474 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. a great degree of inaccuracy in his ideas of the substitution of Christ in the place of the redeemed, and of our Lord's mediatorial office, both in procuring and applying the blessings of redemption.. " His writings," says Dr.Williams, " have in them a singular mixture of excellencies and faults. What is exceptionable arises chiefly from unqualified ex- pressions, rather than from the author's main design."+ Upon the commencement of the civil wars, Dr. Crisp, being puritanically inclined, was driven fromhis rectory by the king's soldiers, and, to avoid their insolence, obliged to flee to London ; where, on account of his peculiar senti- ments about, the doctrines of grace, he met with a most vigorous opposition from the divines of the city. Here he engaged in a grand dispute, having no less than fifty-two opponents ; by which encounter, eagerly managed on his part, he contracted a disease which presently brought him to his grave. He died, it is said, of the small-pox, February 27, 1643, aged forty-three years. His revising were interred in the family vault in St. Mildred's church, Bread-street, London.# In his last sickness, he was in a resigned and most comfortable state of mind, and declared to those about him his firm adherence to the doctrines which he had preached ; also, that as he had lived in the belief of the free grace of God through Christ, so he did now, with confidence and joy, even as much as his present condition was able to sustain, resign his life and soul into the hands of his heavenly Father.§ His wife was the daughter of Rowland Wilson, alderman and sheriff of London, a member of the long parliament, and one of the council of state. By him she had thirteen children, eleven of whom survived him. Dr. Crisp published nothing himself; but, after his death, in 1643, 1644,,and 1646, his friends published three volumes of sermons from his notes, entitled, " Christ alone Exalted, in the Perfection and Encouragement of his Saints, not-. withstanding their Sins and Trials." When they came from the press, it is said that the assembly of divines talked of having them burnt, as a just punishment of the heresy which they contained.il Mr. Flavel and other noncon- formists exposed his errors, and expressed a lively sense of Bogue and Bennett's Hist. of Dissenters, vol. i. p.'400,'401. Edit.1808. + Christian Preacher, p.456. Wood's Athena Oxon. vol. ii. p. 13. § Neal's Puritans, vol. iii. p. 19. N Bogue and Bennett's Dissenters, vol. i. p. 901.
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