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 mortalitie, which lies upon Me, as a Man; I now bear the heavy load of other mens ambitions, fears, jealousies, and cruel passions, whose envie or enmity against Me, makes their own lives seem deadly to them, while I enjoy any part of Mine. I thank God, My prosperitie made Me not wholly a stranger to the contemplations of mortalitie. Those are never unseasonable, since this is alwaies uncertain: Death being an eclipse, which oft happeneth as well in cleer as cloudy dayes. But My now long and sharp adversity hath so reconciled in Me those natural Antipathies between Life and Death, which are in all men, that I thank God, the common terrors 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 cruel and implacable enemies can put upon it (affaires being drawn to the very dregs of malice) yet I bless God, I can look upon all those stings, as unpoysonous, though 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, scorn, and cruelty of it, exceeded what ever 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 wearie 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 own 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. Though, as a KING, I think My self 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.