[577] Collection of several Passages, &c.
[578] "He did not mean," says the author of the Collection, "that it was safe to sin. No, the laying hold of the Covenant implies faith and repentance, which the Gospel requires with new obedience."—p. 6.
Throughout this paragraph we adhere to the words in the Collection.
[579] P. 7.
[580] P. 12.
[581] "Some variation," says the writer of the Collection of Passages, "there is of this prayer, as to the account divers give of it, and something is here omitted. But this is certain, that these were his requests, wherein his heart was so carried out for God and his people, yea for them who had added no little sorrow to his grief and afflictions, that at this time he seems to forget his own family and nearest relations."—13.
The statement that Sterry exclaimed after Cromwell's death, that he was of great use to the people of God whilst he lived, and that he would be much more so interceding for them at the right hand of Christ, rests mainly on the authority of Ludlow (Memoirs, ii. 612) who was not present, and in this instance could only repeat a rumour. He was as prejudiced against Cromwell and his court as any Royalist could be.
[582] Commonwealth Mercury, Sept. 2nd to Sept. 9th. The Protector's funeral was very magnificent, of which a minute account is given by the Rev. John Prestwich, of All Souls, Oxford, in a document preserved amongst the Ashmolean MSS. It is printed in the Cromwellian Diary, ii. 516.
In the newspaper announcing Cromwell's death, there occurs this amusing advertisement:—"That excellent, and by all physitians approved China drink, called by the Chineans, Tcha, by other nations Tay, or Tee, is sold at the Sultaness-Head, a cophee-house in Sweetings Rents, by the Royal Exchange, London."
[583] Clarendon (Hist., 862), says that the day of Cromwell's death was memorable for a storm, which he describes as very violent. Heath says it was reported that he was carried away in the storm the day before. (Chronicle, 408.) The fact is, that this storm, of which both the friends and the enemies of Cromwell made so much, really occurred on Monday, the 30th of August, four days before his death. Barwick, in a letter to Charles II., mentions it as occurring on the 30th. Thurloe, vii. 416. Ludlow, in his Memoirs, does the same, ii. 610. In the title to Waller's poem on the Protector, it is said that it alludes "to the storm that happened about that time."