CHAPTER III. THE LIFE OF MR. SAMUEL DANFORTH. § 1. MOST Christian and candid is the speech of a certain author, who yet writes himself, "A beneficed minister, and regular son of the Church of England," when he says, "I never thought them good painters, who draw the pictures of the dissenting brethren with dirt and soot, but I, knowing them to be unlike those pictures, have with just offence beheld their inju ries, and would have been pleased to have seen them described by some impartial and ingenious master, as fit to adorn the palaces of Princes." Reader, I am going to draw the picture of another minister, who was a non-conformist unto Emendables, in the Church of England; wherein tho' I am not ingenious, yet I will be impartial, and therefore, instead of the dirt and soot, which the persecuting bigots for a few ceremonies would employ upon the memory of such men, I will, with an honest and modest report of his character, cause him to be remembered next unto the first. fellow of that Colledge, whereof he was the next. § 2. This was Mr. Samuel Danforth, son to Mr. N. Danforth; a gentleman of such estate and repute in the world, that it cost him a considerable sum to escape the knighthood, which K. Charles I. imposed on all of so much. per annum; and of such figure and esteem in the Church, that he procured that famous lecture at Framlingham in Suffolk, where he had a fine mannour, which lecture was kept by Mr. Burroughs, and many other noted ministers in their turns; to whom, and especially to Mr. Shepard, he prov'd a Gaius, and then especially when the Laudian fury scorched them. This person had three sons, whereof the second was our Samuel, born in September, in the year 1626, and by the desire of his mother, who died three years after his birth, earnestly dedicated unto the "schools of the prophets." His father brought him to New-England in the year 1634, and at his death, about four years after his arrival here, he committed this hopeful son of many cares and prayers, unto the paternal oversight of Mr. Shepard, who proved a kind patron unto him. His early piety answered the pious education bestowed upon him; and there was one instance of it somewhat singularly circumstanced: when he was reciting to his tutor, out of the heathen poets, he still made some ingenious addition and correction upon those passages which ascribed those things unto the false gods of the gentiles, that could not without blasphemy be ascribed unto any one but the "Holy One of Israel:" his tutor gave him a sharp reprehension for this, as for a meer impertinency; but this conscientious child reply'd, "Sir, I can't in conscience recite the blasphemies of these wretches, without washing my mouth upon it!" Nevertheless, a fresh occasion occurring, his tutor gave him another sharp reprehension for his doing once again as he had formerly done; but the tutor, to the amazement of them all, was terribly and suddenly seized with a violent convulsion-fit; out of which when he at last recovered, he acknowledg'd it as an hand of God upon him, for his harshness to his pupil, whose conscientiousness he now applauded. § 3. His learning, with his virtue, ere long brought him into the station of a tutor; being made the second fellow of Harvard-Colledge, that appears in the catalogue of our graduates. The diary which, even in those early times, he began to keep of passages belonging to his interior state, give great proof of his proficiency in godliness, under the various ordinances and providences of the Lord Jesus Christ; the watchfulness, tenderness and conscientiousness of aged Christianity accompained him, while he was yet but young in years. His manner was to rise before the sun, for the exercises which Isaac attended in the evening; and in the evening likewise he withdrew, not only from the conversation then usually maintained, which he thought hurtful to his mind by its infectious levity, but from supper it self also, for the like exercises of devotion. Although he was preserved free from every thing scandalous, or immoral, yet he seem'd, as Tertullian speaks, Nulli rei natus nisi pœnitentiæ;* and the sin of unfruit fulness gave as much perplexity to him, as more scandalous and immoral practices do to other men; for which comprehensive sin, keeping a secret fast, once before the Lord, the Holy Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ so powerfully and rapturously comforted him, with those words, "he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; without me ye can do nothing;" that the remembrance thereof was all his days afterwards comfortable unto him. § 4. Mr. Welds returning for England, the church at Roxbury invited Mr. Danforth to become a Colleague to Mr. Eliot, whose evangelical employments abroad among the Indians made a Colleague at home to be necessary for him. The pastoral charge of that church he undertook in the year 1650, and no temptations arising, either from the incompetency of the salary allow'd him to support an hospitable family, or from the provocation which unworthy men in the neighbourhood sometimes tried him withal, could perswade him to accept of motions, which were made unto him, to remove unto more comfortable settlements; but keeping his eye upon the great man's motto prudens qui patiens,† he continued in his Roxbury station, for three years more than thrice seven together. All this time, as he studied use, by endeavours to do good, not only in that particular town, but with influences more general and extensive, so he did endeavour to signalize himself by studying of peace, with a moderating and interposing sort of temper, in rising differences; being of the opinion, that usually they have little peace of conscience, who do not make much conHe is wise who is patient. • Fruitful in nothing but penitence. science of peace." And when he then came to dye, spending one whole sleepless night in a survey of his past life, he said, "he could find no remarkable miscarriage (through the grace of Christ) in all this time to charge himself withal, but that with Hezekiah he had served the Lord with a perfect heart all his days." § 5. The sermons with which he fed his flock were elaborate and substantial; he was a notable text-man, and one who had more than forty or fifty scriptures distinctly quoted in one discourse; but he much recommended himself by keeping close to his main text, and avoiding of all remote excurtions and vagaries; and there was much notice taken of it, that though he were a very judicious preacher, yet he was therewithal so affectionate, "that he rarely, if ever, ended a sermon without weeping." On the Lord's days in the forenoons, he expounded the books of the Old Testament; in the afternoons, he discoursed on the body of divinity, and many occasional subjects, and some chapters in the Epistle to the Romans, until the year 1661; and then he began to handle the "harmony of the four Evangelists," proceeding therein to those words of our Lord Jesus Christ, in Luke xiv. 14, "Thou shalt be recompenced at the resurrection of the just:" On which, having preached his last sermon, it proved indeed his last; and from thence he had no more to do, but now "waits all the days of his appointed time, until his change come," at that resurrection, when our Lord Jesus Christ shall call, and he shall answer that call, and the Lord shall have a "desire to the work of his hands." He also preach'd a monthly lecture, and on many private occasions, at meetings of Christians, in the families of the faithful. But instead of ever venturing upon any extemporaneous performances, it was his manner to write his sermons twice over; and it was in a fair long hand that he wrote them. His utterance was free, clear, and giving much in a little time; his memory very tenacious, and never known to fail him, though he allow'd it no assistances. And unto all the other commendable things observed in the discharge of his ministry, he added that of a most pastoral watchfulness over his flock. Hence he not only visited the sick as a messenger from heaven to them, "one among a thousand," but when he met persons recovered from sickness, he would, at this rate accost them: "Well, you have been in God's school; but what have you learnt? what good have you got?" And notable were the effects of these his applications. Hence also he took much. care that none should keep an "house of public entertainment" in his town, but such as would keep good orders and manners in their houses; and the tavern being in view of his own study-window, when he saw any towndwellers tippling there, he would go over and chide them away. Hence likewise he would animadvert upon miscarriages that came in his way, with all watchful and zealous faithfulness, and one instance of his doing so had something peculiar in it. A "day of humiliation" was to be attended, and a man of another town, by unseasonable driving a cart through the street, caused this good man to come out and reprove him for the affront he thereby put upon the devotions of the people in the neighbourhood: the man made him an obstinate and malapert answer, but when he came home, he found one of his children suddenly dead; upon this he could have no rest in his mind, until he came to this "reprover in the gate," with humble and many tokens of repentance. § 6. After his "contraction," according to the old usage of New-England, unto the virtuous daughter of Mr. Wilson (whereat Mr. Cotton preached the sermon) he was married unto that gentlewoman in the year 1651. Of twelve children by her, there are four now at this day surviving; whereof two are now worthy ministers of the gospel. When his wife was under discouragements at any time, through domestick straits, he would reply, "Ben't you discouraged; if you undergo more difficulties than other gentlewomen, still we have the Lord's part, and at last you shall have an ample recompence, a prophet's recompence!" As his end approached, he had strong apprehensions of its approach; and the very night before he fell sick, he told his wife he "had been much concerned how she with her children would subsist, if he should be removed; but now he had got over it, and firmly believed in the covenant of God for them, that they should be, by the Divine Providence, as well provided for as they could be if he were alive:" which has been since accomplished unto admiration! Immediately after this, he fell sick of a putred fever, occasioned by a damp, cold, nocturnal air, on a journey; and in the space of six days passed from natural health to eternal peace, November 19, 1674. Of his dying prayers for his consort, one of the most lively was, that her daughter (now the wife of Edward Bromfield, Esq.) might be made a rich blessing and comfort unto her; and this also hath not been without its observable accomplishment! But if we now enquire after an epitaph, to be inscribed on the tomb where his ashes now lye, with those of our governour Dudley, for whose honourable family he always had a great friendship, I know not whether one might not be taken out of the words of his venerable old Collegue Mr. Eliot, who would say, "My Brother Danforth made the most glorious end that ever I saw !" or from a poem of Mr. Weld's upon him, which had a clause to this purpose: Mighty in Scripture, searching out the sense, Our minds with gospel his rich lectures fed; § 7. The least pupils in astronomy cannot now, without some diversion, reflect upon the astronomy of the ancients, when we read them declaiming against the sphærical figure of the heavens: the many passages to this purpose in Justin Martyr, and Ambrose, and Theodoret, and Theophylact, and the great Austin himself, I will not recite, least, reader, we should, before we are aware, play too much with the beards of the Fathers: nor 66 would we lay aside our value for good old Chrysostom's theology, because we find him in a confident and a triumphing manner upbraiding the world with such an opinion as, Πῇ ἐισιν οι σφαιροεδή κρανὸν εἶναὶ α ποφαινόμενοι : “ Where are those men that imagine that the heavens have a sphorical form?"— since the Scripture saith, "God stretched forth the heavens as a curtain, and he spread them as a tent to dwell in," which are not sphorical. We will not call them fools for these harangues; but leave it unto one of themselves, even Jerom, to pass his censure upon them, est in Ecclesia stultiloquium, si quis Caelum putet fornicis modo curvatum, Esaix, quem non intelligit, sermone deceptus: ""Tis foolish speaking in the Church, if any, through misapprehension of the words of Isaiah, shall affirm that the heavens are not round." The divines of the latter ages are (though, to our surprize, the voluminous Tostatus was not!) better astronomers than those of the former; and among the divines, that have been astronomers, our Mr. Samuel Danforth comes in with a claim of some consideration. Several of his astronomical composures have seen the light of the sun; but one especially on this occasion. Among the "four hundred and odd comets," the histories whereof have been preserved in the records of learned men, a special notice was taken of that which alarumed the whole world in the year 1664. Now, although our Danforth had not the advantages of Hevelius, to discover how many odd clots, compact and lucid, there were in the head of that blazing-star, with one thicker than the rest, until it was grown to twenty four minutes diameter, nor to determine that it was at least six times as big as the earth, and that its parallax rendered it at length as remote from the earth as Mars himself, nevertheless, he diligently observed the motions of it, from its first appearance in Corvus, whence it made a descent, crossing the tropick of Capricorn, till it arrived unto the main top-sail of the ship, and then it returned through Canis Major, and again crossed the tropick of Capricorn, passing through Lepus, Eridamus, and the Equinoctial, and entered into the mouth of the Whale, and so into Aries; where it retired, not leaving any philosopher able to fulfil the famous prophecy of Seneca, in predicting the new appearance of it. He therefore published a little treatise, entitled, "An Astronomical Description of the late Comet, with a brief Theological Description thereof," in which treatise he not only proves, that a comet can be no other than a "coelestial luminary moving in the starry heavens," whereof especially the "largeness of the circle" in which it moves is a mathematical and irrefragable demonstration, but also he improves the opinion of a comet's being portentous, endeavouring, as it became a devout preacher, to awaken mankind by this portent, out of a sinful security. Now, though for my own part, I am sometimes ready to say, with a learned man, tædet me divinationis in re tam incerta;* yet when I consider, how many learned men have made laborious collections of remarkable and calamitous events, to render * I am tired of drawing portents from so uncertain a thing. |