O England! Plagues are at thy door, O England!" He much bewailed that divers men in power, and many of the nobility and gentry of the kingdom, were grown so dissolute and profane; often saying, "God has forsaken us; we are infatuated; we will shut our eyes; we will not see our true interests and happiness: we shall be destroyed!" Apprehending the consequences of the growing looseness of the age to be our ruin; and that the methods most fit to serve the kingdom with true credit, at home and abroad, were too much neglected: the trouble of which did not a little help to feed his distemper, which drew him daily nearer to his end: and as he believed it, so less concerned or disordered, I never saw him at any time; of which I took good notice: wearied to live, as well as near to die, he took his leave of us, and of me, with this expression, and a most composed countenance: "Son William, if you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching, and keep to your plain way of living, you will make an end of the priests to the end of the world. Bury me by my mother: live all in love: shun all manner of evil: and I pray God to bless you all: and He will bless you." XXXVI. Anthony Lowther, of Mask, a person of good sense, of a sweet temper, a just mind, and of a sober education; when of age to be under his own government, was drawn by the men of pleasure of the town, into the usual freedoms of it, and was as much a judge as anybody of the satisfaction that way of living could yield; but some time before his sickness, with a free and strong judgment, he would frequently upbraid himself, and contemn the world for those unreasonable as well as unchristian liberties that so much abound in it; which apprehension increased by the instruction of a long and sharp sickness, he would often despise their folly, and abhor their guilt; breathing, with some impatience, after the knowledge of the best things, and the best company; losing as little time as he could, that he might redeem the time he had lost; testifying often, with a lively relish, to the truth of religion, from the sense he had of it in his own breast: frequently professing, he knew no joy comparable to that of being assured of the love and mercy of God; which, as he often implored with strong convictions, and a deep humility and reverence, so he had frequently tastes thereof before his last period; pressing his relations and friends, in a most serious and affectionate manner, to love God, and one another more, and this vile world less. And of this he was so full, it was almost ever the conclusion of his most inward discourses with his family; though he sometimes said, he could have been willing to have lived, if God had pleased, to see his younger children nearer a settlement in the world; yet he felt no desire to live longer in the world, but on the terms of living better in it. For that he did not only think virtue the safest, but the happiest way of living: commending and