Page:An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828) vol 1.djvu/25

Rh to me a most desirable friend, and I love heaven the better since he went thither." Mr. Bury observes, however, that "he had an almost inconceivable quickness in his speech, but that he afterward happily corrected it, as well for his own sake, as for the benefit of others."

Another of Mr. Henry's fellow-students was Mr., afterward an eminent minister at Bath, and father of the learned Dr. Chandler, of the Old Jury, London. In a letter to Mr. Tong, he speaks of Mr. Henry in the following respectful terms: "It is now thirty-five years since I had the happiness of being in the same house with him, so that it is impossible I should recollect the several [particulars] that fixed in me such an honourable idea of him, that nothing can efface while life and reason last. This I perfectly well remember; that, for serious piety and the most obliging behaviour, he was universally beloved by all the house. We were near thirty pupils when Mr. Henry graced and entertained the family, and I remember not that ever I heard one of the number speak a word to his disparagement. I am sure it was the common opinion, that he was as sweet tempered, courteous, and obliging a gentleman as could come into a house; his going from us was universally lamented."

How long he continued with Mr. Doolittle is not quite certain. Such was the persecuting temper of the times, that this good man was obliged to leave Islington, (upon which he removed to Battersea,) and soon after to disperse his pupils into private families at Clapham, to which place it does not appear that Mr. Henry followed them. It is certain, however, that when he quitted this academy, he returned to his father's house, where he pursued his studies with great assiduity. Among his papers is one dated Broad-Oak, 1682, (about which time it seems probable that he returned thither,) which is a memorial of the mercies which he had received from the hand of God from his birth to that time, which was his birthday: it consists of twenty six particulars, and discovers a lively spirit of devotion.

Mr. Henry was now twenty years of age, and had made great improvement in all the branches of science, which tended to fit him for appearing with great advantage under the ministerial character. But it does not appear that he had yet begun to exercise his talents in public. He was, however, frequently engaged in social exercises of devotion among the good people of his father's acquaintance, and who resorted to that house of prayer. His company was much coveted by them, and they were highly gratified by his visits, which he was ever ready to make to the meanest of them; when he was used to pray with them, and converse with great freedom, affection, and judgment, on their spiritual concerns. Greatly delighted were they to see such a son treading so closely in the steps of such a father; and his memory was long precious in that neighbourhood, and in the adjacent country, where Mr. Philip Henry used frequently to preach in the houses of those pious gentlemen who entertained the ejected ministers, though they generally attended the worship of the established church.

As the times were dark, and the circumstances of dissenting ministers were very discouraging, Mr. Henry had no prospect of a pastoral settlement with a congregation; he therefore, with the advice of friends, directed his thoughts to another and very different employment. He had formed an intimacy with, Esq. of Borcaton, who married the daughter of Lord Paget, and at whose house Mr. P. Henry used to preach once a quarter, and administer the Lord's supper. This worthy gentleman advised his father to enter him in one of the Inns of court, for the study of the law. His view in this was not to divert him from his design of pursuing the work of the ministry, but to find him some present employment of his time, as he was but young, which might hereafter be advantageous to him, not only in a temporal view, as he was heir to a handsome estate, but as it might be subservient to his usefulness as a minister. Accordingly, Mr. Henry went to Gray's-Inn, about the end of April, 1685.

Some of his friends discovered painful apprehensions lest this situation, and the connections he might here form, should prove unfavourable to his religious interest, and, in the issue, divert him from the sacred office to which his former studies had been directed, and for which he discovered such peculiar qualifications. But their fears happily proved groundless; his heart was fully bent for God, and established with grace; so that he still maintained his steadfastness amidst all the temptations with which he was surrounded. He happily formed an acquaintance with several young gentlemen, then students of the law, who were exemplary for sobriety, diligence, and religion, who were glad to receive him as an intimate associate, and with whom a mutual friendship continued to the last. Here his diligence in study, his quick apprehension, his rapid proficiency, his tenacious memory, and his ready utterance, induced some of the profession to think that he would have been eminent in the practice of the law, had he applied himself to it as his business. But he felt himself under no temptation to relinquish the object of his first resolution, and he continually kept that in his view, habituating himself to those exercises which might further his preparation for it. He heard the most celebrated preachers in town; among whom he seemed to be best pleased with Dr. Stillingfleet, at St. Andrew's, Holborn, for his serious, practical preaching; and with Dr. Tillotson, at Lawrence Jewry, for his admirable sermons against popery. He accustomed himself to take notes of what he heard; and he constantly sent a short scheme of the sermons to his father, to whom he generally wrote twice every week, giving him an account of all remarkable occurrences with great judgment, yet with all the caution and prudence which the difficulties of the times required.

During his residence in London, Mr. Henry not only attended with constancy on the public worship of God, but he promoted social prayer and religious conference with his particular friends, and he sometimes expounded the scripture to them. When he was about to leave them he delivered to them an excellent and affecting discourse, on 2 Thess. ii. 1. By the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him; recommending to himself and them the hope of that blessed meeting, as their greatest comfort, now they were about to part. The letters which he wrote to his friends while he continued at Gray's-Inn, discover the lively sense of divine things which he preserved upon his mind, of which an excellent one of great length is published by Tong, to his friend Mr. G. Illidge, of Nantwich, whose father's Memoirs he afterward printed: from whence it appears how valuable a correspondent he was, and how much he aimed at usefulness, in his letters as well as in his conversation.

But though his time was not unprofitably spent in London, he sometimes complained of the want which he felt of those opportunities which he had enjoyed in his father's house: his "Broad-Oak sabbaths, and the heavenly manna," which he had tasted there; and expressed his earnest wishes to return. Accordingly in the month of June, 1686, he went down to Broad-Oak, and continued several months in the country; when he made it appear that his residence in London, and his study of the law,