here at your door, ready to enter in, and hell is at his heels. Alas! death, who now shakes his sword over your head, will soon sheath it into your heart. What will you do, who contemn true godliness through ignorance, when you come to stand before God in judgment? There is but a little airy breathing between you and eternal burnings; it is better to have your eyes open on earth to bewail your sins, than to have your eyes open in hell to bewail your suffering; though you will not let me in now, who would make you happy, yet you will not be able erelong to keep death out, who will make you eternally miserable (Ps. lxxxix. 48). It is sad you will not see your danger till you cannot escape your danger. As I now stand at your door, saying, "Open to me," but am not let in, so you erelong will say, "Lord, Lord, open to me;" but you shall be kept out, for none but those who receive me into their hearts on earth shall be received by Christ hereafter into heaven. Those who contemn godliness here shall be condemned for their ungodliness hereafter. Your poor deluded soul, who thinks its state so good without grace and regeneration, will find it bad erelong under wrath and condemnation; "for except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John iii. 3). This is the day of God's long-suffering, but quickly will come the day of your long-suffering; for He whose mercy you have abused while you live will let out His vengeance against you to eternity when you die (2 Thess. i. 8, 9).

Much to the same purpose he spoke to him, and, with abundance of sorrow, left him to perish in his sins.

SAMUEL SHAW,

At the time of the Restoration, Mr Shaw* was incumbent of a parish in Leicestershire, and, in 1668, he was chosen master of the free school at Ashby de la Zouch, in the same county. For holding this he obtained the licence of arch*Born at Repton, Derbyshire, 1635; died at Ashby, Jan. 22, 1696.

bishop Sheldon, and there must have been something very conciliatory in his character, as he seems to have enjoyed the friendship of successive bishops of Lincoln, and lived on the most friendly footing with the vicar of Ashby, whose church he attended with all his pupils. When, at last, it became lawful for separatists to conduct public worship, he obtained a licence for his class-room, and in opening it preached from the text, "Disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus." Still, he so arranged his service as not to interfere with the hours of worship in the parish church, to which he carried his scholars morning and afternoon. Thus, as Calamy records, "he, for the space of almost thirty years, spent himself in endeavours to make the world better, though with no great gains to himself. It was his chief aim to live usefully; and he thought that a considerable reward of itself. He was of a little stature, and his countenance not very promising; but his eye was sparkling, and he had a singular tongue. His discourse was witty, savoury, affable, and pertinent. He had quick repartees, and would droll innocently, with the mixture of poetry, history, and other polite learning. But his greatest excellency was in religious discourse, in prayer and preaching."

Of his faculty for "drolling" and "quick repartees," we have a curious memento in two little compositions, which, we believe, are entirely unknown to the readers of his theological works. They are comedies written for the amusement of his scholars at Ashby de la Zouch, and they contain an extraordinary fund of humour, as well as shrewd philosophy. At the same time, no writer of that age was more distinguished for the fervour of his devotion, and the intensity of his spiritual realisations. Even from that most serious of all schools, no works have come down to us more solemn and unworldly than the "Farewell to Life," and the "Welcome to the Plague;" and * "Calamy's Ejected Ministers," vol. ii. p. 435.

the following testimony has been transmitted by a contemporary" I have known him spend part of many days, and nights too, in religious exercises, when the times were so dangerous that it would hazard an imprisonment to be worshipping God with five or six people like-minded with himself. I have sometimes been in his company for a whole night together, when we have been fain to steal to the place in the dark, stop out the light, and stop in the voice, by clothing and fast-closing the windows, till the first day-break down a chimney has given us notice to be gone. I bless God for such seasons, for the remembrance of them, and Mr Shaw at them, whose melting words in prayer I can never forget. He had a most excellent faculty in speaking to God with reverence, humility, and a holy awe of His presence, filling his mouth with arguments. By his strength he had power with God; he wept and made supplication; he found Him in Bethel (such were our assemblies), and there he spake with us. I have heard him, for two or three hours together, pour out prayer to God, without tautology or vain repetition, with that vigour and fervour, and those holy words that imported faith and humble boldness, as have dissolved the whole company into tears."

In a conversation with the late Dr Gordon of Edinburgh, we remember feeling some surprise and disappointment at his estimate of Puritan authorship; but he made one strong and emphatic exception in favour of Shaw, whose "Welcome to the Plague" seemed to have impressed his devout but lofty spirit beyond almost any uninspired composition. It was written early in 1666, and, a few months after the destroying angel had visited the author's secluded abode at Loughborough, The preface is singularly solemn and affecting.

* "Palmer's Nonconformist's Memorial," vol. ii. 138.

A WELCOME TO THE PLAGUE.

277

A Welcome to the Plague.

CHRISTIAN READERS,-It is now more than seven months since it pleased the holy and wise God to visit my house with the plague, when some dear and Christian friends from London were with me, whereby He gently touched, and gave warning to myself and whole family, consisting then of eight souls, but called away hence only three members of it, namely, two tender babes, and one servant; besides my beloved sister, and a child of my precious friend, that man of God, Mr G. C., since also translated, who were of those citizens that visited me. You will easily believe that I can have no pleasure to rake into the ashes of the dead, nor to revive the taste of that wormwood and gall which was then given me to drink; and yet I see no reason but that I ought to take pleasure in the pure and holy will of God, which always proceeds by the eternal rules of almighty love and goodness, though the same be executed upon my dearest creature-comforts, and grate ever so much upon my sweetest earthly interest; yea, I see all reason in the world why I should give to God the glory of His attributes and works before all the world, and endeavour that some instruction may accompany that astonishment which from me and my house hath gone out and spread itself far and near.

I will not undertake to make any physical observations upon this unaccountable disease, nor to vindicate myself either from that great guilt that is charged upon me, as if I were a sinner above all that dwell in this country, or from these many false and senseless aspersions that have been cast upon my behaviour during this visitation; but I do freely commit myself "to Him that judgeth righteously," and pray with the Psalmist, "Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake; let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel!" Neither do I pur2 A

VOL. II.

posely undertake in this preface to reconcile the providences of the most wise God to His promises, or to solve the seeming difference between the words of His mouth and the language of His hands, between which I have only suspected some kind of opposition, but have experienced an excellent harmony: "In very faithfulness hast thou afflicted me." Whence arise all these uncharitable censures with which the afflicted soul is apt to charge both himself and his God too? Spring they not certainly from these two grand causes, namely, a misapprehension of the nature of God, and of the nature of good and evil? Let the studious and pious reader search and judge.

If ever, therefore, you would be established in your minds in a day of affliction,-1. Labour to be rightly informed concerning the nature of God. Away with those low and gross apprehensions of God, whereby your carnal fancies ascribe to God such a kind of indulgence towards His children as you bear towards yours, which indeed no way agrees to His nature. His good will towards His children is a solid, wise, and holy disposition, infinitely unlike to our human affections. 2. Labour to be rightly informed concerning the nature of good and evil. Judge not the good or evil of things by their agreeableness or disagreeableness to your fleshly taste or carnal interest, but by the relation they have to the supreme Good. The greatest prosperity in the world, is no farther good than as it tends to make us partakers of God; and the greatest affliction may thus be really good also. But that by the by. My design is to justify and glorify infinite wisdom, righteousness, goodness, and holiness before all men.

O blessed God, who makes a seeming dungeon to be indeed a place of refreshment,-who brings His poor people into a wilderness, on purpose there to speak comfortably to them! Be of good cheer, O my soul; He hath taken away nothing but what He gave; and, in lieu of it, hath given thee that which shall never be taken away,-the first-fruits of life, in