among us, that when the minister, who might be the most likely to do them good, came unto them, the fiends that possessed them would make the minister's face look so dirty and swarthy, that they must by no means acknowledge him. This I may venture to say without flattery: it is long ago that, in another sense than Aquinas, we call'd him "an angelical doctor;" and he has now attained the "face of an angel," without the least wrinkle in it. He is, with Stephen, and the angels of God, gone to behold the glory of the Lord JESUS CHRIST, and bear a part with the "many angels round about the throne, saying, 'Worthy is the Lamb that was siain!" I cannot but recommend him to you, as one that was, “a candidate of the angelical life;" and solicit you to remember, not only the lesws, and counsels, and warnings, which you have had from him, in private cr publick dispensations, but also his example, to follow him wherein he Slowed (and in many things he followed!) the Lord JESUS CHRIST. FINIS. CHAPTER VIII. GEMINI.*-THE LIFE OF THE COLLINS'S. 1. WHEN several sons of Diagoras had so acquitted themselves as to merit and obtain applause in their publick actions, he that brought the eld man the report of it, gave him that salutation, "Dye quickly, or, I am going to tell you that which will keep you out of heaven!" There was a good old man, called COLLINS, the deacon of the church at Camtridge, who is now gone to heaven; but before he went thither, had the satisfaction to see several most worthy sons become very famous persons in their generation; sons that, having worthily served their generation, are now gone thither as well as he; two of them are found among the graduates of Harvard-Colledge. 2. Mr. JOHN COLLINS in his youth received a wound by a fall, which ad like to have cost him his life; but whilst he lay gasping, the renowned Mr. Thomas Shepard came to him with this consolation: "I have just ow been wrestling with the Lord for thy life, and God hath granted me my desire; young man, thou shalt not dye, but live; but remember, that now the Lord says, surely, thou wilt now fear him, and receive instruction." The life then continued unto that young man, afterwards proved so very considerable among the congregational divines of Great Britain, and especially in the great city of London, where he mostly spent his days of publick service, that it well deserves a room in our account of worthies. • Twins. His abilities as he was a preacher, did chiefly signalize him; for such the life and charm which accompanied his exercises in the pulpit, th none but persons of the same humour with him who wrote certain thin like books to prove that "Cicero wanted eloquence," went away unmov or unpleased from them. Nevertheless, being under disadvantages come at the more perfect story of his life, my reader shall have only t contracted report which his epitaph has thus given of it. Reader, the stor will speak, if his friends do not celebrate him! JOHANNES COLLINS. Indolis optima puerulus, patrem pietate insignem, In Americanum Anglorum secutus est colonium. Scriba factus ad regnum cælorum instructissimus, Utrobique multos Christo lucrifecit; Præsertim hac in Metropoli, gregis gratissimi pasi Nil segnis otii gnavo indulgens animo, Nec laboribus morbisque fracto parcens corpori. Ut æternæ aliorum vitæ consuleret ; M. Dris Die III°. Anno Ære Christianæ M DC LXXXVII.* This is the language of the epitaph, the truth-speaker. And as I have thus found the story of his life, so I can, in a yet mo unsuspected quarter, now find a sermon on his death. In the third volum of the "Morning-Exercises," published by that good man, the very Barn bas of London, that very reverend and excellent man, Dr. Annesly; the is a sermon, wearing the name of no other author, but N. N. on that cas "how the religious of a nation are the strength of it?" Now, the author o that sermon was this Mr. John Collins, who tho' he thus reckoned himself no body, yet was by others esteemed so considerable a part of the "strengt of the nation," that at the affectionate prayer of the reverend Mr. Mea poured out before God for his recovery when he lay sick, I have been to there was hardly one dry eye to be seen in the great congregation of th lecture at Pinner's-Hall, where he also had been a lecturer. Let t reader but make the application of that sermon to the author of it; an read this as the running title, "The English nation weakened by the dea of Mr. John Collins." thus a funeral sermon upon him will not be wanting §3. A younger brother, but yet a brother to him, was Mr. Nathani Collins, at whose death, December 28, 1684, in the forty-third year of h age (wherein he got the start for heaven!) there were more wounds give * JOHN COLLINS; while yet an ingenuous boy, he followed to England's American colonies his pious fathe who was then panting for a purer worship of God and a more exact church discipline. Here the youth, burni with undiminished zeal for God's service, became fitted, at school and at Harvard College to be a shining light the kingdom of heaven, and was then given back with usury to Old England. Scotland, though prolific in emine divines, heard and wondered at his public ministrations. Every where he gained many to Christ; more he bu up in Christ. Especially in this metropolis, did he, as a pastor of a loving flock, refrain from indulging his gre intellect in sluggishness or ease, and bore up against toil, disease, and a shattered frame. In meditation, in preac ing, in personal remonstrance and in prayer, he spent his own frail existence, that he might secure the eternal i of his fellow-mortals. No pastor, however great his excellences, ever called forth from the living church more ve eration in life or deeper grief for his death. He died December 3d, in the one thousand six hundred and eighty-seventh year of the Christian Era. to the whole colony of Connecticut in our New-England, than the body of Cæsar did receive, when he fell wounded in the senate-house. Reader, I would have made an essay to have lamented the fate of this our Collins in verse, were it not for two discouragements: not because Annatus the Jesuite reckon❜d it a thing worthy of a scoff in our Dr. Twiss, to be guilty of a little flight at poetry-for the noblest hands have scann'd poetical measures on their fingers-but because my mean faculties would not carry me beyond the performances, whereof the gentleman in Thuanus was afraid, when he made it a clause in his last will, that "they should not burden his hearse with bad funeral verses;" and because that sacred thing, verse, hath been by the licentious part of mankind so prostituted, that now the truth of whatever is therein offered, therefore thus becomes suspected. Nevertheless, his merits were such, that his life must be written, or at least so much of it as this, that he merited highly to have his life written. But our history of him is to be abridged into this brief account, that the church of Middletown upon Connecticut-river, was the golden candlestick from whence this excellent person illuminated more than that whole colony; and that all the qualities of most exemplary piety, extraordinary ingenuity, obliging affability, join'd with the accomplishments of an extraordinary preacher, did render him truly excellent. In saying this of him, I may confirm what I say, in words like those of Jerom on a like occasion, Testor, Christanum de Christiano, vera proferre:* and for his character add this epitaph: Ille pius pastor, quo non præstantior unus, But indeed, as the mother of Brasidas bravely comforted herself upon the death of her much lamented son, Vir bonus est Brasidas et fortis, sed habet multos Sparta similes: even such was the consolation of Connecticut, by the special favour of Heaven to the colony; "that though in the death of Collins, they lost an excellent man, yet he was not the only excellent man they had among them." In the acknowledgments of worth, there may come in for a great share with him several most worthy men, wherewith the Connecticut colony has been singularly favoured, Whiting of Hartford, Woodbridge of Wethersfield, Wakeman of Fairfield, will never be forgotten, till Connecticut colony do forget itself and all religion. * I bear witness, that a Christian is telling the true story of a Christian's life. + The pastoral work with holy zeal he wrought; Teaching by doing-doing what he taught. + Brasidas is a good and brave man, but Sparta has many such. CHAPTER IX. THE LIFE OF MR. THOMAS SHEPARD. Cur præmaturam, Mortemque queramus Acerbam ?. Mors Matura Venit, cum Bona Vita fuit.* § 1. If it were accounted a great honor to the family of the Curii in Rome, that there arose from that stock "three excellent orators," one succeeding another; we may account it a greater honor signalizing the family of the Shepards of New-England, that no less than "three excellent ministers" have successively issued from it. The eldest son of Mr. Thomas Shepard, the ever memorable pastor to the church of Cambridge, was Mr. Thomas Shepard, the pastor of the church of Charlstown; and the only son of Mr. Thomas Shepard, that pastor of Charlstown, was our last Mr. Thomas Shepard, Paternæ Virtutis ex asse Hæres,† his grandfather's and his father's genuine off-spring. The lives of those his predecessors make a figure in our Church-history, and though this our third Mr. Thomas Shepard must have it said of him, "that he did not attain to the days of the years of the life of his fathers in the days of their pilgrimage;" nevertheless his life had that in it which may justly render it observable and exemplary. Yea, such a similitude of spirit, there was descending from the father to the son, and from the son to the grandson in this holy generation, that albeit, they were all of them severally short-lived, the two first not living much more than forty, and the last not so much as thirty years in the world, yet there might a sort of jointed longævity be ascribed unto the generation; for when the father went away, Non totus recessit, we had him still surviving to the life in the posterity. As the name of Abner may be taken both ways, either Pater Lucerna, or Lucerna Patris; either the father was the brightness of the son, or the son was the brightness of the father: such a lustre did father, and son, and grandson mutually reflect upon one another in this happy family. It might be said of them as Nazianzen, I remember, speaks about the family of a Basil; the parents were such that, if they had not such blessed children, they had been of themselves renowned; and the children were such, that, if the parents had not been so of themselves, yet for the sake of these they had been famous in the church of God. Or, they may make us think of the glory with which the most illustrious family in the oracles of God is usually set off when Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, are so often together introduced, where the root gives a verdure to the branches, and the flourishing branches again commend the root. Why should untimely death evoke our grief? Heir to the entirety of his father's virtues. He did not wholly depart. § 2. When Mr. Thomas Shepard, the second of New-England, and the first of Charlstown, died, he left behind him such a picture as that which Tully mentions of Sextus Sulpicius: Nullum unquam Monumentum clarius, S. Sulpicius relinquere potuit, quam Effigiem Morum suorum, Virtutis, Constantiæ, Pietatis, Ingenii Filium; a son that was the lively picture of his virtues. And now that son also is dead without any male off-spring, we will make an essay at the drawing of his picture after another manner; even by such. a narrative of his life, as may be indeed his picture to the life: in the doing whereof perhaps the children of Godly and worthy ancestors may find the encouragement of a confirmation to that observation, that as the snow-ball, the further it rolls, the greater it grows, thus the further that the grace of God is continued, and received, and valued in any family, the greater effects of that grace will be still appearing. For there were some singular circumstances of early blessedness, attending this our youngest and latest Shepard, wherein it might be said of him, as it was of the well-known grandson, of whom this was indeed a true son, "His blessings exceeded the blessings of his progenitors." And we may the rather take notice of this matter, because there was hardly one consideration which oftner possessed the mind of this our Shepard, or more powerfully operated upon him to make him eminent, than "the obligations laid upon him from his ancestors to do worthily." As the famous Boleslaus always carried about with him the picture of his father in his bosom, upon which often looking, he would say, "Let me never do any thing unworthy the son of such a father!" this was the very spirit of our Shepard, who always bore about with him the image of his father, and as often as perhaps almost any one thing, thought on this, "how he might approve himself the son of such a father." §3. Descended from such ancestors, our Thomas Shepard was born at Charlstown in New-England on July 5, 1658. How he was in his earliest years disposed, I choose to relate by reciting some of the words, afterwards used by himself, when he addressed the church of Charlstown for admission to their sacred communion: "As to the thing of that which is commonly called 'first conversion' or 'regeneration,' I have had many thoughts about it; but have been afraid, and am still, to determine it unto this or that particular. What I have found by myself, hath made me oftentimes to question whether the former operations of the spirit of God about me, were any more than common; or whether such and such sins were consistent with saving grace; that whien bath helped me in this case, hath been partly what I have heard from a reverend man of God, 'that such as are from time to time disquieted with such thoughts, the best, if not the only way to put it out of doubt that they have true faith, is by exercising faith, to convert again unto God. And putting my soul in the way of the breathings of God's spirit, and then observing the actings thereof, I have, by the help of the same spirit, found something of relief under those doubts. On my childhood and youth, I have too much cause to say (as Solomon of the * Sestus Sulpicius could not leave any more notable monument, than that image of his character, his virtues. his fidelity and his piety-his own son, |