satisfied with the blessings of your presence and

vertues.

For those that repent of any defects in their duty towards Me, as I freely forgive them in the word of a Christian King, so I believe you will find them truly zealous, to repay with interest that loyalty and love to you, which was due to Me.

In summe, what good I intended, doe you performe, when God shall give you power: much good I have offered, more I purposed to Church and State, if times had been capable of it.

The deception will soone vanish, and the vizards will fall off apace; this maske of religion on the face of rebellion (for so it now plainly appears, since My restraint and cruell usage, that they sought not for Me, as was pretended) will not long serve to hide some mens deformities.

Happy times, I hope, attend you, wherein your subjects (by their miseries) will have learned, that religion to their God, and loyalty to their King, cannot be parted without both their sinne and their infelicity.

I pray God blesse you, and establish your kingdomes in righteousnesse, your soule in true

religion, and your honour in the love of God and your people.

And if God will have disloyalty perfected by My destruction; let My memory ever, with My name, live in you; as of your father, that loves you and once a KING of three flourishing kingdomes whom God thought fit to honour, not onely with the scepter and government of them, but also with the suffering many indignities, and an untimely death for them; while I studied to preserve the rights of the Church, the power of the lawes, the honour of My crowne, the priviledge of Parliaments, the liberties of My people, and My owne conscience, which, I thanke God, is dearer to Me then a thousand kingdomes.

I know God can, I hope he yet will restore Me to My rights. I cannot despaire either of His mercy, or of My peoples love and pity.

At worst, I trust I shall but go before you to a better Kingdome, which God hath prepared for Me, and Me for it, through My Saviour Jesus Christ, to whose mercies I commend you and all Mine.

Farewell, till we meet again, if not on Earth, yet in Heaven.

XXVIII. MEDITATIONS UPON DEATH, AFTER THE VOTES OF NON-ADDRESSES, AND HIS MAJESTIES CLOSER IMPRISONMENT IN CARISBROOKE-CASTLE.

As I have leisure enough, so I have cause more then enough to meditate upon, and prepare for My death for I know there are but few steps between the prisons and graves of princes.

It is Gods indulgence, which gives Me the space, but mans cruelty, that gives Me the sad occasions for these thoughts.

For, besides the common burthen of mortality, which lies upon Me, as a man; I now beare the heavy load of other mens ambitions, feares, jealousies, and cruell passions, whose envy or enmity against Me makes their owne lives seem deadly to them, while I enjoy any part of Mine.

I thank God, My prosperity made Me not wholly a stranger to the contemplations of mortality:

Those are never unseasonable, since this is alwaies uncertaine : death being an eclipse, which oft happeneth as well in clear, as cloudy daies.

But My now long and sharp adversity hath so reconciled in Me those naturall antipathies be

tween life and death, which are in all men, that, I thank God, the common terrours of it are dispelled; and the special horrour of it, as to My particular much allayed for, although My death at present may justly be represented to Me with all those terrible aggravations, which the policy of cruell and implacable enemies can put upon it, (affaires being drawn to the very dregs of malice) yet I blesse God, I can look upon all those stings, as unpoysonous, tho sharp; since My Redeemer hath either pulled them out, or given Me the antidote of his death against them; which as to the immaturity, injustice, shame, scorne, and cruelty of it exceeded, whatever I can fear.

Indeed, I never did find so much, the life of religion, the feast of a good conscience, and the brazen wall of a judicious integrity and constancy, as since I came to these closer conflicts with the thoughts of death.

I am not so old, as to be weary of life; nor (I hope) so bad, as to be either afraid to die; or ashamed to live: true, I am so afflicted, as might make Me sometime even desire to die; if I did not consider, that it is the greatest glory of a Christians life to die daily, in conquering by a

lively faith, and patient hopes of a better life; those partiall and quotidian deaths, which kill us (as it were) by piece-meales, and make us overlive our owne fates; while we are deprived of health, honour, liberty, power, credit, safety, or estate; and those other comforts of dearest relations, which are as the life of our lives.

Tho, as a KING, I think My selfe to live in nothing temporall so much, as in the love and good-will of My people; for which, as I have suffered many deaths, so I hope I am not in that point as yet wholly dead: notwithstanding, My enemies have used all the poyson of falsity and violence of hostility to destroy, first the love and loyalty, which is in My subjects; and then all that content of life in Me, which from these I chiefly enjoyed.

Indeed, they have left Me but little of life, and onely the husk and shell (as it were) which their further malice and cruelty can take from Me; having bereaved Me of all those worldly comforts, for which life it selfe seems desirable to

men.

But, O My soule! think not that life too long, or tedious, wherein God gives thee any opportunities, if not to doe, yet to suffer with such