THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF PROPHECY. "NOT THE WISDOM OF THIS WORLD."-1 COR. II. 6. SCIANT IGITUR, QUI PROPHETAS NON INTELLIGUNT, NEC SCIRE DESIDERANT, JAMES NISBET AND CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF PROPHECY. JANUARY 1857. ART. I. JOHN MASON OF WATER-STRATFORD. JOHN MASON,* who in his day drew much attention to the Hope of the Kingdom, was a minister of the Church of England, and grandfather of the well-known Mason, the author of the "Treatise on Self-Knowledge." We can tell little of his parentage; only he himself in his hymns has not forgotten to celebrate his godly mother : "Oh leave me not, who follow thee! Save, Lord, one born within thy house- When but a boy at school, at Strixton in Northamptonshire, his ardent spirit did not escape the notice of his teacher; and when he removed to Clare Hall College in Cambridge, his talents gained him a name among his fellows. Whether he was then strictly moral, or the opposite, can scarcely be inferred from a saying of his in after days, a saying often repeated by him in the pulpit-"Here stands one that has been as great a sinner as any of you, till it pleased God to open his eyes;" for in this acknowledgment he may be understood as expressing no more than his deep sense of corruption and indwelling sin. Studying hard, and sitting up late *He has attracted the notice of Granger in his "Biographical History of England," vol. i., p. 434, note. |