deliverance coming on, together with longings for the blessedness of another state; his pains increased so on him that no human unassisted patience could have borne them without a great uneasiness of mind. He could not lie down in bed above a year before his death, by reason of the asthma. He was attended on in his sickness by a pious and worthy divine, Mr. Evans Griffith, minister of the parish; and it was observed, that in all the extremities of his pain, whenever he prayed by him, he forbore all complaints or groans, but, with hands and eyes lifted up, was fixed in his devotion. Not long before his death, the minister told him of an approaching sacrament, but that he believed he could not come and partake of it with others, and therefore he would give it to him in his own house He replied, no; his heavenly father had prepared a feast for him, and he would go to his father's house to partake of it, and was carried in his chair. He continued to enjoy the free use of his reason to the last, which during his sickness he had often earnestly prayed for: And when his voice was so sunk that he could not be heard, they perceived by the almost constant lifting up of his eyes and hands, that he was still aspiring towards that blessed state he longed for, and on Christmas day 1675-6, between two and three in the afternoon, he breathed out his pious soul without any struggling or visible pangs. Mr. Baxter's character of Sir Matthew Hale is as follows: The last year of my abode at Acton, (1669) I had the happiness of a neighbour whom I cannot easily praise above his worth; which was Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, whom all the judges and lawyers in England admired for his skill in law, and for his justice; and scholars honoured for his learning, and I highly valued for his sincerity, mortification, selfdenial, humility, conscientiousness, and his close fidelity in friendship. When he first came to town, I came not near him, lest, being a silenced and suspected person, (with his superiors) I should draw him also under suspicion, and do him wrong, till I had notice round about of his desire of my acquaintance, and I scarce ever conversed so profitably with any other person in my life. He was a man of no quick utterance, but often hesitant; but spake with great reason. He was most precisely just, insomuch, as I believe, he would have lost all he had in the world rather than do an unjust act; patient in hearing the most tedious speech which any man had to make for himself, the pillar of justice, the refuge of the subject who feared op pression, pression, and one of the greatest honours of his Majesty's government: For, with some more upright judges, he upheld the honour of the English nation, that it fell not into the reproach of arbitrariness, cruelty, and utter confusion. Every man that had a just cause was almost past fear, if they could but bring it into the court or assize where he was judge, (for the other judges seldom contradicted him). He was the great instrument for rebuilding London: For when an act was made for deciding all controversies that hindered it, it was he that was the constant judge, who for nothing followed the work, and by his prudence and justice removed a multitude of great impediments. His great advantage for innocency was, that he was no lover of riches, or of grandeur. His garb was too plain; he studiously avoided all unnecessary familiarity with great persons, and all that manner of living which signifieth wealth and greatness. He kept no greater a family than myself. I lived in a small house, which for a pleasant backside he had a mind to: But caused a stranger (that he might not be suspected to be the man) to know of me, whether I were willing to part with it, before he would meddle with it: In that house he liveth contentedly, without any pomp, and without costly or troublesome retinue or visitors, but not without charity to the poor. He continueth the study of physic and mathematics still, as his great delight: He hath himself written four volumes in folio, (three of which I have read) against atheism, sadducism, and infidelity, to prove the Deity, and then the immortality of man's soul, and then the truth of Christianity and the Holy Scriptures, answering the infidels' objections against Scripture; it is strong and masculine, only too tedious for impatient readers: He saith, he wrote it only at vacant hours in his circuits, to regulate his meditations, finding at that time he wrote best what he thought on, his thoughts were the easier kept close to work, and kept in a method, and he could after try his former thoughts, and make further use of them if they were good. But I could not yet persuade him to hear of publishing it. The conference which I had frequently with him (mostly about the immortality of the soul, and other foundation points, and philosophical) was so edifying, that his very questions and objections did help me to more light than other men's solutions. Those that take no men for religious who frequent not private meetings, &c. took him for an excellently righteous, moral man: But I that have heard, and read his serious expressions of the concernments of eternity, and seen his love to all good men, and the blamelessness of his life, &c. thought better of his piety than of mine own. When the people crouded in and out of my house to hear, he openly shewed me so great respect before them at the door, and never spake a word against it, as was no small encouragement to the common people to go on; though the other sort muttered, that a judge should seem so far to countenance that they took to be against the law. He was a great lamenter of the extremities of the times, and the violence and foolishness of the predominant clergy, and a great desirer of such abatements, as might restore us all to serviceableness and unity. He had got but a very small estate, (though he had long the greatest practice) because he would take but little money, and undertake no more business than he could well dispatch. He offered to the Lord Chancellor to resign his place, when he was blamed for doing that which he supposed was justice. He had been the learned Selden's intimate friend, and one of his executors: And because the Hobbians and other infidels would have persuaded the world that Selden was of their mind, I desired him to tell me truth therein; and he assured me that Selden was an earnest professor of the Christian faith, and so angry an adversary to Hobbs, that he hath rated him out of the room.' Mr. Baxter after this, relating the treatment himself met with at Acton from his enemies, who procured his commitment to new prison, Clerkenwell, for six months without bail or mainprize, adds: And so I finally left that place, being grieved most that Satan had prevailed to stop the poor people in such hopeful beginnings of a common reformation, and that I was to be deprived of the exceeding grateful neighbourhood of the Lord Chief Baron Hale, who could scarce refrain tears when he did but hear of the first warrant for my appearance.' 6 Mr. Samuel Clark, in his life of Sir Matthew Hale, observes, he was a chief observer of the Lord's Day, in which, besides his constant attendance upon the public service of God twice a-day, in the evening he called all his family together, and repeated to them the heads of the sermons, with some additions of his own, which he fitted for their capacities, after which he constantly shut up himself for two or three hours, which he spent in his secret devotions, and profitable meditations. Of which contemplations two volumes in octavo were printed a little before before his death. He died in the sixty-seventh year of his age: his funeral sermon was preached from Isaiah lvii. 1. and on the fourth of January, he was buried in the church-yard of Alderly, with the following epitaph, composed by himself, on his monument: His Works. Hic inhumatur corpus Matthæi Hale, Militis ; Published by himself. "I. An Essay touching the Gravitation, or Non-Gravitation of Fluid Bodies, and the Reasons thereof. Lond. 1674, 8vo. II. Difficiles Nuga, or Observations touching the Torricellian Experiment, and the various solutions of the same, especially touching the Weight and Elasticity of the Air. Lond. 1674, 8vo. Dr. Henry Moore wrote some remarks upon this, so far as it might concern any passages in his Enchiridion Metaphys. III. Observations touching the Principles of Natural Motion, and especially touching Rarefaction and Condensation, together with a Reply to certain Remarks touching the Gravitation of Fluids. Lond. 1677, 8vo. IV. Contemplations Moral and Divine: In two parts. The first printed at London in 1676, Svo. and the second part in 1677, Svo. To the first were added, Directions touching keeping the Lord's Day: And, Poems on Christmas day. They were both reprinted together in 1679, 8vo. These Contemplations came abroad without his knowledge, and contrary to his intention. V. An English Translation of The Life and Death of Pomponius Atticus, written by his contemporary and acquaintance Cornelius Nepos: together with Observations political and moral. Lond. 1677, 8vo. This translation is said to be badly done. VI. The primitive Origination of Mankind considered and explained, according to the Light of Nature. Lond. 1677, folio. VII. He also wrote the preface to, and published the Abridgement of many Cases and Resolutions of the Common Law, alphabetically digested under several titles, &c. by H. Rolle. Lond. 1668, folio. VIII. Likewise, he was partly the author author of London's Liberty: Or a learned Argument of Law and Reason, anno 1650. Reprinted in 1682, folio, under this title, "London's Liberties: Or, The Opinions of those great Lawyers, Lord Chief Justice Hale, Mr. Justice Wild, and Mr. Serjeant Maynard, about the Election of Mayor, Sheriffs, Aldermen, and Common Council of London, and concerning their Charter." Published after his decease. "I. Pleas of the Crown: or a Methodical Summary of the Principal Matters relating to that Subject. London, 1678, Svo. II. Discourse touching Provision for the Poor. Lond. 1683, 12mo. III. A Treatise touching Sheriffs' Accounts. Lond. 1683, Svo. to which is joined his Trial of Witches, at the Assizes held at Bury St. Edmunds, on the first of March 1664. His condemnation of those poor crazy wretches was the worst and the most culpable action in his whole life: But not worse than the statute, which obliged him to condemn them. IV. His Judgment of the Nature of True Religion, the Causes of its Corruption, and the Church's Calamity by Men's Additions and Violences; with the desired cure. Lond. 1684, 4to. Published by R. Baxter. V. Several Tracts: as, A Discourse of Religion under three heads, &c. His Treatise concerning Provision for the Poor, already mentioned: A Letter to his Chil dren, advising them how to behave in their speech: A Letter to one of his sons, after his recovery from the smallpox. Lond. 1684, 8vo. VI. Discourse of the Knowledge of GoD and of Ourselves, first by the Light of Nature, secondly, by the Sacred Scriptures. To which is added, Brief Abstract of the Christian Religion: And considerations seasonable at all times for the cleansing of the Heart and Life. Lond. 1688, 8vo. VII. The Original Institution, Power, and Jurisdiction of Parliaments. Lond. 1707, 8vo. VIII. Historia Placitorum Corona. The History of the Pleas of the Crown: first published, in 1736, from his original manuscript, and the several references to the Records examined by the Originals, with large notes, by Sollom Emlyn of Lincoln's Inn, Esq. 2 vols. folio. The House of Commons had made an order, the twenty-ninth of November 1680, that it should then be printed; but it was never printed till then. The Pleas of the Crown, &c. printed in 1678, 8vo. (as above) was only a plan of this work. He left several other pieces in manuscript: as, Concerning the Secondary Origination of Mankind, folio. Concerning Religion, 5 vols. folio, and many others." By |