every month, wherein he would strictly examine the error of his heart and life, and confess and bewail those errors, and obtain the "sealed pardon" thereof, by a "renewed faith" in the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ; and then wrestle with Heaven for new supplies of grace, to carry him well through the whole service incumbent on him; and therewithal implore the smiles of Heaven on all the souls that were under his charge, and on the land and world. And this his piety was accompanied with proportionable industry, wherein he devoured books even to a degree of learned gluttony; insomuch that, if he might have changed his name, it must have been into Bibliander. Whence, tho' he had a fine, and large, and a continually growing library, yet, that he might avoid the disgrace of that salutation, salvete, libri sine doctore,* he took a very particular course, to make himself master of the learning, which was lodg'd in so rich a treasury: for so little did he deserve to be numbered among the chaplains of K. Lewis XI. the French king, who, seeing their learning to bear no proportion unto their libraries, wittily said of them, "they were like such as had crooked backs, carrying a burden about with them, which they never saw in their lives," that he had hardly left a book of consequence to be so used, in his library (shall I now call it, or his laboratory) which he had not so perused as to leave with it an inserted paper, a brief idea of the whole book, with memorandums of more notable passages occurring in it, written with his own diligent and so enriching hand. He might say, with Seneca, Nullus mihi per otium exiit dies; partem etiam noctium studiis vindico;t and it is well if he were not a little too much of a Seneca, in hurting of his health by so spending his life. 7. He faithfully set himself to discharge the whole duty of a pastor; and as he walked humbly under the awe of that word in Heb. xiii. 17, "They watch for your souls, as those that must give an account;" so, methinks, I hear him give up this account unto the Judge of all: “Gracious Lord, I watch'd, that I might see what special truths, from time to time, were most proper to be inculcated on my flock, and I thoroughly preached those truths. I watch'd, that I might see what sort of temptations did most threaten my flock, and I set myself to strengthen them against those temptations. I watch'd, that I might see what sort of afflictions did most assault my flock, and I set myself to comfort them under those afflictions. I did watch, to learn what sort of duties were most seasonable to be recommended to my flock, and I vigorously recommended them in the seasons thereof. I did watch, to see what souls of my flock did call for my more particular addresses, and I often address'd one or other of them. Yet not I, but the grace which was with me!" But if we consider him yet more particularly as a preacher, he did thus acquit himself. In the writing of his discourses for the pulpit, he did, as they say Aristotle did when he wrote one of his famous books, "dip his pen into his very soul!" When he was going to compose a sermon, he began with prayer; thinking, benè orasse est benè studuisse. He then read over • All hail, books without a master! + I lose not a day in indolence; I even devote a portion of the night to my studies. To have prayed well, is to have studied well. his text in the original, and weigh'd the language of the Holy Ghost. If any difficulty occurr'd in the interpretation, he was wary how he ran against the stream of the most solid interpreters, whom he still consulted. lle was then desirous to draw forth his doctrines, and perhaps other heads of his discourse in the beginning of the week, that so his occasional thoughts might be useful thereunto. And he would ordinarily improve his own meditations to shape his discourse, before he would consult any other authors who treated on the subjects, that so their notions might serve only to adorn or correct his own. Lastly, having finished his composure, he concluded with a thanksgiving to the Lord, his helper. And then for the utterance of the sermons thus prepared, though his pronunciation were not set off with all the advantages that "itching ears" would have asked for, yet he had the divine rhetorick, recommended by Dr. Stoughton in that speech of his, "this I know and dare avouch, that the highest mystery in divine rhetorick is, to feel what a man speaks, and then to speak what he felt." In thus "fulfilling his ministry," he went through a variety of subjects; but there were especially two subjects that were singled out by him towards the close of it: First, it being a time when a conjunction of iniquity and calamity made but an ill aspect upon the countrey, he did in one part of the Lord's day choose to insist upon the prayer of Jonas; which he handled in forty-five sermons, whereof the last was uttered about a month before his end. Secondly, a synod of churches having discovered and condemned a number of provoking evils, by degenerating whereinto the land was exposed unto the judgments of Heaven, he did on the other part of the Lord's days insist on those provocations; and having dispatch'd what he intended hereof also, he took two texts; the one to awaken the obstinate-namely, that in Jer. xiii. 17: "If you will not hear, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride." The other to encourage the penitent -namely, that in Mat. xi, 28: "Come to me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And he was never after heard speaking in the name of the Lord. § 8. A while before his death, he preached thirteen sermons on that passage, Eccles. xii. 5, "Man goeth to his long home." And he had a strange and strong præsage on his own mind, that he was himself to be not long from that home. I find the patriarch Isaac, in Gen. xxvii. 2, fill'd with many thoughts about "the day of his death" at hand; and enquiring after some special reason for it, I find that Isaac was now come to that age at which his brother Ishmael died, fourteen years before. This probably now, above any other time, awakened him to think of his own death as near unto him. It may be, the præsage of our Shepard, that he should not outlive the age of twenty seven, might be somewhat excited by his calling to mind the age at which his uncle expired. Our first Shepard of Cambridge had three sons, whereof, if the eldest namely, Thomas (the father of our Thomas of Charlstown)—were one sin gularly enlarged in his endowments and improvements, I am sure the second was one whose heart was a tent in which the Lord remarkably chose to dwell: it was Mr. Samuel Shepard, of whose holy life and death I may here interweave a distinct account, by but reciting the words which I find written in a private manuscript of our excellent Mr. Mitchel concerning him. His words are these: "On April 7, 1668, dyed Mr. Samuel Shepard, pastor of the church of Rowly (just two months after his wife), a very precious, holy, meditating, able and choice young man; one of the first three. His attainments in communion with God, and in daily meditation and close walking, may shame those that are elder than he. He was but twenty six years of age in October last. He was an excellent preacher, most dearly beloved at Rowly, and of all that knew him; but just settled among them. The people would have 'plucked out their eyes' for him, to have saved his life. But he was ripe for heaven, and God took him thither; a gain to him, but an invaluable loss to us." Now this our Thomas had an almost unaccountable apprehension that, in his early death, he should be like his uncle Samuel; and under the influence of this apprehension, he so liv'd, and so preach'd, as to avoid the danger of a sudden death, by being always prepared for it. Accordingly, it came to pass that about June 5, 1685, on Friday, being indisposed in his bowels, he yet continued his pains and hopes, all the Saturday following, to be ready for the exercises of the Lord's day, when the Lord's-Supper also was to have been administred. But on the Saturday night his illness grew so much upon him, that he said unto his wife, "I would gladly have been, once more, at the table of the Lord; but I now see that I shall no more partake thereof until I do it after a new manner in the kingdom of heaven." On Lord's day noon I visited him, and at my parting with him, he said, "My hopes are built on the free mercy of God and the rich merit of Christ, and I do believe that, if I am taken out of the world, I shall only change my place; I shall neither change my company, nor change my communion: And as for you, sir, I beg the Lord Jesus to be with you unto the end of the world!" After this, he spoke little to his attendants; but was often over-heard pouring out prayers, especially for the widow-church (as he often expressed it) which he was to leave behind him. And in the night following, to the extream surprize of his friends on earth, he went away to those in heaven! If his age be now enquired after, it is remarked that, altho' the Scripture doth mention the particular age of many heroes eternized in its oracles, yet after the Lord Jesus Christ came, and continued in this lower world no longer than thirty two years and a half, the Scripture does not mention the age of any one person whatsoever, as if the time of any one's continuance in this world, more or less, were not worth minding, since the Son of the Most High tabernacled so little a while. among us. However, we will here mention the age of our Shepard: it was a month short of twenty-seven. But, An miserum dices, citò quòd terrena reliquit ! § 9. "Wisdom, gravity, prudence, temperance (as one speaks) are not always confined unto them that have wrinkled faces, furrowed brows, dim eyes, and palsey hands, leaning on a staff;" nor is a young man uncapable of being a divine. Although our Shepard had not outlived the years of youth, when he went from hence, yet he had outgrown the airs of it; and among all the vertues of an old man which adorn'd him, not the least of his ornaments was, his being well established in the study of divinity. To accomplish himself in that study, he did not apply himself unto the reading of those authors who, pretending to describe unto us, "the whole duty of man," and the "condition of our obtaining the benefit purchased by Christ," are careful to insist on any thing rather than that a reliance on the righteousness of the obedience, yielded by the Lord Jesus Christ as our surety unto God for us, which is the "one thing needful," or that faith, whereby we come to have the union with our Lord Jesus Christ, from which alone all good works arise: and those who, amidst their voluminous harangues upon moral virtue, are very careful to avoid the least insinuation that a man cannot be truly virtuous, until the Spirit of God, by a supernatural operation, infusing a new principle into him, hath regenerated him, and that a man can do nothing truly virtuous without the supernatural aids of that spirit. He look'd upon many late books, written to undermine the orthodox "articles of the church of England," in these matters, by persons who perhaps had got into preferment by subscribing those very articles, as books that indeed betray'd the Christian religion, under the pretence of upholding it. And the mercy of God having preserved the mind of this our young student from the wrong schemes which might have afterwards entailed such an eternal unsuccessfulness upon his ministry, as uses to attend the ministry wherein the "grace of the gospel" is not acknowledged, he chose to read those authors which have the truer "spirit of the gospel" in them. I find therefore, under his own hand, a list of such authors as these, to be considered by him, as indeed worthy to be perused and considered: Mr. Perkins, Dr. Preston, Dr. Usher, Dr. Manton, Mr. Jeans, Mr. Strong, Mr. Caryl, Mr. Swinnock, Dr. Jacomb, Dr. Owen, Mr. Polbill. And however he saw a Sherlock, after a very unevangelical manner, abusing the writings of his grandfather Shepard, his value for those writings, and the writings of such men as Mr. Hooker or Dr. Goodwin, was thereby not abated; but his detestation of the new-divinity, wherein he saw the mysteries of "union with Christ" confounded, "acquaintance with Christ" reproached, and "living by faith" and "coming to Christ with nothing for all things," made a ridicule, was more than a little augmented. And as it was a principal endeavour with him to settle himself in the true "protestant, New-English Anti-Arminian points of truth," so on all occasions he prov'd himself one • Call him not wretched; though he thus resign Those earthly things-to speed to joys divine. able to maintain the truth against all opposers: Whence the immature death of so accomplish'd a divine, cannot but be a sensible wound unto our churches. But he that "holds the stars in his right hand," can, if we address him for it, upon the setting of some, cause others to rise; yea, it is possible, and it is indeed proposed, that by writing the lines of some such, others may be excited and assisted, in shining like unto them. This was the short life of my dear Shepard. I confess my affection unto him to have been such, that, if I might use the poet's expression of his friend, animæ dimidium meæ, I must say, "I am half buried, since he is dead," or, "he is but half dead, since I am alive." Nevertheless, this affection hath not bribed my veracity in any part of the character which I have given of him; for as, on the one side, I count it base to throw dirt on the face which dust hath been cast upon; so, on the other side, I think, that painting becomes dead people worse than living. A line or two of Emanuel Thesaurus, upon that first and young Shepard ABEL, we may now leave upon him for his EXEMPLIFIED IN THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. NATHANIEL MATHER; WHO HAVING BECOME, at the age OF NINETEEN, AN INSTANCE OF MORE THAN COMMON LEARNING AND VIRTUE, CHANGED EARTH FOR HEAVEN, OCTOBER 17, 1688. Si spectes Annos, Annis Puer ille videtur: Si Mores spectes, Moribus esse Senex.t THE FOURTH EDITION.-WITH A PREFATORY EPISTLE BY MATTHEW MEAD. TO THE READER. Of all reading, history hath in it a most taking delight, and no history more delightful than the lives of good men, it being not only pleasant, but profitable; and so while other pleasures become a bait to vice, this becomes a motive to virtue. It may be said of such lives, as that excellent Mr. Herbert said of Verses, A life may find him who a sermon flies, And turn delight into a sacrifice. Thou hast here a rare history of a youth, that may be of great use and advantage both to old and young; that the aged, seeing themselves out-done by green years, may "gird up • Here the young Shepherd lies, with life o'erworn: Whose death, we all-whose life, not one can mourn. † Look at his face; 'tis childhood's, young and fair: Look at his soul; and manhood's strength is there. |