236 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. JOHN ANGEL, A. M.-This pious divine was born in Gloucestershire, and educated in Magdalen-hall, Oxford., Having taken his degrees, he left the university and entered upon_ the ministerial work. Previous to the year 1629, Mr. Higginson, being chosen by the mayor and aldermen of Leicester to be the town preacher, but refusing the office, on account of his growing nonconformity, he recommended Mr. Angel, then a learned and pious conformist, to their appro- bation. They accordingly made choice of him ; when he removed to Leicester, and continued in the ,office of public lecturer, with some interruption, upwards of twentyyears" Though at first hewas conformable to the established church, he afterwards imbibed the principles of the puritans, and became a sufferer in the common cause. Archbishop Laud, giving an account of his province in the year 1634, observes, " That in Leicester the dean of the archeS suspended one Angel, who hath continued a lecturer in that great town for divers years, without any license at all to preach; yet took liberty enough." His grace adds, " I doubt his violence hath cracked his brain, and do therefore use him the more tenderly, because I see the hand of God bath overtaken him."t Mr. Angel most assuredly had the license of those who employed him, and who paid him for his ' labours, though he might not ' have the formal allowance of his diocesan or the archbishop. What his lordship can mean by insinuating that "his violence had cracked his brain, and the hand of God having overtaken him," is not very easy to understand. If he laboured under some afflictive, mental, or bodily disorder, as the words seem to intimate, he was surely more deserving of sympathy and compassion than a heavy ecclesiastical censure. But the fact most probably was, that Mr. Angel was deeply involved in spiritual darkness about his Own. state, and in painful uncertainty concerning his own salvation. " For," says ,Mr. Clark, "there was a great light, Mr. Angel, formerly of Leicester, afterwards of Grantham, but now with God, who being under a sore and grieious deSertibn, received much comfort from the conversation of Mr. RichardVines."# This undoubtedly refers to the same affliction. Though it does not appear how long Mr. Angel continued under sttspensioh, he was afterwards restored to his ministry; and he continued his lecture till the.year 1650, when he w.ao. Mather's Hist. of New Erg. b. iii. p.73. + Wharton's Troubles of Laud, vol. i. p. 531. Clark's Lives, last vol. part i. p. 50.
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