off to the best advantage. Besides, he took this oc-
casion of farther clearing and justifying what he had
written against the aphorist, before Dr. Tully en-
tered the lists against him: and of giving the world
his second and more correct thoughts upon these
nice points, so controverted by protestants and pa-
pists among themselves. It is also very probable,
that he did not find that satisfaction in Dr. Tully's
answer to Mr. Bull, this having been out then above
a year, which he first looked for: and that he was
still more dissatisfied with the answer of Mr. Tru-
man, whose principles were not a little different from
his. As for the animadversions of the younger Gata-
ker, he could not have seen them, they not being
printed till his own were in the press: and if he had
seen and read them, it cannot be thought that he
would have been diverted by any thing in them
from undertaking a labour which lay so near his
heart, and whence he promised himself so great a
triumph. But he was now grown old, and not the
man he formerly had been, whatsoever he might
think of himself, or what assurance soever he might
have of victory, as an advocate for the first reform-
ers, as he would be thought to be. For it was evi-
dently a weakness in him, at threescore and twelve
years of
age, when he was quite worn out, and just
ready to drop into his grave, to begin a new combat,
unprovoked, and because, about twenty or thirty
years before, when he was in the full vigour both of
body and mind, he had been successful enough in
engaging with an adversary visibly inferior in
strength, to undertake now, in his latter days, to
grapple with an enemy every way his superior, an
exact master in the arts of this sort of war, and one

1676.

1676. so extraordinarily accomplished besides, both by experience and study, for maintaining and defending this particular cause dependent betwixt them, as our Mr. Bull was, even beyond some who otherwise might be his rivals in learning; he being then also in the very prime and fulness of strength, and every way qualified for such labours as these of the mind. The old man, zealous however for his cause, published at London his book against Mr. Bull, just at the very same time that Mr. Bull's justification of himself, and his work against Mr. Gataker and Dr. Tully, came forth. But this did him no harm at all; for he had so fully already removed all the material objections of Mr. Tombes, in his answers to the strictures of those two learned Calvinian divines, and so clearly demonstrated the weakness of their foundation, that there needed no farther apology to be made for his book and himself, against such an hypothesis as could be not better defended by the great learning of its supporters. Mr. Tombes's book was called, ° Animadversions upon a book of George Bull's, which he hath entitled, The Apostolical Harmony. According to the title-page, it should have been published in 1676, but Mr. Bull had seen a printed copy of it before the end of 1675, when he was concluding his general preface to his two apologetical treatises aforenamed, so that the edition of it must have been in Michaelmas term of this last year, and about half a year before the author's death.

This Mr. Tombes, our author's last adversary, as

• Animadversiones in Librum Georgii Bulli, cui titulum fecit Harmonia Apostolica, &c.

An account

animad

and verter and

his charac

the ter.

to his cause, were it not for some notions which he 1676. fell into against the catholic practice and doctrine of the church, such as men of learning in the several of this new communions could by no means approve of, which particularly Mr. Bull was averse to in highest degree, he might possibly have preserved a reputation among the learned, not inferior to many of his age. He was educated at Oxford, in Magdalen ball, under the famous Mr. William Pemble, author of Vindicia Gratia, and of several other learned treatises, whom he succeeded in the catechetical lecture of the said hall: and approved himself an excellent disputant, and no bad divine upon the principles of the anti-remonstrants, which were then much in fashion. It cannot be denied, but that he was esteemed a person of incomparable parts: and therefore was chosen lecturer in this hall, upon his tutor's decease, when he was yet but one-and-twenty years -old, and of six years standing only in the university. Which lecture he held for about seven years; and then left Oxford, and went to Worcester first, and after that to Lemster in Herefordshire; at both which places he made himself very popular by his preaching. But having no preferment bestowed upon him, as some will have it, suitable to his merit, it is thought he became uneasy to see himself so much neglected: and thence made himself to be suspected as a person inclined to the puritans; or not so rightly affected at least to the church established, as by his education he ought to have been. Which suspicion increased more and more concerning him, as the faction against church and state grew stronger and having acquired no small reputation in the place where he lived, for a more power

1676. ful way of preaching than ordinary, as all prospect of advancement in the church was now taken from him, he was the more disposed to follow the stream of the times, and the growing interest of a party, pretending to a greater purity of reformation, both in faith, and worship, and manners; and more especially, since by such as these, he was chiefly crowded after and applauded. It was about the year 1630, that he began to be famous in the city of Worcester, and in 1641, he had the living of All-Saints in Bristol given him by Fiennes, who managed that city for the parliament, where he continued till 1643, when the city was surrendered to the king's party; sowing in that time the seeds of some of those opinions wherewith that city so abounded when Mr. Bull first came into the neighbourhood of it. Afterwards going to London, he became Master of the Temple; where he preached against the antinomians, as he says in his epistle dedicatory before his Animadversions upon the Harmonia, with a design to shew how their errors did proceed from a misunderstanding of the doctrine of the justification of a sinner. He continued in this place about four years, when he was supplanted by one Johnson. After this he went to Bewdley in Worcestershire, at which time Mr. Baxter was minister of Kidderminster, another market town, about three miles distant from that place, being very much followed. They preached against one another's doctrines, and published books against each other. Tombes was the head of the anabaptists, and Baxter of the presbyterians: the victory, as it is usual, was claimed by both sides: but some of the learned, who were affected to neither of them, yielded the advantage both of learning and

argument to the former, while yet they were as far 1676. from approving his cause, as even Mr. Baxter him self could be. Certain it is, that his doctrine did spread mightily in a little time, a considerable number both of presbyterians and independents being brought over by him. In 1653, being in London, he was appointed one of the triers of public ministers. About the same time he got likewise the parsonage of Rosse, and the mastership of the hospital in Ledbury, both in Herefordshire; which he kept with Lemster and Bewdley. At the restoration of king Charles the Second, when he saw and considered to what a woful condition this poor kingdom had been brought, under the pretext of religion and liberty, by restless spirits, being willing to take this for a providential determination, he quietly and readily submitted himself to the royal party, and resolved to live peaceably for the future, under the legal establishment of the church, by conforming himself to it as a lay-communicant: but would never accept either benefice or dignity, which was offered him. And to justify his conformity, and to excite others to follow his example, he writ a book, called Theodulia, or A just Defence of hearing the Sermons and other Teaching of the present Ministers of the Church of England; against a Book, unjustly entitled, (in Greek,) A Christian Testimony against them that serve the Image of the Beast. Lond. 1667. Nevertheless, he continued in his judgment as much an anti-pædobaptist as ever. The Oxford biographer, who is never to be suspected of partiality for any persons puritanically inclined, saith of him, "That, set aside his anabaptistical positions, he was "conformable enough to the church, would fre