HENRY AINSWORTH. 449 XXVI. strong; and had this excellency above many, that he CHAP. was most ready and pregnant in the Scriptures, as if the book of God had been written in his heart; being as ready in his quotations, without tossing and turning his book, as if they had laid open before his eyes, and seldom missing a word in the citing of any place, teaching not only the word and doctrine of God, but in the words of God, and for the most part in a continued phrase and words of Scripture. He used great dexterity, and was ready in comparing scripture with scripture, one with another. In a word, the times and place in which he lived were not worthy of such a man. YOUNG MEN. But we find that he is taxed, in a book writ by George Johnson, with apostasy and to be a manpleaser, &c. ANCIENT MEN. Who can escape the scourge of tongues? Christ himself could not do it when he was here upon earth, although there was no guile found in his mouth; nor Moses, although he was the meekest man in the earth. For man-pleasing, they that tax him [do it] because he concurred against their violent and endless dissensions about the former matters. And for his apostasy, this was all the matter. When he was a young man,' before he came out of England, he at the persuasion of some of his godly friends went once or twice to hear a godly minister preach; and this was the great matter of apostasy, for which those violent men thought him worthy to be deposed from his place, and for which 450 JOHN SMITH. XXVI. CHAP. they thus charge him. And truly herein they may worthily bear the name of rigid, &c.' MR. JOHN SMITH Was an eminent man in his time, and a good preacher, and of other good parts; but his inconstancy, and unstable judgment, and being so suddenly carried away with things, did soon overthrow him. Yet we have some of us heard him use this speech: "Truly," said he, "we being now come into a place of liberty, are in great danger, if we look not well to our ways; for we are like men set upon the ice, and therefore may easily slide and fall." But in this example it appears it is an easier matter to give good counsel than to follow it, to foresee danger than to prevent it: which made the Jere. prophet to say, "O Lord, the way of man is not in himself, neither is it in man to walk and to direct his steps." He was some time pastor to a company of honest and godly men which came with him out of England, and pitched at Amsterdam. He first fell into some errors about the Scriptures, and so into some opposition with Mr. Johnson, who had been his tutor, 1. 23. 1 After Johnson's removal to Embden, Ainsworth was the sole pastor of the church at Amsterdam till his death. This "Rabbi of his age," as he was called, "was the author of a very learned commentary on the five books of Moses, in which he shows himself a complete master of the Oriental languages and of Jewish antiquities. His death was sudden, and not without suspicion of violence; for it is reported, that having found a diamond of great value in the streets of Amsterdam, he advertised it in print, and when the owner, who was a Jew, came to demand it, he offered him any acknowledgment he would desire; but Ainsworth, though poor, would accept of nothing but a conference with some of the rabbies upon the prophecies of the Old Testament relating to the Messiah, which the other promised; but not having interest enough to obtain it, and Ainsworth being resolute, it is thought he was poisoned. His congregation remained without a pastor for some years after his death and then chose Mr. Canne, author of the marginal references to the Bible." See Neal's Puritans, i. 363, 386, 437; Baylie's Dissuasive, p. 15; Cotton's Way, p. 6. and the church there. JOHN SMITH. 451 XXVI. But he was convinced of them CHAP. by the pains and faithfulness of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Ainsworth, and revoked them; but afterwards was drawn away by some of the Dutch Anabaptists, who finding him to be a good scholar and unsettled, they easily misled the most of his people, and other of them scattered away. He lived not many years after, but died there of a consumption, to which he was inclined before he came out of England. Ilis and his people's condition may be an object of pity for after times.1 MR. JOHN ROBINSON Was pastor of that famous church of Leyden, in Holland; a man not easily to be paralleled for all things, whose singular virtues we shall not take upon us here 'Smith, who has already been mentioned on pages 22 and 34, was, according to Baylie, p. 15, "a man of right eminent parts.' Neal says that he was a learned man, of good abilities, but of an unsettled head, as appears by the preface to one of his books, in which he desires that his last writing may always be taken for his present judgment. He was for refining upon the Brownists' scheme, and at last declared for the principles of the Baptists; but being at a loss for a proper administrator of the ordinance of baptism, he plunged himself, and then performed the ceremony upon others; which gained him the name of a Se-baptist. He afterwards embraced the tenets of Arminius, and published certain conclusions upon those points in the year 1611, which Mr. Robinson answered in 1614; but Smith died soon after, and his congregation dissolved. The fall of Mr. Smith," says Cotton, in his Way, p. 6," and the spirit of errors and instability that fell upon him, was a dreadful warn ing from heaven against self-fulness The celebrated Bishop Hall wrote 452 XXVI. JOHN ROBINSON. CHAP. to describe. Neither need we, for they so well are known both by friends and enemies. As he was a man learned and of solid judgment, and of a quick and sharp wit, so was he also of a tender conscience, and very sincere in all his ways, a hater of hypocrisy and dissimulation, and would be very plain with his best friends. He was very courteous, affable and sociable in his conversation, and towards his own people especially. He was an acute and expert disputant, very quick and ready, and had much bickering with the Arminians,' who stood more in fear of him than any of the university. He was never satisfied in himself until he had searched any cause or argument he had to deal in thoroughly and to the bottom; and we have heard him sometimes say to his familiars that many times, both in writing and disputation, he knew he had sufficiently answered others, but many times not himself; and was ever desirous of any light, and the more able, learned, and holy the persons were, the more he desired to confer and reason with them. He was very profitable in his ministry and comfortable to his people. He was much beloved of them, and as loving was he unto them, and entirely sought their good for soul and body In a word, he was much esteemed and reverenced of all that knew him, and his abilities [were acknowledged] both of friends and strangers. But we resolved to be brief in this matter, leaving you to better and more large information herein from others." See pages 41 and 392. 2 JOHN ROBINSON was born in 1576, but the place of his birth is unknown. He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he entered in 1592, took the degree of Master of Arts in 1600, and Bachelor of Divinity in 1607, the year before he went over to Holland. Before his election as pastor of the Pilgrim Church, mentioned on page 23, he had a benefice near Yarmouth, in Norfolk, where he was often molested by the bishop's officers, and his friends almost ruined in the ecclesiastical RICHARD CLIFTON. 453 MR. RICHARD CLIFTON Was a grave and fatherly old man when he came first into Holland, having a great white beard; and pity it was that such a reverend old man should be forced to leave his country, and at those years to go into exile. But it was his lot; and he bore it patiently. Much good had he done in the country where he lived, and converted many to God by his faithful and painful ministry, both in preaching and catechizing. Sound and orthodox he always was, and so continued to his end. He belonged to the church at Leyden; but being settled at Amsterdam, and thus aged, he was loath to remove any more; and so when they removed, he courts. It is an ungenerous insinuation of Bishop Hall, at the end of his Apology against Brownists, "Neither doubt we to say, that the mastership of the hospital at Norwich, or a lease from that city, (sued for, with repulse,) might have procured that this separation from the communion, government, and worship of the Church of England, should not have been made by John Robinson." Baylie, that bitter inveigher against the Brownists and Independents, acknowledges that "Robinson was a man of excellent parts, and the most learned, polished and modest spirit that ever separated from the Church of England; that the Apologies and Justifications he wrote were very handsome; that by Dr. Ames and Mr. Parker he was brought to a greater moderation than he at first expressed; that he ruined the rigid separation, was a principal overthrower of the Brownists, and became the author of Independency." As to this last point, however, see Cotton's reply, in note on page 442. The name, however, as Mosheim suggests, 1 may have been derived from an As has already been seen, pp. 77 CHAP. |