24. Upon their denying His Majestie the Attendance of His Chaplains.
W Hen providence was pleased to deprive Me of all other civil comforts and secular attendants, I thought the absence of them all might best be supplied by the attendance of some of my Chaplains, whom for their Function I reverence, and for their Fidelitie I have cause to love. By their Learning, Pietie, and Praiers, I hoped to be either better enabled to sustain the want of all other enjoyments, or better fitted for the recovery and use of them in Gods good time; so reaping by their pious help a spiritual harvest of grace amidst the thorns, and after the plowings of temporal crosses.
The truth is, I never needed or desired more the service and assistance of men judiciously pious, and soberly devout.
The solitude they have confined me unto, adds the wildernesse to my temptations: For the company they obtrude upon me, is more sad then any solitude can be.
If I had asked my Revenues, my power of the Militia, or any one of my Kingdoms, it had bin no wonder to have been denied in those things, where the evil policy of men forbids all just restitution, lest they should confess an injurious usurpation: But to deny me the ghostly comfort of my Chaplains seems a greater rigor & barbarity, then is ever used by christians to the meanest prisoners, & greatest malefactors, whom though the justice of the law deprive of worldly comforts, yet the mercy of religion allows them the benefit of their Clergy, as not aiming at once to destroy their Bodies, and to damn their Souls.
But my agony must not be relieved with the presence of any one good Angel; for such I account a learned, godly, and discreet Divine: and such I would have all mine to be.
They that envie my being a King, are loth I should be a Christian: while they seek to deprive me of all things else, they are afraid I should save my Soul.
Other sense, Charity it self can hardly pick out of those many harsh repulses I received, as to that request so often made for the attendance of some of my Chaplains.