OF

JOHN GOODWIN,

SOMETIME FELLOW OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND VICAR OF ST. STEPHEN'S
COLEMAN STREET, LONDON, IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY:

COMPRISING

AN ACCOUNT OF THE CONTROVERSIES IN WHICH HE WAS ENGAGED

IN DEFENCE OF UNIVERSAL TOLERATION IN MATTERS OF RELIGION, AND OF
THE UNIVERSAL REDEMPTION OF MANKIND BY THE DEATH OF CHRIST:

WITH A REVIEW OF SEVERAL PUBLIC TRANSACTIONS IN GREAT BRITAIN,
DURING THE CIVIL WARS AND THE COMMONWEALTH.

BY THOMAS JACKSON.

He had a clear head, a fluent tongue, a penetrating spirit, and a marvellous faculty
in descanting on Scripture; and, with all his faults, must be owned to have
been a considerable man.-CALAMY.

PREFACE.

Ir will probably excite surprise that an extended biography of a man comparatively unknown, and one of the most abused men that England ever bred, should appear more than two hundred years after his death. The statement of a few facts, therefore, relative to the origin and composition of the narrative, may not be inappropriate.

Through a long life the author has found one of his highest pleasures in the perusal of old books, especially of books written in the seventeenth century; which he cannot but regard as the golden age of English theological literature. Among the numerous writers of that eventful period, no one excited his attention more than John Goodwin. The fine temper of this remarkable man as a controversialist,-the general raciness of his style, the originality of his thoughts,—the clearness and force of his argumentation,-the native humour with which he repelled the hard sayings of angry opponents,—the surprising facility with which he elicited the meaning of the sacred writers, his elevated views of the Divine Philanthropy, and of the extent of human redemption effected by the death of