but when, or how, I know not. I think there is little danger of any harm to him here, if there be none at home on his return. Love to Sarah and Eleanor, and to all the rest. Do what you can to get to heaven yourselves, and to help one another thither. Prepare for further sufferings, to which it may be these things are but the preamble; but all is well that ends everlastingly well. Thanks for all your love and faithfulness to me, and patience with me; the Lord will reward it.

I am, most entirely, and most affectionately, thine, P. H.

LETTER XII.

DR. OWEN to CHARLES FLEETWOOD, Esq. A few hours before his death.

DEAR SIR,

ALTHOUGH I am not able to write one word myself, yet I am very desirous to speak one word more to you in this world, and do it by the hand of my wife. The continuance of your entire kindness, knowing what it is accompanied withal, is not only greatly valued by me, but will be a refreshment to me, as it is even in my dying hour. I am going to him whom my soul has loved, or rather who has loved me with an everlasting love, which is the whole ground of all my consolation. The passage is very irksome and wearisome, through strong

pains of various sorts, which are all issued in an intermitting fever. All things were provided to carry me to London to-day, according to the advice of my physicians; but we are all disappointed by my utter disability to undertake the journey. I am leaving the ship of the church in a storm; but whilst the great Pilot is in it, the loss of a poor underrower will be inconsiderable. Live and pray, and hope, and wait patiently and do not despond; the promise stands invincible, that he will never leave us, nor forsake us. I am greatly afflicted at the distempers of your dear lady; the good Lord stand by her and support and deliver her. My affectionate respects to her, and the rest of your relations, who are so dear to me in the Lord. Remember your dying friend with all fervency: I rest upon it, that you do so, and am,

August 22, 1683. (')

Your's entirely,

J. OWEN.

LETTER XIII.

ROBERT RICH, Earl of Warwick, to CROMWELL, in reply to a letter of condolence on the loss of a near relative.

MY LORD,

11th March, 1658.

My pen and my heart were ever your Lordship's servants; now they are become your debtors. This

(1) The Doctor died on the 24th of August.

paper cannot enough confess my obligation, and much less discharge it, for your seasonable and sympathizing letters, which (besides the value they derive from so worthy a hand) express such faithful affections, and administer such Christian advice, as renders them beyond measure welcome and dear to me. And, although my heaviness and distraction of thoughts persuades me rather to peruse those excellent lines than to answer them, and to take relief from them rather than to make a return to them, yet I must not be so indulgent to mine own sorrows, as to lose this opportunity of being thankful to your lordship for so great a favour. My Lord, I dare not be insensible of that hand which hath laid a very sharp and awaking affliction upon me; but we may not be so presumptuous as to make choice of our own rod, or, so much as in thought, to detract from or diminish the justice, and wisdom, and goodness of God in those hard events, which must all stand inviolable, when millions of such worms as I am are gone to dust. I must need say, I have lost a dear and comfortable relation, one in whom I had much determined my affections and lodged my hopes, which are now rebuked and withered by a hasty and early death; but my property in him was inferior to his who hath taken him, and I must rest my heart in his proceedings, making it my care and suit that those evils which cannot be averted may be sanctified. In order to which I desire, from this one sad instance, to argue the whole world of vanity and variableness. Alas! what a staff of reed are these things, which have

no stay in themselves, and therefore can give none to us. They witness their own impotency, and themselves admonish us to pitch our rest above this sphere of changeable mortality, and to cast anchor in heaven, while we can find no hold at all on earth. Assuredly he that will have and hold a right tranquillity, must found it in a sweet fruition of God, which whosoever wants may be secure, but cannot be quiet. My lord, all this is but a broken echo of your pious counsel, which gives such ease to my oppressed mind, that I can scarce forbid my pen being tedious. Only it remembers your lordship's many weighty and noble employments, which, together with your prudent, heroic, and honourable managery of them, I do here congratulate as well as my grief will give me leave. Others' goodness is their own; yours is a whole country's, yea, three kingdoms', for which you justly possess interest and renown with wise and good men: virtue is a thousand escutcheons. Go on my lord; go on happily, to love religion, to exemplify it. May your lordship long continue an instrument of use, a pattern of virtue, and a precedent of glory. This is the inward and affectionate prayer of,

My, Lord,

Your Lordship's most affectionate servant,

WARWICK.

LETTER XIV.

LADY RUSSELL to DR. FITZWILLIAM, about two months after the execution of her noble husband.-Faith wrestling with overwhelming sorrow.

I NEED not tell you, good Doctor, how little capable I have been of such an exercise as this. You will soon find how unfit I am still for it, since my yet disordered thoughts can offer me no other than such words as express the deepest sorrows, and confused, as my yet amazed mind is. But such men as you, and particularly one so much my friend, will, I know, bear with my weakness, and compassionate my distress, as you have already done by your good letter and excellent prayer. I endeavour to make the best use I can of both; but I am so evil and unworthy a creature, that though I have desires, yet I have no dispositions, or worthiness towards receiving comfort. You that knew us both and how we lived, must allow I have just cause to bewail my loss. I know it is common with others to lose a friend; but to have lived with such a one,— it may be questioned how few can glory in the like happiness, so consequently lament the like loss. Who can but shrink at such a blow, till by the mighty aids of his Holy Spirit, we will let the gift of God, which he hath put into our hearts, interpose? That reason which sets a measure to our souls in prosperity, will then suggest many things which we have seen and heard, to moderate us in