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preachers have made it their business to preach Christ, and the exceed- ing riches of his grace, and to study matter rather than words, upon Mr Perkins' old principle verba sequentur res. But all have not had alike fertile invention, or solid judgment, or alike skill and learning in languages and arts, &c. Some particular persons have been blessed with them all, by which they have made stars of the first magnitude in the church of God. Such, reader, we take the reverend author of these sermons to have been, in all whose writings thou shalt find a quick and fertile invention, governed with a grave and solid judgment, and the issue of both expressed in a grave and decent style, so as it is not easy to say what one would desire in a divine that was wanting in him. He had a heart full of love and zeal for God and his glory, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth continually spake. So frequent, yet so learned and solid preaching by the same person, was little less than miraculous. But he was a scribe fully instructed in the things of the kingdom of God, and, like a good householder, was continually fetching out of the storehouse of his knowing and judicious .soul things both old and new. He was no studier of words and phrases, he abhorred such a pedantry, and debasing the authority of gospel propositions ; but a grave and serious soul, fitted with his skill in arts and languages ; neither ever did nor could want expressions above the scorn of the most wanton word-dressers, though beneath the expectations of such as can be pleased with the tuneableness of yxiranomasias, or the rollings of six-footed words. He was a good mid learned, a grave and judicious person, and his auditory never failed (though he laboured more than the most preachers, his constant course of preaching being for many years five times, and, till near his end, three times a week) to hear from him a pious, learned, and most judicious discourse. This those who never heard him may easily believe by his printed commentaries and sermons, in which we never met with any that complained for want of anything fit for a divine. So that he is one of those authors upon the credit of whose name not only the plainer and less intelligent sort of people, but even scholars, may adventure to buy any book that was his, and be assured they will see no cause to repent of the expense of their money. His late large folio upon the 119th Psalm is a plentiful evidence of this ; and a great part of our English world hath given their suffrage to this, by making it so scarce in so short a time, as the price of it is enhanced above a fifth part.
We here offer a second volume, of a greater bulk (though no greater price), which contains his discourses upon the 25th of Matthew, the 17th chapter of John, the Gth and 8th chapters of Paul's Epistle to the Ptomans, and the 5th chapter of his second Epistle to the Corin- thians ; five chapters, than which possibly in the whole New Testament there will not be found five others more full of gospel doctrine, in the knowledge of which God's people are more concerned.
In the first, under the parable of the ten virgins (five of which were wise, five foolish), our Lord represents to us the state of the members of the church waiting for Christ's second coming to judgment ; amongst whom some are sincere, some are hypocrites, the different actions and issues of whom are excellently represented to us, and most worthy
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to be learned and considered. Secondly, Under the parable of the talents we are instructed in God's different dispensation of his gifts to men, their different use of them, and the account they are like to be called to about them. To which is subjoined a hypotuposis of the day of judgment, fit to be continually in our eyes and ears.
In the second, we have our Saviour's last prayer for his elect, as well those that to the end of the world should believe, as those who at that time did believe. It was our Lord's legacy ; what good Christian desireth not a full understanding of it, that he may know what to hope, and pray in faith for, as being first secured to him by the prayer of him whom the Father heareth always ?
In the 6th and 8th of the Eomans are contained great treasuries of gospel truth. Upon both (the latter especially) many learned men have spent their labours to great advantage ; but the scripture is such a book as we never know when we fully comprehend it, and (if he may judge to whose share it fell to peruse some of those notes) the reader will find some things here discovered which he will hardly meet with elsewhere. His way of handling it is rather dogmatical and practical than polemical; yet he now and then judiciously resolveth a question. But all along in the handling of it he discovereth both an excellent notion, and a most profound and solid judgment.
The last discourses, on 2 Cor. v., look like a cygnea cantio. Whether they were some of his last discourses we cannot tell, nor can we judge it from the subject, he being a person who was dying daily, and never so in love with his earthly tabernacle, nor possessed of so weak a faith as to the house in the heavens, as either to desire the former should stand longer than should be for the glory of God, or himself kept from the latter overlong. It pleased God not to surprise him with death, but to let him see it at some distance, making its approaches to him before it gave him the fatal word of arrest.