456 THE HAPPINESS DE SEPARATE SPIRITS. rDISC. II. churches, which was under the pastoral care of the re- verend Dr. John Owen, where he continued an honour. able member under successive pastors till the day of his death. Nor was he ashamed to own and support that despised interest, nor to frequent those assemblies when the spirit of persecution raged highest in the days of king Charles and king James the Second. He was a present refuge for the oppressed, and the special providence of God secured him and his friends from the fury of the oppressor. He was always a devout and diligent attend- ant on public ordinances till these last years of his life, when the infirmities of age growing upon him, confined him to his private retirements. But if age confined him, death gave him a release. He is exalted now to the church in heaven, and has taken his place in that glorious assembly, where he worships among them before the throne : There he has no need to relieve his memory by the swiftness of his pen, which was his perpetual practice in the church on earth, and by which means he often entertained his family in the evening worship on the Lord's-day with excellent dis- courses; some of which he copied from the lips of some of the greatest preachers of the last age : There his un- bodied spirit is able to sustain the sublimest raptures of devotion, which run through the worshippers in that heavenly state ; though here on earth I have sometimes seen the pious pleasure too strong for him: and while he has been reading the things of God to his household, the devotion of his heart has broken through his eyes, has interrupted his voice, and commanded a sacred pause and silence. He enjoyed an intimate friendship with that great and venerable man, Dr. Owen, and this was mutually culti- vated with zeal, and delight onboth sides, till death divided then:. The world has already been acquainted, that it is to the pious industry of Sir JOHN HARTOPP, that we are indebted for many of those sermons and discourses of the Doctor's, which have been lately published in folio. A long and familiar acquaintance enabled him also to furnish many memoirs, or matters of fact, toward that brief account of the Doctor's life, which is prefixed to that volume, though it was drawn up in the present form," with. various enlargements, by another.hand
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