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THE celebrating of the praises of the dead,

is an argument so worn out by long and frequent use, and now become so nauseous, by the flattery that usually attends it, that it is no wonder if funeral orations, or panegyrics, are more considered for the elegancy of style, and fineness of wit, than for the authority they carry with them, as to the truth of matters of fact. And yet I am not hereby deterred from medling with this kind of argument, nor from handling it with all the plainness I can delivering only what I myself heard and saw, without any borrowed ornament.

I do easily foresee how many will be engaged for the support of their impious maxims and immoral practices, to disparage what I am to write. Others will censure it, because it comes from one of my profession, too many supposing us to be induced to frame such discourses for carrying on what they are pleased to call Our Trade. Some will think I dress it up too artificially, and others, that I present it too plain and naked.

But being resolved to govern myself by the exact rules of truth, I shall be less concerned in the censures I may fall under. It may seem liable to great exception, that I should disclose

se many things, that were discovered to me, if not under the seal of confession, yet under the confidence of friendship; but this noble lord himself not only released me from all obligations of this kind, when I waited on him in his last sickness, a few days before he died, but gave it me in charge, not to spare him in any thing which I thought might be of use to the living; and was not ill pleased to be laid open, as well in the worst as in the best and last part of his life; being so sincere in his repentance, that he was not unwilling to take shame to himself, by suffering his faults to be exposed for the benefit of others.

I write with one great disadvantage-that I cannot reach his chief design, without mentioning some of his faults: but I have touched them as tenderly as occasion would Lear; and I am sure with much more softness than he desired, or would have consented to, had I told him how I intended to manage this part. I have rela ted nothing with personal reflections on any others concerned with him; wishing rather they themselves, reflecting on the sense he had of his former disorders, may be thereby led to forsake their own, than that they should be any ways reproached by what I write; and therefore, though he used very few reserves with me, as to his course of life, yet, since others had a share in most parts of it, I shall relate nothing but what more immediately concerned himself; and shall say no

more of his faults than is necessary to illus trate his repentance.

The occasion that led me into so particular a knowledge of him, was an intimation given me by a gentleman of his acquaintance, of his desire to see mc. This was sometime in October, 1679, when he was slowly recovering out of a great disease. He had understood that I often attended on one well known to him, that died the summer before; he was also then entertaining himself in that low state of health, with the first part of the History of the Refor.. anation, then newly come out, with which he seemed not ill pleased; and we had accidentally met in two or three places some time ber fore.

These were the motives that led him to call for my company. After I had waited on him once or twice, he grew into that freedom with me, as to open to me all his thoughts, both of religion and morality, and to give me a full view of his past life, and seemed not uneasy at my frequent visits. So till he went from London, which was in the beginning of April, I waited on him often.

As soon as I heard how ill he was, and how much he was touched with the sense of his former life, I wrote to him, and received from him an answer, that, without my know lege, was printed since his death, from a copy which one of his servants conveyed to the press. In it there is so undeserved a value

put on me, that it had been very indecent in me to have published it: yet that must be attribu ted to his civility and way of breeding and indeed he was particularly known to so few of the clergy, that the good opinion he had of me is to be imputed only to his unacquaintance with others.

My end in writing, is so to discharge the last commands this lord left on me, as that it may be effectual to awaken those who run on to all the excesses of riot; and that in the midst of those heats, which their lusts and passions raise in them, they may be a little wrought on by so great an instance of one who had run round the whole circle of luxury; and as Solomon says of himself, Whatsoever his eyes desired, he kept it not from them; and withheld his heart from no joy. But when he looked back, on all that, on which he had wasted his time and strength, he esteemed it vanity and vexation of spirit; though he had both as much natural wit, and as much acquired learning, and was as much improved by thinking and study, as perhaps any libertine of the age. Yet when he reflected on all his former courses, even before his mind was illumiinated with better thoughts, he counted them madness and folly.

But when the power of religion came to operate on him, he added a detestation to the contempt be formerly had of them, suitable to what became a sincere penitent, and express

ed himself in so clear and so calm a manner, so sensible of his failings towards his Maker and his Redeemer, that as it wrought not a little on those that were about him, so, I hope, the making it public may have a more general influence, chiefly on those on whom his former conversation might have had ill effects..

I have endeavoured to give his character as fully as I could take it; but as I saw him onlyin one light, in a sedate and quict temper, when he was under a great decay of strength and loss of spirits; I cannot give his picture with that life and advantage that others may, who knew him when his parts were more lively: yet the composure he was then in may perhaps be supposed to balance any abatement of nis usual vigour, which the decline of his health brought him under.

I have written this discourse with as much care, and have considered it as narrowly as I could. I have done it slowy, and often used my second thoughts in it; not being so much concerned in the censures which might fall on myself, as cautious that nothing should pass, that might obstruct my only design of writing, which is the doing what I can towards refor. ming a loose and lewd age.

And if such a signal instance, concurring with all the evidence we have for our most ho ly fath, has no effect on those who are running the same course, it is much to be feared they are given up to a reprobate sense:

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