thou hast sent this affliction to call mee to repentance, and to make me inwardly consider and behold that Saviour whom my accursed sins have nayled to the cross, and pierced to the heart.

From my childhood to my declined age, thou hast made use of all thy wondrous and manifold methods of drawing me, a sinner, to amendment and obedience; but, alas! how hitherto have they been in vaine! Thou madest me prosperous and unsuccessfull, poor and rich; thou broughtest me into dangers, and gavest me deliverance; thou leddest me into exile, and broughtest me home with honour; and yett none of thy dispensations have had their naturall or reasonable effect upon me; they have been resisted and overcome by an obdurate sensuality. Soe that, if in thy infinite mercy thou wilt yet make any further experiment upon mee, and not leave me to myselfe, the most heavy of all judgments, what can I expect but that afflictions should bee accumulated till my gray haires be brought with sorrow to the grave? This, O Lord, is my portion, and it is justly due to me. I lay my mouth in the dust, and humbly submit myself to itt. Yett, gracious God, give me eleave with comfort to remember, that thy mercy is infinite, and over all thy works. In that mercy, and in the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, look uppon mee; turn thy face to me, and thy wrath from me. Let this sore affliction melt or break my heart; let it melt it into godly sorrow, or let the hardness of it be even broken by yet heavyer calamityes. However, at last returne, O Lord, and heale mee, and leave a blessing behind thee. The blessing of a true repentance, and a constant amendment, the blessing of fervent devotion, of universall obedience to thy holy lawes, and of unshaken perseverance in the wayes of thee my God.

This I beg in the name and for the sake of the all-sufficient sacrifice and meritts of my blessed Redeemer, in the words he hath left us to pray.

19 March, 168.

His prayer and thanksgiving, being recovered a while before from a most dangerous pleurisy, which he had in London.

O MOST mighty and most mercifull God, by thee we live, move, and have our being. Thou art the fountaine of life; and to thee it belonges to set the bounds of it, and to appoint the time of our death. Our business in this world is to adore, to praise,

and serve thee, according to the notions thou hast imprinted in us, and those revelations of thy self and of thy will, that thou 129 hast vouchsafed to the sons of men in their severall generations by thy holy word. The blessings of this life are of thy bounty, given to engage us to gratitude and to obedience, and the afflictions we sometimes suffer and labour under come also from thy hand, with purposes of mercy to recall and reduce us from the sinfullness and error of our wayes, into which plenty and prosperity had plunged us before.

I confess, O Lord, that by the course of a long and healthfull life vouchsafed to me, thou hast extended all those methods by which thy designs of mercy might have been visible to me, if my eyes had not been diverted by the vanitys of this life, and my understanding obscured and corrupted by a wilfull turning of all my faculties upon the brutish, sensuall, unsatisfying pleasures and delights of this transitory world. Thus have I most miserably misspent a longer and more vigorous and painless life, than one man of ten thousand has reacht unto, neglecting all the opportunities of doing good that thou hast put into my power, and embracing all the occasions by which I was tempted to do evill. Yet hast thou spared me, and now lately given me one warning more, by a dangerous sickness, and by a marvellous recovery shewing me the misery I had undergone, if with all the distraction and confusion I was in, for want of due preparation for death, I had been carryed away to answer for multitudes of unrepented sins. Grant (O most mercifull God) that this last tender of mercy may not be fruitless to me; but that I from this moment, though it be later then the eleventh hour of my life, may apply myself to redeem, not only the idleness, but wickedness of the dayes that are past. And do thou then, O Lord, graciously accept my weak endeavours and imperfect repentance, in forgiveing not onely what is past, but endueing me with grace to please thee with more faithfullness and integrity for the time to come, that so, when thou shall call for my soul, I may part with it in tranquillity of mind, and a reasonable confidence of thy mercy, through the merits of my blessed Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

31 August, 1684. His prayer when newly arrived at Dublin, and returned to the

government of Ireland.

O THOU, who art a most righteous judge, who neither despisest the meanest for their poverty, nor acceptest the most powerfull for their power, make mee alwayes to remember, and seriously to consider, that as all those outward privileges I enjoy among men are by thee bestowed upon me out of thy goodness, so none of them can exempt mee from thy justice, but that I shall one day be brought to answer for all I have done in the flesh, and in particular for the use or misuse I have made of those peculiar advantages whereby it hath pleased thee to distinguish mee from others; more especially in the neglect of those means and opportunityes thou hast put into my hands, either to performe my duty to thee my God, or else to my king, my country, my family, relations and neighbours, or even to the whole people who have been committed to my care and subjected to my authority. O lett the remembrance and continuall thought of this and of thy favours now at length prevayle upon me, to a cheerfull and carefull employing of all I have received from thee, to those ends for which they were given by thee. Lord grant, that the experience and that measure of knowledge thou hast endowed me with, may have such an efficacy on my practice, that they may help to advance my salvation, and not aggravate sins or guilt to my condemnation. I confess, O Lord, I have often been more elevated, and taken more pride in the splendor 130 of the station thou hadst placed mee in, than in considering that it came from thy gracious bounty and providence. I have often been lesse carefull then I ought, to discharge the trust committed to mee with that diligence and circumspection and conscienciousness which the weight and importance of such a trust required. Nay, on the contrary, I have been vayne, slothfull, and careless, vayne of my slender performances, slothfull in not employeing my tallent to discover and execute justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, to the maintenance of virtue and religion, and to the releueing and delivering the poore, the innocent, and the oppressed. Nay, soe careless have I been of my owne carriage and conduct, that by my ill example, and in complyance with a corrupt and intemperate life, I have drawn others into vanity, sinfullness, and guilt. Lord, of thy infinite mercy pardon

these provoking sins of myne; and pardon the sins of those I have any wayes drawn to sin by my example; or for want of that advice, admonishment, or caution which it was in my power, as it was in my duty, to have administred. And, Lord, out of the same infinite mercy, grant, that for the time to come I may in some measure redeem the errors and failings of my past life, and of all these crying sinns; and this not onely by a hearty and prevaileing repentance, and a carefull circumspection over all my wayes and actions hereafter; but by a diligent attendance on thy service, and by a vigilant administration of the power and trust which is committed unto me. 'Tis hereby alone, that I shall be enabled to render a good account of my stewardshipp, and become capable of thy mercy, thro' the merits and mediation of my blessed Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ.

25 September, 1686.

His prayer and thanksgiving on the birth of his great grandson Thomas.

O LORD, most mercifull and just, I, who am less than the least of those mercyes and bountyes thou hast extended towards mee, and who have by my sins provoked thee to inflict uppon mee much heavier and severer corrections than those I have already felt, doe most humbly prostrate myself before thee, trembling att thy justice, and imploreing thy mercy. Itt was thy good pleasure to bless mee with a numerous offspring; and in thy most just displeasure thou hast bereaued mee of most of them, even of all my immediate children but one; and tho' thou didst take them out of this world one by one, and at severall distances of time, to lett mee see thou didst intend the death of each of them should be a distinct and gracious warning to mee, to break of the sinfull and negligent course of the life I led; yet foolish heart darkened, and filled with sensuall thoughts and worldly affections: and I was so farr from repentance and amendment uppon those chastisements, that I was insensible of them, and discerned not thy most mercifull purposes in them. I must now acknowledge, with shame and confusion of face, that if in thy justice thou hadst or shouldst yet take away from me all the comforts of posterity that are left, and cause my name to perish from the face of the earth; it were but the just reward of my impenitence and unthankfullness. But thou, O Lord, hast ORMOND, VOL. v.

was my

vouchsafed to make yett a farther experiment upon me, and given me the blessing of a great granchild to bear my name, and possess after mee what I and my fore-fathers have received from thy bounty. O gracious God, lett not mine or their sins and transgressions be so remembred, as to frustrate thy mercifull intentions of goodness to me and myne, but give us all the grace so to serve thee in our respective stations and generations, 131 that however thy infinite wisdome shall think fitt to dispose of us in this world, (to which give us grace chearfully to submit,) wee may attain everlasting salvation in the world to come, through the merits and mediation of our blessed Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ.

His prayer of preparation for the holy sacrament.

O MOST gracious God, it is of thy most mercifull goodness, that now, in the later end of a long and mispent life, thou hast inclined mee to call to minde the sins and miscariages thereof. They began with my childhood, and have been continued to this my declined age; and I now come, with shame and with confusion of face, to an humble and penitent confession of all my transgressions. Assist mee, good Lord, by thy grace, in soe difficult, and yett soe necessary a worke. And though the difficultie thereof is become insuperable to me, by the multitude of my sins, and by that supine and wretched negligence I have been guilty of; yett thou art a God most powerfull and most mercifull; and nothing is above thy power, but thy mercy; which is over all thy workes. I therefore, by thy omnipotent mercy, and for the passion of Christ Jesus thy blessed Son and my Saviour, doe presume to beg such a portion of thy grace, as may bring to remembrance all my sins; that soe I may not only detest them, but abhor myself for offending soe mercifull a God. Lett the sence of that misery they have brought upon me produce a reall and effectual repentance, such a repentance, and soe firme a purpose of amendment, as may fitt me for participateing in the blessed sacrament now to be celebrated, that soe I may obtain the graces and advantages derived from it to those that are worthy communicants. Grant this, O Lord, through the merrits and mediation of Jesus Christ my blessed Saviour and Redeemer, in whose name, for whose sake, and in whose words, I beg these and all other thy blessings and mercy's