Memorials of the Independent Churches in Northamptonshire: with biographical notices of their pastors, and some account of the puritan ministers who laboured in the county.Coleman, Thomas
History
Memorials of the Independent Churches in Northamptonshire: with biographical notices of their pastors, and some account of the puritan ministers who laboured in the county.
Coleman, Thomas
Clergy -- England -- Northamptonshire; Independent churches -- England -- Northamptonshire; Puritans -- England -- Northamptonshire
Mr. Addington, of Harborough, delivered the funeral oration at the
interment of Mr. Boyce, and Mr. Gregson, of Rowell, preached the
funeral sermon, from 1 Thess. iv. 13, 14. In the closing part of that
sermon we find the following statements in the account given of Mr.
Boyce:--
It should be known that he feared the Lord, like good Obadiah,
greatly, from his youth. He gave himself up to the Church of Christ
under the pastoral care of Mr. Simpson, of Coventry, when he was 16
years of age. He acquired a rich stock of useful and valuable
knowledge from those who were admirably capable of imparting from
their rich treasures. Thus furnished, he began the sacred work of
the ministry before he was 21 years of age, and has told you, in the
last letter he will ever write, "It was the determination with which
I preached my first sermon among you, to know nothing comparatively,
but Jesus Christ, and him crucified; and I trust it has been my
sincere concern to continue in that resolution to the last,
testifying repentance towards God, and faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ." You are his witnesses, my dear brethren, how well, through
divine grace, he abode by his determination, and you well know that
the doctrines of the rich, free, and sovereign grace of God were his
delight to study and to preach; and you must know how wisely and
judiciously he stated them--with what caution, guarding against
every extreme, and every abuse of those great and glorious truths.
You cannot but know with what discreet zeal, with what plainness and
fidelity, he published the grace of God in the ever-blessed and
glorious Redeemer. Was not this the chief topic he delighted to
insist upon? and particularly to show what holy, divine, and
heavenly influence it ought to have upon the hearts and lives of
men? and did he not do this in a very persuasive and pathetic
manner? Did he not preach Christ Jesus the Lord, and constantly in
his ministrations lay no other foundation than Christ Jesus, which
God has laid in Zion, for your faith and hope to build and rest your
eternal concerns upon? How has he declared in that very serious and
affectionate epistle he sent you, "I know no other foundation that
God has laid in Zion; and the more I survey the excellence of it,
as given us in the Scriptures, the more I can say it is tried and
precious. Nothing else will do to support the stress of our eternal
hope, or indeed the pressure of painful afflictions. Blessed be God,
here is support! here is consolation! it rejoices me to think that
there are so many that can add the testimony of their experience to
mine." The great God had blessed him with a happy temper and amiable
carriage and behaviour. He knew how to weep with those that weep,
and to rejoice with those that rejoice. He abhorred the mean conduct
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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