I went to London with my wife, to celebrate Christmas-day, Mr. Gunning preaching in Exeter chapel, on Micah vii. 2. Sermon ended, as he was giving us the Holy Sacrament, the chapel was surrounded with soldiers, and all the communicants and assembly surprised and kept prisoners by them, some in the house, others carried away. It fell to my share to be confined to a room in the house, where yet I was permitted to dine with the master of it, the Countess of Dorset, Lady Hatton, and some others of quality who invited me. In the afternoon, came Colonel Whalley, Goffe, and others, from Whitehall, to examine us one by one; some they committed to the marshal, some to prison. When I came before them, they took my name and abode, examined me why, contrary to the ordinance made, that none should any longer observe the superstitious time of the nativity (so esteemed by them), I durst offend, and particularly be at common prayers, which they told me was but the mass in English, and particularly pray for Charles Stuart; for which we had no Scripture. I told them we did not pray for Charles Stuart, but for all Christian kings, princes, and governors. They replied, in so doing we prayed for the king of Spain, too, who was their enemy and a Papist, with other frivolous and ensnaring questions, and much threatening; and, finding no color to detain me, they dismissed me with much pity of my ignorance. These were men of high flight and above ordinances, and spoke spiteful things of our Lord's nativity. As we went up to receive the Sacrament, the miscreants held their muskets against us, as if they would have shot us at the altar; but yet suffering us to finish the office of Communion, as perhaps not having instructions what to do, in case they found us in that action. So I got home late the next day; blessed be God!
27th January, 1657-58. After six fits of a quartan ague, with which it pleased God to visit him, died my dear son,[Pg 320] Richard, to our inexpressible grief and affliction, five years and three days old only, but at that tender age a prodigy for wit and understanding; for beauty of body, a very angel; for endowment of mind, of incredible and rare hopes. To give only a little taste of them, and thereby glory to God, who "out of the mouths of babes and infants does sometimes perfect his praises," he had learned all his catechism; at two years and a half old, he could perfectly read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the first three languages exactly. He had, before the fifth year, or in that year, not only skill to read most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of the irregular; learned out "Puerilis," got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versâ, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius's "Janua"; began himself to write legibly, and had a strong passion for Greek. The number of verses he could recite was prodigious, and what he remembered of the parts of plays, which he would also act; and, when seeing a Plautus in one's hand, he asked what book it was, and, being told it was comedy, and too difficult for him, he wept for sorrow. Strange was his apt and ingenious application of fables and morals; for he had read Æsop; he had a wonderful disposition to mathematics, having by heart divers propositions of Euclid that were read to him in play, and he would make lines and demonstrate them. As to his piety, astonishing were his applications of Scripture upon occasion, and his sense of God; he had learned all his catechism early, and understood the historical part of the Bible and New Testament to a wonder, how Christ came to redeem mankind, and how, comprehending these necessaries himself, his godfathers were discharged of their promise.
These and the like illuminations, far exceeding his age and experience, considering the prettiness of his address and behavior, cannot but leave impressions in me at the memory of him. When one told him how many days a Quaker had fasted, he replied that was no wonder; for[Pg 321] Christ had said that man should not live by bread alone, but by the Word of God. He would of himself select the most pathetic psalms, and chapters out of Job, to read to his maid during his sickness, telling her, when she pitied him, that all God's children must suffer affliction. He declaimed against the vanities of the world, before he had seen any. Often he would desire those who came to see him to pray by him, and a year before he fell sick, to kneel and pray with him alone in some corner. How thankfully would he receive admonition! how soon be reconciled! how indifferent, yet continually cheerful! He would give grave advice to his brother, John, bear with his impertinences, and say he was but a child. If he heard of or saw any new thing, he was unquiet till he was told how it was made; he brought to us all such difficulties as he found in books, to be expounded. He had learned by heart divers sentences in Latin and Greek, which, on occasion, he would produce even to wonder. He was all life, all prettiness, far from morose, sullen, or childish in anything he said or did. The last time he had been at church (which was at Greenwich), I asked him, according to custom, what he remembered of the sermon; two good things, Father, said he, bonum gratiæ and bonum gloriæ, with a just account of what the preacher said.
The day before he died, he called to me: and in a more serious manner than usual, told me that for all I loved him so dearly I should give my house, land, and all my fine things to his brother Jack, he should have none of them; and, the next morning, when he found himself ill, and that I persuaded him to keep his hands in bed, he demanded whether he might pray to God with his hands unjoined; and a little after, while in great agony, whether he should not offend God by using his holy name so often calling for ease. What shall I say of his frequent pathetical ejaculations uttered of himself: "Sweet Jesus, save me, deliver me, pardon my sins, let thine angels receive me!" So early knowledge, so much piety and perfection! But thus God, having dressed up a saint fit for himself, would not longer permit him with us, unworthy of the future fruits of this incomparable hopeful blossom. Such a Child I never saw: for such a child I bless God, in whose bosom he is! May I and mine[Pg 322] become as this little child, who now follows the child Jesus that Lamb of God in a white robe, whithersoever he goes; even so, Lord Jesus, fiat voluntas tua! Thou gavest him to us, thou hast taken him from us, blessed be the name of the Lord! That I had anything acceptable to thee was from thy grace alone, seeing from me he had nothing but sin, but that thou hast pardoned! blessed be my God for ever, Amen.
In my opinion, he was suffocated by the women and maids that attended him, and covered him too hot with blankets as he lay in a cradle, near an excessive hot fire in a close room. I suffered him to be opened, when they found that he was what is vulgarly called liver-grown. I caused his body to be coffined in lead, and deposited on the 30th at eight o'clock that night in the church at Deptford, accompanied with divers of my relations and neighbors, among whom I distributed rings with this motto: "Dominus abstulit;" intending, God willing, to have him transported with my own body to be interred in our dormitory in Wotton Church, in my dear native county of Surrey, and to lay my bones and mingle my dust with my fathers, if God be gracious to me, and make me as fit for him as this blessed child was. The Lord Jesus sanctify this and all other my afflictions, Amen.
Here ends the joy of my life, and for which I go even mourning to the grave.