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DISABLED as the Bishop was by ill health from performing his duty in the pulpit, and even from attending the service of the church, he was yet very unwilling to live and die altogether useless to the world. Several of the last years of his life were therefore employed chiefly in revising and correcting and preparing his works for the press. They are intitled Dissertations, because many of them were first written as such, and were never preached, nor intended to be preached. Others were originally sermons, but have received additions and alterations; for things may be said in a Dissertation, which cannot with equal propriety be delivered from the pulpit.

Sensible of the disadvantages which posthumous

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works usually lie under from the carelesness and mistakes of other editors, he judged it most advisable for himself to commit his writings to the press, and to make himself alone answerable for them. He was grieved to see the works of his friend Bishop Pearce, since his death, not published in an uniform manner, but some in quarto, and some in octavo, and in the quarte some things omitted which had been printed before, and should have been inserted to make up the second a just volume, as particularly his two letters to Dr. Middleton; and throughout the whole not that care taken in correcting the press which should have been, and which such valuable remains deserved.

But though for this and other reasons he caused his works to be printed, yet he had no thoughts of publishing them in his life-time, being more desirous to do good than to be a witness of the praise or censure that might attend them. In thus printing his works he compared himself to a man erecting his own monument in his life-time; and whether this monument is of brass or marble or of mouldring stone, the public must judge and determin. Whatever may be his success, it was his sincere intention in all his discourses, theological, nistorical, or moral, to benefit and instruct himself and others, to press and enforce some moral duties, to explain and illustrate certain passages of scripture, to search into the reasonableness of the

divine dispensations from the creation to the con summation of all things, and thereby

assert eternal providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

It was a matter of surprise and grief to him, and what he frequently lamented, that several of his friends and contemporaries, who were excellently qualified in point of learning and knowlege to write well upon any subject, should yet choose to bury their talents in a napkin, and to leave no memorial behind them. He had his fears and apprehensions, that the contrary would be objected to him, and that he might be charged with writing too much. But yet there is surely some kind of merit in taking pains for the instruction and entertainment of others, whether the success is answerable or not. As no good is owing, so no thanks are due to supine indolence. Concealed knowlege is like a lamp burning in a sepulchre. "Let your light shine before men," is a good rule in litterature as well as in morality.

One of the last things of his writing was his account of his own life. Not that ever he thought his life of such importance and consequence as to deserve an account to be given of it to the public; but as he had opportunities of being privy to some interesting transactions, and possessed several curious and entertaining anecdotes of Lord Bath and

others

others of his friends and acquaintance, he knew no better method of relating and bringing them toge ther than by weaving them into a narrative of his own life, making the one as it were the vehicle of the other, and writing the life principally for the sake of the anecdotes. In the general opinion it savors something of vanity for a man to write the story of his own life, though several grave authors have done the same. But that rock he has avoided as carefully as he could, and has suppressed more particulars concerning himself than he has related. In many parts he is not mentioned at all. In the parts where he is mentioned, it is in order to bring forward other persons and other things. In all relating to himself there is still some reference to the use and information of others. He appears only as a gentleman-usher to introduce better company, or like the chorus in the ancient tragedies, a spectator more than an actor, and he would have been muta persona, but for the sake of doing justice to some characters. Truth and friendship prompted him much more than vanity or self-love. It sometimes happens that an old man's chit chat is very agreeable. This may truly come under that denomination; it was amusing even in sickness to the writer, and it may be perhaps in an idle hour not unentertaining to the reader.

In short, as all his writings were well intended, he could not but wish that they might be well re

ceived.

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