Thomas Vincent, John Turner, Robert Perrott, and M. Pemberton, The Death of Ministers Improved . . . to which is added a sermon upon that occasion by Richard Baxter (1678)

By Jenny-Lyn de Klerk

This book and sermon written after the death of a beloved minister Henry Stubbs, shows the deep fellow-feeling experienced by the members of a church with each other and their pastors, as well as the Puritan practice of using the death of a loved one as an opportunity to think about one’s own life and death. In Baxter’s sermon, he exhorts his listeners to reflect on Stubbs’ life of “devotedness to God, in his Christian and Ministerial work, notwithstanding all expected difficulties and oppositions, which he resolved with unmoved patience to undergo to the joyful finishing of his course” (p. 3) and use it as a motivation to do the same with their lives. This book is signed by three women: “Grace … her Book,” “mrs. maisy …” and “mrs Mary Lee Brooke”

Source: Allison Library, Regent College. Shelf mark BX 9318 .V46 1678. Photographs by Jenny-Lyn de Klerk.