but by whipping and scourging; whereas, if they had set it on its broad end downwards, it would have stood firm of itself. The "lawfulness of eating black-puddings (as Mr. Howe observed to the same effect on another occasion) would be a juster ground of controversy than any point of the disputed conformity." The doctor appeared satisfied, and advised him as a friend to stand to his principles. Mr. Howe continued some time in Devonshire, preaching in private houses as he had opportunity. Being acquainted that an officer of the bishop's court had inquired after him, he rode to Exeter, where he met with a friend, a dignified clergyman, who acquainted the bishop that Mr. Howe was there; upon which his Lordship expressed a desire to see him, and received him with great civility as his old acquaintance, but expostulated with him about his nonconformity, and desired to know the reasons. Mr. Howe, waving many others, only mentioned re-ordination. Why, pray, Sir, said the bishop, what hurt is there in being re-ordained ?' "Hurt! my Lord, said Mr. Howe, it is shocking; it hurts my understanding; it is an absurdity; for nothing can have two beginnings." The bishop dropping the matter, told him, as he had done at other times, that if he would come in among them he might have considerable preferments; and dismissed him in a friendly manner, without any thing being said on either side about the process that was issued out against him; and accordingly there the matter ended.

In 1665, he took the oath required by the Oxford act upon the same principle as Dr. Bates and others did in London: But, notwithstanding, he was this year imprisoned two months in the isle of St. Nicholas, though upon what occasion it doth not appear.

In 1671, being reduced to straits, he accepted an invitation from a person of quality in Ireland. Being detained by contrary winds on the Welch coast, (probably at Holyhead) he continued there a Lord's Day. The company, being desirous he should preach to them, were seeking a convenient place, when they met the parish minister and his clerk riding to the town. One of them asked the clerk, whether his master preached that day? who answered, No; my master does not use to preach, he only reads prayers. On being asked further, whether he would give leave for a minister who was there to use his pulpit, he replied, Very willingly;' which accordingly he did. Mr. Howe preached. In the afternoon the audience was very large, and seemed much afVOL. IV.

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fected

fected. The wind continued contrary all the week. The next Lord's Day, there was a prodigious multitude gathered together; and the clergyman, having no expectation of further assistance, was in great consternation, being not able to preach himself, and thinking if there were no preaching it would greatly lessen his reputation. He therefore sent his clerk to Mr. Howe, and begged he would come and preach again, as otherwise he knew not what to do, the country being come in for several miles to hear him. Mr. Howe being much indisposed was in a sweat in bed. But, considering it as a plain call of Providence, he cooled himself as speedily as he could with safety, and, casting himself on GOD, went and preached with great freedom. He said he never saw people more moved, and that, if ever his ministry was of use, it was then. Very soon after, the vessel sailed, and he felt no ill effects. In Ireland he lived as chaplain to the Lord Massarene at Antrim, where he was universally respected, and enjoyed the particular friendship of the bishop of that diocese, who, together with his metropolitan, gave him liberty to preach, without demanding any conformity, in the public church, every Lord's Day afternoon. And the Archbishop, at a meeting of the elergy, told them, that he would have Mr. Howe have every pulpit, where he had any concern, open to him. By his preaching and conversation here he was useful to many.

Upon the death of Dr. Seaman, 1675, he was invited by a part of his congregation to fix in London. After mature deliberation, and weighing the arguments on both sides, (which he drew out in writing) he consented to go, and made a peaceable use of King Charles's indulgence. He preached to a considerable and judicious audience, and was much respected not only by his brethren among the dissenters, but by several eminent divines of the church of England, v. g. Doctors Whitchcote, Kidder, Fowler, Lucas, &c. with whom he often freely and familiarly conversed.

In regard to the steps taken in order to a coalition between the church and the dissenters, some of the dignified clergy sent for him to their houses, (Bishop Lloyd, Sherlock, &c.) and expressed great deference to his opinion. He had a particular intimacy with Dr. Tillotson, (afterwards Archbishop) in respect to whom the following anecdote is worthy of notice. The dean, as he then was, (1680) preached a sermon at court, on Josh. xxiv. 15. in which he asserted, that no man is obliged to preach against the religion of a country, though a false one, unless he has the power of working miracles.' King Charles slept most of the time.

When

When the sermon was over, a certain nobleman said to him, It's pity your majesty slept, for we have had the rarest piece of Hobbism that ever you heard in your life.' Odds fish, said the king, he shall print it then; and immediately called the Lord Chamberlain to give his command to the dean to do it. When it came from the press, the dean, as was usual with him, sent it as a present to Mr. Howe, who, on the perusal, was grieved to find a sentiment which had so ill a tendency, and drew up a long letter, in which he freely expostulated with the dean for giving such a wound to the Reformation, and carried it himself. The dean, upon the sight of it, moved for a little journey into the country, that they might talk the matter over without interruption. Mr. Howe enlarged on the contents of the letter as they travelled in the chariot. The dean at length wept, and said, this was the most unhappy thing that had befallen him for a long time; owned, that what he had asserted was not to be maintained, and urged in his excuse, that he had but little notice of preaching that day, and none of printing the sermon.

When, in 1684, Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, printed a letter for putting into execution the laws against dissenters, Mr. Howe wrote a free answer to it, of which a copy may be seen in his Mem. p. 104-112. The next year, the prospect of the dissenters being very dark, he accepted an invitation of Lord Wharton to travel with him abroad. In the course of his travels, he had the satisfaction to converse with a number of learned papists, and protestant divines. In 1686, having no encouragement to return, he settled at Utrecht, where the Earl of Sunderland and his Countess, some English gentlemen, and two of his own nephews, boarded with him. During this time, he took his turn with Mr. Mat. Mead, &c. who were there also, in preaching at the English church, and in the evening preached to his own family. He was of great use to several English students. then at the university, and much respected by its professors, as well as by several persons of distinction from England, among whom was Dr. G. Burnet, afterwards Bishop of Sarum, with whom he had much free conversation. Prince of Orange, afterwards William III. admitted him. several times into his presence, and discoursed with him with great freedom, as he sometimes did, after he ascended the British throne.

The

Upon King James's declaration for liberty of conscience in 1687, Mr Howe's flock in London earnestly pressed his return, and he readily complied. He waited upon the Prince

of

of Orange first, who advised him to be cautious of addressing, and not to fall in with the measures of the court. He was thankful for a little breathing-time, and endeavoured to improve it to the best purposes, and to preserve himself and others from the snares laid for them, always declaring against approving the dispensing power. When those fears were blown over by the revolution, Mr. Howe, at the head of the dissenting ministers, made an handsome address to the Prince of Orange at St. James's, which has been printed. On the passing the toleration act, he addressed a small tract both to conformists and dissenters, with a view to promote mutual forbearance. With the same truly Christian design, he afterwards [1693] published his sermon on the Carnality of religious contentions," when unhappy differences had taken place among the dissenting ministers, occasioned chiefly by the reprinting the posthumous works of Dr. Crisp, who, though a good man, was charged with some Antinomian notions. These debates, however, issued in the exclusion of Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Williams from the lecture at Pinner's Hall, when Mr. Howe, Dr. Bates, and Mr. Alsop joined him in carrying on a separate lecture at Salter's Hall. Warm debates soon followed, concerning the Trinity and occasional conformity, in which Mr. Howe engaged with great moderation, Christian meekness, and charity; greatly lamenting the want of these in others, and desiring to breathe a nobler air and inhabit better regions. The last thing he published was, a " Dis

course

I know not how to omit entertaining my readers with a short extract from Mr. Howe's sermon on Dr. Bates's death, which breathes a sweet spirit of pi ty and kindness upon this ever-to-be lamented subject of parties and breaches among real Christians. His words are: "Think me not so vain, as to reckon, exclusively, the cause of dissenters, the cause I now speak of: No, no; I speak of the common cause, of all serious, sober-minded Christiaus, within the common rule, or without it. I neither think any one party to include all sobriety of mind, or to exclude all insobriety. But I apprehend converting work to be much at a stand, within the pales that men have set up, severing one party from another, and without them. Few are any where brought home to GoD through Christ. And God knows, too few design it, otherwise than to make proselytes to their several parties: And this is thought a glorious conversion. Serious piety, and Christianity, languishes every where. Many that have a name to live are dead, and putrified, already stink! Common justice and righteousness are fled from among us. Sincerely good and pious men die away, in the natural sense, apace. You know, if deaths and burials should, in the weekly bills, exceed births, and other accessions to the city, whither this tends! When so many great lights are withdrawn, both such as are within the national church con stitution, and such as are without it, is there no danger GoD should

alse

course of Patience in expecting future Blessedness." This was what he had particular occasion for. Having employed his time, strength, and interest in the most valuable services, he was wasted with several diseases, which he bore with great patience and a resigned submission to the will of his heavenly Father. He discovered no fear of dying, but

also remove the candlestick? Our obduration, and insensible stupidity, portends a deadly darkness to be drawing on. And must such lives go, to make a way for God's anger! And lead on a more general, and more dreadful, approaching death! Oh! that GoD would rend the heavens and come down! He may yet melt our hearts, and make them flow at his presence, notwithstanding their mountainous, rocky height, and hardness. This may be the means of saving some souls, and of deferring the common calamity. A great thing it would be to have it deferred. What a privilege would many servants of Christ count it, not to live to the day, when the Spirit of the living GoD shall be generally retired and gone; and atheism, scepticism, infidelity, worldliness, and formality, have quite swallowed up our religion. While such men as we have lost, lived, they did, and such do, as instruments, keep somewhat of serious religion alive, under our several forms, but as ready to expire. But though it should seem generally to have expired, let us believe it shall revive. When our confidences and vain boasts cease: The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! Lo! here is Christ, and there is Christ! and one sort ceases to magnify this church, and another that, and an universal death is come upon us; then (and I am afraid not till then) is to be expected a glorious resurrection, not of this or that party: For living, powerful religion, when it recovers, will disdain the limits of a party. [Or, as he expresses himself in his funeral sermon for Mr. Mede: "Till that season comes, it matters little, and signifies to me scarce one straw, what party of us is uppermost."] Nor is it to be thought, that religion, modified by the devised distinctions of this or that party, will ever be the religion of the world. But the same power that makes us return into a state of life, will bring us into a state of unity, in divine light and love. Then will all the scandalous marks and means of division among Christians, vanish; and nothing remain as a test, or boundary of Christian communion, but what hath its foundation, as such, in plain reason, or express revelation. Then, as there is one body, and one spirit, will that Almighty Spirit so animate, and form this body, as to make it every where amiable, self-recommending, and capable of spreading and propagating itself and to increase with the increase of GOD. Then shall the Lord be One, and his name One, in all the earth.

From such sentiments as these, we may (to use the words of Dr. Calamy, in the memoirs of his life) take our measures of him both as a Minister and a Divine; and can hardly forbear making this reflection, that it would be an unspeakable happiness, did but such a spirit as this prevail more among all the parties into which we are divided,' p. 58. For several more noble sentiments of this kind, we will subjoin Mr. "Howe's Address both to Conformists and Nonconformists."

"1. That we do not over magnify our differences, or count them greater than they really are. I speak now (says Mr. Howe) of the proper differences which the rule itself makes, to which the one sort conforms, and the other conforms not. Remember that there are

differences

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