which he found from learned and pious men, that were in many things not of his own perswasion: such holiness and patience, and sweet condescension, were his incomparable abilities accompanied withal, that good men, who otherwise differed from him, would still speak of him with reverence. To give one particular instance: 'Tis well known that the rever end Charles Chancey, President of the Colledge, and a neighbour in the town and church with our much younger MITCHEL, at the time of the Synod, zealously and publickly opposed the Synodalian principles whereof Mr. MITCHEL was no small defender: But so far was the dissent between them, in the very heat and heighth of all the controversie, from causing the reverend old man to handle his antagonist, in any measure as the angry Dioscorus did the dissenting Flavian, in the council of Ephesus, that he would commonly say of him, "I know of no man in this world that I could envy so much as worthy Mr. Mitchel, for the great holiness, learning, wisdom and meekness, and other qualities of an excellent spirit, with which the Lord Jesus Christ hath adorned him." § 15. And shall we a little more particularly describe that holiness of this excellent man, which we have so often mentioned? It is an aphorism of a Machiavel, [and, reader, was it not worthy of a Machiavel!] "that he who writes an history, must be a man of no religion." By that profane rule, the first and the best historian in the world, the most religious Moses, was ill accomplished for a writer of history. But the history which we are now writing, does professedly intend nothing so much as the service of religion, even of that religion whereof our MITCHEL made an exemplary profession. Wherefore we go on to say: know, reader, that he was a great example of a "walk with God;" and of religion he was much in prayer, much in fasting, sometimes taking his virtuous wife, therein to make a consort with him; and sometimes also he kept whole days of thanksgiving privately with his family, besides what he did more publicly; devoting himself as a thank-offering to God for his mercies, with a reasonable service. In his diary, he betimes laid that rule upon himself, "Oh! that I could remember this rule, never to go to bed until I have had some renewed, special communion with God!" He kept a strict watch over not only his words, but also his very thoughts; and if by the reflection, which he was continually making on himself, he judged that his mind had not been always full of heaven, and his heart had been, what he called, hard and slight, that he had been formal in his devotions, that he had not profited abundantly by the sermons of other men, that he had not made conscience of doing all the good he could, when he had been in any company, he would put stings into his reflections, and rebuke and reproach himself with an holy indignation. Severe might seem the rule of R. Hanina: "If two sit together, and there be no discourse of the law, is the seat of the scornful;" severe might seem the rule of R. Simeon: "If three do eat at one table, and say nothing about the law, they are as if they eat the sacrifices of the dead;" and severe might be the rule of R. Hananiah: "He that wakes in the night or walks by the way, and lets his heart lie idle, sins against his own soul." But our MITCHEL reckoned it no severity unto himself to impose upon himself such rules as these for his conversation. I have read, that five devout persons being together, there was this question started among them: how, in what ways, by what means, "they strengthened themselves in abstaining from sin against the God of heaven?" The first answered, "I frequently meditate on the certainty of death, and the uncertainty of the time for my death, and this makes me live in the fear of sin every day as my last." The second answered, "I frequently meditate on the strict account of sin that I am to give at the day of Judgment, and the everlasting torments in hell, to be inflicted on them that can give no good account." The third answered, "I frequently meditate on the vileness and filthiness and loathsomeness of sin, and the excellency of grace, which is contrary unto so vile a thing." The fourth answered "I frequently meditate on the eternal rewards and pleasures reserved in heaven for them that avoid the pleasures of sin, which are but for a moment." The fifth answered, "I frequently meditate on the Lord JESUS CHRIST, and his wondrous love to miserable sinners, in dying a cursed and bitter death for our sin; and this helps me to abstain from sin, more than any other consideration whatsoever;" and the answer of this last was indeed the greatest of all. Now, all these were the subjects which our holy MITCHEL obliged himself to an assiduous meditation upon; and by meditating on these it was, that he became very holy. Moreover, he was, as holy men use to be, very solicitous to make a due improvement of all afflictions that the providence of Heaven dispensed unto him. He would say, "When God personally afflicts a man, it is as if He called unto the man by name, and jogged him, and said, 'Oh! repent, be humbled, be serious, be awakened:" Yea, he could not so much as be kept a little from the labour of his ministry by an hoarse cold arresting him, without writing down this improvement of it: "My sin is legible in the chastisement: cold duties, cold prayers (my voice in prayer, i. e. my spirit of prayer fearfully gone), my coldness in my whole conver sation, chastisement with a cold: I fear that I have not improved my voice for God formerly as I might have done, and therefore He now takes it from me." But the affliction which most of all exercised him, seems to have been in the successive death of many lovely children, though all of them in their infancy. 'Tis an observation made by some, upon several passages in the Scripture concerning that generous and gracious man, David, that he was Liberorum Amantissimus-full of affections to hist children; and that was to be observed in our Mr. Jonathan Mitchel; for which cause, when his children were sick, his paternal bowels felt more than ordinary wounds; and when they were dead, his humiliations thereupon were extraordinary. He wrote whole pages of lamentations on these occasions; and one of his infants particularly expiring before it could be brought forth to an orderly baptism, I cannot but recite a little of the meditations then written by him: "It was a further sad hand of the Lord [says he] that it should dye unbaptized. Though I do not think they are orthodox, that hang salvation upon baptism, and not rather upon the covenant, yet as it is appointed to be a confirming sign, and as it is an ordinance of grace, so to be deprived of it is a great frown, and a sad intimation of the Lord's anger: And though it may be well with the child notwithstanding (that it becomes me to leave unto the Lord!) yet it is to us a token of displeasure. And what construction of thoughts tending to the Lord's dishonour it may occasion, I know not: that after my labours in publick about infant-baptism, the Lord should take away my child without and before baptism! Hereby the Lord does again and again make me an example of his displeasure before all men, as if He did say openly, that he hath a special controversie with me; thus remarkably taking away one after another. The Lord brings me forth, and makes me go up and down, as one smitten of God: the Lord spits in my face by this thing. See 2 Sam. xii. 12. Numb. xii. 12. Deut. xxviii. 45, 46. 58, 59." Such and many more were the workings of his tender soul under his repeated afflictions. And such were the unsearchable dealings of God, that besides the children which he sent unto heaven before him, when he went unto heaven himself, he left behind three sons and two daughters, all of which lived unto somewhat of youth, yet they have all of them since dyed in their youth: except only a virtuous young gentlewoman, married unto Captain Stephen Sewal, of Salem; unto whom (with her offspring, the only posterity of this great man) may the Lord multiply all blessings of that covenant for which their progenitor proved so serviceable a pleader in his generation! The last thing that ever he wrote in his reserved papers, after he had bitterly reproached "the sinful deadness, straitness, enmity, and unsavouriness [as he called it] upon his own heart;" upon which he added this pathetical expression, "I feel I shall fall and tumble down into the pit of hell, if left unto myself." It was June 7, 1668. To quicken his cares of daily meditation "First, Far younger than I, some of them now got to heaven, have done much this way. Nulla Dies sine Linea.* Secondly, Meditation, yea, daily meditation, in general, is an indispensible duty. Psal. i. 2, and Psal. cxix. 97. And because it is so, there may be something of meditation in prayer, in reading the word; Josh. i. 8, with Deut. xvii. 19, and in occasional transient thoughts; yet surely some sett meditation daily besides these, is at least to me a duty, who am set apart for the holy work of the ministry, wherein it would be helpful, as well as to my own soul. Thirdly, Heaven is here begun upon earth: shall I be thinking on, and talking with, Christ, to all eternity, and not discourse with him one quarter of an hour in a day now? “Fourthly, The great enemies of all good-flesh, Satan and world-do of all other things most oppose meditation, which shows that there is much good in it. Flesh, by awkness, giddiworld, by distractions; Satan, by stirring up both. Lord, awaken me, and keep me awake!" 16. But what and when was the end of this holy walk? The incongruities and inconsistencies of historians are not more notorious in any Not a day without a line [of writing]. ness; one article, than in that of the deaths of the heroes whose lives they have eternalized. With what varieties are the deaths of Cyrus, of Antiochus, of Alexander, of Hannibal, of Romulus, of Scipio, of Plato, of Aristotle, reported? There is hardly any philosopher, but he dies twice or thrice over in Laertius; and there is hardly one of Plutarch's worthies, but he dies as many ways. The death of our MITCHEL remains now to be related with more of certainty. Though "bodily exercise does profit a little," as the Apostle concedes, namely, to the health of the body; and Mr. MITCHEL had, from a principle of godliness, used himself to bodily exercise; nevertheless he found it would not wholly free him from an ill habit of body. Of extream lean, he grew extream fat; and at last, in an extream hot season, a fever arrested him just after he had been preaching on those words: "I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and unto the house appointed for all the living." The fever did not seem to threaten his death; however, in his illness, to them that visited him, he said, “If the Lord Jesus Christ have any service for me to do for Him and His dear people, I am willing to do it; but if my work be done, His will be done!" But the distemper suddenly assaulting him with a more mortal malignity, and summoning him to the "house appointed for all the living," he fell to admiring the manifold grace of God unto him, and broke forth into these words: "Lord, thou callest me away to thee; I know not why, if I look to myself; but at thy bidding I come!" which were some of the last words which he spoke in the world: for his friends, who had not for many hours entertained the expectation of any such disnfal event, were compelled in floods of tears to see him dye on July 9, 1668, in the fortythird year of his age: when (as one expresses that matter) he left his body to be dipped in the river Jordan, that afterwards, in its resurrection, passing into Canaan, it may, beyond the story of Achilles, become impenetra ble and invulnerable. Wonderful were the lamentations which this deplorable death fill'd the churches of New-England withal; for as the Jewish Rabbies lamented the death of R. Jose, with saying, that after his death, Cessarunt Botri, i. e. Viri tales, in quibus omnes, tum Eruditionis, cum Virtutis, cumuli erant:* So, after the departure of our MITCHEL, it was fear'd there would be few more such rich grapes to be seen growing in this unthankful wilderness. Yea, they speak of this great man in their lamentations to this day; and what they speak is briefly the same that one of our most eminent persons has writ in those terms: "ALL New England SHOOK WHEN THAT PILLAR FELL TO THE GROUND." EPITAPH. And now, reader, let us go to the best of poets in the English nation for those lines which may, without the least wrong to truth, be applied as an Epitaph to this best of preachers in our little New-English nation. The incomparable Dr. Blackmore's Orator TYLON shall now be our MITCHEL: * The Botri (men in whom were accumulated all knowledge and all virtues) were extinct. Tis the great MITCHEL, whose immortal worth Of good and kind, he the just standard seem'd, He seem'd express on heavn's high errand sent, Nectar divine flows from his heavn'ly tongue, Our ravish'd souls, in blest enchantments held, Glide thro' our breasts, and melt our yielding hearts. But what need I travel as far as Europe for an Elegy upon this worthy man? Let it be known, that America can embalm great persons, as well as produce them, and New-England can bestow an elegy as well as an edu cation upon its heroes. When our Mitchel was dying, he let fall such a speech as this unto a young gentleman that lodg'd in his house, and now stood by his bed: "My friend, as a dying man, I now charge you that you don't meet me out of Christ in the day of Christ." The speech had a marvellous impression upon the soul of that young gentleman, who then compos'd the ensuing lines: TO THE MEMORY OF THE REVEREND JONATHAN MITCHEL. Quicquid Agimus, quicquid Patimur, venit ex Alto.* THE country's tears, be ye my spring; my hill Stars falling speak a storm; when Samuel dies, In sacred censures Farel's dreadful scroll Of words, broke from the pulpit to the soul. From th' wrinkled Alps to wooe the western dame; And fata Exodus eclips'd his sun. Some say, that souls oft sad presages give: He's gone, to whom his country owes a love, Clear'd men, and made their notions Swine inherit. EPITAPHIUM. Here lies within this comprehensive span, * All that we do and suffer cometh from on high. VOL. IL-8 |