aised him from his knees with his
own hands, and "protested he believed him; and that he knew he was an
honest man, and doubted not but that he loved him truly." And, having
thus dismissed him, he called some Lords of his Council into his
chamber, and said with much earnestness, "My Doctor is an honest man;
and, my Lords, I was never better satisfied with an answer than he hath
now made me; and I always rejoice when I think that by my means he
became a Divine."

He was made Dean in the fiftieth year of his age, and in his
fifty-fourth year a dangerous sickness seized him, which inclined him to
a consumption; but God, as Job thankfully acknowledged, preserved his
spirit, and kept his intellectuals as clear and perfect as when that
sickness first seized his body; but it continued long, and threatened
him with death, which he dreaded not.

Within a few days his distempers abated; and as his strength increased
so did his thankfulness to Almighty God, testified in his most excellent
"Book of Devotions," which he published at his recovery; in which the
reader may see the most secret thoughts that then possessed his soul,
paraphrased and made public: a book that may not unfitly be called a
Sacred Picture of Spiritual Ecstasies, occasioned and applicable to the
emergencies of that sickness; which book, being a composition of
meditations, disquisitions, and prayers, he writ on his sick-bed; herein
imitating the holy Patriarchs, who were wont to build their altars in
that place where they had received their blessings.

This sickness brought him so near to the gates of death, and he saw the
grave so ready to devour him, that he would often say his recovery was
supernatural: but that God that then restored his health continued it to
him till the fifty-ninth year of his life: and then, in August 1630,
being with his eldest daughter, Mrs. Harvey, at Abury Hatch, in Essex,
he there fell into a fever, which, with the help of his constant
infirmity--vapours from the spleen--hastened him into so visible a
consumption that his beholders might say, as St. Paul of himself, "He
dies daily;" and he might say with Job, "My welfare passeth away as a
cloud, the days of my affliction have taken hold of me, and weary nights
are appointed for me."

Reader, this sickness continued long, not only weakening, but wearying
him so much, that my desire is he may now take some rest; and that
before I speak of his death thou wilt not think it an imperti