as begot in him an awful reverence for his person; and says, "his
discourse was so pious, and his motion so genteel and meek, that after
almost forty years, yet they remain still fresh in his memory."
The next morning Mr. Duncon left him, and betook himself to a journey
to Bath, but with a promise to return back to him within five days;
and he did so: but before I shall say any thing of what discourse then
fell betwixt them two, I will pay my promised account of Mr. Farrer.
[Sidenote: Mr. Nicholas Ferrer]
[Sidenote: Little Gidden]
Mr. Nicholas Farrer--who got the reputation of being called Saint
Nicholas at the age of six years--was born in London, and doubtless
had good education in his youth; but certainly was, at an early age,
made Fellow of Clare-Hall in Cambridge; where he continued to
be eminent for his piety, temperance, and learning. About the
twenty-sixth year of his age, he betook himself to travel: in which
he added, to his Latin and Greek, a perfect knowledge of all the
languages spoken in the Western parts of our Christian world; and
understood well the principles of their Religion, and of their manner,
and the reasons of their worship. In this his travel he met with many
persuasions to come into a communion with that church which calls
itself Catholic: but he returned from his travels as he went, eminent
for his obedience to his mother, the Church of England. In his absence
from England, Mr. Farrer's father--who was a merchant--allowed him a
liberal maintenance; and, not long after his return into England, Mr.
Farrer had, by the death of his father, or an elder brother, or both,
an estate left him, that enabled him to purchase land to the value of
four or five hundred pounds a year; the greatest part of which land
was at Little Gidden, four or six miles from Huntingdon, and about
eighteen from Cambridge; which place he chose for the privacy of it,
and for the Hall, which had the Parish-Church or Chapel, belonging
and adjoining near to it; for Mr. Farrer, having seen the manners and
vanities of the world, and found them to be, as Mr. Herbert says, "a
nothing between two dishes," did so contemn it, that he resolved to
spend the remainder of his life in mortifications, and in devotion,
and charity, and to be always prepared for death. And his life was
spent thus:
[Sidenote: Life there]
He and his family, which were like a little College, and about thirty
in number, did most of them keep Lent and all Ember-weeks strictly,
both in fasting and using all those mortifications and prayers that
the Church hath appointed to be then used; and he and they did the
like constantly on Fridays, and on the Vigils or Eves appointed to
be fasted before the Saints' days: and this frugality and abstinence
turned to the relief of the poor: but this was but a part of his
charity; none but God and he knew the rest.
[Sidenote: The daily round]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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