On his recovery he had passed from one extreme to the other, from the
misgivings of despair to the joyful assurance of salvation. He now felt
that he was accepted by God, a vessel of election to work the work of God,
and bound through gratitude "to put himself forth in the cause of the
Lord."[3] This flattering belief, the
[Footnote 1: Warwick's Memoirs, 249. Warwick had his information from Dr.
Simcott, Cromwell's physician, who pronounced him _splenetic_. Sir Theodore
Mayerne was also consulted, who, in his manuscript journal for 1628,
describes his patient as _valde melancholicus_.--Eliis, Orig. Letters, 2nd
series, iii. 248.]
[Footnote 2: Warwick, 249.]
[Footnote 3: In 1638 he thus writes of himself to a female saint, one of
his cousins: "I find that God giveth springs in a dry barren wilderness,
where no water is. I live, you know where, in Meshec, which they say
signifies prolonging,--in Kedar, which signifies blackness. Yet the Lord
forsaketh me not, though he do prolong. Yet he will, I trust, bring me to
his tabernacle, his resting place." If the reader wish to understand this
Cromwellian effusion, let him consult the Psalm cxix. in the Vulgate., or
cxx. in the English translation. He says to the same correspondent, "You
know what my manner of life hath been.
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