234 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. brethren. He was mighty in the .scriptures, and an inter- preter one of a thousand. He was an accomplished scholar, a perfect master of the Greek, an excellent philologist, and an admirable orator. He was a ready and close disputant, and approvedhimself, to the admiration of many, in the treaties of Uxbridge and the Isle of Wight. He was a solid, judicious, and orthodox divine, mighty in points of controversy, giving a death-wound to error. His spiritual and powerful ministry was principally upon the doctrine of justification, debasing man and exalting the Saviour. He wished to die praying or preaching. That which would have made some keep their beds, did not keep him out of 'the pulpit : and as he preached, so he lived and died. He Was of an heroical and undaunted spirit; and, likeLuther, nothing would hinder him from a courageous and conscientious dis- charge of his duty.. He was accounted " the very prince of preachers, a thorough Calvinist, and a bold, honest man, void of pride and flattery."+ Fuller styles him " an excellent preacher, and the very champion of the assembly,;" and adds, " that he was constant to his principles, yet moderate and charitable towards those who differed from him."# Wood says nothing of him, only denominates him azealous puritan.§ Dr. Grey insinuates a reflection on the simplicity and integrity of Mr. Vines, by a story of his praying in the morning of an Easter Sunday, before the Marquis of Hert- ford, for the king's restoration to his throne and regal rights : but, in the afternoon, when the Marquis was absent; and Lord Fairfax come to church, he prayed in stylo parliamentario, that God would turn the heart of the king, and give him grace to repent of his grievous sins,'especially all the blood he had shed in those civil, uncivil wars. On this it was observed, that Mr. Vines was much more altered between the forenoon and afternoon, than the difference between an English marquis and an Irish baron.11 The reader, however, will easily perceive, that each of these prayers might have been very consistently offered up by the same person. When Mr. Vines was schoolmaster at Hinckley, he had for one of his pupils Mr. John Cleiveland, a noted royalist and popular poet in the reign of CharlesI., who, it is said, " owed the heaving of his natural fancy, by the choicest elegancies in Jacombe's Fun. Ser. for Mr. Vines. + Clark's Lives, part i. p. 48-51. t Fuller's Worthies, part ii. p. 134,135. t Athena; Oxon. vol. i. p. 891. 11 Grey's Examination, vol. Hi: p. 175,116.
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