XVI PKEFACK.
United States ; the Rev. W, G. Lewis, Westboume Grove ; the E.ev, George Thomson, Hackney ; the Rev. E. Pattison, Gedding ; the Rev. Robert Redpath, M.A., London ; W. E. Whitehouse, Esq., Bir- mingham, I have received various memorabilia, communicated with such ungrudging alacrity and kindness as much to deepen the obli- gation.
I beg to thank the Rev. J. C. Robertson, Canterbury ; the Rev. Hastings Robinson, D.D., Great Warley; the Rev. William West, Hawarden ; the Rev. William Webster, M.A., Richmond ; Charles Bird, Esq., London ; the Rev. Dr Cairns, Berwick ; the Rev. Dr Bonar, Kelso ; the Rev. Dr Bryce, Belfast ; and the Rev. Thomas Smith, M.A., Edinburgh, and numerous anonymous correspond- ents, for service in verification of references in this volume and those that are to follow. I am sure the edition will owe much to the willing hand and vigilant eye of the last-named gentle- man, as General Editor of the series, in revision of the proofs with myself
It would be ungrateful not to acknowledge the unvarying courtesy with which I have been permitted access to the stores of the great libraries, e. g., British Museum, where Mr Watt, as he is to all, was ever eager to assist ; Red Cross Street ; University and Advocates', Edinburgh. Nor can I withhold a grateful word from the Editors and Correspondents of 'Notes and Queries,' and other Hterary journals, whose columns I have had occasion to use, I have endeavoured to leave no source of information unconsulted, and have given the authority for my statements, whether in Memoir or Notes. ' For in all faculties, their writings have been of longest continuance, who have made fairest use of other authors.' 'For mine owne, either judgment or opinion ' also, with the foregoing, in the words of Sir John Hayward, ' as I do nothing the more value the spider's for that she draweth it out of her own bowels ; so doe I not esteeme the lesse of the honeycombe, because it is gathered out of many flowers.' — (Sanctuary of a Troubled Sou], Part ii. To the Reader, 1631. ISmo). Wherever I have been indebted to a pre- decessor, it is duly recorded.
And now, with unfeigned diffidence in myself and my part, but with the conviction that no common service is being rendered to Christian literature by this edition of Sibbes, I would say, in the words of Isaak Walton, ' If I have prevented an abler person, I beg pardon of him and my reader.' — (Intr. to Life of Herbert^
A. B. G,
1st Manse, Kinross, 2d May 1862.
MEMOIR OF RICHARD SIBBES, D.D.
CHAPTER I.
• MEMORIALS ' THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
Izaak Walton — Dr "William Gouge — Richard Baxter — John Davenport, B.D. — Leading ' Puritans ' — Sihbes's own indifference.
There are more than common reasons to cause regret that hitherto there has not been, and in this later time can scarcely be, a worthy life of the 'heavenly' Richard Sirbes (the adjective, like the 'venerable' Bede, the 'judicious' Hooker, the 'holy' Baxter, being the almost invariable epithet associated with every mention of his name, through many generations after his departure).* I look upon my own gatherings, after no small expenditure of time and endeavour, all the more sorrowfully because of these reasons. I would fain have placed upon the honoured forehead of the author of the 'Bruised Reed' and 'Soul's Conflict' a wreath of 'amaranthine flowers;' but alas! have instead with difficulty gleaned a few crushed and withered leaves, some poor spires of faded grass and braids of grave-stone moss, with perchance a sprig of not altogether scentless thyme ; whereas in the course of my researches, I have come upon various notices and scintillations of revelation, which shew how diflterent it might have been had <?on- temporaries discharged their duty. These tantalizing indications
* ' Heavenly.' The famous Dr Manton thus speaks of him : ' This is mentioned .... because of that excellent and peculiar gift which the worthy and reverend author had in unfolding and applying the great mysteries of the gospel in a sweet and mellifluous way ; and, therefore, was hy his hearers usually termed the " sweet dropper" — sweet and lieavenly distillations usually dropping from him with such a native elegancy, as is not easily to he imitated.' — (To the Reader .... Commentary .... on 2 Cor. i.). 'That "heavenly" man,' says Zachary Catlin ; and Neal, ' His works discover him to have been of a '" heavenly," evangelical spirit.' — (Hist- of the Puritans, vol. i. 582, edition, 3 vols. 8vo, 1837.)
VOL. I. r 6
XX MEMOIR OF EICHAED SIBBES, D.D.
of personal knowledge, and ot reserved and iiow lost information, may perhaps most fitly introduce our narrative.
First of all, in that ' Last Will and Testament,' over which so many eyes have brimmed with unsorrowing tears — drawn out ' in a full age,' very shortly before the venerable writer went up to lay his silver crown of gray hairs at His feet — good, gentle, blithely garrulous Izaak Walton bequeaths, among numerous other tokens and legacies, his copies of the ' Bruised Reed' and ' Soul's Conflict,' and there gleams upon the antique deed, like a ray of sunlight, these noteworthy words about them : — ' To my son Izaak, I give Doctor Sibbes his Soul's Conflict, and to my daughter his Bruised Eeed, desiring them to read them so as to be well acquainted WITH THEM.'"' Nor was this the only expression of esteem for Sibbes by the 'old man eloquent.' In a copy of' The Returning Backslider,' now preserved in Salisbury Cathedral library, he has written this inscription : —