[He would observe, sometimes, that there are five good lessons, which they are blessed, who learn in the days of their youth.

1. To remember their Creator. Not only remember that you have a Creator, but remember him to love him, and fear him, and serve him.

2. To come to Jesus Christ. Every man that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me. Behold, he calls you; he encourages you to come to him. He will in no wise cast you

out.

3. To bear the yoke in youth. The yoke is that which young ones cannot endure. But it is good for them to bear it.* The yoke of the Cross. If God lay affliction on you when young, do not murmur, but bear that cross. It is good to be trained up in the school of affliction. The yoke of Christ. Take MY yoke. It is an easy yoke; his commandments are not grievous.

4. To flee youthful lusts. Those who are taught of God have learned this. See that you do not love your pleasures more than the sanctifying of the Sabbath. This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath-day.

5. To cleanse their way. How? By taking heed thereto according to thy word. Love your Bibles. Meditate in them day and night. And, if you do thus, you are taught of God.+]

He did not burden his children's memories by imposing upon them the getting of chapters and psalms without book; but endeavoured to make the whole word of God familiar to them, especially the scripture stories, and to bring them to understand it and love it, and then they would easily remember it. He used to observe, from Psalm cxix. 93,-I will never forget thy precepts, for with them thou hast quickened me ;-that we are then likely to remember the word of God when it doth us good.

He taught all his children to write himself, and set them betimes to write sermons, and other things that might be of use to them. He taught his eldest daughter the Hebrew tongue when she was about six or seven years old, by an English Hebrew Grammar, which he made on purpose for her; and she went so far in it, as to be able readily to read and construe a Hebrew Psalm.

He drew up a short form of the baptismal covenant for the use of his children. It was this;

I take God the Father to be my chiefest good, and highest end. I take God the Son to be my Prince and Saviour. §

* Those that have not been inured to the yoke of obedience will never endure the yoke of suffering. P. Henry. Com. Place Book. Orig. MS.

+ P. Henry. From a MS. in the hand-writing of Mrs. Savage.

"Those that have received comfort, life, and quickening, by the word of God, find themselves obliged to remember it for ever." Dr. Manton. Works, vol. i. p. 597. Fol. 1681.

To choose Christ, is, freely and deliberately, upon advice and consultation with ourselves, being thoroughly convinced of his excellency, and our own need of him, to accept him as our only Portion, our Lord and Saviour, renouncing every thing elsc, be what it will, that may stand in competition with him. P. Henry. Orig. MS.

I take God the Holy Ghost to be my Sanctifier, Teacher, Guide, and Comforter.

I take the word of God to be my rule in all my actions.*

And the people of God to be my people in all conditions.

I do likewise devote and dedicate unto the Lord, my whole self, all I am, all I have, and all I can do.

And this I do deliberately, sincerely, freely, and for ever.

This he taught his children; and they each of them solemnly repeated it every Lord's Day in the evening, after they were catechised, he putting his Amen to it, and sometimes adding,-So say, and so do, and you are made for ever.

He also took pains with them to lead them into the understanding of it, and to persuade them to a free and cheerful consent to it. And, when they grew up, he made them all write it over severally with their own hands, and very solemnly set their names to it, which he told them he would keep by him, and it should be produced as a testimony against them, in case they should afterwards depart from God, and turn from following after him.

He was careful to bring his children betimes (when they were about sixteen years of age) to the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, to take the covenant of God upon themselves, and to make their dedication to God their own act and deed; and a great deal of pains he took with them, to prepare them for that great ordinance, and so to transmit them into the state of adult church-membership. And he would often blame parents, who would think themselves undone if they had not their children baptized, and yet took no care when they grew up and made a profession of the christian religion, to persuade them to the Lord's Supper.-It is true, he would say, buds and blossoms are not fruit, but they give hopes of fruit; and parents may, and should take hold of the good beginnings of grace which they see in their children, by those to bind them so much the closer to, and lead them so much the faster in the way that is called holy. By this solemn engagement, the door, which stood half open before, and invited the thief, is shut and bolted against temptation. And, to those who pleaded that they were not fit, he would say,That the further they went into the world, the less fit they would be. Qui non est hodie cras minus aptus erit. Not that children should be compelled to it, nor those that are wilfully ignorant, untoward, and perverse, admitted to it, but those children that are hopeful and well inclined to the things of God, and appear to be concerned in other duties of religion, when they begin to put away childish things, should be incited, and encouraged, and persuaded to this, that the matter may be brought to an issue,-Nay, but we will serve the Lord; fast bind, fast find. Abundant thanksgivings have been

It is our principle, that we must make the word the rule of all our actions. Burroughs's Moses's Choice, p. 212. 4to. 1660.

rendered to God by many of his friends for his advice and assistance herein.

In dealing with his children about their spiritual state, he took hold of them very much by the handle of their infant baptism, and frequently inculcated that upon them, that they were born in God's house, and were betimes dedicated and given up to him, and, therefore, were obliged to be his servants. Psalm cxvi. 16. I am thy servant, because the son of thine handmaid. This he was wont to illustrate to them by the comparison of taking a lease of a fair estate for a child in the cradle, and putting his life into it. The child then knows nothing of the matter, nor is he capable of consenting; however, then he is maintained out of it, and hath an interest in it; and when he grows up, and becomes able to choose, and refuse, for himself, if he go to his landlord, and claim the benefit of the lease, and promise to pay the rent, and do the services, well and good, he hath the benefit of it, if otherwise, it is at his peril. Now, children, he would say, our great Landlord was willing that your lives should be put into the lease of heaven and happiness, and it was done accordingly, by your baptism, which is the seal of the righteousness that is by faith; and by that it was assured to you, that if you would pay the rent and do the service, that is, live a life of faith and repentance, and sincere obedience, you shall never be turned off the tenement; but if now you dislike the terms, and refuse to pay this rent, (this chief rent, so he would call it, for it is no rack,) you forfeit the lease. However, you cannot but say, that you had a kindness done you, to have your lives put into it. Thus did he frequently deal with his children, and even travail in birth again to see Christ formed in them, and from this topick he generally argued; and he would often say,-If infant baptism were more improved, it would be less disputed.

He not only taught his children betimos to pray, (which he did especially by his own pattern, his method and expressions in prayer being very easy and plain,) but when they were young he put them upon it, to pray together, and appointed them on Saturdays in the afternoon to spend some time together,-none but they, and such of their age as might occasionally be with them,-in reading good books, especially those for children, and in singing and praying; and would sometimes tell them for their encouragement, that the God with whom we have to do, understands broken language. And, if we do as well as we can in the sincerity of our hearts, we shall not only be accepted, but taught to do better. To him that hath, shall be given.

He sometimes set his children, in their own reading of the Scriptures, to gather out such passages as they took most notice of, and thought most considerable, and write them down. Though this performance was very small, yet the endeavour was of good use. He also directed them to insert in a paper book, which each of them

See Tong's Life of Matt. Henry, p. 18, ut supra.

had for the purpose, remarkable sayings and stories, which they met with in reading such other good books as he put into their hands.

He took a pleasure in relating to them the remarkable providences of God, both in his own time, and in the days of old, which he said, parents were taught to do by that appointment, Exodus, xii. 26, 27,-Your children shall ask you in time to come, What mean you by this service? and you shall tell them so and so.

What his pious care was concerning his children, and with what a godly jealousy he was jealous over them, take in one instance. When they had been for a week or a fortnight kindly entertained at B-, * as they were often, he thus writes in his Diary upon their return home;-My care and fear is, lest converse with such so far above them, though of the best, should have influence upon them to lift them up, when I had rather they should be kept low. For, as he did not himself, so he was very solicitous to teach his children, not to mind high things; not to desire them, not to expect them in this world.+

We shall conclude this chapter with another passage out of his Diary :

April 12, 1681. This day fourteen years the Lord took my firstborn son from me, the beginning of my strength, with a stroke. In the remembrance whereof my heart melted this evening. I begged pardon for the Jonah that raised the storm. I blessed the Lord, that hath spared the rest. I begged mercy,-mercy for every one of them; and absolutely and unreservedly devoted and dedicated them, myself, my whole self, estate, interest, life, to the will and service of that God from whom I received all. Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, &c.

* Boreatton, near Baschurch, in Shropshire. See Letters to a Young Clergyman, v. i. pp. 145, 146.

+ Appendix, No. XII.

CHAPTER V.

His Ejectment from Worthenbury; his Nonconformity; his Removes to Broad Oak; and the Providences that were concerning him to the Year 1672.

HAVING thus laid together the instances of his family religion, we must now return to the history of events that were concerning him, and are obliged to look back to the first year after his marriage, which was the year that King Charles the Second came in; a year of great changes and struggles in the land, which Mr. Baxter, in his Life,* gives a full, and clear, and impartial idea of; by which it may easily be guessed how it went with Mr. Henry in his low and narrow sphere, whose sentiments in those things were very much the same with Mr. Baxter's.

Many of his best friends in Worthenbury parish were lately removed by death; Emeral family, contrary to what it had been; and the same spirit, which that year revived all the nation over, was working violently in that country, viz. a spirit of great enmity to such men as Mr. Henry was. Worthenbury, upon the King's coming in, returned into its former relation to Bangor, and was looked upon as a chapelry dependent upon that. Mr. Robert Fogg had, for many years, held the sequestered Rectory of Bangor, which now Dr. Henry Bridgman,+ (son to John, Bishop of Chester, and brother to the Lord Keeper Bridgman, §) returned to the possession of. By which Mr. Henry was soon apprehensive that his interest at Worthenbury was shaken; but thus he writes:-The will of the Lord be done. Lord, if my work be done here, provide some other for this people, that may be more skilful, and more successful, and cut out work for me elsewhere; however, I will take nothing ill which God doth with me.

* See Reliq. Baxter. Lib. I. Part II. p. 229, &c. ut supra.

+ Ob. 15th May, 1682. Wood's Ath. Oxon. ut supra. v. 4, p. 863.

He died at Morton, near Oswestry, in Shropshire, and was buried at Kinnerley. He was the author of the "Leger," now deposited in the Episcopal Registry. Ormerod's Hist. of Cheshire, v. i. p. 76. See also Prince's Worthies of Devon, p. 133, 4to. ed.

1810.

§ See p. 67, ante.