e serviceable unto the
worst enemies that he had in the world. Never had any man fewer
enemies than he! but once having delivered something in his ministry
which displeased one of his hearers, the man did passionately abuse
him for it, and this both with speeches and with writings that
reviled him. Yet it happening not long after that this man gave
himself a very dangerous wound, Mr. Eliot immediately sends his wife
to cure him; who did accordingly. When the man was well, he came to
thank her, but she took no rewards; and this good man made him stay
and eat with him, taking no notice of all the calumnies with which he
had loaded him; but by this carriage he mollified and conquered the
stomach of his reviler.

He was also a great enemy to all contention, and would ring aloud
courfeu bell wherever he saw the fires of animosity. When he heard any
ministers complain that such and such in their flocks were too
difficult for them, the strain of his answer still was, "Brother,
compass them!" and "Brother, learn the meaning of those three little
words, bear, forbear, forgive." Yea, his inclinations for peace,
indeed, sometimes almost made him to sacrifice right itself. When
there was laid before an assembly of ministers a bundle of papers
which contained certain matters of difference and contention between
some people which our Eliot thought should rather unite, with an
amnesty upon all their former quarrels, he (with some imitation of
what Constantine did upon the like occasion) hastily threw the papers
into the fire before them all, and, with a zeal for peace as hot as
that fire, said immediately, "Brethren, wonder not at what I have
done; I did it on my knees this morning before I came among you." Such
an excess (if it were one) flowed from his charitable inclinations to
be found among those peace-makers which, by following the example of
that Man who is our peace, come to be called "the children of God."
Very worthily might he be called an Irenaeus as being all for peace;
and the commendation which Epiphanius gives unto the ancient of that
name, did belong unto our Eliot; he was "a most blessed and a most
holy man." He disliked all sorts of bravery; but yet with an ingenious
note upon the Greek word in Col. iii. 15, he propounded, "that peace
might brave it among us." In short, wherever he came, it was like
another old John, with solemn and earnest persuasives to love; and
when he could say little else he would give that c