and many others, are so wearied, or continually employed, either in the labors, or the cares of their callings, that it is a great impediment to their salvation. Freeholders and tradesmen are the strength of religion and civility in the land; and gentlemen, and beggars, and servile tenants, are the strength of iniquity. Though among these sorts, there are some also that are good and just, as among the other there are many bad. And their constant converse and traffic with London, doth much promote civility and piety among tradesmen.

"16. I found also that my single life afforded me much advantage: for I could the easier take my people for my children, and think all that I had too little for them, in that I had no children of my own to tempt me to another way of using it. Being discharged from the most of family cares, and keeping but one servant, I had the greater vacancy and liberty for the labors of my calling.

"17. God made use of my practice of physic among them also as a very great advantage to my ministry; for they that cared not for their souls, did love their lives, and care for their bodies; and, by this, they were made almost as observant, as a tenant is of his landlord. Sometimes I could see before me in the church, a very considerable part of the congregation, whose lives God had made me a means to save, or to recover their health; and doing it for nothing so obliged them, that they would readily hear me.

"18. It was a great advantage to me, that there were at last few that were bad, but some of their own relations were converted: many children did God work upon, at fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen years of age; and this did marvellously reconcile the minds of the parents and elder sort to godliness. They that would not hear me, would hear their own children. They that before could have talked against godliness, would not hear it spoken against, when it was their children's case. Many who would not be brought to it themselves, were proud that they had understanding, religious children; and we had some old persons of eighty years of age, who are, I hope, in heaven, and the conversion of their own children, was the chief means to overcome their prejudice, and old customs, and conceits.

"19. And God made great use of sickness to do good to many.

For though sick-bed promises are usually soon forgotten; yet it was otherwise with many among us; and as soon as they were recovered, they came first to our private meetings, and so kept in a learning state till further fruits of piety appeared.

"20. And I found that our disowning the iniquity of the times did tend to the good of many. For they despised those that always followed the stronger side, and justified every wickedness that was done by the stronger party.” "And had I owned the guilt of others, it would have been my shame, and the hindrance of my work, and provoked God to have disowned me.

"21. Another of my great advantages was, the true worth and unanimity of the honest ministers of the country round about us, who associated in a way of concord with us. Their preaching was powerful and sober; their fruits peaceable and meek, disowning the treasons and iniquities of the times as well as we. They were wholly addicted to the winning of souls; self-denying, and of most blameless lives; evil-spoken of by no sober men, but greatly beloved by their own people and all that knew them; adhering to no faction; neither episcopal, presbyterian, nor independent, as to parties; but desiring union, and loving that which is good in all, These, meeting weekly at our lecture, and monthly at our disputation, constrained a reverence in the people to their worth and unity, and consequently furthered my work."

"22. Another advantage to me was the quality of the sinners of the place. There were two drunkards almost at the next doors to me, who one by night, and the other by day, did constantly every week, if not twice or thrice a week, roar and rave in the streets like stark mad men. These were so beastly and ridiculous, that they made that sin, of which we were in most danger, the more abhorred.

"23. Another advantage to me was the quality of the apostates. of the place. If we had been troubled with mere Separatists, Anabaptists, or others that erred plausibly and tolerably, they might perhaps have divided us, and drawn away disciples after them. But we had only two professors that fell off in the wars; and one or two that made no profession of godliness were drawn in to them. Those that fell off, were such as before, by their want of grounded

understanding, humility, and mortification, gave us the greatest suspicion of their stability; and they fell to no less than familism and infidelity, making a jest of the scripture and of the essentials of Christianity. And as they fell from the faith, so they fell to drinking, gaming, furious passions, (horribly abusing their wives, and thereby saving them from their errors,) and to a vicious life. So that they stood up as pillars and monuments of God's justice, to warn all others to take heed of self-conceitedness and heresies, and of departing from truth and Christian unity. And so they were a principal means to keep out all sects and errors from the town.

"24. Another great help to my success at last, was the foredescribed work of personal conference with every family apart, nd catechising and instructing them. That which was spoken to thein personally, and which put them sometimes upon answers, awakened their attention, and was easier applied than public preaching, and seemed to do much more upon them.

"25. And the exercise of church discipline was no small furtherance of the people's good: for I found plainly, that without it, I could not have kept the religious sort from separations and divisions. There is something generally in their dispositions, which inclineth them to dissociate from open ungodly sinners, as men of another nature and society; and if they had not seen me do something reasonable for a regular separation of the notorious, obstinate sinners from the rest, they would irregularly have withdrawn themselves; and it had not been in my power with bare words to satisfy them, when they saw we had liberty to do what we would.

"It was my greatest care and contrivance so to order this work, that we might neither make a mere mock-show of discipline, nor, with Independents, unchurch the parish church, and gather a church out of them anew. Therefore all the ministers associate agreed together, to practise so much discipline as the Episcopal, Presbyterians, and Independents, were agreed on that presbyters might and must do. And we told the people that we were not about to gather a new church, but taking the parish for the church, unless they were unwilling to own their membership, we resolved to exercise that discipline with all: only, because there are some papists and familists or infidels among us, and because in these times of liberty

we cannot, nor desire to, compel any against their wills, we desired all that did own their membership in this parish church, and take us for their pastors, to give in their names, or any other way signify that they do so; and those that are not willing to be members and rather choose to withdraw themselves than live under discipline, to be silent.

"And so, for fear of discipline, all the parish kept off except about six hundred, when there were in all above sixteen hundred at age to be communicants. Yet because it was their own doing, and they knew they might come in when they would, they were quiet in their separation; for we took them for the Separatists. Those that scrupled our gesture at the sacrament, I openly told that they should have it in their own. Yet did I baptize all their children, but made them first, as I would have done by strangers, give me privately, or publicly if they had rather, an account of their faith; and if any father was a scandalous sinner, I made him confess his sin openly, with seeming penitence, before I would baptise his child. If he refused it, I forbore till the mother came to present it; for I rarely, if ever, found both father and mother so destitute of knowledge and faith, as in a church sense to be incapable hereof.

"26. Another advantage which I found to my success, was, by ordering my doctrine to them in a suitableness to the main end, and yet so as might suit their dispositions and diseases. The things which I daily opened to them, and with greatest importunity labored to imprint upon their minds, were the great fundamental principles of christianity contained in their baptismal covenant, even a right knowledge and belief of, and subjection and love to, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; love to all men, and concord with the church and one another. I did so daily inculcate the knowledge of God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, love and obedience to God, unity with the church catholic, and love to men and the hope of life eternal, that these were the matter of their daily cogitations and discourses, and indeed, their religion.

"Yet, I did usually put in something my sermon, which was above their own discovery, and which they had not known before; VOL. I.

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and this I did that they might be kept humble, and still perceive their ignorance, and be willing to keep in a learning state. For when preachers tell their people of no more than they know, and do not show that they excel them in knowledge, and easily overtop them in abilities, the people will be tempted to turn preachers themselves, and think that they have learned all that the ministers can teach them, and are as wise as they. They will be apt to contemn their teachers, and wrangle with all their doctrines, and set their wits against them, and hear them as censurers, and not disciples, to their own undoing, and to the disturbance of the church; and they will easily draw disciples after them. The bare authority of the clergy will not serve the turn, without overtopping ministerial abilities. And I did this to increase their knowledge, and also to make religion pleasant to them, by a daily addition to their former light, and to draw them on with desire and delight. But these things which they did not know before, were not unprofitable controversies which tended not to edification, or novelties in doctrine contrary to the universal church; but either such points as tended to illustrate the great doctrines before mentioned, or usually about the right methodizing of them; the opening of the true and profitable method of the creed or doctrine of faith; the Lord's Prayer, or matter of our desires; and the ten commandments, or the law of practice.

"27. Another help to my success was, that my people were not rich. There were among them very few beggars; because their common trade of stuff-weaving would find work for all, men, women, and children, that were able. And there were none of the tradesmen very rich, seeing their trade was poor, that would but find them food and raiment. The magistrates of the town were, few of them, worth forty pounds per annum; and most not half so much. Three or four of the richest thriving masters of the trade, got about five or six hundred ponnds in twenty years. The generality of the master workmen, lived but a little better than their journeymen, from hand to mouth, but only that they labored not altogether so hard.

"And it is the poor that receive the glad tidings of the gospel, nd that are usually rich in faith, and heirs of the heavenly riches