The life and death of Mr. Tho. Wilson, minister of Maidstone, in the county…

CHAP. XX. Of his Zeal.

HE was one that abundantly discovered his zeal for God in embracing all opportunities to do him service, in his great care where ever he came for the strict observation, and right Sanctification of the Lords Day, in his sense of the dishonour done to God by the profaneness and contempt of the ordinances of God by some, and by the errors and wilful withdrawings from the Ordinances by others; which he bewailed bitterly to his dying day. Some who its hoped had the root of matter in them; questioned his call to the Ministry, nay suspected his call to be Anti-christian and separated from him, though they themselves acknowledges that he was their Spiritual Father, and had begotten them through the Gospel, and he might say to them as the Apostles to the Corinthians, Ye are the Seal of our Ministry, do we need as some others Letters of Commendation to you, ye are our Epistle, known and read of all men; Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the ⟨p. 45⟩Epistle of Christ Ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not in Tables of stone, but in fleshly Tables of the heart, 2 Cor. 3. 1, 2, 3. How frequently and affectionately did he urge that upon them, that separated in my hearing, Isa. 11, 6, 7, 8, 9. This causeless sinful separation lay near his heart, even when he lay upon his dying bed. The great danger of their souls, as also of those that wholly cast of the care of their eternal good, caused him in the course of his Sermons and Expositions, when the Scriptures led him to it, to reprove their sins sharply, and indeed according to the command of the Holy Ghost, he could do it [Greek or Hebrew], cuttingly that they might be sound in the Faith.