During the closing hours of life he suffered greatly from thirst.
Timrod (Henry, American poet), 1829-1867. "Never mind, I shall soon drink of the river of Eternal Life," on finding that he could no longer swallow water.
"An unquenchable thirst consumed him. Nothing could allay that dreadful torture. He whispered as I placed the water to his lips, 'Don't you remember that passage I once quoted to you from "King John?" I had always such a horror of quenchless thirst, and now I suffer it!' He alluded to the passage:—
And none of you will let the Winter come,
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw!
"Just a day or two before he left on a visit to you at 'Copse Hill,' in one of our evening rambles he had repeated the passage to me with a remark on the extraordinary force of the words.
"Katie took my place by him at five o'clock (in the morning), and never again left his side. The last spoonful of water she gave him he could not swallow. 'Never mind,' he said, 'I shall soon drink of the river of eternal Life.'
"Shortly after he slept peacefully in Christ."
From a letter by Timrod's sister.
Tindal (Matthew, celebrated author and infidel), 1657-1733. "O God—if there be a God—I desire Thee to have mercy on me."
Tindal is particularly celebrated for two publications, the first, issued in 1706, being entitled, "The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted against the Romish and all other Priests;" and the other, published in 1730, called, "Christianity as Old as the Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature."