EIGHTEEN SERMONS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, SELECTED FROM THE WORKS OF THE REV. ISAAC BARROW, D.D. FORMERLY MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. MEMOIR OF ISAAC BARROW, D.D. ISAAC BARROW, the learned and pious author of the following Sermons, born in the month of October, 1630, was the son of Thomas Barrow, a respected citizen of London, and the nephew and namesake of Isaac Barrow, then Lord Bishop of St. Asaph. He was at an early age sent to the Charterhouse School, where he made so small proficiency, that he was removed to Felsted, in Essex. His contemporary biographer indeed says, "that so little appearance was there of that comfort which his father afterwards received from him, that he often solemnly expressed his wish, if it should please God to take away any of his children, it might be his son Isaac. So vain a thing is man's judgment, and so inadequate is our own knowledge to guide our own affairs." It is, indeed, not only an act of presumption and ignorance, when men would select for themselves the course of events under which they would desire to live, but it is also a source of incessant disappointments, and great uneasiness and discontent. If we would heartily resign our circumstances and ourselves to the direction of Providence, making the best of what he is pleased to dispense, and cherishing that heavenly temper of mind, which under all the changes and chances of this mortal life suggests the pious feeling, "This pleases me, because it pleases my heavenly Father," we should possess within us a never-failing source of satisfaction and solace. Very few years elapsed before Thomas Barrow had reason to thank God for having blessed him with a son who proved in after life to be not only kind and affectionate and dutiful to his father, but one of the brightest ornaments of his Church and country. Isaac Barrow having by redoubled diligence redeemed his lost time, and made great progress in the elementary branches of education, was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1645. Here he had to contend with some pecuniary difficulties. His father's steady adherence to the Royal cause had so reduced his means, that so far from being able |