The Works Of The Reverend John Howe – Volume 1

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John Howe was born on May 17, 1630, in Loughborough, Leicestershire. His father was a minister with Puritan sympathies who, in 1634, was suspended from the ministry by the High Commission Court for praying publicly “that God would preserve the prince in the true religion, of which there was cause to fear” that such would not be the case and that “the young prince might not be brought up in popery.” The Howes fled to Ireland in 1635, lived there through the Irish rebellion of 1641, then returned to England in the early 1640s to settle in Lancashire.

Like many Puritans, Howe was blessed with the presence of God in the midst of excruciating pain. “I expect my salvation,” Howe said, “not as a profitable servant, but as a pardoned sinner.” Once he told his wife that though he thought he loved her as well “as it was fit for one creature to love another,” yet if he had to choose whether to die that moment or live for another seven years, he would choose to die. After a temporary respite, he pointed to his body and said, “I am for feeling that I am alive, and yet I am most willing to die and to lay aside this clog.”