1. As a man, I am disposed to assign a very high place to the author of these volumes. He strikes me as having been, not merely an ordinary " good " man, but one of singularly great grace and con- sistency of Christian character.
He lived in an age when party spirit ran very high, and the faults of an adversary were carefully noted and relentlessly exposed. None, perhaps, found that out to their cost so thoroughly as the Puritans, after Charles II. returned to England, and the Commonwealth was overthrown. To blacken the reputation of a Puritan, and vilify him before the public, was too often the way to get promotion ; and woe to the unhappy man whose life had given even a semblance of a handle to his opponents 1
In an age like this, Manton occupied for several years a very prominent position. He was not a country parson, living scores of miles from London, and absorbed in unobtrusive pastoral labours among a rural population. On the contrary, he was a stjindard- bearer in the fore-front of the battle— a city set upon a hill that could not be hid— a man who could neither say, nor do, nor write anything without being observed. Did Oliver Cromwell require a minister to oflfer up prayer at the public ceremony of his undertaking
AN ESTIMATE OF MANTON. Xlii
the Protectorship ? Manton was the minister. — Did the Long Parlia- ment want a special sermon preached before its members on that great public event ? Manton was frequently ordered to be the preacher. — Did the famous Westminster Assembly want a commendatory preface written to their Confession and Catechisms of world-wide reputation ? They commit the execution of it to the pen of Thomas Manton. — Was a Committee of Triers appointed to examine persons who were to be admitted into the ministry, or inducted into livings ? Manton was a leading member of this committee. — Was a movement made by the Presbyterian divines, after Cromwell's death, to restore the monarchy and bring back Charles II. ? Manton was a leader in the movement. — Was an effort made after the Eestoration to bring about a reconciliation between the Episcopal Church and the Nonconfor- mists ? Manton was one of the commissioners to act in the matter in the unhappy Savoy Conference. — In short, if there was one name which more than another was incessantly before the public for several years about the period of the Eestoration, that name was Manton's. If there was one divine who, willingly or unwillingly, was constantly standing under the full gaze of friends and foes in London, that divine was the Eector of St Paul's, Covent Garden, Thomas Manton.
Now, remembering all this, I ask the reader to observe, that through- out this fiery ordeal Manton preserved a spotless reputation. I am struck with the fact, that the most violent writers of that violent day can lay nothing to his charge of the slightest importance. The most foul-mouthed and rancorous assailants of the Puritans seem unable to lay hold on any weak point in his character. No weapon forged against him seems to prosper, and no dirt sticks to his name. Even Antony a Wood, the prejudiced author of " Athenae Oxonienses," can find nothing to allege against Manton, and is obliged to content him- self with contemptible sneers and insinuations.
Some one may perhaps imagine that Manton was a prudent, "canny " man, who avoided doing anything to give offence, and had a keen eye to his own interests. There is not an atom of foundation for such a theory. When it was first proposed to bring to trial and execute Charles I., Manton was one of fifty-seven divines who signed and pub- lished a bold protest against the design. When Christopher Love was beheaded by Oliver Cromwell on a charge of treason, Manton accom- panied him to the scaffold, and afterwards preached his funeral sermon at St Lawrence Jewry, though the soldiers threatened to shoot him. As to minding his own interests, no man perhaps ever thought less of them than Manton. The mere fact that he refused the Deanery of Eochester, when offered to him by Charles II., and afterwards resigned
XlV AN ESTIMATE OF MAXTON.
St Paul's, Covent Garden, for conscience sake, is plain evidence that he never shrank from giving ofTence if Christ's truth, in his judgment, seemed to make it necessary.
With all tliese facts before us, I cannot avoid the conclusion that Manton must have been a man of uncommon graces and singular consistency of character. In no other way can I account for the com- parative absence of material faults in his life, even his enemies themselves being judges. A man who went down to the grave at fifty-seven, with 80 fair a reputation, after spending the prime of his life in London, and mingling incessantly in public affairs, must surely have been no common Christian. It can never be said of him that his lines fell " in pleasant places," and that liis grace was never tried and tested ! Few modern divines perhaps ever passed through such a fiery ordeal as he did, and surely few ever came out of such with so untarnished a name. He must have been a rare combination of wisdom, tact, boldness, courtesy, firmness, sound judgment, and charity. As a godly man, I do not hesitate to place him in the foremost rank of Puritan divines ; and I ask the student of his writings to remember, as they read them, that they are reading the works of one who was eminently a " good man, and full of the Holy Ghost."