60 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. anda reputation scarcely to be exceeded. JOHN WILKINSON, son of the above, who diedDecember 18, 1664, aged sixty-one years, was also interred near them. THOMAS COLEMAN, A. M. -This learned and pious divine was born in the city of Oxford, in the year 1598, and educated in Magdalen college, in that university. Having enteredupon the ministerial work, he became vicar of Bliton in Lincolnshire ; but he was persecuted, and afterwards driven from the place for nonconformity. On the com- mencement of the civil wars, he fled for refuge to London, was made rector of St. Peter's, Cornhill, and chosen one of the assembly of divines. He frequently preached before the parliament; and, October 15, 1643, when both houses took the covenant, he preached before the lords, giving some explanation of it. He observed on this occasion," that by prelacy, as used in the covenant, was not meant all episco- pacy, but only the form therein described.". In 1644, he was appointed one of the committee of examination and approbation of public preachers. The year following, in the grand debate of the assembly, concerning the divine right of the presbyterian mode of church government, he gave his opinion against it; and openly declared, both in the assembly and from the pulpit, that if thedivine right of presbyterianism should ever be established by public authority, he was ap- prehensive it would prove equally arbitrary and tyrannical as the prelacy had been. He therefore proposed that, under present circumstances, the civil magistrate should have the power of the keys till the nation should be brought into a more settled state.t Mr. Coleman was of erastian principles respecting church government; but he fell sick during the above debate ; and some of the members waiting upon him, he desired they would not come to any conclusion till they had heard what he had further to offer upon the question. But his complaint increasing, he died in a few days, and the whole assembly paid the last tribute of respect to his memory by attending his funeral solemnities, March 30, 1647. Wood says, " he was so accomplished an Hebrean, that he was commonly denominated Rabbi Coleman;" and adds, " that he behaved Sylvester's Life of Baxter, part i. p. 49. 4 Neal's Puritans, vol. iii. p. 261.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=