O MOST mighty God, and merciful God, the God of all true sorrow, and true joy
too, of all fear, and of all hope too, as thou hast given me a repentance, not
to be repented of, so give me, O Lord, a fear, of which I may not be afraid.
Give me tender and supple and conformable affections, that as I joy with them
that joy, and mourn with them that mourn, so I may fear with them that fear.
And since thou hast vouchsafed to discover to me, in his fear whom thou hast
admitted to be my assistance in this sickness, that there is danger therein,
let me not, O Lord, go about to overcome the sense of that fear, so far as to
pretermit the fitting and preparing of myself for the worst that may be feared,
the passage out of this life. Many of thy blessed martyrs have passed out of
this life without any show of fear; but thy most blessed Son himself did not
so. Thy martyrs were known to be but men, and therefore it pleased thee to fill
them with thy Spirit and thy power, in that they did more than men; thy Son was
declared by thee, and by himself, to be God; and it was requisite that he
should declare himself to be man also, in the weaknesses of man.
Let me not
therefore, O my God, be ashamed of these fears, but let me feel them to
determine where his fear did, in a present submitting of all to thy will. And
when thou shalt have inflamed and thawed my former coldnesses and indevotions
with these heats, and quenched my former heats with these sweats and
inundations, and rectified my former presumptions and negligences with these
fears, be pleased, O Lord, as one made so by thee, to think me fit for thee;
and whether it be thy pleasure to dispose of this body, this garment, so as to
put it to a farther wearing in this world, or to lay it up in the common
wardrobe, the grave, for the next, glorify thyself in thy choice now, and
glorify it then, with that glory, which thy Son, our Saviour Christ Jesus, hath
purchased for them whom thou makest partakers of his resurrection. Amen.