short passage from the pulpit to the kingdom, from the height of his usefulness to receive the recompence of reward. So was it ordered by him, in whose hands our times are.

His body was buried on the 27th of June following in Whitchurch church, attended with a very great company of true mourners from all the country round, even from Chester and Shrewsbury, who followed his corpse with many tears. He was averse to all ostentation, and used to say to his relations, "When I am dead, make "but little ado about me: a few will serve to bring me "to my grave." But his mind in this respect could not be followed. Many testimonies were given of his great worth, and some are recited in his life written more at large by his son, to which we must refer the reader. We will only subjoin to this long account some few sentences of this excellent man which were gathered up from his preaching and conversation, as he himself never published any thing.

Though Mr. Henry, (says his great and pious son, through the excess of his modesty and self-diffidence, never published any of his labours to the world, nor ever fitted or prepared any of them for the press; yet

none

none more valued the labours of others, or rejoiced more in them; nor have I heard any complain less of the multitude of good books, concerning which he often said, "That store is no sore;" and he was very forward to persuade others to publish; and always expressed a particular pleasure in reading the lives, actions, and sayings of eminent men, ancient and modern, which he thought the most useful and instructive kind of writings. He was also a very candid reader of books, not apt to pick quarrels with what he read, especially when the design appeared to be honest; and when others would find fault, and say this was wanting, and the other amiss, his usual excuse was, "There is nothing perfect under the sun."

"Twas a saying he frequently used, that" every crea"ture is that to us, and only that, which God makes it "to be." And another was, "Duty is our's; events are "GOD's." And another was, "The soul is the man, "and, therefore, that is always best for us, which is best "for our souls." And another was, "The devil cozens "us of all our time, by cozening us of the present time."

In his thanksgivings for temporal mercies, he often said, "If the end of one mercy were not the beginning of an"other, we were undone:" And to encourage to the work of thanksgiving, he would say, that "new mercies "called for new returns of praise, and then those new "returns will fetch in new mercies." And from Psalm 1. 23. He that offers praise glorifies me, and to him that orders his conversation aright,-he observed, "That thanksgiv "ing is good, but thanksliving is better."

When he spoke of a good name, he usually described it to be "a name for good things with good people." When he spoke of contentment, he used to say, "When "the mind and the condition meet, there is contentment. "Now, in order to that, either the condition must be "brought up to the mind, and that is not only unreason"able but impossible; for, as the condition riseth, the "mind riseth with it; or else the mind must be brought "down to the condition, and that is both possible and rea"sonable." And he observed, "That no condition of life "will of itself make a man content, without the grace of "GoD: for we find Haman discontented in the court; "Ahab discontented on the throne; Adam discontented "in paradise; nay, (and higher we cannot go) the angels "that fell, discontented in heaven itself."

He said, there were four things which he would not for the world have against him: "The word of God, his VOL. IV.

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❝ own

"own conscience, the prayers of the poor, and the aca "count of godly ministers.

"He that hath a blind conscience which sees nothing, a dead conscience which feels nothing, and a dumb con"science which says nothing, is in as miserable a condi"tion as a man can be in on this side hell."

Preaching on 1 Pet. i. 6. If need be, ye are in heaviness, he shewed what need the people of GoD have of afflictions: The same need as our bodies have of physic, "that our trees have of pruning, that gold and silver "have of the furnace, that liquors have of being emptied "from vessel to vessel, that the iron hath of a file, that "the fields have of a hedge, that the child has of a rod."

Preaching on that prayer of Christ for his disciples, John xvii. 21. That they all may be ONE, which no doubt is an answered prayer, for the Father heard him always: He shewed, That notwithstanding the many sad divi"sions that are in the church, yet all the saints, as far as "they are sanctified, are ONE; one in relation, one flock, "one family, one building, one body, one bread; one by "representation, one in image and likeness, of one incli"nation and disposition; one in their aims, one in their "askings, one in amity and friendship, one in interest, "and one in their inheritance; nay, they are one in "judgment and opinion; though in some things they "differ, yet those things in which they are agreed are

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many more, and much more considerable, than those "things in which they differ. They are all of a mind concerning sin, that it is the worst thing in the world; "concerning Christ, that he is all in all; concerning the favour of GOD, that it is better than life; concerning. the world, that it is vanity; concerning the word of "GOD, that it is very precious," &c.*

The

The Monthly Reviewers are pleased to acknowledge the Author's "Catholicism and Charity," in passing over the distinctions of Conformity and Non-conformity to the Established Church; but they afect an inquiry, Why Socinus is not admitted into this evangelical publication, as well as Calvin or Beza?-The short answer is: Because Socinus, so for from being evangelical, is not allowed to be a Christian, and would have made therefore a poor figure among our worthies, who loved, adored, and trusted in CHRIST, as their LORD and their God. When these gentlemen can point out among the adherents of the Socini, or among those who deny the essential divinity of JESUS CHRIST, any persons who re eived, out of his fulness grace for grace in their lives, and triumphantly glorified him in their deatis, as almost all those have done, whose names we think it our honour to record in these volumes, then their pretensions to this brotherhood may merit consideration. At present, we think it a duty not to mingle the characters of men, who, when alive, would

The great thing that, he condemned and witnessed. against in the church of Rome, was their monopolizing of the church, and condemning all that are not in with their interests, which is so directly contrary to the spirit of the gospel, as nothing can be more. He sometimes said, "I " am too much a catholic to be a Roman catholic."

He often expressed himself well pleased with St. Austin's healing rule, which, if duly observed, would put an end to all our divisions: "Sit in necessariis uniles, in non ♦ necessariis libertas, in omnibus charitas." In necessary "things let there be unity; in things not necessary, liberty; and in all things, charity."

He observed from Numb. x. 12. “ That all our removes in this world are but from one wilderness to another. Upon any change that is before us, we are apt to pro"mise ourselves a Canaan; but we shall be deceived; it "will prove a wilderness.".

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When some zealous people in the country would have him to preach against top-knots, and other vanities in apparel, he would say, that was none of his business; if he could persuade people to Christ, the pride, and vanity, "and excess of those things would fall of course;" and yet he had a dislike to vanity and gaiety of dress, and allowed it not in those that he had influence upon. His rule was, that in such things we must neither be owls nor apes; not affect singularity, nor affect modishness; nor (as he used to observe from 1 Pet. iii. 3.) "make the "putting on of apparei our adorning, because Christians have better things to adorn themselves with."

Speaking of the causes of atheism, he had this observation: "That a head full of vain and unprofitable notions, "meeting with a heart full of pride and self-conceited"ness, dispose a man directly to be an atheist."

A gentlewoman, that upon some unkindness betwixt her and her husband, was parted from him, and lived separately near a twelvemonth, grew melancholy, and complained of sin, and the withdrawing of the light of God's countenance, and the want of assurance; he told her, "She must rectify what was amiss between her and her "husband, and return into the way of duty, else it was "in

not have wi hed to be so mingled, but rather would have followed the Apostle Paul's precept of rection, and the Apostle John's example of avoiding those who, like Cerinthus, traduce the Divine Nature of their GoD and SAVIOUR. Reputed probity alone will not afford a sufficient itle, for Socrates and many other hea hens had this, but that sort of Christianity which our excellent Preacher here speaks of, upon John xvii. 21.