He lived and died in comfortable communion with
God, as judicious persons near him well observed. He was that Mordecai
that sought the welfare of his people and spake peace to his seed. Yet
were his temptations such, as it appeared frequently that he that hath
grace enough for many men may have too little for himself, the treasure
he had being but in an earthen vessel and that equally defiled with
original sin as any other man's nature is." There are phrases here that
may be matched with the choicest in the life of Agricola; and, indeed,
the whole letter, superior to Tacitus in judicial fairness of tone, goes
abreast of his best writing in condensation, nay, surpasses it in this,
that, while in Tacitus the intensity is of temper, here it is the clear
residuum left by the ferment and settling of thought. Just before,
speaking of the dissolution of Oliver's last Parliament, Maidstone says:
"That was the last which sat during his life, he being compelled to
wrestle with the difficulties of his place so well as he could without
parliamentary assistance, and in it met with so great a burthen as (I
doubt not to say) it drank up his spirits, of which his natural
constitution yielded a vast stock, and brought him to his grave, his
interment being the seed-time of his glory and England's calamity.
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