pronounced the publick oration in taking his master's degree, his thin and slender appearance, his soft and delicate voice, and the red spots in his cheeks, caused the audience in general to conclude him bordering on a consumption, and to be designed but for a few weeks of life.** 'His ten

der constitution and often infirmities, together with many sudden and threatening shocks on his health by acute diseases, were earnest and quickening mementos to him of his frailty and mortality.'t By strict regularity of living, however, he retained sufficient health for his life and labours to cease together. He preached the Lord's day previous to, and rose as usual on the morning of his death.

His family is extinct. John Dennie, whom Turell calls, in his biography, the only lamp the doctor left burning in his house at his decease,' died childless. The late Mrs. Ward, wife of Rev. Ephraim Ward of Brookfield, was a grandaughter of John Colman, brother of the doctor.

(13.) p. 12. To say as much as this of Cotton Mather, is certainly to do him no injustice. That he had great application and a wonderful memory, there is of course no disputing; but I apprehend that he cannot be said to have possessed any faculty besides that of memory in remarkable strength. Like most other persons of such comprehensive pretensions, he was extremely inaccurate. No one, probably, now relies on his historical writings as authority, when they are unsupported by other evidence. His estimation of his own importance was also altogether unreasonable. At two different vacancies in the presidency of the college, he kept fasts to seek direction in the course which he should pursue when appointed to that office. Many of the representatives favoured his claim; but the corporation four times passed him by, and chose more competent men. While Leverett was president, the Mathers seldom attended the overseers' meetings, and Cotton Mather was never of the corporation.

We have seen how the ministerial intercourse between Cotton Mather and Dr. Colman began. The dispute does not appear to have left any permanent resentment in the mind of the latter. His funeral sermon, from Gen. v. 24, not only breathes a most affectionate and noble spirit, but one is inclined to think, that its panegyrick would have been more qualified, had not the author feared, that their former relation might bias him to do Mather less than justice.

(14.) p. 12. In his funeral sermon upon William Cooper, than which nothing can be more affectionate, he says, if in any particular point I could not act with him, yet he evidently appeared to me to act, as he professed, as of sincerity, in the sight of God, and as his conscience com

manded him.' Good men are apt to think the times in which they live degenerate. Colman says, in his sermon just quoted, 'It is a time of decay. Let us, therefore, the rather be strengthening the things that remain and are ready to die; and, in his address in that sermon to candidates for the ministry, Your times are like to be harder than ours, more loose and careless, more evil and trying.' And again, in his sermon on the general fast, March 22, 1716: We are sadly on the decay as to serious piety and vital religion. We have lost our first love, life, and zeal. Our fathers, where are they,—their spirit of devotion, their sobriety and temperance, their godliness and honesty? Sensuality, worldliness and pride are grown up in the place of these,-profaneness, lukewarmness and hypocrisy, selfishness and unrighteousness.'

(15.) p. 12. DR. COLMAN was frequently employed by the general court in draughting letters and addresses, and held extensive correspondence, upon the affairs of the colony, with the governours and agents, and with dissenting gentlemen in England. He also wrote several addresses to the king and ministry, in behalf of the clergy of Massachusetts. He was, it seems, blamed by some for interfering at all with civil and secular matters. But,' asks his biographer, 'must a person, who knows well the interest of his country, and is capable of serving it, and saving it too, when sinking, be silent only because he is a minister? Is he nothing else? Is he not a subject of his prince, and a member of the commonwealth?'

He was very active in introducing the practice of inoculation for the small pox. 'Of 5889, who took it in Boston' in the year 1721, '844 died. Inoculation was introduced upon this occasion, contrary to the minds of the inhabitants in general, and not without hazard to the lives of those who promoted it, from the rage of the people."* Professional and religious bigotry combined to oppose it. A bill to prohibit it passed the house of representatives, and was only stopped in the council. The practice was however persevered in by Dr. Boylston, who was manfully defended by Mather and Colman. The latter published, in 1721, Some Observations on the New Method of receiving the Small Pox by ingrafting, or inoculating, dedicated to President Leverett. There is a curious example of the spirit, which this dispute elicited, in a sermon preached in London by Mr. Mussey in 1722, and reprinted in Boston. The text is Job ii. 7, and the doctrine, that Satan was the first inoculator.

Dr. Colman published a pamphlet in 1719 in favour of the erection of a market-house, a measure which, at that time, and until several years after, when one market-house was destroyed, and the two others injured by a mob, occasioned much excitement among the citizens.

* Hutchinson's History, II. 247.

of his good sense and fine taste, to leave room for the world to doubt of his sentiments in this matter.' Dr. Colman wrote, in a letter to Mr. Williams of Lebanon, ‘It is, at this day, enough to make the heart of a sober and considerate Christian bleed within him, to hear of the sore rents and divisions made by Mr. Davenport and others in a great number of towns and churches throughout our provinces. Almost all on Long Island are thus broken to pieces, and so are many in Connecticut, and with us of the Massachusetts to a sorrowful degree.' And, in his sermon at the ordination of S. Cooper, he expresses his wish before God and in his fear, that those among ourselves, who have of late years taken upon them to go about exhorting and preaching, grossly unfurnished with ministerial gifts and knowledge, would suffer those words of the Lord, [Jeremiah xxiii. 31, 32,] to sink deep into their hearts, to check them in their bold career, and blind censures of many faithful pastors, into whose folds they are daily breaking, and because of the mildness of our spirits towards them, seem to grow the more bold and fierce. And it were greatly to be wished, that people would beware of such straggling, illiterate teachers, and avoid them, in whatever appearances of sheep's clothing they may come." Cooper's feeling on the subject appears from the following extract of a preface written by him for a sermon by Jonathan Edwards, about a year after the revival began: 'If any are resolutely set to disbelieve this work, to reproach and oppose it, they must be left to the free, sovereign power and mercy of God to enlighten and rescue them. These, if they have had opportunity to be rightly informed, I am ready to think, would have been disbelievers and opposers of the miracles and mission of our Saviour, had they lived in his day. The malignity, which some of them have discovered, to me approaches near to the unpardonable sin; and they had need beware, lest they indeed sin the sin which is unto death.'

เ

(21.) p. 15. MR. COOPER was a native of Boston. His father died when he was very young. His mother was called by Colman, in his sermon upon her death, the woman that one would have wished to be born of.' He was graduated in 1712, and chosen president in 1737. The following extract from the overseers' records relates to his election:

'At an overseers' meeting at the college, 4th May, 1737,

"The forenoon was spent in prayer.

'P. M. The overseers, having given their advice to the corporation by a Latin speech made by the governour about the general qualifications of a president, the corporation withdrew.

'The corporation, returning to the overseers' board, informed them, that they had endeavoured to come to the choice of a president, but could not then come to a decisive vote, and therefore thought it needful to take some further time to deliberate on that affair, and hoped, the honourable and reverend overseers would agree with them in that their thought; and then

the corporation withdrew. And, after some time, the overseers sent for the corporation, and told them, that they expected the corporation would present their choice of a president to them at their next meeting, which would be the 26th instant.'

'At an overseers' meeting, at the council chamber, Boston, 26th May, 1737,

'Two votes of the corporation, respecting the choice of the Rev. William Cooper to the office of president of Harvard College, were read at the board.

'Whereupon immediately there was read a letter from Mr. Cooper to the overseers, in which he said, that "having been informed by a message from the reverend corporation of the college of his election to be president of that society, and that the said election was this day to be presented to the board of overseers, and being unwilling that the honourable and reverend board should have any needless trouble given them, or the settlement of the college be at all delayed on his account, he took this first opportunity wholly to excuse himself from that honour and trust." President Holyoke was soon after elected.

‘I am a witness,” says Colman, in his sermon at Cooper's funeral, 'to his early, serious and steady inclinations to serve God and his generation, by his holy will, in the work of the ministry; and that in his childhood he was in this a Timothy, that he knew the holy Scripture and studied his Bible, that he might be made wise to salvation.' 'On the day that he heard the first sermon that was preached in this house, being then but seven years old, he set himself to read like me as soon as he came home; and I ought to thank God if I have served any way to the forming him for his since eminent pulpit-services, and in particular his method of preaching Christ and Scripture: So a torch may be light at a farthing candle.' 'His profiting at school and college was remarkable, like his diligent study.' 'He came out at once, to a very great degree, a perfect preacher, when he first appeared in the pulpit at Cambridge, as Mr. President Leverett at the time observed to me.' With what light and power (by the help of God) he has since continued to preach the doctrines of grace, with the laws and motives of the gospel, is known to you all.' 'His sermons were well studied, smelt of the lamp, and told us how well his head and heart had been labouring for us from week to week; and how intent his mind and desire was, so to speak to us in the name of God, and from his oracles, as might best inform our minds, strike our affections, and enter into our con. sciences. But when he led us in prayers and supplication, praises and thanksgivings to God, in one administration and another, more especially of the sacraments of the New Testament, baptism and the Lord's supper; then his eminence appeared, in such a flow, propriety and fulness, as could not but often surprize the intelligent worshipper, and bear away the spiritual and truly devout, as on angels' wings, toward heaven, He came near to the throne,

and filled his mouth with arguments.' 'In the pulpit and out of it, he was, like Phinehas, zealous for his God, a faithful reprover of sin, and earnest to make atonement for it.' 'He neither sought glory of men, nor feared the faces of a multitude, nor did the contempt of families terrify him: He was endowed and formed to lead, advise and execute; and indeed was not easily turned. He thought, judged and fixed, and then it was hard to move him. God pleased greatly to own his ministry, publick and private, for saving good to souls, and gave him many seals of it, more especially (as he judged) of late years, in whom he had much joy, and they a vast honour and reverence for him.' He is gone from us in the prime of life and usefulness, while his strength was firm, promising many more years of service.' 'I can truly say, (as I said in tears over the dear remains on the day of its interment,) that, had I the like confidence of my own actual readiness to be offered, I had much rather, for your sake and the churches' through the land, have chosen to die in his stead, might he have lived to my years, and served on to the glory of God.'

In the letter quoted page 13, Dr. Chauncy characterized Mr. Cooper as a good preacher, eminently gifted in prayer, and a man of good understanding, though not endowed with a great deal of learning, or an uncommon strength in any of his powers.'

Mr. Cooper published, in 1721, a very spirited and judicious pamphlet in the controversy respecting inoculation for the small pox.

The following is the most complete list I have been able to make of his other publications:

A sermon on the incomprehensibleness of God.

17

shewing how and why young people should cleanse their way.

1716.

addressed to young people on a day of prayer, March 5, 1723.

'God's concern for a godly seed.'

on the death of John Corey. 1726.

Blessedness of the tried saint.

A sermon on early piety. 1728.

1727.

on the reality, extremity and absolute certainty of hell torments.

1732.

on the death of Lieut. Gov. Tailer. 1732.

on the death of Moses Abbot. 1734.

at the ordination of Robert Breck at Springfield. 1736.

on winter. Concio Hyemalis. 1737.

on the death of the Rev. Peter Thacher. 1739.

The doctrine of predestination into life explained and vindicated, in four sermons. 1740. Reprinted in London, 1765, and in Boston, 1804.