THE inserting your honours'names in this publication so little needs an apology, that it had much more needed one not to have done it. Your deeply inward affection to the excellent author; your most singular and just value for his person, ministry, converse, and memory, as they were too great to be fully expressed, so they are to be wholly concealed and buried in silence. Those acts of your beneficence towards him, wherein love is wont, the sincerer it is, always the more to affect privacy, it were a rude violence to offer at disclosing. But its paths in that so long-continued friendly commerce with him, unto which your honours were pleased to condescend, could not be hid. Any eye might observe the frequency of your kind visits, the familiar freedom you gladly allowed him at your house, as at his own home; and that when the season invited you to your pleasant country recess, it was also the more pleasant to you if his affairs could allow him there to divert and repose himself with you. In the very common and piercing affliction of his death, which entered into the souls of many, none that were not of his nearer relatives had a greater share than your honours, or in the bitter sorrows caused by it. Your part may be hoped to be as peculiarly great in the advantages and consolations which he that bringeth light out of darkness is pleased to attend and follow it. The decease of any such person (besides that it is otherwise also instructive) is a further enforcing repetition and inculcation of a common but very apt and powerful argument, both for the increase of our faith concerning another world, and the diminution of our love to this. To the former purpose, the argument from this topic cannot but be very convictive unto such whom the forelaid serious apprehension of a Deity hath prepared and made capable of it. Unto others, to whose grosser minds that most important and so easily demonstrable thing is doubtful, one may despair anything should be certain that they see not with their eyes. But who that believes this world hath a wise, holy, righteous, merciful ruler, that disposes all things in it, can take notice that the best of men die from age to age as others do, and allow himself to think no difference shall be made hereafter? And that God should order the collecting of so great a treasure in one man; not to say of general learning and knowledge, but of true goodness, grace, sanctity, love to himself, and to men for his sake (his very image, and the lively resemblances of his own holy and gracious nature) to be for ever buried in the dust? Or who would not rather conclude (as that blessed apostle) that when the world is passing away and the lusts of it, he that doth the will of God (being thus transformed into it) abideth for ever? 1 John ii. 17.
And for that other purpose, who that beholds what was of so great value, forsaking our world and caught up into heaven, would not less love an earthly station, and covet to be consorted with the holy assembly above? Every such assumption ought to diminish with us the retentive power of this world, and sensibly add to the magnetism and attractiveness of heaven. Doth not God expressly teach and prompt us to despise a world, out of which he plucks such excellent ones, plainly judging it not worthy of them? The general argument to both these purposes, though it hath not more strength in itself from the death of this or that particular person (when we foreknew that such must die) yet hath more emphasis and efficacy upon us, as the instances are repeated; especially when we. have a present occasion to consider the death of some one of great value thoroughly known to us, as this worthy person was to your honours. For it is not then a cold, faint idea we have of such a one's worth (as that is which is begot by remote and more general report) but have a lively remembrance of it as it appeared in numerous vivid instances; and thence do, with the more spirit and assurance, conclude such excellences too great to be for ever lost, or be an eternal prey to death and the grave; but therefore that he is certainly ascended and gone into a world more suitable to him: whence also the manifold endearments (which were the effects of former very intimate conversation) recur afresh with us, and carry up our hearts after him thither, making us wish and long to be there too.
But the wisdom and mercy of providence seem especially to have taken care the church of God on earth should be some way recompensed for the loss of so considerable a person out of it, by those so generally acceptable and useful works of his that survive him. Your honours'judicious and very complacential gust and relish of anything that was Reverend Dr Manton's make you the more capable of the larger share and fuller satisfaction in that recompence. And were it known how great a part of them hath had a second birth or resurrection by the diligence of one depending on you, that rescued them from the obscurity of a private closet as from a grave, and who, though deservedly favoured by you upon other accounts, is undoubtedly much the more upon this also, you would be esteemed to have the more special title to them, as well as capacity of advantage by them.
There is, however, enough to make it decent and just, that wheresoever these writings shall be read, your kindness to the author should be told for a memorial of you; and whatsoever your interest was, in him and his labours, it cannot be a lean wish unto you to desire your benefit may be proportionable, which is most earnestly desired for you, with the addition of all other valuable blessings, by your honours' greatly obliged, and very humble servants in Christ our Lord,
WILLIAM BATES.
JOHN HOWE.
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