honored

eternal shore of mercy! Your last letter, my
friend, I received as a bitter sweeting-as all, that
is under the sun, is-sweet, in that I hear from you,
and that you continue striving for life eternal; bit-
ter, in that we differ about the way, in the midst of
the dangers and the distresses.

For the scope of this rejoinder, if it please the Most High to direct your eye to a glance on it, please you to know, that at my last being in England, I wrote a discourse entitled, "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience." I bent my charge against Mr. Cotton especially, your standard-bearer of New England ministers. That discourse he since answered, and calls his book, "The Bloody Tenent made white in the Blood of the Lamb." This rejoinder of mine, as I humbly hope, unwashed his washings, and proves that in soul matters no weapons but soul weapons are reaching and effectual

His "much-honored, kind friend” replies:—

SIR,-I thank God my blessed parents bred me up in the old and best religion, and it is my glory that I am a member of the Church of England, as it was when all the reformed churches gave her the right hand. When I cast mine eye upon the frontispiece of your book, and saw it entitled "The Bloudy Tenent," I durst not adventure to look into it, for fear it should bring into my memory the much blood that has of late been shed, and which I would fain forget; therefore I do, with thanks, return it. I cannot call to mind any blood shed for conscience: -some few that went about to make a rent in our once well-governed church were punished, but none suffered death. But this I know, that since it has been left to every man's conscience to fancy what religion he list, there has more christian blood been shed than was in the ten persecutions. And some of that blood will, I fear, cry to the day of judg ment. But you know what the Scripture says, that when there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes,-but what became of that, the sacred story will tell you.

Thus entreating you to trouble me no more in this kind, and wishing you a good journey to your charge in New Providence, I rest

YOUR FRIEND, IN THE OLD AND BEST WAY. Williams, not to be disconcerted, triples the length of his response, with new divisions and scripture citations, and this among other biting paragraphs on the lady's favorite reading :

I have read those books you mention, and the king's book, which commends two of them, Bp. Andrews's and Hooker's-yea, and a third also, Bp. Laud's: and as for the king, I know his person, vicious, a swearer from his youth, and an oppressor and persecutor of good men (to say nothing of his own father), and the blood of so many hundred thousands English, Irish, Scotch, French, lately charged upon him. Against his and his blasphemous father's cruelties, your own dear father, and many precious men, shall rise up shortly and cry for vengeance.

But for the book itself-if it be his-and theirs you please to mention, and thousands more, not only protestants of several sects, but of some papists and Jesuits also-famous for worldly repute, &c.—I have found them sharp and witty, plausible and delight ful, devout and pathetical And I have been amazed to see the whole world of our forefathers, wise and gallant, wondering after the glory of the Romish learning and worship. (Rev. xii) But amongst them all whom I have so diligently read and heard, how few express the simplicity, the

35

MR. WILLIAMS,-I thought my first letter would have given you so much satisfaction, that, in that kind, I should never have heard of you any more; but it seems you have a face of brass, so that you cannot blush.

For Milton's book, that you desire I should read, if I be not mistaken, that is he that has wrote a book of the lawfulness of divorce; and, if report says true, he had, at that time, two or three wives living. This, perhaps, were good doctrine in New England; but it is most abominable in Old England. For his book that he wrote against the late king that you would have me read, you should have taken notice of God's judgment upon him, who stroke him with blindness; and, as I have heard, he was fain to have the help of one Andrew Marvell, or else he could not have finished that most accursed libel. God has began his judgment upon him here -his punishment will be hereafter in hell. But have you seen the answer to it! If you can get it, I assure you it is worth your reading.

I have also read Taylor's book of the Liberty of Prophesying; though please not me, yet I am sure it does you, or else I [know]* you [would]* not have wrote to me to have read it. I say, it and you would make a good fire. But have you seen his Divine Institution of the Office Ministerial! I assure that is both worth your reading and practice. Bishop Laud's book against Fisher I have read long since; which, if you have not done, let me tell you that he has deeply wounded the Pope; and, I believe, howsoever he be slighted, he will rise a saint, when many seeming ones, such as you are, will rise devila

This winds up the correspondence. Mrs. Sadleir, as she puts it aside, for publication a couple of hundred years later, writing on the back of Williams's first letter:-"This Roger Williams, when he was a youth, would, in short hand, take sermons and speeches in the Star Chamber, and present them to my dear father. He, seeing so hopeful a youth, took such liking to him that he sent him in to Sutton's Hospital, and he was the second that was placed there; full little did he think that he would have proved such a rebel to God, the king, and the country. I leave his letters, that, if ever he has the face to return into his native country, Tyburn may give him welcome."

• These words are not in the MS.

For which scrap of biographical information, in the too general dearth of anecdote respecting a good and great man, we thank her.*

After his return he writes to his friend John Winthrop, subsequently the Governor of Connecticut, relating, among other incidents of his visit to England, this anecdote of his exchange of languages with John Milton in his blindness--" It pleased the Lord to call me for some time, and, with some persons, to practice the Hebrew, the Greek, Latin, French and Dutch. The Secretary of the Council, Mr. Milton, for my Dutch I read him, read me many more languages." He was intimate with Cromwell and passed much time with Sir Henry Vane, the old Governor of Massachusetts. In this journey he was associated with his friend Mr. John Clarke, who remained in England as the agent of the colony, and in whose behalf, on his return, he addressed a plea to his "beloved friends and countrymen," the General Assembly of Rhode Island. It is a good example of his love of justice, directness, and business tact, and, as such, we present a portion of it in our extracts.

Williams was active as usual in the affairs of the colony, and was chosen its President in 1654. The persecution of the Quakers then followed in Massachusetts; their rights were maintained in Rhode Island, though Williams held a controversy with Fox and his disciples, an account of which he embodied in the last of his publications in 1676, George Fox digg'd out of his Burrowes,§ a pun on the names of the Quaker leaders. Fox replied to this in his New England Firebrand Quenched, with abundant bitterness; and Edmundson, one of Williams's personal antagonists in the controversial encounter, which was held both at Newport and Providence, in his Journal of his Life, Sufferings, and Labor, speaks of "one Roger Williams, an old priest and an enemy to truth, putting forth fourteen propositions, as he called them. It was an unpleasant affair, but the Quakers had laid themselves open to attack by some outrageous extravagances. Seven years afterwards, in 1683, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, the Founder of Rhode Island, the friend of peace and asserter of liberty, died at Providence, on the spot which his genius and labors had con ecrated. He left a wife and six children. There is no portrait of him. The engraving prefixed to the Life in Sparks's Ameri

Mr. Elton was led to the knowledge of these letters by Mr. Bancroft the bistorian, and copied thein from the original MSS. preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. + Elton's Life, 114.

It was first published in the Rhode Island Book in 1840, George Fox digg'd out of his Burrowes, or an Offer of Disputation, on fourteen Proposalls made this last Summer, 1672, so call'd) unto G. Fox, then present on Rode Island, in New England, by R. W. As also how (G. Fox slily departing) the Disputation went on, being managed three Dayes at Newport on Rode Island, and one Day at Providence, between John Stubbs, John Burnet, and Williama Edmundson, on the one Part, and R. W. on the other. In which many Quotations out of G. Fox and Ed. Burrowes Book in Follo are alledged. With an Appendix, of some Scores of G. F., his simple lame Answers to his Opposites in that Book quoted and replied to, by R. W. of Providence in N. E. Boston, printed by John Foster, 1676.

1 Bee Memoir of Roger Williams, the Founder of the State of Rhode Island, by James D. Knowles, for much careful his torical investigation on this and other points. Mr. J. R. Bartlett has given an account of Edmundson's book, printed in London 1718, in some Early Notious of Rhode Island, in the Providence Journal for 1855.

can Biography, is froin an old painting put forth a few years since, which was soon pronounced an indifferent likeness of Benjamin Franklin.

CONFERENCE BETWEEN TRUTH AND PEACE-FRON THE
BLOODY TENENT.

Truth. In what dark corner of the world (sweet Peace) are we two met? How hath this present evil world banished me from all the coasts and quarters of it? and how hath the righteous God in judgment taken thee from the earth, Rev. vi. 4.

Peace. Tis lamentably true (blessed Truth) the foundations of the world have long been out of course: the gates of earth and hell have conspired together to intercept our joyful meeting and our holy kisses: with what a weary, tired wing have I flown over nations, kingdoms, cities, towns, to find out precious truth?

Truth. The like enquiries in my flights and travels have I made for Peace, and still am told, she hath left the earth, and fled to heaven.

Peace. Dear Truth, what is the earth but a dungeon of darkness, where Truth is not?

Truth. And what is the Peace thereof but a fleeting dream, thine ape and counterfeit!

Peace. Oh, where's the promise of the God of Heaven, that Righteousness and Peace shall kiss each other?

Truth. Patience (sweet Peace), these heavens aud earth are growing old, and shall be changed like a garment, Psal. cii. They shall melt away, and be burnt up with all the works that are therein; and the most high Eternal Creator shall gloriously create new heavens and new earth, wherein dwells right eousness, 2 Peter iii. Our kisses shall then have their endless date of pure and sweetest joys; till then both thou and I must hope, and wait, and bear the fury of the dragon's wrath, whose monstrous lies and furies shall with himself be cast into the lake of fire, the second death, Rev. xx.

Peace. Most precious Truth, thou knowest we are both pursued and laid for. Mine heart is full of sighs, mine eyes with tears. Where can I better vent my full oppressed bosom, than into thine, whose faithful lips may for these few hours revive my drooping, wandering spirits, and here begin to wipe tears from mine eyes, and the eyes of my dearest children?

Truth. Sweet daughter of the God of Peace, begin, pour out thy sorrowes, vent thy complaints; how joyful am I to improve these precious minutes to revive our hearts, both thine and mine, and the hearts of all that love the Truth and Peace, Zach. viii. Peace. Dear Truth, I know thy birth, thy nature, thy delight. They that know thee, will prize thee

far above themselves and lives, and sell themselves to buy thee. Well spake that famous Elizabeth to her famous attorney, Sir Edward Coke: "Mr. Attorney, go on as thou hast begun, and still plead, not pro Domina Regina, but pro Domina Veritate.

Truth. Tis true, my crown is high, my sceptres strong to break down strongest holds, to throw down highest crowns of all that plead (though but in thought) against me. Some few there are, but oh, how few are valiant for the Truth and dare to plead my cause, as my witnesses in sackcloth, Revel. i. While all men's tongues are bent like boughs to shoot out lying words against me!

Peace. Oh, how could I spend eternal days and endless dates at thy holy feet, in listening to the precious oracles of thy mouth. All the words of thy mouth are Truth, and there is no iniquity in them. Thy lips drop as the honeycomb. But oh! since we must part anon, let us (as thou saidst) im

prove our minutes, and (according as thou promisedst) revive me with thy words, which are sweeter than the honey, and the honeycomb.

CONCLUSION.

Peace. We have now (dear Truth) through the gracious hand of God clambered up to the top of this our tedious discourse.

Truth. Oh, 'tis mercy unexpressible that either thou or I have had so long a breathing time, and that together!

Peace. If English ground must yet be drunk with English blood, oh, where shall Peace repose her wearied head and heavy heart?

Truth. Dear Peace, if thou find welcome, and the God of peace miraculously please to quench these all-devouring flaines, yet where shall Truth find rest from cruel persecutions?

Peace. Oh, will not the authority of holy scriptures, the commands and declarations of the Son of God, therein produced by thee, together with all the lamentable experiences of former and present slaughters, prevail with the sons of men (especially with the sons of Peace) to depart from the dens of lions, and mountains of leopards, and to put on the bowels (if not of Christianity, yet) of humanity each to other!

Truth. Dear Peace, Habacuck's fishes keep their constant bloody game of persecutions in the world's mighty ocean; the greater taking, plundering, swallowing up the lesser: O happy he whose portion is the God of Jacob! Who hath nothing to lose under the sun, but hath a state, a house, an inheritance, a name, a crown, a life, past all the plunderers, ravishers, murtherers reach and fury!

Peace. But lo! Who's here?

Truth. Our sister Patience, whose desired company is as needful as delightful! 'Tis like the wolf will send the scattered sheep in one: the common pirate gathers up the loose and scattered navy! the slaughter of the witnesses by that bloody beast unites the Independents and Presbyterians. The God of Peace, the God of Truth will shortly seal this truth, and confirm this witness, and make it evident to the whole world,

That the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience, is most evidently and lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace. Amen.

PLEA FOR JOHN CLARKE

The first is peace, commonly called among all men, the King's Peace, among ourselves and among all the King's subjects and friends, in this country and wheresoever: and, further, at our agent's most reasonable petition, the King prohibits all his subjects to act any hostility toward our Natives inhabiting with us without our consent, which hath hitherto been otherwise practiced to our continual and great grievance and disturbance.

The second jewel is Liberty. The first, of our spirits, which neither Old nor New England knows the like, nor no part of the world a greater.

2d. Liberty of our persons; no life, no limb taken from us, no corporeal punishment, no restraint but by known laws and agreements of our own making.

8. Liberty of our Estates, horses, cattle, lands, goods, not a penny to be taken by any rate from us, without every man's free debate by his deputies, chosen by himself, and sent to the General Aesembly.

4. Liberty of society or corporation, of sending or being sent to the General Assembly, of choosing and being chosen to all offices and of making or repealing all laws and constitutions among us

5. A liberty, which other charters have not, to wit, of attending to the laws of England, with a favorable mitigation, viz not absolutely, but respecting our wilderness estate and condition.

I confess it were to be wished, that these dainties might have fallen from God, and the King, like showers and dews and manna from heaven, gratis and free, like a joyful harvest or vintage, without any pains of our husbandry; but since the most holy God, the first Cause, hath ordered second causes and means and agents and instruments, it is no more honest for us to withdraw in this case, than for men to come to an Ordinary and to call for the best wine and liquor, the best meats roast and baked, the best attendance, &c., and to be able to pay for all and yet most unworthily steal away and not discharge the reckoning.

My second witness is Common Gratitude, famous among all mankind, yea, among brute beasts, even the wildest and fiercest, for kindness received. It is true, Mr. Clarke might have a just respect to his own and the peace and liberty of his friends of his own persuasion. But I believe the weight that turned the scale with him was the truth of God, viz. a just liberty to all men's spirits in spiritual matters, together with the peace and prosperity of the whole colony. This, I know, put him upon incredible pains and travail, straits and anguish, day and night, himself and his friends and ours, which I believe a great sum of money would not hire him to wade through the like again. I will not trouble you with the allowances, payments, and gratuities of other colonies in like cases. Only let me present you with a famous story out of our English records. Henry the Third, as I remember, fell out with the city of London, took away their charter and set a governor over them, which brought many evils and sorrows on them. But Doctor Redman, so called, pacified the King's anger and procured a restitution of their charter, though with great charges and payments of moneys Now while this Redman lived, they honored him as a father and heaped all possible gratuities upon him; and when he died they decreed that the Lord Mayor and Aldermen and chief citizens, should yearly and solemnly visit his tomb, which mine eyes have seen performed in the public walks in Paul's, and I presume, it is practised to this day. I will not trouble you with the application of this story, but present you with my third Witness of the fairness of this matter, which is Christianity, which we all pretend to, though in various and different persuasions. This witness soars high above Common justice and Common gratitude, yea, above all religions. This not only speaks home for due payment and due thankfulness, but of doing good for evil, of paying blessing for cursing, of praying for enemies and persecutors, of selling houses and lands, yea, of laying down lives for others. Common justice would not, Common gratitude would not, least of all will Christianity, employ a public messenger unto a mighty King and there leave him to shift for his living and means to go through so high a service, nor leave him to shift for moneys and to mortgage his house and lands to carry on our business and thus to forfeit and lose them; and lost they are, as all must see, except a speedy redemption save them. Shall we say we are christians, yea but ingenuous or just men, to ride securely, in a troublous sea and time, by a new cable and anchor of Mr. Clarke's procuring and to be so far from satisfying his ongagement about them, that we turn him adrift to languish and sink, with his back broke, for putting under his shoulder, to ease us. "Which of you, said Christ Jesus to his enemies, "will see an ox or a sheep fall into a pit and not pull it out on the Sab

If we wholly neglect this business, what will be come of our credit! Rhode-Island, in the Greek language, is an Isle of Roses, and so the King's Majesty was pleased to resent it; and his honorable

commissioners in their last letter to the Massachusetts from the eastward, gave Rhode-Island and this whole colony an honorable testimony which is like to be pointed to the view of the whole world. Shall we now turn our roses into hemlock and our fragrant ointment into carrion! Our own names, in a righteous way, ought to be more precious to us than thousands of gold or silver, how much infinitely more precious, the name of the most Holy and most High and his holy truth of soul-liberty amongst us.

JOHN CLARKE,

THE friend of Roger Williams, was one of the earliest authors of Rhode Island. He was born in 1609, and is supposed to have been a native of Bedfordshire. Ile was educated as a physician. Soon after his emigration to Massachusetts he publicly claimed, with Roger Williams, full license for religious belief. He was one of the eighteen, who on the seventh of March 1637-8, having formed themselves into an association, purchased Aquetneck and became the Founders of Rhode Island. In 1644, he formed and became the pastor of the Baptist Church at Newport, a charge he retained until his death. In 1649 he was treasurer of the colony. In 1651 he visited his friends at Lynn, and while preaching there on the forenoon of Sunday, July 20, was arrested, compelled to attend meeting in the afternoon, and on the 31st, after trial, condemned to pay a fine of twenty pounds. He wrote from prison proposing a discussion of his theological principles, a course which had been suggested by the judge, Endicott, in passing sentence; but the challenge was not taken up, and Clarke soon after paying his fine, was ordered to leave the colony. In 1651 he went with Roger Williams on an embassy to England, where he remained until he obtained the second charter of the colony dated July 8, 1663. He published in London in 1652, Ill News from New England.* It contains a narrative of his difficulties and a discussion of various theological points, with an inculcation of the great doctrine of toleration. The work is reprinted in the last volume (second of the fourth series) of the Massachusetts Historical Society, where it occupies 113 octavo pages. Its style is diffuse, the sentences being of intolerable length, but is in general animated, and passages occasionally occur which approach to eloquence.

After his return, Clarke was elected for three successive years deputy governor of the colony. He

Ill News from New England, or a Narrative of New Eng land's Persecution, wherein is declared that while old England is becoming new, New England is become old. Also four proposals to the Honoured Parliament and Council of State, touchIng the way to Propagate the Gospel of Christ (with small charge and great safety), both in Old England and New. Also four conclusions touching the faith and order of the Gospel of Christ, out of his last Will and Testament, confirmed and justifed

SAMUEL GORTON was born in the town of Gorton, England, where his ancestors had resided for many generations. "I was not brought up," he says, in a letter written to Nathaniel Morton, the annalist, "in the schools of human learning, and I bless God that I never was." In his address to Charles the Second, in 1679, he speaks of "his mother," the Church of England, but in 1636 we find him emigrating from the city of London, where he was engaged in business as a clothier, to Boston, that he might "enjoy liberty of conscience, in respect to faith towards God, and for no other end." After a short residence in Boston, not finding the theology there prevalent to his taste, he removed to Plymouth, where his wife's servant, having smiled in church, "was threatened with banishment from the colony as a common vagabond.'t Gorton incurred odium by his defence of the offender, which was increased by his success as a preacher in drawing off hearers from the Plymouth church. This was peculiarly distasteful to the pastor, the Rev. Ralph Smith, who was instrumental in his arraignment and conviction on the charge of heresy. The court, Gorton says, "proceeded to fine and imprisonment, together with sentence given, that my family should depart out of my own hired house within the space of fourteen days, upon the penalty of another great sum of money (besides my fine paid), and their further wrath and displeasure, which time to depart fell to be in a mighty storm of snow as I have seen in the country; my wife being turned out of doors in the said storm..... and myself to travel in the wilderness I knew not whither, the people comforting my wife and children when I was gone with this, that it was impossible for me to come alive to any plantation." This was in the winter of 1637-8.

He removed to Aquetneck, or Rhode Island, where he soon became involved in difficulty about "a small trespass of swine." He was brought before the governor, Coddington, who ordered, "You that are for the king, lay hold on Gorton." He again, on the other side, called forth, "All you that are for the king, lay hold on Coddington." He was whipped and banished from the island.

He next removed to Providence, where, in January, 1642, he purchased land at Pawtuxet. Here he was followed, as at his previous residences, by those who sympathized with his doctrines. Ho

soon took part, with his usual warmth, in a dispute between the inhabitants of the settlements at Moshassuck and Pawtuxet. His opponents, in the absence of any chartered government of their own colony, applied to Massachusetts Bay for assistance. That colony answered that they had "no calling or warrant to interfere in their contentions." A second application in September, 1642, was construed into an admission of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts Bay, and Gorton was summoned to Boston. He returned a reply on the 20th of November, denying the jurisdiction of the "men of Massachusetts," in which he was clearly in the right; and again removed in 1642 to lands purchased at Shawomet, from a sachem called Miantonomo. It was not long, however, before two inferior sachems, acknowledging the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, were instigated to claim the purchased lands as their property. The inhabitants of Shawomnet were cited to appear at Boston to answer the complaint of these sachems. On their refusal to do so an armed commission was sent to settle the affair. The negotiations failed, and Gorton finally consented to appear, with his followers, at Boston. On their arrival the question of the title to the lands was dropped, and they were tried for heresy. Gorton was convicted, and, narrowly escaping the punishment of death, was sentenced to "be confined to Charlestown, there to be set on work, and to wear such bolts or irons, as may hinder his escape, and to continue during the pleasure of the court." In case he should preach or publish his doctrines he was to be put to death. In January, 1644, this punishment was commuted to banishinent. Gorton repaired with his followers to Aquetneck, where they persuaded the sachems to deed their lands, and place themselves under the protection of the English crown. In the same year he sailed from New Amsterdam for England, where he published, in 1646, his tract, entitled Simplicitie's Defence against Secen-Headed Policy. He also preached on several occasions to large audiences. He returned in 1648 to Boston, with a letter from the Earl of Warwick, requesting that he might be allowed to pass through Massachusetts unmolested, and on his arrival at Shawomet, named the place Warwick, in acknowledgment of this and other services from that nobleman. He had secured, while in England, the protection of the government, and passed the remainder of his days in tranquillity. He died at an advanced age in the latter part of the year 1677, leaving several children, one of whom, Samuel, lived to the age of ninety-four. His sect seems to have survived him about a century, as President Stiles, of Yale College, remarks, in his manuscript diary on visiting at Providence, November 18, 1771, Mr. John Angell, aged eighty years :-" He is a Gortonist, and the only one I have seen. Gorton lives now only in him; his only disciple left."

In addition to " Simplicitie's Defence," a tract of one hundred and eleven pages quarto, which was reprinted in 1647, and has also been republished in the second volume of the Transactions of the Rhode Island Historical Society, Gorton wrote a commentary on the one hundred and tenth psalm, with the title of An Incorruptible Key, composed of the cx. Psalm, wherewith you may Open the rest of the Holy Scriptures, 1647,

pp. 240; Saltmarsh returned from the Dead, a commentary on the General Epistle of James, 4to. pp. 198; and An Antidote against the common Plague of the World, a commentary on the denunciations of the scribes and pharisees in the twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. A MS. commentary on chapter vi. 9-13 of the same Gospel, in 130 folio pages, is preserved in the library of the Rhode Island Historical Society.

EDWARD JOHNSON.

EDWARD JOHNSON is supposed to have emigrated to New England with Governor Winthrop in 1630. He was a prominent man in the organization of the town and church of Woburn in 1642, was chosen its representative in 1643, and annually re-elected, with the exception of the year 1648, until 1671. He held the office of recorder of the town from its incorporation until his death in 1682. His Wonder Working Providence of Sion's Saviour, in New England, is a history of the country "from the English planting in the year 1628 until the year 1652." It was published in London in 1654, and reprinted in the second series of the Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., where it forms about 230 pages. It is somewhat rambling and diffuse in style and matter, and contains a number of verses on various New England worthies, of which the following, on Hooker, is an average specimen.

Come, Hooker, come forth of thy native soil;

Christ, I will run, says Hooker, thou hast set My feet at large, here spend thy last day's toil; Thy rhetoric shall people's affections whet Thy golden tongue and pen Christ caus'd to be The blazing of his golden truths profound, Thou sorry worm, it's Christ wrought this in thee; What Christ hath wrought must needs be very

sound.

Thou angel bright, by Christ for light now made; Throughout the world as seasoning salt to be, Although in dust thy body mouldering fade, Thy Head's in heaven, and hath a crown for thee. The opening of his preface is pithily expressed, Good Reader: As large gates to small edifices, so are long prefaces to little books; therefore I will briefly inform thee that here thou shalt find the time when, the manner how, the cause why, and the great success which it hath pleased the Lord to give to this handful of his praising saints in N. Eng., &c

JOHN ELIOT,

John Elist

THE "Apostle to the Indians," was born at Nasing, County of Essex, England, in 1604, and educated, like many of the early New England divines, at Cambridge. He was afterwards usher to Hooker in his grainmar-school at Little Baddow, near Chelmsford, Essex. He emigrated to New England in 1681, arriving in Boston har bor on the ninth of November. He was soon