William Bates (1625 - 1699), was an eminent Nonconformist who sacrificed status and comfort for his faith in Christ Jesus. He demonstrated truly that he sought the praise of God rather than the praise of men.

In that vein, Bates was one of the commissioners at the Savoy Conference in 1660 for reviewing the Liturgy, and assisted in drawing up the exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer. The object of this conference was to persuade the dissidents to fall in with the requirements of the Church of England in regard to its rituals and ceremonies, but Bates refused outright, and he made strong arguments against it.

Bates was offered the deanery of Lichfield and Coventry at the Restoration, but he declined the offer; and, according to Dr. Calamy, he might have been afterward raised to any bishopric in the kingdom, could he have conformed, but Bates would have none of it. He, like so many other Puritans in his day, refused to compromise on even the slightest issue.

Reputed as one of the best theological writers of his time, Bates produced a number of works, which, like so many others, are hard to find in this our day. Nevertheless, they are very valuable, and should be sought by all who wish to pursue the heart of the Puritans.

"The first man by rebellion against his Maker, lost his innocence and felicity, and conveyed a sad inheritance of sin and misery to his universal progeny : ever since it has been esteemed a principal part of wisdom to prepare the minds of men to encounter with innumerable evils that surround them, and to preserve a well-ordered contented state of soul, when actually under the greatest afflictions. All the famous sophists of the world, the most celebrated professors of patience, could not attain to this skill. Their consolatary discourses composed with wit and eloquence, are like artificial fruits of wax, that seem to surpass the productions of nature, but can only please the sight, and afford no real refreshment to the taste... They erected a blind and foolish power under the title of fortune, to preside in this sphere of mutability: they always boast of their playing a prize with fortune, and triumph over a phantom of their own fiction. This conceit was both impious and uncomfortable; impious, to take the sceptre of government from God's hand, and attribute the foolish pleasure of fortune, what is ordered by his providence; and uncomfortable, for they fancied their deity to be blind, without discerning between the worthy and unworthy, and inexorable to the complaints of the injured, and the prayers of the miserable." The Great Duty Of Resignation

"For christians to attend to the instructions of natural reason, and neglect the divine revelations of the gospel, is a folly like that of the silly Indians of Mexico, who having plenty of wax, the natural work of the bees, yet made use of firebrands to light them in the night, that afforded a little light mixed with a great deal of smoke." The Great Duty Of Resignation

"In the scripture are laid down in the clearest manner, and with infallible assurance, such principles as are effectual to compose the mind to patient suffering, and to meet with valiant resolution all the terrible contrarieties in the way to heaven... It declares, that sin opened an entrance unto all the current adversities in the world, which are the evident signs of God's displeasure against it." The Great Duty Of Resignation

"The due sense of sin will humble and quiet the mind under sufferings; it directs us to consecrate our sorrows, to turn the flowing stream into the channel of repentance. And thus the passion of grief, which, if terminated on external troubles, is barren and unprofitable, it can neither retrieve our lost comforts, nor remove any oppressing evil; if it be employed for our offences, prepares us for divine mercy, and is infinitely beneficial to us. And thus by curing the cause of afflictions, our guilt that deserves them, we take away the malignity and poison of them." The Great Duty Of Resignation

"The word of God assures us, that all the perturbations and discords in the passages of our lives are ordered by his wisdom and will, so that without extinguishing the two eyes of reason and faith, we must acknowledge his providence, and observe his design in all, which is either to excite us when guilty of a careless neglect, or performance of our duty; or to reclaim us from our excursions and deviations from the narrow way that leads to life." The Great Duty Of Resignation

"There is nothing more common nor more fatal, than for afflicted persons to seek by carnal diversions and contemptible comforts, to overcome their melancholy, and the sense of divine judgments; and hereby they add new guilt, and provoke new displeasures. This presages and accelerates final ruin; for such whom afflictions do not reform, are left as incorrigible." The Great Duty Of Resignation

"Above all encouragements, the gospel sets before us the sufferings of our Redeemer, and directs all his disciples in sincerity to accustom themselves to the contemplation and expectation of troubles on earth: it tells them it is a branch of their religion, to suffer with him that they may reign with him. And what is more reasonable, than if our Saviour endured superlative sufferings to purchase eternal glory for us, that we should with the same mind bear lighter afflictions to prepare us for it?" The Great Duty Of Resignation

"If this principle be alive and active in our breasts, that our present afflictions shall determine in our future happiness, when time shall cease and eternity succeed; this will encourage us to serve God with our best affections when our days are overcast with sorrow, as in a bright prosperity: this will secure our passage through a stormy tempestuous world, as if it were a truly pacific sea, knowing that divine providence always guides us to the port of eternal tranquillity." The Great Duty Of Resignation