431 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. afterWards called Boston. This they found a more healthy and agreeable situation.* Some time after Mr. Wilson's settlement at Boston, he came over to England, when his wife, with many others, returned with him to the newplantation. He afterwards came to England a second time, and, upon his return, four ministers and nearly two hundred passengers accompanied him. He continued pastor of the church at Boston to the day of his death, and was greatly admired and beloved. Thecelebrated Dr. Ames used to say, " If I might have my choice of the best situation on this side heaven, I would be teacher to a congregational church of which Mr. Wilson was pastor." This happiness enjoyed Mr. Cotton, and after him Mr. Norton, in the church of Boston. He was a most exact and judicious preacher, 'especially in his younger years, and was greatly admired by Dr. Goodwin, Mr. Burroughs, and other celebrated divines. During the latter part of his life he took greater liberties ; when his sermons chiefly consisted of exhortations, admonitions, and counsels, delivered with much warmth and affection. He was a man of great piety, and uncommon charity and liberality, employing all his estate to supply the wants of the necessitous. Being of a sweet natural disposition, he was universally beloved, and accounted the very father of the new plantation. All the inhabitants of the town being once upon a general muster called together, a -gentleman present thus observed to Mr. Wilson : " Sir," said he, " here is a mighty body of people, and there are not seven of them all who do not love Mr. Wilson." To which he replied, " Sir, I will tell you something as strange : There is not one amongthem all but Mr. Wilson loves." Mr. Wilson was a man of a meek and quiet spirit, and always discovered a becoming resignation to the will of God. When at any time he sustained any outward losses, lie quietly submitted himself to his heavenly Father's will. Having been once on a journey, a person of his acquaint- ance met him on the road and told him, saying, "Sir, I have bad news for 'yon. While you have been abroad, your house is burnt down." To which he meekly replied, " Blessed be God : he has burnt down this house, because lie intends to giVe use another." He vigorously opposed the antinomian and familistic errors in the synod of 1637, but too much favoured the prosecutions of the quakers and Morse and Parish's Hist. p. 39; 40.
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