servant. I never earnestly set myself to beg of God anything, but He fulfilled the petition of His most unworthy But now and of late, I have, nor do not find in my heart any inclination to beg longer life of God. Nay I rather desire to be dissolved with St. Paul, and to leave this life for one eternal in heaven, through the merits of my Saviour Jesus Christ, now wholly and fully submitting myself to the blessed will of my good Lord, to do with me for life or death as He knows best for me; and much more to this purpose he discoursed, as occasion was. That night he, growing somewhat hot and dry, went to his bed, but took not much sleep; yet in the morning he rose again, but found himself unfit to go into the air, and so kept his chamber and had prayers in it, though the family went at their hours to church. 80. He complained not of any pains now, neither in head or any part of his body, but a kind of faintness and decay of strength. Saturday night he removed to another chamber, and so he rose no more out of his bed; but after two or three days he willed a pallet to be made on the floor, unto which he removed, and came no more off it. Sunday he received the communion, which Mr. Groose administered, and before it made a most solemn and comfortable confession of his faith, according to the Church of England, acknowledging his salvation to depend only upon the sweet and infinite mercies and sufferings of his most dear Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, renouncing all other dependencies, saying, when all men had done all they could, they must wholly acknowledge and confess themselves most unworthy servants. In brief, such were his expressions, that the minister said, he never had, or ever should hear the like again. So with great desire and devotion he received the blessed sacrament with much joy; and during all his sickness his speech tended to nothing but exhortations to love, fear, and serve God, as the only comfort and happiness of this world, and to the better. He often would exhort the family, that they should stedfastly and constantly adhere to the doctrine of the Church of England, and to continue in the good old way and in those they have been taught out of the word of God, and in what he had accordingly informed them of, for it was the true, right, good way to heaven; that they should find oppositions, and means used by those that they did not expect it from to withdraw them, to hinder, to divert them. But, said he, I forewarn you to be constant, to be stedfast in the good old way. You will find danger and trouble, but shrink not, rely upon God, and serve Him in sincerity of devotion, both in souls and bodies; God will have both, He made both, and both must worship Him in reverence and fear. He is a great Lord God, as full of mercy, 80 of majesty. I am now going before Him, to give an account of what I have said to you and instructed you in. I again say, what I have taught you is according to His good will and heavenly word, and out of it. Be you stedfast and of good cheer, if you continue to serve Him, He will be your shield and defence to preserve you. Much to this and the like effect he spake often to them, as occasion served. One day, speaking of some employment for the family to proceed in, as they had begun, about their concordances and the new device way of printing, as some termed it, he said, he would have them to keep and preserve the thing and the pictures. For, said he, I hope God will send you ways and means and helps to go forward with them, and you may grow to perfection of something, by such helps as God will send. Leave not the thought of them, though I be gone. And here by the way, because I speak of his remembering of pictures, for as you have been formerly told that he caused some of the works they had made to be set forth with pictures:-that he wholly disliked, to have the picture of God to be made or used in any place or thing, saying, it was a breach of the second commandment to make any such resemblance. 81. Some neighbour ministers, hearing he was ill, came to visit him; and, after salutations, he would desire them to say with him the Belief and Lord's Prayer, which he would say, and then they proceed in such discourse as was fit for those that came to converse with dying men. And one minister said unto him, What joy may you now have of the many good alms-deeds you have done in several kinds, in a liberal manner; and then would have gone on in the numbering them up. But N. F. cut him off instantly, What speak you of such things? Mass1, I am to ask my God forgiveness for my great neglect in that my duty. It had been but my part to have given all that I had, and not to have scattered a few crumbs of alms here and there. The Lord God forgive, I most humbly beseech Him, my too much carnal love to my friends in this kind. 82. Thus in heavenly counsels to all the family he passed the days and nights, in praying and in exhortation, and found himself to grow more weak and faintish daily, but his spirit was quick and lively, and all senses as perfect as at any time in the best of his health; and found not pain or aches in any part of his body, taking now and then some broths, and his heats did much abate, and his thirstiness also. One time he called for his brother's and sister's young children, his nephew Nicholas Ferrar2, whom he dearly loved and, as you heard, had for him and the rest of his sister's children provided all liberal means for the training up of them at Gidding in learning, in several kinds. And this youth he loved dearly and looked upon as him, to whom Gidding, by God's blessing, would in the end descend; and desirous he was, that he might continue in that virtuous and pious course he had by his love and 1 Mass or Mess, i. e. By the Mass, still used in the North (Pegge's Anecdotes of the Engl. language, 388), and in Derbysh. and Lancash. (Grose's Provincial Glossary). It occurs again below. 2 See the sequel to this life, from a Lambeth MS. care been trained up in from his cradle. He gave him and the rest of his sister's young children his hearty blessing, with many good counsels and precepts to remember all that he taught them in their books called The children's morning and night precepts and their story-books, and to keep in heart diligently their psalms and concordances, that then God would love them and no good thing, that was good for them, they should want; that they should ever remember that the fear of God was the beginning of wisdom, and procured all happiness. To these and other the like things he advised, and so kissed them all, with earnest calling upon God, that He would ever keep them in His protection, for he only was safe, that God kept. 83. I may not here omit to touch, as by the way, that his brother John Ferrar having one only daughter1 the year after he came to Gidding, N. F. and his mother (and that out of both their affections to the remembrance of the plantation of Virginia, which, as relate before, they so dearly affected, and that J. F. might daily more and more have the memorial of it, as not to cease praying for the prosperity of it and doing all the good he could otherwise to it, as opportunity in anything or kind that might happen in his power in success of time to come,) named his daughter Virginia, so that speaking unto her, looking upon 1 "She being born on Christmas-eve was christened upon Christmas-day."-MS. |