Diary Extract 1761 April 21

Caryl (Contemporary portrait, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

April 21. I had a comfortable night's rest, and found myself much better this morning; I have reason to be thankful that I have been kept, during my indisposition, from murmuring and discontented thoughts. I have been reading several useful authors, and particularly Mr. T. Rowe's life*, and some passages in "Caryl on Job,"** which has unexpectedly been put into my hands. I hope it will be of great service to me. "O Lord, I will praise thee; for though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away and thou comfortest me."

*Thomas Rowe (1657–1705) was an English nonconformist minister, a Calvinist significant as the teacher of the next generation of Dissenters, particularly in philosophy, in one of the first of the dissenting academies, St Helen's

**.Joseph Caryl (1602-1673) was born in London, educated at Merchant Taylors' School and a graduate of Exeter College, Oxford. He became preacher at Lincoln's Inn and frequently preached before the Long Parliament. A Westminste Divne, he was ordered by parliament to attend Charles I in Holmby House and in 1650 was sent with John Owen to accompany Cromwell to Scotland. In 1662, following the Restoration, he was ejected from St Magnus-the-Martyr near London Bridge. He continued to minister to an Independent congregation in London until his death in March 1673, when Owen succeeded him.