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543 John Everard The Gospel treasury opened ca. 1625–36, published 1653 Christian Reader, As there were many causes of delay in publishing these sermons, so there are also in bringing them to light now: the time when they were preached was in the days of the last bishops, who endeavored the strangling of many truths in the birth, as Pharaoh the children of Israel, lest they should increase and multiply to discover and suppress their deeds of darkness; to that end high-commissioning many precious and bright-shining lights, whereof this author was in the number . . . as if they were guilty of foul doctrine or foul life or both; and though they could prove nothing against them, yet keeping them in their courts, if possible, to awe and vex them, if they could not suppress them. The author hereof being spotless in either, especially since God in a special and extraordinary manner appeared to him, in him, in his latter days; for he confessed, with the Apostle Paul (Eph. 4:17, 18), that in the days of his former ignorance and vanity, he walked as other gentiles, and as men living without God in the world, in the vanity of his mind, having his understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the blindness of his heart; which no doubt our merciful and ready-pardoning God had forgiven, though men could not or would not forget, which he regarded not much, God speaking peace and pardon to his soul. But afterward he desired nothing more than to bring in others to see what he saw and to enjoy what he enjoyed, and to clear truth to them in either respect; he oftentimes averring —as to others, so to the publisher hereof—that his trouble was not for self-sufferings, but that truth should be any way obstructed or defamed through him. . . . . . . For as truth is strongest, so God had wonderfully come into him and declared himself by him, in his late years, and made him (as it were) a Sampson against the numerous Philistines and a David against the huge and mighty Goliaths of those times. . . . yet as he was a man of presence and princely behavior and deportment, and fit to accompany such, so he was also familiar even with the meanest, and if willing to be taught, he was Religion in Early Stuart England, 1603–1638 544 as willing to instruct and teach them; and they were (upon this account) more welcome to him than lords or princes, imitating the humble carriage of his Lord and Master; he not thinking it any disparagement to accompany with the worst and lowest of men, so he might do them good; for (he knew) he was not sent to call the righteous but the sinners, nor to heal the whole but the sick; not the justiciaries1 and those who, though they may be large in confession of sin, yet really see but little in themselves, and less to repent of. Insomuch, that those who were about him, either in sickness or health, would often say they gat more good instruction from him in discourse than by many sermons of other men’s, he being still forward, if they were backward, to take occasions to communicate some divine truths, so that he won their attention to hearken to him, as Christ did Mary’s, who chose that better part [Luke 10:42] which should never be taken from her. . . . He was also a man of a choice, courageous, and discerning spirit, endowed with skill and depth of learning, judgment, and experience to manage what God had (though but of late) revealed to him (as he often would say), affirming he was now ashamed of his former knowledge, expressions, and preachings, even since he commenced Dr. in Divinity; although he was known to be a very great scholar and as good a philosopher, few or none exceeding him; yet when he came to know himself and his own heart, and also to know Jesus Christ & the Scriptures more than grammatically, literally, or academically, viz. experimentally, he then counted all those things (even all his acquired parts and human abilities) loss and dung, for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ and him crucified [Phil. 3:8] not only externally but particularly, buried and risen again in himself; and for that blessed sight, to see how the Scriptures were daily fulfilling in himself and others—they concerning as much all...

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