That I have inscribed this Commentary to your name will not seem strange to those that know my great obligations to yourself and your worthy husband, and your interest in that beloved place ^ and people among whom I have had so many sweet opportunities of enjoying, and, I hope, of glorifying God, and from whom I should never have removed but upon those weighty causes and considerations which did even rend me from them. And though I am now transplanted, and owe very much service and respect elsewhere, yet that noble lord^ that gave me the call will allow me full time and leave to pay my old debts, that afterward I may be the more in a capacity publicly to express my gratitude to himself.
If any should be so foolish as to object the unsuitableness of dedi- cating a comment on the scripture to one of your sex (as it seemeth some did to Jerome 3), I shall not plead that two of the books of scripture are named from women, Ruth and Esther, that an epistle which maketh up a part of the canon is inscribed to an ' elect lady/ that if this be a fault, others have faulted in like kind before me;^ but only that this is a practical commentary, and surely in matters of prac- tice (which is every Christian's common interest) your sex hath a full share. Though your course of life be more private and confined, yet you have your service. The scriptures speak of the woman's gaining upon the husband, 1 Peter iii. 1 ; seasoning the children, Prov. xxxi, 1, 2 Tim. i. 5 ; encouraging the servants in a way of godliness, espe- cially of their own sex ; it is said, Esther iv. 16, ' I also and my maidens will fast likewise.' These maidens were either Jews, and then it showeth what servants should be taken into a nearer attendance, such as savour of religion (see Ps. ci. 6), or else, which is more probable, such as she had instructed in the true religion, for these maidens
^ Stoke Newington. ^ rpijg Right Honourable William Earl of BedforcL
^ Hierou. Epist. 140, * Hieron. to Celantia, Asella, &c.
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 5
were appointed her by the eunuch, and were before instructed in court fashions, Esther ii. 9 ; but that did not satisfy. She taketh time to instruct them in the knowledge of the true God, and it seemeth in her apartment had many opportunities of rehgious commerce with them in the worship of God. Madam, how far you practise these duties it is not necessary that I should tell the world. Persevere with cheer- fulness, and in due time you shall reap if you faint not. The good Lord shed abroad the comforts and graces of his Spirit more abun- dantly into your heart, which is the unfeigned desire of him who is, madam, your most obliged and respectively^ observant,
Tho. Manton.
1 That is, "respectfully."— Ed.
TO THE READER.
Good Ekader, — The people of God have ever been exercised with two sorts of enemies — persecutors and sectaries : it is hard to say which is worst. When the Christian church began first to look forth in the world, there were adverse powers without ready to crush it, and Libertines who, like worms bred within the body, sought to devour the entrails and eat out the very bowels of it. The first ringleader was Simon Magus, and there followed Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Ebion, Cerdo, Marcion, Tatianus, Valentinus, and many others, who, being once turned aside from the truth and the fellowship of the faithful, lost all awe of God, and were given up to a sottish judgment to believe all kinds of fables and fancies. The monsters of Africa came from the unnatural commixtures of the beasts running wild in the deserts ; so when men had once broken through the hedge, mingling their own fancies with the word of God, by an unnatural production they brought forth such monstrous and absurd opinions.
In succeeding ages the devil hath often played over the old game, sometimes oppressing the church by the tyranny of pseudo-Christians, as many martyrs being made by antichristian as pagan persecutions, Rev. xiv. 13 ; at other times corrupting the truth by error, or render- ing it suspicious by the divisions about it. Heresies revolve as fashions, and in the course of a few years antiquated errors revive again, and that by their means who did not so much as know them by name.
When God first called his people out of Babylon by Luther's re- formation, and the Christian religion began to be restored to its pristine purity, there was not only a Eoman party to persecute, but a fanatical party to perplex the estate of reformation and retard the course of the gospel, as histories do abundantly declare, especially Sleidan in his Commentaries.
What hath been our late experience we all know, and have cause to bewail : as soon as we were freed from our hard taskmasters, and a door of hope began to be opened to us, a swarm of Libertines have arisen among us, and do every day increase in number, power, and malice, and under various forms oppugn the unquestionable interests of Jesus Christ, to the great scandal of reformation, and the saddening of the hearts of the godly. We seem to be ripe for a judgment, but