' Of tliis Llest man, let this Just praise be given, Heaven was in liim, before he was in heaven. — Izaak Walton.'
Pity that either Wotton was not assigned to another, or that Richard Sibbes made not a sixth to the golden five ' Lives' of this most quaintly-wise and wisely-quaint of all our early English biographers. How lovingly, how tenderly, with salt of wit and warbling of poetic prose, would he have made ' sacrifice to the memory ' (his own phrase) of Master Ricliard Sibbes, the more than equal of Donne or Herbert, Sanderson or Wotton, and only in degree, not in kind, beneath Hooker himself
Again, in Sibbes's own will, the usual sum was left to Dr William Gouge of ' Blackfryer's, London,' to preach a funeral sermon. The wording runs, ' To my reverend frende Dr Gouge, I doe give as a testimony of my love, twenty shillings, desiring him to take the paynes to preach my funeral sermon.' Pity once more that this noble preacher, whose great ' Exposition of Hebrews ' is worthy of a place beside the kindredly-massive folios of John Owen, having preached it, as he doubtless did, gave not his ' ser- mon' to the press. Spoken by one who was his fellow-student at the university, and who knew and greatly loved him, while men's eyes were yet wet for him, while the tones of his 'sweet- dropping' voice (Manton's word) still lingered in the groined roof of the chapel of Gray's Inn, it must have contained not a little that we of the nineteenth century would have prized. It is vexatious that importunity should have got printed this large-thoughted mans
*• ' Will of Walton.' Introductory Essay to ' The Angler' by Major, 4th edition, 1844, jip. xlii.-vi.
MEMOIR OF RICHARD SIBBES, D.D. XXI
funeral sermons, for a ' Mrs Margaret Ducke !' and numerous others equally unknown, and secured not this.
Further, Richard Baxter, his survivor for upwards of half a cen- tury, might have been the biographer of Sibbes. In the story of his earlier days, in that marvellous ' Reliquiae Baxterianoe,' which won the heart of Coleridge, he speaks gratefully of liim : — ' About that time [his fifteenth year] it pleased God that a poor pedlar came to the door that had ballads and some good books, and my father bought of him Dr Sibbes's Bruised Rccd. This also I read, and found it suited my state and seasonably sent me, which opened more the love of God to me, and gave me a livelier appre- hension of the mystery of redemption, and how much I was beholden to Jesus Christ.'* This cii'cumstance alone, observes Granger, in his meagre and chary fashion missing the right word 'immortal,' would have rendered his (Sibbes's) name memorable.'-f* How priceless would have been a life of Sibbes from this like-minded man, as a companion to his Alleine ! How thankfully should we have spared half a dozen of liis ' painful' controversial books for half a dozen pages of such a memoir !
Nor is my roll of casualties — shall I say ? — done. In the address 'to the Christian Reader,' prefixed to 'The knowledge of Christ indispensably required of all men who would be saved' (-ito, 1653), of John Davenport, who, like Gouge, was Sibbes's contem- porary, coadjutor, and bosom friend, he informs us of a grievous loss to himself and to us : — ' My far distance from the press,' he says, dating from his sequestered ' study in Newhaven,' New England, ' and the hazards of so long a voyage by sea, had almost discouraged me from transmitting this copy; foreseeing that what- soever (jpaX/xaraj are committed by the printer, men disaffected will impute it to the author ; and being sensible of my great loss of some manuscripts by a wreck at sea, together with the lives OF SUNDRY precious ONES, about six years since.' From the peculi- arly close and endeared friendship between the two, there can be little doubt that among those precious ones would be Richard Sibbes.
Then again, we have Thomas Goodwin, Thomas Manton, and Philip Nye, Simeon Ash, and Jeremiah Burroughs, John Sedgwick, Arthur Jackson, James Nalton, and John Dod, John Hill, John Goodwin, Robert Towne, Joseph Church, Lazarus Seaman, William Taylor, Ezekiel Culverwell, in truth, all the foremost puritan names of the period, as the writers of ' Prefaces,' ' Epistles,' ' Dedications.*
* ' Baxter,' R. B., pp. 3, 4, lib. i., pt. 1, 1696, folio.
t ' Granger,' Biog. Hist of England, 2d edition, 1776.
:j: That is, ' slips, blunders.'
TTfn MEMOIR OF RICHAED SIBBES, D.D.
addresses ' To tlie Reader,' in the original quartos and duodecimoH as they were issued in quick succession. In these there are pro- voking hints, so to speak, of withheld information. Thus say Ash, Nalton, and Church : * The scope and business of this epistle is not so miach to commend the workman (whose name is a sweet savour to the church), as to give a short and summary view of the generals handled in this treatise. Though much might be said of this eminent saint, if either detraction had fastened her venomous nails in his precious name, or the testimony of the subscribers of this epistle might give the book a freer admission into thy hands.'* Again, John Goodwin thus pleads : ' Good reader, to discourse the worth or commendationsof the author, especially the pens of others having done sacrifice unto him in that kind, / judge it but an unpertinency , and make no question but that if I should exchange thoughts or judgments with thee herein, / should have hut mine own again!']' A sketch of our saintly Calvinist by the great Ar- minian would have been worth having.