Parentator. Memoirs of remarkables in the life and the death of the ever-memorable Dr.…

THE Church of God is now to be Entertained with an History of a MAN, whose Life had in it many Memorable Things, which are Worthy to be Recorded and Reported, and have the Memory of them kept alive, by a more Qualified Historian, than he whose Pen is now Employed upon it. But if since the Days of Josephus, the World has more than once allowed an Eminent Person to Write his Own Life; and better Men than a Cardan, even a Junius, an Hall, a Baxter, to say nothing ⟨p. 2⟩of a Thuanus, have unexceptionably done it; (an Austin too has e'en almost done so:) and had a Goodwin and an Owen done so, we had been furnished with some Antidote against some of the Lies, that Croak in our English Chronicles; Most certainly, it may now be allowed a Son, to Write the Life of his Father. I shall before I have done, find such a Pattern of a Son Writing the Life of his Father; as will raise my Action, if it be at all well done, unto the Honour of being some Reward of a Sons doing so. In the mean time, I think it enough to say, my dear Friend Mr. Matthew Henry did it. I never heard any Blame cast on the Greek Lady, who used her Pen, to tell the Story of her Father; nor does any Body that I know of, blame Nazianzen, for his Panegyric upon his Father; But I may single out him the rather to be Mentioned on this occasion, because the Term of a Patriarch, (afterwards Applied unto an Ecclesiastical Dignity, and Station, which the Gospel knows not, and which Introduced what we all know in the West,) was first Innocently used in an Oration of Nazianzen upon his Deceased Father: and it was with the same Innocency that the very Term was commonly used in the Language of our People, whenever Dr. INCREASE MATHER was at any time in his latter Years Discoursed of.