College, Cambridge, in 1613, being then in his fourteenth year; was chosen a fellow and a lecturer in 1620, being still a minor. But in 1634, 'dissatisfied in his conscience with the laws of conformity,' he abandoned all his preferments. Under the pressure of persecution he left England in 1639, and took refuge in Holland. On the breaking out of the civil war, he returned to England, in 1643, and was appointed by an ordinance of Parliament, pastor of a church in London, and a member of the famous Westminster Assembly of Divines. Cromwell chose him as his chaplain, and he was admitted President of Magdalen College, Oxford. On the Restoration, he resigned his Presidentship, and anticipated the Act of Uniformity by becoming pastor of an Independent Church in London, formed principally of Oxonians who followed him from the University to the metropolis. In the great Fire of London he lost about half his library, to the value of five hundred pounds, the rest being rescued from the flames, with extreme personal hazard, by the celebrated Moses Lowman. His biographer remarks on this bereavement, 'God struck him thus in a very sensible part; for he loved his library too well.' Thomas Goodwin wrote many rich pieces of divinity, the principal of which are his Commentaries of parts of the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Book of Revelation, and those which Mr. Wesley abridged for the Christian library: A Child of Light Walking in Darkness; Christ the Object and Support of Faith; The Return of Prayers; and the Trial of a Christian's Growth. He was one of the holiest men of his time. Wesley thus acutely characterises him as a theologian: 'He was a very considerable scholar, and an eminent divine; and had a very happy faculty in descanting upon Scripture, so as to bring forth surprising remarks, which yet generally tended to illustration.' Even during his lifetime his writings achieved a European reputation, and were specially valued in America. XII. HE father of this eminent man was Alexander Leighton, D.D., the author of a book, entitled, Zion's Plea; or, An Appeal to the Parliament, which brought upon him the vengeance of Bishop Laud and the High Commission Court. He was condemned in the Star Chamber to have his ears cut and his nose slit, and was imprisoned for eleven years. His son, the Archbishop, was a man of very considerable learning and great piety. Dr. Burnet says that he was possessed of a high and noble sense of Divine things, and that he had a contempt both of wealth and reputation, and bore every sort of ill-usage and reproach like a man that had pleasure in it. The sublimity of thought and expression in his preaching, and the grace and gravity of his pronunciation were such, that few persons heard him without emotion. Dr. Doddridge wrote a preface to his Expository Works, in which he calls him a 'wonderful man,' and speaks of the delight and edification which he found in reading his writings. Of the Bishop's style he says, it has dignity and force mingled with true simplicity, and has often reminded him of that soft and sweet eloquence of Ulysses, which Homer describes as falling like flakes of snow. Soon after the accession of Charles II., he was appointed Bishop of Dunblane, Scotland, but finding his efforts thwarted, he was discouraged, and resigned his bishopric. In 1670 he proposed to the King a plan for settling the differences in the Church of Scotland, and accepted the Archbishopric of Glasgow. When he came to Glasgow, he held a synod, and exhorted the clergy, 'To look more to God, and to consider themselves as the Ministers of the cross of Christ; to lay aside all revenge, and to humble themselves before God by |