456 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. JOHN ALLEN.-This very pious divine was born in the year 1596, and educated, probably, in the university of Cambridge. He was a hard student, a good scholar, an excellent preacher, a grave and pious divine, and a man of a most humble, heavenly, and courteous behaviour, full of sweet christian love to all; earnestly, and with much meek- ness of spirit, contending for the faith and peace of Christ. All these excellencies, however, were insufficient to screen him from the persecutions of the times. Though it does not with certainty appear at what place he was settled, after his removal from the university, he bore his share of sufferings with the holy and zealous puritans of those times. A divine of his name, and probably the same person, was minister at Ipswich, who, during the oppressionsof Bishop Wren, voluntarily departed from his cure, and went to London.* Having no prospect of better days, or of enjoy- ing rest from persecution, he went, with many others, to New England, where he arrived about the year 1637. Soon after Ins arrival he was chosen pastor of the church of Dedham, where he continued, much beloved and very useful, all the rest of his days. He died grcatly lamented, August 26, 1671, aged seventy-five years. His flock .pub lished his last two sermons ; the one front Cant. viii. 5., Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved : and the other from John xiv. 22., Peace I leave withyou. In their preface to these sermons, written with tears of grief, they denominate him "a constant, faith- ful, diligent steward in the house of God, a man ofpeace and truth, and a burning and shining light." He published " A Defence of the Nine Positions;" and " A Discourse in Defence of the Synod held at Boston in the year 1662." He, with the assistance of Mr. Thomas Shepard, wrote upon " Church-reformation."-f THOMAS GRANTHAM was a faithful and laborious minis-. ter of Christ, born in the year 1634. He feared the Lord from his youth, and, about the age of nineteen, he joined , the baptist church at Boston in Lincolnshire. Having obtained favour of the Lord, he had a good reputation in the church of God, and soon discovered his abilities for making known the gospel to others. In the,.prosecution of Wren's Parentalia, p. 96. f Hist. of New Eng. p. 115, 125.-Mather's Hist. of New Eng. b. Hi. p. 138, 133.
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