himself anchored upon safe and firm ground, a blessed fear, a happy trembling. The story of Manasses he read often, who beginning to repent in fetters as he had now in prison, was a comfort to him. That of St. Paul to the Corinthians, the Epist. vi. chap. ver. 9, 10, 11. "And such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, &c." was the like.

On Thursday, the next morning, he desired to receive the communion, when I provided myself with such matter as I conceived fit for him by way of preparation, and so with some others appointed to communicate with him, he received it with penitential expressions, and after that was somewhat comforted. He desired me to stay dinner with him, as the last set meal he intended in this world. The magnanimity of the man I did much admire, his cheerfulness in counting how many hours he had to live, his solid counsel to his wife, who (upon his discourse of death and thankfulness to God for this punishment) fell into a passion; his comforting of her that he was upon an advancement, and why should she be against it? that his sins were not the greater for the shame he was to suffer; that the only thing to be feared in death is the sting of it, which he hoped was now taken out; that he trusted God, who had forgiven the sin, would also in time abate the scandal and provide for her also, if she could by faith rely upon him.

That afternoon (the storm in his conscience being somewhat allayed) he had many calm and comfortable discourses of the privileges of Christians, admitted to be not only servants, friends, but sons of God, heirs and co-heirs with Christ, called his love, his spouse, said to be married to him, to have a fellowship with him, &c. which he desired to have largely declared unto him. Then was his coffin brought into his chamber, (though he was displeased he had it not long before :) it came seasonably, he now looked on it with little consternation of mind, only as on his bed he must sleep in; and yet even then another thing troubled him, which he feared was a stupidity, viz. that he was no more disturbed with the approach of death, having slept quietly the night before; in which after he was satisfied, yet it fell so out that the next

night he was much disquieted, which he took as a punishment for his desire of it, and so gave it over.

One passage he took special notice of, that the same friend of his, who not many days before had been very harsh with him, fearing the party to whom he had given up himself was too mild and would not deal roughly enough with him, &c. now visiting him again, and finding that change in him wished his soul in his case, and applied all comforts to him, which coming from the same mouth that had used him so sharply before drew many tears of joy from him, and confirmed him; divers divines, with others that came to visit him, did the like, and rejoiced much at the sight of him.

That night his prayer was to my admiration (with which, his desire was, we might every time we parted conclude.) It is known what an excellent faculty he had naturally, in a ready present expression of what he understood, either in ecclesiastical or civil affairs. Now God had given him another heart, he did as much excel in spiritual. How desirous he was still to be put upon the trial for saving grace, by any signs of discoveries (in which we run through many) would be impertinent to relate.

Naturally he was not apt for tears, but now he was a man of tears; be fore given to pride and vain glory, now humble, thankful for the counsel of the meanest person, attentive to any advice, open in the abasing and condemning himself to whomsoever came at him; his very countenance was altered. When he heard of the Lord Deputy Wandesford's death (who had no long sickness), with others who died suddenly, being in health at his condemnation, his appli cation to me was, what cause he had to bless God it was not so with him, who must undoubtedly then have sunk down to hell. What thankfulness did he confess, he owed to God and man for this week's preparation. Appre hended it as no small token of God's love to him, in giving him his portion of shame in this world as a means to shun it in the world to come, which he once expressed with such a height of affection as I wondered at, believing that nothing but this or the like would have wrought upon his masterless disposition, which under

any other troubles he feared would still have lingered, like Lot in Sodom, (ready to be fired) till he was haled out, or like cattle within a house and fire about them, yet stir not till they are drawn out. And herein he was so far from bearing any hatred to such as had prosecuted him, that he accounted them his best friends, apthe case of Phæreus Jason to plying

through with a sword opened an imposthume, which the physicians could pot cure. That howsoever his enemies, as Joseph said of his brethren, might intend his hurt, yet God had turned it to his good; by his death they had saved his life, and so he owed them thanks, acknowledged God's goodness to him in his sudden surprisal and strict imprisonment, that as no counsel would come unto him so he was not permitted to go into the town to them, by which liberty it may be some evasions might have been contrived for his escape, which would have proved his everlasting undoing. That speech of his, periissem, si non periissem; or that of another's (whom a shipwreck occasioned the being a philosopher) tum secundis relis navigavi, quando naufragium feci, was in substance his often application to himself.

After the Lord Deputy's death, when the rumour of sonie hope of a reprival came to his ear (by such who thought they did him a good office) till another governor succeeded, it moved him not, as rather chusing a present deserved death than the prolonging of an ignominious life, whereby the scandal (which he was now most troubled for) would but increase, He did so abhor himself, that once a thought rising within him to have petitioned to have been beheaded, (for which some precedents he could have produced); he told me, he answered himself by himself with indignation, that a dog's death was too good for him, and so judged himself to the last, which appeared by this particuJar, that he was casting with himself where he might be buried so as to be out of remembrance, wished his grave were in the bottom of the sea where he had deserved to be cast with a millstone about his neck for that offence and scandal he had given; the church-yard he thought was too much honour for him: and in conclusion, lest his friends, being left to

themselves, should have procured some better place, he sent for the clerk of St. John's, and the verger of Christ's Church (of which he was once prebend), to whom I was a witness of his charge, that they should not suffer him to be buried in that Church, or in any ordinary place in the church-yard, but appointed it in the furthest corner where some rub

none could be remembered ever to have been buried before, when with many tears to them he condemned himself as unworthy of the commu nion of the dead as now of the living.

After this he related unto me, in several discourses, divers observable passages in his former life, and since he came into the castle, tending to the magnifying of God's justice and mercy to him, some of which he left to my judgment if the knowledge of them might be useful to others. The disrespect and neglect of his mother since he came to ability he acknow. ledged, according to the fifth com mandment, to be just that his days should be shortened.

His often wishing would he were hanged if this or that be so, &c. (which in some protestations fell out to be false) went not in the same jus tice unobserved. His once in anger, and by way of revenge, scaring his mother, that he would go hang him. self on a common gallows they rode by, with his horse's bridle. This howsoever done in his youth, and not meaning it, yet he observed God's justice in bringing him to it in earnest. His reading of naughty books, (of which he named some and wished they were burned), viewing of im modest pictures, frequenting of plays, drunkenness, &c. were the causes and movers to fouler facts: let men by this example forbear them. About three weeks (as I take it) before the complaint was put in against him in parliament, the man who had been the corrupter of him in his youth, whom he had not seen twenty years before, came casually out of England into this kingdom and visited him, the sight of whom did so affright him as if some Ghost had appeared to him; he said his very heart misgave him, and his conscience apprehended him, as some presage or messenger of a present vengeance drawing nigh him. His too much zeal and forwardness,

both in introducing and pressing some Church innovations, and in dividing himself from the house of convocation, anno 1634, in opposition to the Articles of Ireland then voted to be received, of purpose to please some men's persons, who had notwithstanding (with just cause) now forsaken him, passed not without taking notice of a just hand in it also, and from which he gave good counsel to others. He acknowledged he had, at divers times, many sore gripings and checks of conscience, which sometimes held him two or three days together; but he had (as St. Stephen said to the Jews) resisted always the holy spirit till now. In times of sickness, or in any frights or fears of death, his conscience would be a very hell within him, so that once he had gone so far in a resolution of amendment, that he had composed in Latin a large prayer in the confession of his sins which he repeated to me, and had at several times used it, (he put it into that language lest any of his servants overhearing him should have understood it), and for a fit made some reforma tion, but returned again like the dog to his vomit, and like the hog washed to the mire. Some discourses from a layman, since he came into the castle, had some work upon him for the present, but he had still endeavoured to put far from him all thoughts that might disquiet him, all which he took notice of as somewhat comfortable to himself, that God ever follows such as belong to him with all sorts of means till he brings them to repentance ; when mild purges will not work he prescribes stronger, when the secret voice of the conscience within nor the admonitions of the word without will move, then he useth louder cries to awaken them, poverty, disgrace, nay, destruction of the body, that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

There were many more evident signs of a true change in him besides what I have related. His giving satisfaction to any that he had wronged even in small matters; his sending for some that were mean persons, and asking them forgiveness. Those whom he had prosecuted too bitterly in the high commission court, endeavouring to his uttermost to take off their fines: his care for the satisfying his smallest debts: his desire to have been degraded of what honour he had

received, either in the Church or University: his admonishing many that came unto him, not to presume by his example to defer repentance, who with much hazard and difficulty had obtained it: his good and savoury counsel to myself, I shall not forget: for his family, his resolutions, (if he had lived to have reformed it) that they should have been God's servants and none of his : for himself, his intentions to have given over all law businesses, and have wholly employed his time in preaching and the studies of the scriptures, which he had neglected, I doubt not, but would have been stedfast, but (saith he) now I hope God will give me the knowledge of these mysteries by some quicker way: his giving some alms to the poor, with a charge to the party that it might not be known from whence it came, were good things in him. But more especially it appeared in his pious letters to his wife and chil dren hereunto annexed, the latter of which was wrote the night before his execution. It is scarce to be believed, in this little space, how much he had read in some practical books of our late divines, (the being not acquainted with whom before he much be wailed,) in special that of Dr. Pres ton's of God's all-sufficiency, and Bishop Downham's of the covenant of grace (which had been called in) did him much good: his reading the stories of the manner of some peni tent godly men's deaths did much animate him against his own.

The night before it was a wonder to see his resolution in taking leave of his children, and giving them good counsel, and to one of them the said letter; and some hours after, his tak ing his last farewell of his wife, who was the more passionate: his affectionate and heavenly counsel to her, comforting her, and instructing her, was to my admiration; and in conclusion told her he had wrote a letter to her, which she should receive about the time of his execution, which, if she observed, their next meeting would be in heaven. Then late at night he sent for all the servants of the house, and with tears gave them such savoury admonitions that they all wept. His speech to me, not long before his leaving the castle, is not to be omitted, viz. "It may be," (saith he) "if they do not bury me till Sunday, you will be desired to preach

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. In all the general principles laid down

I now leave your readers to determine, whether the preacher is justly chargeable with the weighty offence of "grossly perverting" the above quoted text from its most evident" meaning, when he applies it to "God's people, who had been blind and deaf, but whose eyes and ears the spirit had opened*."

I will only add, that the word which occurs in this verse, and is translated people, means sometimes a society of men, and sometimes a collection of gregarious animals, but is never applied to idols.

CRITO.

Your correspondent having objected to a sentiment advanced in one of the discourses of this preacher, adds, "His text on the same occasion was most grossly perverted. Isa. xliii. 811. Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears, &c. These words, which most evidently refer to idols, he applied to God's people who had been blind and deaf, but whose eyes and ears the spirit had opened." (p. 408.)

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Now, Sir, I'must beg leave to say, that the text was not, in this instance, most grossly perverted," and that the words do not "most evidently refer to idols." I might support this opinion by a review of the verses preceding and succeeding the verse in question; but for the sake of brevity, and also for the sake of avoiding critical discussion, I will rest the vindication of the accused preacher on the two following facts:-First, that the translators of the bishop's Bible render the text referred to, thus "I will bring forth the blind people and they shall have eyes, and the deaf and they shall have cars" and, secondly, that Tremellius, after translating the words by Produc populum cœcum cui sunt oculi, et surdos quibus sunt aures, adds, in a note explanatory of this verse" Populum Dei, qui ex cæco et surdo per gratiam Dei oculatus et auritus factus est." CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 22.

I WISH to call the attention of your readers to the concluding part of the last prophecy of Daniel. This prophecy (which commences at the second verse of the eleventh chapter, and terminates at the third verse of thetwelfth) describes a series of events that were to happen in regular succession from the time of Daniel to the very end of the world; consequently, it is the business of its interpreter to follow undeviatingly the stream of history. Our Lord himself hath been pleased to determine one period in the prophecy, by referring the abomination of desolation, mentioned in Dan. xi. 31, to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Hence all those events, which are detailed by the prophet subsequent to his mention of the abomination of desolation, must evidently be posterior in point of time to the destruction of Jerusalem. Accordingly, in the thirty-second and thirtythird verses of the same chapter, the persecutions of the primitive Christians are set forth: in the thirty-fourth, the conversion of the empire under Constantine is mentioned; an event, which, as it increased the temporal prosperity of the Church, caused many worldly characters to cleave to it with flatteries: in the thirty-fifth verse, the reformation is noticed: and, in the thirty-sixth, thirty-seventh, thirty-eighth, and thirty-ninth, the corruptions of popery are described: the fortieth verse points out the downfall of the papacy, and at the same time exhibits to us the rise of another

*These words are, in fact, an almost literal translation of Tremellius's note.

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