Page:Our Hymns.djvu/120

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100 OUR HYMNS :

known. How fine, for instance, are the following verses, taken from a funeral hymn of seven similar verses ! Verses 4 and 5 :

" Death, thon that spoil st the human race,

And boastest in thy reign, Know, thy own ruin hastes apace, Thou dy st, wo live again.

" Not amongst evils now, but friends,

We rank the stingless foe; Our passage into life it stands, Our greatest friend below."

Itobert Seagrave was born Nov. 22nd, 1693, at Twyford, in Leicestershire, where his father, of the same name, was vicar from 1687 to 1720. When the younger Robert had almost com pleted his seventeenth year, he was admitted, Nov. 8th, 1710, subslzar of Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1714, and M.A. in 1718.

His public life as a Christian minister had one special object to rouse the Church of England and the people in general from the religious lethargy into which they had sunk. He traced their unhappy condition to the merely moral preaching which prevailed. It was his aim to replace this by thoroughly Gospel preaching. In furtherance of this object he published several tracts and pamphlets. The first about the year 1736, " A letter to the people of England, occasioned by the falling away of the Clergy from the doctrines of the Reformation, by Pauliuus. London, printed for A. Cruden." Mr. Seagrave gave his name to this in place of the assumed name of Paulinus, in the fourth edition. This letter he followed up by a sermon on Gal. iii. 24, entitled, " A draught of the justification of man, different from the present language of our pulpits." He had previously, in 1731, sent forth anonymously, " A Remonstrance addressed to the Clergy," &c. In 1737, he published " Six Sermons upon the manner of Salvation, being the substance of Christianity, as preached at the time of the Reformation;" and, in 1738, " Observations upon the conduct of the Clergy, in relation to

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