The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, To the reader
TO THE READER.
Christian Reader,
WE have disswasives and perswasives to this kind of History, the Lives of Wise and holy Persons: The disswasives are, that it may tempt men to think that such Instances are Rarities, and that Saints are so few, that we may with the Papists, Canonize them, and call only a few extraordinary Votaries, the Religious. Whereas none but true Saints can be saved; And God in wonderful mercy hath raised up so great a number in our days, and of our acquaintance, as makes even this Earth the less grievous to us, which is salted, perfumed and enlightened by their Graces.
In this it is with me, as it was about the success of my Ministry: when before my publick Preaching, and two years after, God blessed my endeavours with the Conversion of now and then one Soul, (*)Malignant I mean not turning them to Sects or odd Opinions, but to a holy and heavenly mind and life, from the love of sin and transitory vanity.I used with thankfulness to write them down: But when he turned multitudes, from ignorance, pride and a carnal mind to holy Obedience, I gave over keeping a Catalogue, for it was no rarity: so when my excellent holy Friends dyed, I could have wished that the World for imitation, had known them as I did, and that their Lives had been published; But when I lived in the Acquaintance and Communion of multitudes of such, I saw that it would have been a partial, or an endless work? For Gods Graces are much the same in all his holy ones. O how great a number of holy persons of my Acquaintance, of exemplary Lives could I name, that God hath taken to himself of Bridgnorth, Dudley, Kederminster, Bewdeley, Stourbridge, other parts of Worcester-shire, Coventry, London, &c. When we describe their Humility, Piety, soundness of Judgment, Fidelity, Peaceableness, Concord, secret and open Holiness, Sobriety, &c. we must speak over the same things of all.
But yet the Perswasives are not invalidated by this. For 1. Some persons live where prejudice, or the prohibition of Superiours, hath kept them unacquainted with such persons; And they need Information from those that knew them.
2. We live in a time of mental War, when it is the Devils great and daily business to belie the best of men, and make the ignorant believe that they are a Generation of walking Plagues, movers of Sedition, teaching men to Worship God contrary to the Law, enemies to Caesar, Preaching up another King, one Jesus, and turning the World upside down, not keeping the Tradition of the Fathers; The Cry is loud, Away with such Fellows from the Earth; It is not fit that they should live. Most odious Lies are published of them with so great confidence, as that Strangers may think they are bound to believe them, lest they should censure the reporters to be what they are. And so much of God, of Christ, of the Holy Ghost, of the Gospel and of Religion, and of the Church and Souls of men, doth lie upon the true representation of the Faithful, and the vindicating of Gods Image upon them, and confuting Satans lies, as that it is no small part of the Duty of all Christs Servants to endeavour it: especially by their own holy and harmless Lives, which will most effectually plead their cause. Thousands are harden'd in sin, yea in enmity against a holy Life, yea in persecution, by believing serious Godly men, to be as bad as the Carnal World, a humorous, proud, seditious, hypocritical sort of People! They that dare not accuse God, or Christ or Scripture, dare accuse them that obey it: because the best have faults, and Hypocrites are among them, and their malice hath more matter to work upon. And yet when they grow ripe they will venture to charge the Scripture it self, of obscurity and insufficiency first, and next of falshood.
3. And God will have the memory of the just to be blessed, and the names of the wicked to rot. Justin, Cyprian, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Martin, and many such, were men hated and persecuted by Princes and other Prelates, while they lived; yet hath God made their Memories honourable, and the Names of their Persecutors odious to good men: And though their Enemies have been oft and long in greatest power and numbers, they could never turn the stream of Honour.
4. It is the Custom of the Devil to write infamous Lies of the best men when they are dead, which would be believed if those that knew them while they lived, did not say that which should refute the lies. What monstrous Lies have the Papists written of Luther, Zuinglius, Oecolampadius, Calvin, Bucer Martyr, Beza, &c. which a true History of their Lives hath shamed, with all judicious men that read them. The same I may say of many of late times in this Land. I have Cartwrights own answer to Dr. Sutliffe in M. S. which doth so fully confute the shameful story of his Confederacy with Hacket, Coppinger and Arthington's, as will shame the slanderers to any impartial Reader. Rivet was fain to bring Certificates from the Magistrates and Records of the Town in France where Calvin lived, to disprove the lyers that publisht him a stigmatized Sodomite; He that eat but one very little Meal a day, and almost macerated himself (as even Massonius testifies) was by Papists reported to be a Glutton. Bucer was said to be killed and torn in pieces by the Devil, when all his sickness and pious dying is fully testified by Cambridge Doctors. And what do you think those who now in Press and Pulpit make such whose Lives this History recordeth (to be odious Rogues, not fit to live out of a Common Gaol) will say of them when they are dead? But those that knew them are safe from believing it.
5. And this kind of work is of greater benefit and charity to ignorant ungodly men, than to the dead or any other living. The Dead are above it: The Faithful need it not: But as Christ saveth Souls by imprinting on them the Image of holy Love, so Satan damneth Souls by drawing them from such Love, to hate their Brethren, even the best: And he that hateth his Brother is a murderer, and no murderer hath Eternal Life.
6. And Nature is delighted in History. And the World is dolefully abused by false History, specially Ecclesiastick: And the true History of exemplary Lives, is a pleasant and profitable recreation to young persons; and may secretly work them to a liking of Godliness and value of good men, which is the beginning of saving Grace: O how much better work is it, than Cards, Dice, Revels, Stage-Plays, Romances or idle Chat.
As to this work, I commend it to the Reader as principally for the foresaid use; so from so much knowledge as I have had of the Author and of the persons and things here recorded.
The Author was well known to be a man of great sincerity, a hater of lying, and great lover of truth: And of long experience and great acquaintance in many parts of the Land; especially Cheshire, Warwick-shire and London. My acquaintance with him hath been long, though not much, because of interrupting distances. On October 23. 1642. little knowing what was doing at Edge-hill, I was Preaching in his Pulpit at Alcester, on those words [The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence.] My Voice hindered me, but the Auditors heard the Canon: That Night was past by us in sad Watching, with the noise of Fugitive Troops: The next day, (such spectacles being rare, and sad) Mr. Clarke and I rode to the Field to see what was done, where we saw the dead Bodies of English Men slain by one another. I after lived in Coventry, where Mr. Clarke oft was: And where his very humble, godly, chearful old Father-in-Law, Mr. Overton, a Minister above 80 years of age, was with many other excellent men, one of my frequent Company: Mr. Clarke went to London, and there was Pastor of a small Parish, Bennet Fink: When the King Commissioned us to treat for Concord with the Bishops, he was daily with us; and had the chief hand in drawing up the Exceptions against the Liturgy (at which I was absent.) In 1662. on September 10, he married me in Bennet Fink Church, in the presence of Alderman Ashhurst and Mrs. Ashhurst: After that; when the Lord Keeper Bridgeman by a favourable Exposition drew twenty Non-conforming Ministers to take the Oxford Oath, he resolved to be one, that he might leave the accusers of them as Disloyal, no pretence: But to shew that he did it not for any worldly advantage, presently left London, and lived privately at Thistleworth to his death, bearing not only his own low estate with patience, but his worthy Sons also, who were sufferers with him, Ejected by the Act of Ʋniformity.
I never saw him since, nor heard that he came to London, but by a Letter from him a year before he died he told me he was 82 years old.
He hath done great Service by former History. One Volume of Lives, and an Epitome of Martyrology, and a Volume of God's strange Judgments upon great Sinners.
Some Enemies deride him for Writing Lives with no more Art: But I take that to be his Commendation; He did not make the Histories, but take them made by faithful acquaintance of the dead: And he was not to patch or paint the dead, nor to add any thing of his own, but to deliver naked truth: some good men say, that many of the Lives of excellent men in his first Book are short and dry: That's our loss, but none of his fault: If all had done as Mr. Thomas Ball did by his Tutor Dr. Preston, that defect had been fully satisfied: I was going to get from old Sam. Hildersham, some additions to his Father Arthur's Life, but his death frustrated me.
Melchior Adam hath done in my judgment very great Service to the Church in his four Volumes, the Lives of the German Divines, Philosophers, Lawyers and Physicians: But some he hath done copiously and excellently, and very many (of the three last sort) so exactly as to be next to nothing: And how could he help it? To have made Stories himself had been unworthy a Historian, so is it in this case.
I have not read over this Book, being desired suddenly to write this Preface; and therefore undertake not the Justification of what I have not read: But I knew so many of the Persons and Histories my self, as makes me not doubt but the Reader will have no cause to question the Historical truth: And the rather because I see Mr. Clark is but the reciter of other mens words, and the Collector into one Volume of many mens Lives before published; some more being now newly added, at least which I never saw. Goldastus and abundance such Collectors, have done great Service in keeping many small Tractates from being lost. John Janewaies life, and Joseph Allens I had a hand in Publishing and Presacing heretofore: And O that I could reach that heavenly frame of mind, by which they lived and died in triumphant joy and praise to God! Dr. Sam. Boston, Mr. Vines, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Machin, Dr. Staunton, Mr. Wadsworth, Mr. Stockton, I knew: Dr. Twisse was so well known (whose worthy Daughter Mrs. Corbet hath lived with me formerly, and this year and half) that the History hath full evidence. Judge Hales and the Countess of Warwick (my great Friends) need no testimony of mine. I knew not of his Epitomizing my Wives life; but the manner of that tells me he is like to be faithful in the rest: His worthy Son addeth his own Life, which he found written by himself.
I have desired the Book-seller to Reprint the Life of the Countess of Suffolk, Daughter to the Earl of Holland, written by Bishop Rainbow, yet living, as an excellent pattern to Ladies; the Book being not easily to be got.
I have in Funeral Sermons and Epistles described truly many excellent persons, whose Examples would be useful to this depraved Age; were it not for the charge of Printing, I would wish them Bound all together as these be, viz. Mrs. Bakers of Worcester, Mrs. Coxes, Mrs. Hanmers, my Wives Mother, Alderman Ashhursts, Mr. Waddesworth, Mr. Stubbs, Mr. Corbets, &c.
It's a great work to learn to die, safely and comfortably; even the work of all our lives: my turn is near, and this preparation is my daily Study: But its the Communication of life, light and love from Heaven, that must make all effectual, and draw up our Hearts and make us ready: For which I daily wait on God. At the brink of the Grave, and door of Eternity
Jan. 16. 1682/3. Richard Baxter.