be to edification. I pray you leave such railing.
Ye call the pope a bear and a banson. Either he
is a good man or an ill. Domino suo stat aut cadit.
The office of a bishop is honourable. What edifying is
this to rail? Let him alone."

But they would not let him alone, nor would they
let the abbot alone. He grew "somewhat acrased," they
said, vexed with feelings of which they had no experience.
He fell sick, sorrow and the Lent discipline
weighing upon him. The brethren went to see him in
his room, Brother Dan Woburn among the rest, who
said that he asked him how he did, and received for
answer, "I would that I had died with the good men
that died for holding with the pope. My conscience,
my conscience doth grudge me every day for it." Life
was fast losing its value for him. What was life to him
or any man when bought with a sin against his soul?
"If he be disposed to die, for that matter," the
insolent Croxton said, "he may die as soon as he will."

All Lent he fasted and prayed; and his illness grew
upon him; and at length in Passion week he thought
all was over, and that he was going away. On Passion
Sunday he called the brethren about him, and as they
stood round his bed, with their cold, hard eyes, "he
exhorted them all to charity," he implored them "never
to consent to go out of their monastery; and if it
chanced them to be put from it, they should in no
wise forsake their habit." After these words, "being in
a great agony, he rose out of his bed, and cried out and
said, 'I would to God, it would please him to take me
out of this wretched world; and I would I had died
with the good men that have suffered death heretofore,
for they were quickly out of their pain.'" * Then, half
wandering, he began to mutter to himself aloud the
thoughts which had been working in him in his
struggles; and quoting St. Bernard's words about the
pope, he exclaimed, "Tu quis es. Primatu Abel,
gubernatione Noah, auctoritate Moses, judicatu Samuel
potestate Petrus, unctione Christus. Aliae ecclesiae
habent super se pastores. Tu pastor pastorum es."
____

* Meaning, as he afterwards said, More and Fisher and the
Carthusians.
____

Let it be remembered that this is no sentimental
fiction begotten out of the brain of some ingenious
novelist, but the record of the true words and sufferings
of a genuine child of Adam, labouring in a trial too
hard for him.

He prayed to die, and in good time death was to
come to him; but not,