Some say that souls of sad presages give;
Death-breathing sermons taught us last to live.
One sows, another reaps, may truly be,
Our grave instruction and his elegy.
His system of religion half unheard,
Full double in his preaching life appear’d.
Happy that place where rulers deeds appear,
I’ th’ front of battle, and their words i’ the rear.
He’s gone, to whom his country owes a love,
Worthy the prudent serpent and the dove.
Religion’s Panoply, the sinner’s terror,
Death summon’d hence sure by writ of error,
The Quaker trembling at his thunder, fled,
And with Caligula resum’d his bed.
He by the motions of a nobler spirit,
Clear’d men, and made their notions swine inherit,
The Munster goblin by his holy flood,
Exorcis’d, like a thin Phantasma stood.
Brown’s babel shatter’d by his lightning fell;
And with confused horror pack’d to hell.
The Scripture with a commentary bound,
(Like a lost calice) in his heart was found.
When he was sick, the air a fever took,
And thirsty Phœbus quaft the silver brook.
When dead the spheres in thunder clouds and rain,
Groan’d his elegium, mourn’d and wept our pain,
Let not the brazen Schismatic aspire;
Lot’s leaving Sodom, left them to the fire.
’Tis true, the bee’s now dead, but yet his sting,
Death’s to their dronish doctrines yet may bring.
Epitaphium.
The churches, courts, and countries Jonathan,
He that speaks Mitchell, gives the schools the lie;
Friendship in him gain’d an ubiquity.
—F. D.
Vicet post funera virtus.
An epitaph upon the deplored death of that supereminent minister of the gospel, Mr. Jonathan Mitchell.
Mitchell expired in his prime;
Who four years short of forty-seven,
Was found full ripe and pluck’d for heaven.
Was full of prudent zeal and love,
Faith, patience, wisdom from above;
New England’s stay, next age’s story;
The churches gem; the college glory.
Angels may speak him; ah! not I,
(Whose worth’s above Hyperbole)
But for our loss, wer’t in my power,
I’d weep an everlasting shower.
—J. S.6
A fourth minister that died this year was Mr. John Eliot, jun., born at Roxbury, in New England, eldest son of the Rev. Mr. John Eliot, teacher of the church there. He was educated at Cambridge, in the Latin school, and in the College, until he became master of arts; and a few years after was called to be pastor of a church within the bounds of Cambridge, upon the south side of Charles river. He was a person excellently endowed, and accomplished with gifts of nature, learning, and grace; of comely proportion, ruddy complexion, cheerful countenance; of quick apprehension, solid judgment, excellent prudence; learned both in tongues and arts for one of his time, and studiously intense in acquiring more knowledge. His abilities and acceptation in the ministry did excel; his piety, faith, love, humility, self-denial, and zeal, did eminently shine upon all occasions. He had (under the conduct of his father) by his diligence, industry, and zeal (for the good of souls), attained to such skill in the Indian language, that he preached to the Indians sundry years; travelling many miles in a day once a fortnight, to dispense the gospel to them. The Indians have often said, that his preaching to them was precious and desirable; and consequently their loss, and the obstruction in that work, much to be lamented. In a word, there was so much of God in him, that all the wise and godly who knew him, loved and honoured him in the Lord, and bewailed his death; which fell upon the 13th day of October, 1668, and of his age about thirty-five years.
I shall close up this small history with a word of advice to the rising generation, that as now their godly predecessors have had large experience of the goodness and faithfulness of God, for the space of near forty-six years (some of them), and have passed under various dispensations, sometimes under great afflictions, otherwhile the sun shining upon their tabernacles in ways of peace and prosperity; and yet notwithstanding, through the grace of Christ, the most of them have held their integrity in his ways; that so, such as succeed them would follow their examples so far as they have followed Christ; that it might not be said of them, as it is to be feared it may be, by what yet appears amongst many of them, that indeed God did once plant a noble vine in New England, but it is degenerated into the plant of a strange vine, Jer. ii. 21. It were well that it might be said that the rising generation did serve the Lord all the
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