--

him. Now the truth is, the church hath no need of such as you, an unlearned, self-conceited hat-maker. It is true, that, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the popish priests and friars being dismissed, there was a scarcity for the present of learned men; and so some tradesmen were permitted to leave their trades, and betake themselves to the ministry; but it was necessity that did then constrain them so to do. But thanks be to God, we have now no such necessity; and therefore this practice of you and your comrades casts an ill aspersion upon our good God, that doth furnish our church plentifully with learned men; and it doth also scandalize our church, as if we stood in need of such as you to preach the gospel. This you call preaching, or prophesying; and thus, as one of them told the lords of the parliament, that they were all preachers; for so they practise and exercise themselves as young players do in private, till they be by their brethren judged fit for the pulpit, and then up they go, and, like mountebanks, play their part. Mr. Greene, Mr. Greene, leave off these ways: bring home such as you have caused to stray. It is such as you that vent their venom against our godly preachers, and the divine forms of prayers; yea, against all set forms of prayers all is from antichrist; but that which you preach is most divine; that comes fresh from the Spirit: the other is an old dead sacrifice, composed (I should have said killed) so long ago, that now it stinks. It is so old, that in the year 1549 it was compiled by Doctor Cranmer, Doctor Goodricke, Doctor Scip, Doctor Thirlby, Doctor Day, Doctor Holbecke, Doctor Ridley, Doctor Cox, Doctor Tailor, Doctor Haines, Doctor Redman, and Mr. Robinson, archdeacon of Leicester; but what are all these? They are not to be compared to John Greene, a hat-maker; for he thinketh what he blustereth forth upon the sudden, is far better than that which these did maturely and deliberately compose." It is not at all wonderful, that, when the church had lost its power to persecute nonconformists, those who still retained the spirit of persecution should indulge in this kind of defamation and ridicule.

However, during this year, Mr. Greene, together with several of his brethren, was complained of to the house of commons, for lay-preaching. He was convened before the house, when he was reprimanded, threatened to be severely punished, if he did not renounce the practice, and then dismissed; but whether he obeyed their orders, or still

Nalson's Collections, vol. ii, p. 265, 270.

continued to exercise his talents in preaching, we are not able to learn.

Mr. Edwards, in reproaching all who dissented from his presbyterian bigotry, observes of Mr. Greene, that he was one of the first mechanics, who, presently after the meeting of the long parliament, preached publicly in the churches in London; and that afterwards, in the year 1644, he accompanied Colonel Hemstead to Trinidad. After his return, he statedly preached in Coleman-street, once on the Lord's day, and once on a week day; where, in the year 1646, to use the words of our author, " there is so great a resort and flocking to him, that yards, rooms, and house are all so full, that he causes his neighbours' conventicles, and others, to be oftentimes very thin, and independents to preach to bare walls and empty seats, in comparison of this great rabbi.". Crosby mentions one Mr. John Green, who survived the restoration, and who endured cruel persecution with the rest of his brethren; but it does not appear whether this was the same person.t

had

JOHN PRICE was a zealous preacher among the independents, during the civil wars. Edwards styles him "an exchange-man, a beloved disciple of Mr. John Goodwin, and one of his prophets; who used to preach for him when he any book to answer, or some libertine tractate to set forth." He then gives the following account of him: "This Master Price contents not himself to preach only in London, but I hear that he was lately at Bury St. Edmunds; that he there preached in a house, and maintained certain dangerous and heretical opinions; as, that men might be saved who were not elected, and that if men improve nature well, God will surely give them grace. So that it seems this exchangeman sells other wares besides independency and separation, and does with feigned words make merchandize of men's souls." This scurrilous writer adds: "Master Price was also at a meeting here in London, where some of several sects, seekers, antinomians, anabaptists, brownists, independents, met with some presbyterians, to consider how all these might live together, notwithstanding their several opinions; and he was, as all the sectaries were, for a general toleration; and they agreed together like buckle and thong, only the presbyterians were not satisfied."

* Edwards's Gangræna, part iii. p. 248, 249. + Crosby's Baptists, vol. iii. p. 82.

In the year 1646, Mr. Price published several pamphlets on the controversies of the day. One was written in defence of independency; two others were replies, one to the City Remonstrance, the other to a Vindication of the Remonstrance. In politics he seems to have been of republican principles, ascribing the supreme power of the kingdom to the house of commons; and this is all that we know of him.*

Mr. SYMONDS was beneficed at Sandwich in Kent, during the civil wars; styled by Edwards, " a great independent, and a great sectary." If we are to give credit to this writer, he was of a high and imperious spirit, and, in his views of church discipline, remarkably rigid and severe.+ He relates of him what he calls " a merry story," which is as follows: While he was at Sandwich, a person came to him to be catechized; but, instead of performing the duty of his office, he sent him to a mechanic of the town to do it for him; and when he was expostulated with, and asked why he had done so, he replied, "that one goose might best teach another to eat." The author applies and improves this story by adding, "so merry are our most demure independents."

The following account of Mr. Symonds we give in the words of this writer. "There is one Mr. Symonds, a great sectary," says he, "who came to London since the wars, and preached at little Alhallows, Thames-street, and at the Tower, where I have been informed, that he hath preached several strange things: as, for toleration, and liberty for all men to worship God according to their consciences, and in favour of antipadobaptism. Also preaching once at Andrew's, Undershaft, for Mr. Goodwin, he preached high strains of antinomianism: as, that Christ was a legal preacher, and lived in a dark time, and so preached the law, but afterwards the gospel came to be preached. Afterwards, preaching at Lawrence Poultney, on the day of thanksgiving for taking Sherborn castle, he spake of the great victories the saints, meaning the independents, had obtained; and yet the parliament was now making laws against these saints. As at London he hath preached thus; so since he left London, this last summer, he preached at Bath before the General strange stuff, viz. against presbytery, saying it was a limb of antichrist, pleading for liberty of conscience, and for those who Edwards's Gangræna, part iii. p. 160, 161. Ibid. p. 108, 109. Ibid. p. 76.

would not have their children baptized till they came to years of understanding, and for weavers and ignorant mechanics preaching; when he spake of these men's gifts, and their having the Spirit, before learned men and men bred at universities, with a great deal of this stuff. It is a sad thing, that Sir Thomas Fairfax, that valiant and well-affected gentleman, should have such kind of chaplains and preachers upon all occasions to preach before him. I have spoken the more of this Mr. Symonds, because I hear he is nominated one of the itinerary preachers of Wales; that so the country and ministers may be aware of him; and that the assembly, when he comes to be approved of, may do their duties, and not let him pass so easily as they did Mr. Cradock."*

From this curious narrative it appears that Mr. Symonds was of the baptist persuasion; and it is further observed, that he was approved and appointed by the house of commons to preach in Wales. He was living in the year 1646; but was a different person from Mr. Joseph Symonds, pastor of the church at Rotterdam in Holland, a brief memoir of whom is given in the next article.+

JOSEPH SYMONDS was some time the worthy assistant of Mr. Thomas Gataker, at Rotherhithe, near London; but afterwards he became rector of St. Martin's, Ironmongers'lane, in the city. Having espoused the sentiments of the independents, he forsook the church of England, left his benefice, and went to Holland. After his departure, Archbishop Laud, in the year 1639, pronounced against him the sentence of deprivation, by which the good man lost his living, after he had given it up. Mr. Symonds having sacrificed his benefice, to escape the storm of persecution, settled at Rotterdam, where he was chosen pastor to the English church, in the place of Mr. Sydrach Sympson. In this situation, his deportment and his doctrine were particularly conciliatory, and his labours eminently useful.§ Mr. Edwards, to reproach his sentiments and to cloud his memory, says, "that his independent church at Rotterdam was overgrown with anabaptism; and that he wrote to his friends in England, saying, he was so pestered with anabaptists, that he knew not what to do." Mr. Robert Park, afterwards one of

the ejected nonconformists, was his assistant in the pastoral office. It appears that he was living in the year 1646, and still pastor of the church at Rotterdam. Though he was an independent, Edwards styles him "one of the most moderate and modest of that way." Several pieces, written by a person of the same name, occur in the Sion and Bodleian catalogues. Though pastor of a church in a foreign land, he was sometimes called to preach before the parliament, as appears from one of his sermons afterwards published with this title, "A Sermon lately preached at Westminster, before sundry of the Honourable House of Commons, 1641: By Joseph Symonds, late minister in Ironmongers'-lane, London, now pastor of the Church at Rotterdam."

HENRY BURTON, B. D.-This painful sufferer for nonconformity was born at Birdsall in Yorkshire, in the year 1579, and educated in St. John's college, Cambridge, where he took his degrees, and was afterwards incorporated at Oxford. His first public employment was that of a tutor to the sons of Lord Carey at Leppington, who, in 1625, was created Earl of Monmouth, and whose lady was governess to Prince Charles in his infancy. It was probably owing to the interest of this honourable person, that he was made clerk of the closet to Prince Henry, and, after his death, to Prince Charles. In the year 1623, he was appointed to attend the young prince to Spain; but, for reasons unknown, he was set aside, even after part of his goods were shipped.s On that prince's accession to the crown, he expected no less than to be continued in the clerk's office; but his majesty giving that place to Neile, Bishop of Durham, Mr. Burton is said to have been so highly disgusted, that he warmly expressed his resentment on all occasions, particularly by railing against the bishops. "The vapours of ambition fuming in his head," says Clarendon," he would not think of less than still being clerk of the closet. Being thus disappointed, and, as he called it, despoiled of his right, he would not in the greatness of his heart, sit down with the affront, but committed two or three such weak and saucy indiscretions, as caused an inhibition to be sent him, that he should not presume to come any more to court." The principle of

* Palmer's Noncon. Mem. vol. ii. p. 355. + Edwards's Gangræna, part iii. p. 243. Granger's Biog. Hist. vol. iii. p 5. Fuller's Church Hist. b. xi. p. 152.