Litchfield enquirer. [volume] (Litchfield, Conn.) 1829-current, 1846-04-09

illustrious of poets, who for magniAcence
OF imagination, for grandeur of thought, for
purity, beauty, and tenderness of sentiment,
for harmony of numbers, for power and fe-
licity of language, stands without a rival
Milton was Puritan.
Who were the low-bred fanatics, the
crop cared rebels, the rabble Of round-headsi
Name that purest patriot whose name stands
brightest and most honored in the history of
English liberty, and whose example is ever
the star of guidance and of hope, to all who
resist usurped authority. Hampden was
Puritan,--associate With Pym in the elo-
quence that swayed the Parliament and full
min'd'' over England, comrade in arms
with Cromwell, and shedding his blood up
on the battlefield 'gsf- si.'t.a
But their preachers were COOLERS and tink-
ers! Were they indeed Well, and what
were Christ's apostles? One tinker I re-
member, among the preachers of that age.
| and of that great party-though not, Id the
most proper meaning of the word, a Puritan;
and what name is more worthy of place a
mong the names of the elected fishermen of
Galilee, than the name Of Bunyan? That
tinker, shut up in Bedford Jail for the crime
of preaching, saw there with the eye of faith
and genius, visions only less divine than
those which were revealed to his namesake
in Patmos. His "Pilgrim's Progress" lives
in all the languages Of Christendom, among
the most immortal of the works of human ge-
MUS. Would that all preachers were gifted
like that tinker Bunyan!
But the Puritan preachers cannot be char
acterized as illiterate, or as men who had
been trained to mechanical employments.---
They were men from the universities, skill
ed in the learning ofthe age, and well equip
ped for the work of preaching. Never has
England seen more illustrious company Of
preachers than when Baxter, Owen, Bates,
Charnock, Howe, and two thousand others of
inferior attachments indeed, but of kindred
spirit, labored in the pulpits of the establish
ment. Never has any ministry in the
Church Of England done more, in the same
time, and under similar disadvantages, for
the advancement Of the people in the knowl-
edge of Christian truth, and in the practice
of Christian piety, than was done by the
ministry of the Puritans Whence came the
best and most famous of those books ofdevo-
ton, and Of Experimental and practical pie
ty, which have so enriched our language,
and by which the authors preach to all gen.
erations. The "Saint's Rest" the Call TO
the Unconverted," the "Living Temple, -
The Blessedness of the Righteous" these
and other works like these, which have
been the means ofleading thousands to God
the eternal fountain,---are the works Of the
Puritan preachers. ii
Let me not be considered as maintaining
that the Pnritans were faMltless or infallible.
l know they had faults, great faults. I
know they fell into serious errors. BY their
errors and faults, the, great cause which
their virtue SO earnestly espoused, and their
valor so strongly defended, was wrecked and
almost ruined. But dearly did they pay, in
disappointment in persecution, in many suf-
ferings, in the contempt which was 'heaped
upon them by the infatuated people they had
vainly struggled to emancipate, the per-
atty of theil faults and errors. And richly
have their posteri,y, inhabitirg both hemis-
pher<s. cnjnyed, in well ordered liberty, in
the diffusion of knowledge, and in the saw,
ing influences ospure observation-disclosures
chase of their sufierings, the reward Of their
virtues and their valor.