* ' Trinity Lectureship.' Tho ' Memorial' is given by Mr Cooper in his Annala of Cambridge, iii. 168.
MEMOIR OF EICHAKD SIBBES, D.D. XXXVU
and daughters unto God, besides the edifying and building up of others.'*
We have incidental confirmations of the weighty testimony of the * Pastor of St Bennet Fink, London.' More generally, in that curious little rarity of Puritan biography, ' The Life and Death of that Holy and Reverend man of God, Mr Thomas Cawton't (1662), we read ' He conscientiously and constantly laboured to counter- work those factors of hell, and drove a trade for God in bestirring himself to insinuate into any lad that was ingenious, and was very successful therein, to the astonishment and confusion of his opposers. Many had great cause to bless God for him, and their first acquaintance with him, for his bringing them to Dr Preston's and Dr Sibbes, his Lectures in those times.' More specially. Cot- ton Mather, the Thomas Fuller of New England, tells us of one memorable conversion through his instrumentality — John Cotton, who was in turn the * leader to Christ ' of a greater than himself, Dr Preston, and whom Oliver Cromwell himself addressed as ' my esteemed friend.']:
It were like to rubbing off with coarse fingers the powder from a moth's wing, in any wise to change the loving and grave narrative. It is as follows : — ' Hitherto we have seen the life of Mr Cotton while he was not yet alive ! Though the restraining and prevent- ing grace of God had kept him from such outbreakings of sin as defile the lives of most in the world, yet like the old man who for such a cause ordered this epitaph to be written on his grave, "Here lies an old man who lived but seven years," he reckoned himself to have been but a dead man as being " alienated from the Ufe of God," until he had experienced that regeneration in his own soul, which was thus accomplished. The Holy Spirit of God had been at work upon his young heart, by the ministering of that reverend and renowned preacher of righteousness, Mr Perkins ; but he resisted and smothered those convictions through a vain persuasion, that if he became a godly man 'twould spoil him for being a learned one. Yea, such was the secret enmity and prejudice of an unregenerate soul against real holiness, and such the torment which our Lord's witnesses give
* Clarke, Lives of Thirty-two English Divines, 3d edition, 1677, folio, p. 143.
t ' Cawton,' p. 11.
X Cotton and Cromwell. The letter of the great Protector, alluded to, a very striking one, will be found in Brook's Lives of the Puritans, iii. 158-9. It is also given with characteristic annotation in Carlyle's ' Cromwell,' iii. 221-225 (3d ed. 1850). When, may I ask in a foot-note, will America give us worthy editions of the still inedited and uncollected ' Works' of John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Daven- port, and others of their kindred ? Surely this were better than much that has beea reprinted over the Atlantlo*
XXXVlll MEMOIR OF RICHARD SIBBES, D.D.
to the consciences of the earthly-minded, that when he heard the bell toll for the funeral of Mr Perkins, his mind secretly rejoiced in his deliverance from that powerful ministry by which his conscience had been so oft beleaguered ; the remembrance of which things after- wards did break his heart exceedingly ! But he was at length more effectually awakened by a sermon of Dr Sibs, wherein was dis- coursed the misery of those who had only a negative righteousness, or a civil, sober, honest blamelessness before men. Mr Cotton became now very sensible of his own miserable condition before God ; and the errors of those convictions did stick so fast upon him, that after no less than three years disconsolate apprehensions under them, the grace of God made him a thoroughly renewed Christian, and filled him with a sacred joy which accompanied him into the ful- ness of joy for ever. For this cause, as persons truly converted unto God have a mighty and lasting affection for the instruments of their conversion, thus Mr Cotton's veneration for Dr Sibs was after this very particular and perpetual, and it caused him to have the picture of that great man in that part of his house where he might oftenest look upon it.'*
Various similar iniemorahilia might be here adduced from the Puritan 'Biographies' and 'Histories.' One additional 'word in season,' spoken to Dr Thomas Goodwin, may suffice. In his earlier days this celebrated divine leant to Arminianism rather than to Calvinism, and it was through Sibbes that his views were cleared, to his life-long satisfaction, on the point of Jesus Christ being the Head and Representative of his people. It is also recorded that, in familiar discourse with Goodwin, Sibbes said, 'Young man, if you ever would do good, you must preach the gospel, and the free grace of God in Christ Jesus. 'f The counsel was as a ' nail in a sure place,' and no reader of Goodwin needs to be told how fully and magnifi- cently he sets forth the ' grace' of God in Christ.
Well was it that such men as Paul Bayne and Richard Sibbes were preachers in such a place and at such a time. From contem- porary accounts it is apparent, that notwithstanding the profound impression 'on the town' by Perkins, and notwithstanding that there were a few who, Mary-like, 'kept all the things' they had heard from him, ' and pondered them in their hearts,' Cambridge was sunken down, as a whole, to all its former indiiferentism and for- mality. The preaching that was fashionable among the 'wits' of