35$ LIVES OF THE PURITANS. Pembroke, and the Countess or Bedford,had a great interest in him ; and all looked upon him as a rising man, and respected him accordingly. Some of the courtiers, how- ever, had a jealous eye upon him; for all saw that he came not to court for preferment, as did most others.. In the year 1624, Dr. Preston was invited to become lecturer at Trinity church, Cambridge ; for which there was a strong contest betwixt him and Mr. Micklethwait, fellow of Sidney college, and a very excellent preacher. The contest in voting for the new lecturer was so great, that it could not be determined without the hearing of the king, who was opposed to the doctor's preaching at Cam- bridge. As an inducement to drop the contest, he was offered the bishopric of Gloucester, then void; and the Duke of Buckingham further urged, that, as the lecture was supported by six-penny subscriptions, it was a thing unseemly to the master of a college, and the chaplain of the prince. But the duke was resolved not to lose him, and, therefore, took care that nothing was determined contrary to the doctor's wishes. Sir Edward Conway told him, that if he would give up the contest for the lecture, and let it be disposed of some other way, his majesty had authorized him to say, " that he should have any other more profitable and honourable preferment hemight desire." But the doctor's chief object was to do good to souls, not to obtain worldly emolument : the king's was to render him useless, and divide him from the puritans.+ When, therefore, it am, peared that nothingwould allure him from the object of his wishes, or be a sufficient compensation for this noble sphere of public usefulness, he was confirmed in the lecture, being his last preferment, which he held to his death. This celebrated divine thus generously preferred a situation of eighty pounds a year, with the prospect of extensive use- fulness to souls, to the bishopric of Gloucester, or any other preferment in the kingdom. He obtained great celebrity by the learned productions of his pen. His writings are numerous, and most of them admirable for the time. The pious and learned Bishop Wilkins gives an high characterofhis excellent sermons.I In his " Treatise on the New Covenant," his method is highly instructive; and his manner familiar and insinuating, yet very clear. He abounds in apt similes and illustrative Clark's Lives, p. 89-95, + Fuller's Hist. of Cam. p. 163, 164.-Clark'sLives, p. 96, 97, Wilkins on Preaching, p. 825 83.
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