XXIX. The late Sir Henry Vane must be too fresh in memory to need a character; but it is certain, his parts were of the first rate, and superior to the generality of men; but he would often say, he owed them to religion. In his youth he was much addicted to company, and promised little to business; but in reading a book, called, "The Signs of a Godly Man," and being convicted in himself that they were just, but that he had no share in any one of them, he fell into that extreme anguish and horror, that for some days and nights he took little food or rest, which at once dissolved his old friendships, and made those impressions and resolutions to religion, that neither university, courts, princes, nor parents, nor any losses or disappointments that threatened his new course of life, could weaken or alter. And though this laid him under some disadvantages for a time, his great integrity and abilities quickly broke through that obscurity; so that those of very differing sentiments did not only admire, but very often desired him to accept the most eminent negotiations of his country, which he served according to his own principles with great success, and a remarkable self-denial. This great man's maxim was, Religion was the best master, and the best friend; for it made men wise, and would never leave them that never left it; which he found true in himself: for as it made him wiser than those that had been his teachers, so it made him firmer than any hero, having something more than nature to support him: which was the judgment as well of foreigners as others, that had the curiosity to see him die. Making good some meditations of his own, viz.: "The day of death is the judge of all our other days: the very trial and touch-stone of the actions of our life. It is the end that crowns the work, and a good death honoureth a man's whole life. The fading corruption and loss of this life is the passage into a better. Death is no less essential to us, than to live or to be born. In flying death, thou fliest thyself; thy essence is equally parted into these two, life and death. It is no small reproach to a Christian, whose faith is in immortality, and the blessedness of another life, to fear death much, which is the necessary passage thereunto."