Читать книгу Dæmonologia Sacra; or, A Treatise of Satan's Temptations. In Three Parts онлайн

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‘You see, Sr, how much I need your prayers, and (if it could be) ye nomination of a man of parts, prudence, piety, and authority to assist me at present, and to succeed me when I am gone. Much of ye dissenters’ interest in ye North depends upon ye welfare of or congregation. The Episcopall party have long since made their prognostik, yt token I die, ye congregation will be broken, and then there will be an end of ye dissenters’ interest in Newcastle. I pray give my deare love and respects to all ye brethren wth you, and pardon the trouble given by, Revd. sr, your affectionate brother and servant,

Rich. Gilpin.’

On the 4th page, folio—For the Reverend Mr Richard Stratton, minister of ye gospel, at the house, Hatton Garden, in London.

We have little more to tell of the author of Dæmonologia Sacra. He survived his estimable ‘assistant’ Manlove but a short time. But to the last he was ‘in harness.’ Looking over old Papers he came upon a Sermon which he had preached so far back as ‘1660,’ at the ‘Assize’ in Carlisle, revised and published it; and it bears the same date of ‘1700’ as his own death: so that, like Sibbes, he must have had proof-sheets passing through his hands very near ‘the end.’ The ‘Epistle’ or ‘Preface’ prefixed is as terse and effective as ever; and the ‘Sermon’ itself manly, outspoken, faithful, and truly characteristic of the man. The title-page will be found in our list.58 This ‘Sermon’ having been preached before Judge Twisselton and Serjeant Bernard and the ‘gentry’ present at the Assize, is specially searching on ‘sins’ in ‘high places,’ for Gilpin acted on the sentiment of Edward Boteler, who, in his own quaint way, says of Earl Mulgrave, ‘He knew what great evils evil great ones are; that they have many followers, go they whither they will, and seldom go to hell alone.’ [As after, p. 48.] I detach a single ‘particular’ from this weighty Sermon:—‘If magistrates advance not the throne of Christ, they commonly prove furious against it, and plagues of God’s people. If this proceed from a careless blockish temper, then judgment of itself will degenerate into gall, and the “fruit of righteousness into hemlock.” Justice, like water, purifies itself by motion, when it “runs down like a stream:” if it be a standing water, it corrupts, and corruptio optimorum pessima. If this neglect proceed from enmity to Christ, then, seeing they have the greatest advantages in their hands to do evil, they may “establish wickedness by a law:” they can “push with the horn, and tread down the pasture with their feet.” [Ezek. xxxiv. 18.] “When the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” [Prov. xxix. 2.] Or if it proceed from apostasy, then “the revolters are profound to make slaughter.” [Hosea v. 27.] And this happens not so much from the churlish and cruel dispositions of men, as from God’s giving them up judicially to rage against His ways, either as a scourge to his people, or in order to their own ruin. Hence it is noted that the cruellest persecutions were set on foot by emperors, sometimes of the best parts, and most civil dispositions, as Antoninus Philosophus, Trajan, Severus, Decius, &c. Magistrates are for the most part like the prophet’s figs, either very good or very bad: they are the heads of the people, and all diseases in the head are dangerous; so when the leprosy appeared in the head deeper than the skin, the party was pronounced utterly unclean,’ (pp. 13, 14.)