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Published by L & G Seeley, 169, Fleet Street, Nov 1, 1838.

CHRISTIAN GUARDIAN,

AND

Church of England Magazine.

APRIL 1838.

MEMOIR OF WILLIAM BURKITT, M. A.

SOMETIME VICAR OF DEDHAM, AND COMMENTATOR ON THE NEW TESTAMENT.

THIS faithful servant of Christ was born at Hitcham in Northamptonshire, July 25, 1650. His father, the Rev. Miles Burkitt, was one of the ministers who suffered by the Act of Uniformity in 1662, a

circumstance which makes the son's adherence to the Established Church the more remarkable. His mother was of the family of Sparrow, who lived at Reed, in Suffolk..

In his childhood he was endowed with a very tenacious memory, which, combined with a religious education, was the means of early storing his mind with divine truths. After being sent to school at Bilston and at Stowmarket, he was placed at an academy in Cambridge, where it pleased God to awaken his mind, by visiting him with the small-pox, a disorder which then often proved fatal. He thus commemorates the event in his own memorials. "While I continued at school in Cambridge, it pleased God to visit me with the small-pox, but very favourably, and, as I hope, in great mercy, laying the foundation of my spiritual health in that sickness, working, as I hope, a prevailing thorough change in the very frame and disposition of my soul. May my soul, and all within me, bless APRIL 1838.

thy name, O Lord, that this sickness should, by the blessing of thy Holy Spirit, open my blind eyes, which hath shut and closed the eyes of so many in death and darkness. O happy sickness, that ends in the soul's recovery.'

At the age of fourteen, he was admitted at Pembroke-hall, in that university. During his residence there, Cambridge was visited, in 1666 with the plague. Most of the students retired into the country. I, with two or three more, (he says) continued locked up in the college, and could, out of my chamber-window, behold the dead bodies of infected (persons) carried forth to burial. Which solemn spectacles, together with the doleful condition of the town and nation, wrought my soul to an holy seriousness.'

He entered very early into the ministry, being ordained by the pious bishop Reynolds, who if he had lived, would have had reason to rejoice over him. His first employment was as domestic chaplain at Bilston-hall,* and his next at Milden, where he remained suc

*There is a confusion in this part of his life by Parkhurst, which would represent him as chaplain before he was ordained, and the error, (for such it must be) has been copied by others.

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It was his practice to preach twice a day, though only one sermon was then enjoined by usage and canonical regulation. He soon found, that the people among whom he was called to labour, were all illiterate, and therefore he endeavoured to suit his sermons to the meanest capacities, preaching very plainly, as well as practically and affectionately. Being challenged by an Anabaptist minister, as a preacher of unscriptural doctrine, because he had maintained the lawfulness and utility of infant baptism, he was induced to publish 'An Argumentative and Practical Discourse' on that subject, which was of great service in that neighbourhood. In 1679 he preached a funeral sermon on the death of the Rev. William Gurnall, Minister of Lavenham, in Suffolk,* entitled, The people's zeal provoked to a holy emulation, by the pious and instructive example of their dead minister,' from Heb. xiii. 7.

This sermon was published at the request of the parishioners,† and contains many striking and useful remarks, some of which may very fitly be inserted in this place.

• If sorrow be sanctified, it cannot hurt the heart, or prejudice the soul.

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It is a poor and low evidence of your respects to him, should you go with Mary to your dear friend's sepulchre, and there bedew bis coffin with your tears: the highest demonstration of your ardent love to him, and of your unbounded and inexpressible gratitude to God for him, is to take up his exemplary graces by a

* Author of the Christian's Complete Armour.' He died October 12, 1679, aged 63.

It is republished in Wood's Funeral Sermons of eminent English divines, 1831.

Christian imitation, and to mourn more passionately that you are so unlike him; than that you have at present lost him; that all your long converses with him should no more assimilate you to his own likeness.'

The remarks on the mind subduing policy of the Church of Rome, in the following passage, appears new, and is extremely forcible.

The best of ministers being but men at best, therefore their people's imitation of them and their example, must not be an universal, but a limited imitation; with this just caution, the great apostle St. Paul propounded his own example to the Corinthiaus' view; "Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ; as if he had said, If at any time you find me, your spiritual guide, stepping aside, and walking unanswerable to that uniform pattern of obedience, which the holy Jesus set before both me and you in his own holy and immaculate life, take heed that you decline my example, and follow not my footsteps.

6

Indeed, the doctors of the Romish synagogue do peremptorily oblige their followers to believe whatever they (as infallible dictators) propound to them, be it never so unreasonable; and to practise also whatever they set an example before them, be it never so ridiculous and absurd. Verily they impose the same ignominious terms upon the people of their communion, which Nahash offered to the men of Jabesh-gilead, that every one shall put out his right eye, that so they may be the more fit for their blind devotion; yea, both eyes, if the church command it; the eye of sense too must at least be disbelieved, otherwise that grand affront to human nature, the doctrine of transubstantiation had never obtained credence in the world.

* 1 Sam. xi. 2.

*

• But

warn

we charitably you of your danger, if you try not both our doctrine and our manners, by the infallible touchstone of the Holy Scriptures, before you believe the one, or imitate the other.'

Pursuing this subject more in detail, he says,

It ought to be a regular and uniform imitation; you are not to follow him universally in all his actions, but in the impartial exercise of all his graces; this counsel the holy apostle gives, Phil. iv.

8.

"Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, praise, or comeliness" in his actions, those things you must think upon. Remember to follow your spiritual guide in that even path of piety, wherein he hath uprightly followed the captain of your salvation. Hypocrisy singles out one grace and shuns another, but sincerity discovers itself by an uniform care and endeavour to transcribe all, and doth nothing by partiality.

'God's great design in sending his messengers amongst a people is, that by the holiness of their example, as well as the purity of their doctrine, they may win souls to a love of righteousness: this is the duty which Timothy is exhorted to, when the apostle bids him hold forth the word of life; that is, the purity of it in his doctrine, and the power of it in his conversation: t from hence, no doubt, it is that Christ compares his apostles to lights, "Ye are the light of the world: an allusion, ‡ (as may be probably conjectured,) to torches held out in a dark night, to direct passengers their way, or to fires upon a beacon near the sea coast, to prevent the bewildered mariners splitting upon rocks, and suffering shipwreck.

'St. Paul, in his famous funeral oration for the saints departed, * Morals. + Conduct. Matt. v. 14.

Heb. xi. tells us of Noah, verse 7, that he condemned the world, which no doubt he did by his practice, as well as by his preaching; indeed he preached by his hand, as well as by his tongue; his building the ark was a daily visible sermon to that unreclaimed generation.

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Your highest commendations and praises of them, (your ministers) without a Christian endeavour to exemplify and imitate whatever you observed praiseworthy in them, is but an unprofitable compliment of no more fragrance than a handful of flowers which the innocent child strews upon its parent's grave, which make the corpse smell not at all the sweeter.

Precepts may be dark and obscure, but precepts exemplified are plain and facile:* the holy example of departed saints affords us a double help in running our Christian race.

'Oh, how highly are we (ministers) all concerned to oblige ourselves to an eminent and exemplary piety of conversation! The reason is obvious, because the eyes of all our flock not only are, but ought to be upon us: our mistakes then, are not like the errors of a pocketwatch, which mislead only a single person, but like those of a townclock, which misguide a multitude.

· A heterodox conversation will carry an orthodox judgment to hell.

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