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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
on
both
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