suspicion, pregnant reasons were assigned. XII. To crown all, John Bly and William Bly testify'd, that being employ'd by Bridget Bishop to help take down the cellar-wall, of the old house, wherein she formerly lived, they did in holes of the said old wall, find several Poppets,1 made up of rags, and hogs brussels, with headless pins in them, 10 the points being outward. Whereof she could now give no account unto the Court, that was reasonable or tolerable. XIII. One thing that made against the prisoner was her being evidently convicted of gross lying, in the court, several times, while she was making her plea. But besides this, a jury of women found a preternatural teat upon her body; but upon a second search, 20 within three or four hours, there was no such thing to be seen. There was also an account of other people whom this woman had afflicted. And there might have been many more, if they had been enquired for. But there was no need of them. the town-dwellers, to be oft or long in your visits of the ordinary, 'twill certainly expose you to mischiefs more than ordinary. I have seen certain taverns, where the pictures of horrible devourers were hang'd out for the signs; and, thought I, 'twere well if such signs were not sometimes too, too significant. Alas, men have their estates devoured, their names devoured, their hours devoured, and their very souls devoured, when they are so besotted that they are not in their element, except they be tipling at such houses. When once a man is bewitched with the ordinary, what usually becomes of him? He is a gone man; and when he comes to die, he'll cry out as many have done, "Alehouses are hell-houses! Ale-houses are hell-houses!" But let the owners of those houses also now hear our counsels. Oh! hearken to me, that God may hearken to you another day! It is an honest, and a lawful, tho' it be not a very desireable employment, that you XIV. There was one very strange have undertaken. You may glorifie thing more, with which the Court was the Lord Jesus Christ in your employnewly entertained. As this woman was 30 ment if you will, and benefit the town under a guard, passing by the great and considerably. There was a very godly spacious Meeting-House of Salem, she man that was an innkeeper, and a gave a look towards the house. And great minister of God could say to that immediately a dæmon invisibly entring man, in 3 John 2, thy soul prospereth. the meeting-house, tore down a part of O let it not be said of you, since you it; so that tho' there were no person to are fallen into this employment, thy be seen there, yet the people at the soul withereth! It is thus with too noise running in, found a board, which many. Especially when they that get was strongly fastned with several nails, a License perhaps to sell drink out of transported unto another quarter of the 40 doors, do stretch their License to sell house. From MAGNALIA CHRISTI THE BOSTONIAN EBENEZER And oh! that the drinkinghouses in the town might once come under a laudable regulation. The town 50 has an enormous number of them; will the haunters of those houses hear the counsels of Heaven? For you that are 1 dolls within doors. Those private houses, when once a professor of the gospel comes to steal a living out of them, it commonly precipitates them into abundance of wretchedness and confusion. But I pray God assist you that keep ordinaries, to keep the commandments. of God in them. There was an inn at Bethlehem where the Lord Jesus Christ was to be met withal. Can Boston boast of many such? Alas, too ordinarily it may be said, There is no room for him in the inn! My friends, let me beg it of you, banish the unfruitful the chief instrument of beginning another colony, as Mr. Cotton, whom he left behind him, was, of preserving and perfecting that colony where he left him; for, indeed each of them were the oracle of their several colonies. Tho' Mr. Hooker had thus removed from the Massachuset-Bay, yet he sometimes came down to visit the works of darkness from your houses, and then the sun of righteousness will shine upon them. Don't countenance drunkenness, revelling, and mis-spending of precious time in your houses: Let none have the snares of death laid for them in your houses. You'll say, I shall starve then! I say, better starve than sin: But you shall not. It is the word of the Most High, trust in the 10 churches in that bay. But when ever Lord, and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed. And is not peace of conscience, with a little, better than those riches, that will shortly melt away, and then run like scalding metal down the very bowels of thy soul? THE LIFE OF MR. THOMAS HOOKER he came, he was received with an affection like that which Paul found among the Galatians; yea, 'tis thought, that once there seemed some intimation from heaven, as if the good people had overdone in that affection; for on May 26, 1639, Mr. Hooker being here to preach that Lord's Day in the afternoon, his great fame had gathered a 20 vast multitude of hearers from several other congregations, and among the rest, the governour himself, to be made partaker of his ministry. But when he came to preach, he found himself so unaccountably at a loss, that after some shattered and broken attempts to proceed, he made a full stop; saying to the assembly, That every thing which he would have spoken, was taken both out of his mouth, and out of his mind also; wherefore he desired them to sing a Psalm, while he withdrew about half an hour from them. turning then to the Congregation, he preached a most admirable sermon, wherein he held them for two hours together in an extraordinary strain both of pertinency and vivacity. Mr. Hooker and Mr. Cotton were, for their different genius, the Luther and Melancthon of New England. At their arrival unto which country Mr. Cotton settled with the church of Boston, but Mr. Hooker with the church. of New-Town, having Mr. Stone for his assistant. Inexpressible now was the joy of Mr. Hooker, to find himself surrounded with his friends, who were 30 come over the year before, to prepare for his reception; with open arms he embraced them, and uttered these words, "Now I live, if you stand fast in the Lord." But such multitudes flocked over to New England after them, that the plantation of New Town became to straight for them; and it was Mr. Hooker's advice, that they should not incur the danger of a Sitna, 40 or an Esek, where they might have a Rehoboth. Accordingly in the Month of June 1636, they removed an hundred miles to the westward, with a purpose to settle upon the delightful banks of Connecticut River. And there were about an hundred persons in the first company that made this removal; who not being able to walk above ten miles a day, took up near a fortnight in the 50 journey; having no pillows to take their nightly rest upon, but such as their father Jacob found in the way to Padan-Aram. Here Mr. Hooker was Re That Reverend and excellent man, Mr. Whitfield, having spent many years in studying of books, did at length take two or three years to study men; and in pursuance of this design, having acquainted himself with the most considerable Divines in England, at last he fell into the acquaintance of Mr. Hooker; concerning whom, he afterwards gave this testimony: "That he had not thought there had been such a man on earth; a man in whom there shone so many excellencies, as were in this incomparable Hooker; a man in whom learning and wisdom were so tempered with zeal, holiness, and in the great soar of his intellectual abilities. There are some interpreters, who understanding church officers by the living creatures, in the fourth chapter of the Apocalypse, will have the Teacher to be intended by the eagle there, for his quick insight into remote. and hidden things. The church of Duxbury had such an eagle in their Par watchfulness." And the same observer having exactly noted Mr. Hooker, made this remark, and gave this report more particularly of him, That he had the best command of his own spirit, which he ever saw in any man whatever. For though he were a man of a cholerick disposition, and had a mighty vigour and fervour of spirit, which as occasion served, was wondrous useful unto 10 tridge, when they enjoy'd such a him, yet he had ordinarily as much teacher. government of his choler, as a man has of a mastiff dog in a chain; he could let out his dog, and pull in his dog, as he pleased. And another that observed the heroical spirit and courage, with which this great man fulfilled his ministry, gave this account of him, He was a person who while doing his Master's work, would put a King in his 20 found most agreeable; which three perpocket. . . . THE LIFE OF MR. RALPH PARTRIDGE When David was driven from his friends into the wilderness, he made this pathetical representation of his condition: 'Twas as when one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains. 30 Among the many worthy persons who were persecuted into an American wilderness, for their fidelity to the ecclesiastical kingdom of our true David, there was one that bore the name, as well as the state, of an hunted Partridge. What befel him, was, as Bede saith of what was done by Foelix, Juxta nominis sui Sacramentum.1 This was Mr. Ralph Partridge, who 40 for no fault but the delicacy of his good spirit, being distress'd by the ecclesiastical setters, had no defence, neither of beak, nor claw, but a flight over the ocean. The place where he took covert was the colony of Plymouth, and the town of Duxbury in that colony. This Partridge had not only the innocency of the dove, conspicuous in his 50 blameless and pious life, which made. him very acceptable in his conversation; but also the loftiness of an eagle, in keeping with his christening By the same token, when the Platform of Church-Discipline was to be compos'd, the synod at Cambridge appointed three persons to draw up each of them, A Model of Church-Government, according to the Word of God; unto the end that out of those the synod might form what should be sons were Mr. Cotton, and Mr. Mather, and Mr. Partridge. So that in the opinion of that reverend assembly, this person did not come far behind the first three, for some of his accomplishments. After he had been forty years a faithful and painful preacher of the gospel, rarely, if ever, in all that while interrupted in his work by any bodily sickness, he dy'd in a good old age about the year 1658. There was one singular instance of a weaned Spirit, whereby he signalized himself unto the churches of God. That was this: There was a time when most of the ministers in the colony of Plymouth left the colony, upon the discouragement which the want of a competent maintenance among the needy and froward inhabitants, gave unto them. Nevertheless Mr. Partridge was, notwithstanding the paucity and the poverty of his congregation, so afraid of being any thing that look'd like a bird wandring from his nest, that he remained with his poor people, till he took wing to become a bird of paradise, along with the winged seraphim of Heaven. THE LIFE OF MR. JOHN ELIOT PART III: ELIOT AS AN EVANGELIST than in the language of the Chinese, or of the Greenlanders) save that the Indians to the northward, who have a peculiar dialect, pronounces an R where an N is pronounced by our Indians. But if their Alphabet be short, I am sure the words composed of it are long enough to tire the patience of any scholar in the world. They are The natives of the country now possessed by the New-Englanders had been forlorn and wretched heathen ever since their first herding here; and tho' we know not when or how those Indians first became inhabitants of this 10 sesquipedalia verba,1 of which their mighty continent, yet we may guess linguo is composed; one would think is in The first step which he judg'd necessary now to be taken by him, was to learn the Indian language; for he saw them so stupid and senseless, that they would never do so much as enquire after the religion of the strangers now come into their country; much less would they so far imitate us as to leave off their beastly way of living, that 40 our Eliot (the anagram of whose name they might be partakers of any spiritual advantage by us, unless we could first address them in a language of their own. Behold, new difficulties to be surmounted by our indefatigable Eliot! He hires a native to teach him this exotick language, and with a laborious. care and skill, reduces it into a Grammar which afterwards he published. was Toile) quickly became a master of; he employ'd a pregnant and witty Indian, who also spoke English well, for his assistance in it; and compiling some discourses by his help, he would single out a word, a noun, a verb, and pursue it through all its variations. Having finished his grammar, at the close he writes, "Prayers and pains There is a letter or two of our alphabet, 50 thro' faith in Christ Jesus will do any which the Indians never had in theirs; tho' there were enough of the dog in their temper, there can scarce be found an R in their language; (any more thing!" And being by his prayers and pains thus furnished, he set himself in the year 1646 to preach the Gospel of words of six syllables |