Jeremaiah Burroughs
JEREMIAH BURROUGHS was educated in the university of Cambridge; but he was obliged to remove both from the University and the kingdom for nonconformity, in these evil times. He had now his season of adversity; but he was sufficiently supported under it. He was persecuted but not forsaken.-He was among those pious and faithful ministers and followers of Christ, who suffered severely by Bishop Wren’s Visitation-articles. Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, was now high in place, and carried things to excessive and intolerable lengths, through his warm and violent attachments to the ancient rites and ceremonies of the church. The king was entirely directed by his counsels. And Rapin says: "If it was endeavored in Scotland to ruin Presbyterianism (Calvinism) by indirect ways, it was thought proper to proceed in England with less caution. Accordingly, all possible efforts were used to destroy it utterly, by persecuting the puritans, for whom there was not the least condescension.”—Samuel Ward, a minister in Ipswich, boldly preached against the king’s book of sports, and also said, That the church of England was ready to ring in changes in Religion: for which he was suspended by the high commission-court, and afterward committed to prison for refusing to make a public recantation.
Mr Burroughs cheerfully renounced every temporal interest for the sake of truth, and with determined courage, trusting in the Lord, he retired to Holland. There he became a minister of an English congregation at Rotterdam, He continued here some time; but returned to England, when he received encouragement by the Long Parliament, and became preacher to two of the largest and most numerous congregations about London, Stepney and Cripplegate. He was called to sit in the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, and was one of the dissenting brethren in that Assembly; but shewed himself to be a divine of great candour, modesty and charity. Mr Baxter was accustomed to say, if all the Presbyterians had been like Mr Marshall, and all the Independents like Mr Burroughs, their differences may have been easily compromised. Mr Burroughs made a declaration in the name of the Independents, in their differences with the Presbyterians, “That if the Independent congregations might not be exempted from that coercive power of the classes; if they might not have liberty to govern themselves in their own way, as long as they behaved peaceably toward the civil magistrate, they were resolved to suffer, or go to some other place of the world, where they might enjoy their liberty.” It was said, that the divisions which prevailed in these times broke his heart, because one of the last subjected which he preached upon and printed was his Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace, or an attempt to heal divisions among Christians. He never gathered a separate congregation, nor accepted of a parochial living, but wore out his strength in continual preaching, and for other services to the church. He endured all things for the elects sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. He denied himself, that he might promote the eternal happiness of his fellow creatures. Like Paul, he travailed at birth, in order that Christ be formed in the souls of his hearers. In his preaching, he did not use “those gaudy ornaments which too often put the preacher in the place of his text; or, as one has well expressed it, serve only to evaporate weighty truths, and to make them appear as light as his style.”—His great aim was to guide his hearers in the way to heaven; and accordingly, plainness and persuasion were the chief objects of his attention. The plain Calvinist doctrine of the Reformation was honoured with wonderful success, in promoting the interests of the Redeemers Kingdom, at that time. Mr Burroughs sermons were pregnant with important instructions. He, in a peculiar manner, warmly charged home the evil of sin, and proclaimed solemnly the benefits of redemption through Christ’s atoning blood. An ingenious writer says, “Presumptions and despair are the two dangerous extremes to which mankind are prone in religious concerns. Charging home sin precludes the first, proclaiming redemptions, prevents the last.” In both these Mr Burroughs excelled; as may be clearly seen, by his two remarkable treatises, The Exceeding Sinfulness of Sin, and Gospel-Remission. He neither flattered the pride of his hearers, nor cherished their presumption; but unfolded clearly to them the way of saving sinners through an atonement, in which mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace embrace each other; in which God is just and the justifier of him who believes in Jesus. Such doctrine natively tends to humble us, and to endear God’s name to us. And it claims, in a particular manner, the attention of ministers of the gospel.
Mr Burroughs was esteemed a great ornament of the pulpit. He used to preach at Stepney church in the morning at seven o’clock, and Mr Greenhill in afternoon at three; which occasioned Hugh Peters, in a sermons which he preached there to call the one morning star of Stepney, and the other the evening start. Mr Burroughs died of a consumptive illness on the 14th nov. 1646, about the forty-seventh year of his age.
