y prolonged beyond the common lot of man; for he lived till he was
ninety-one years, seven months, and four days old, and his end at last
was but a pleasant translation from the bodily to the spiritual life.

For some days before the close he was calm and cheerful, rehearsing to
the neighbours that came to speer for him, many things like those of
which I have spoken herein. Towards the evening a serene drowsiness fell
upon him, like the snow that falleth in silence, and froze all his
temporal faculties in so gentle a manner, that it could not be said he
knew what it was to die; being, as it were, carried in the downy arms of
sleep to the portal door of Death, where all the pains and terrors that
guard the same were hushed, and stood mute around, as he was softly
received in.

No doubt there was something of a providential design in the singular
prolongation of such a pious and a blameless life; for through it the
possessor became a blessed mean of sowing, in the hearts of his children
and neighbours, the seeds of those sacred principles, which afterwards
made them stand firm in their religious integrity when they were so
grievously tried. For myself I was too young, being scant of eight years
when he departed, to know the worth of those precious things which he
had treasured in the garnel of his spirit for seed-corn unto the Lord;
and therefore, though I often heard him speak of the riddling wherewith
that mighty husbandman of the Reformation, John Knox, riddled the truths
of the gospel from the errors of papistry, I am bound to say that his
own exceeding venerable appearance, and the visions of past events,
which the eloquence of his traditions called up to my young fancy,
worked deeper and more thoroughly into my nature than the reasons and
motives which guided and governed many of his other disciples. But,
before proceeding with my own story, it is meet that I should still tell
the courteous reader some few things wherein my father bore a part--a
man of very austere character, and of a most godly, though, as some
said, rather of a stubbornly affection for the forms of worship which
had been established by John Knox and the pious worthies of his times;
he was withal a single-minded Christian, albeit more ready for a raid
than subtle in argument. He had, like all who knew the old people his
parents, a by-common reverence for them; and spoke of the patriarchs
with whom of old the Lord was wont to hold communion, as more