e
highest comfort to your soul.

_Qu._ I have used to read much in the Bible, and take great contentment
in it.

_Wh._ Your Majesty will find more contentment and comfort in the study of
this book than of all other books whatsoever, and therefore I do humbly
recommend the often reading of it to your Majesty.

_Qu._ I doubt you have an ill opinion of me that you so earnestly
persuade me to this, as if you thought me too backward in it.

_Wh._ I only give my humble advice to your Majesty, out of my own
experience, of the great comfort, wisdom, and true pleasure which is to
be met with in this book, and nowhere else, and that all things out of it
are of no value.

_Qu._ I am full of the same opinion; but there are too many who have not
so venerable an opinion of it as they ought to have.

_Wh._ There are indeed, Madam, too many who mock at this book, and at God
himself, whose book it is; but these poor worms will one day know that
God will not be mocked, and that they and their reproaches will sadly
perish together; and I am glad to hear your Majesty's distaste of such
wicked ones.

_Qu._ Surely every good Christian ought to distaste such men and such
opinions.

They had much more discourse upon the same subject, wherein Whitelocke
spake the more, because he found the Queen more inclined to it now than
he had perceived her to be at other times.

Being come from the Queen, he spake with Grave Eric in another room,
whose opinion was that it would be fit to sign the articles on the
morrow, and said that his father would be returned time enough to do it.
Whitelocke doubted that, by reason of his weariness after his journey, it
might not be then convenient. Eric replied, that there would be nothing
to be done that would occasion trouble, the signing and putting the seals
to the articles already prepared and agreed on was all that was to be
done. Whitelocke demanded if the power given by the Queen to her
Commissioners were sealed. Eric said it was not, but that Canterstein
would be in town this evening, and would see all done.

_April 26, 1654._

[SN: Whitelocke complains of further delays.]

Grave Eric came to Whitelocke's house, and this discourse passed between
them:--

_Whitelocke._ It seems to me somewhat strange that after all things
agreed between her Majesty's Commissioners and me, I should yet attend
three weeks to obtain one half-hour for the signing of the articles.

_Grave Eric._ The Queen's goin