SECTION 9.03

But where content dwells, even a poor cottage is a kingly palace, and this happiness he had all his life long; not so much minding this world, as knowing he was here as a pilgrim and stranger, and had no tarrying city, but looked for one made with hands eternal in the highest heavens: but at length was worn out with sufferings, age, and often teaching, the day of his dissolution drew near, and death, that unlocks the prison of the soul, to enlarge it for a more glorious mansion, put a stop to his acting his part on the stage of mortality; heaven, like earthly princes, when it threatens war, being always so kind as to call home its ambassadors before it be denounced, and even the last act or undertaking of his, was a labour of love and charity; for it so falling out that a young gentleman, a neighbour of Mr Bunyan’s, happening into the displeasure of his father, and being much troubled in mind upon that account, and also for that he heard his father purposed to disinherit him, or otherwise deprive him of what he had to leave; he pitched upon Mr Bunyan as a fit man to make way for his submission, and prepare his father’s mind to receive him; and he, as willing to do any good office, as it could be requested, as readily undertook it; and so riding to Reading in Berkshire, he then there used such pressing arguments and reasons against anger and passion, as also for love and reconciliation, that the father was mollified, and his bowels yearned to his returning son.

But Mr Bunyan, after he had disposed all things to the best for accommodation, returning to London, and being overtaken with excessive rains, coming to his lodgings extremely wet, fell sick of a violent fever, which he bore with much constancy and patience, and expressed himself as if he desired nothing more than to be dissolved, and be with Christ, in that case esteeming death as gain, and life only a tedious delaying felicity expected; and finding his vital strength decay, having settled his mind and affairs, as well as the shortness of time, and the violence of his disease would permit, with a constant and christian patience, he resigned his soul into the hands of his most merciful Redeemer, following his pilgrim from the City of Destruction, to the New Jerusalem; his better part having been all along there, in holy contemplation, pantings and breathings after the hidden manna and water of life, as by many holy and humble consolations expressed in his letters to several persons in prison, and out of prison, too many to be inserted at present.  He died at the house of one Mr Struddock, a grocer, at the Star on Snow Hill, in the parish of St Sepulchre’s, London, on the 12th of August 1688, and in the sixtieth year of his age, [241] after ten days’ sickness; and was buried in the new burying place near the Artillery Ground; where he sleeps to the morning of the resurrection, in hopes of a glorious rising to an incorruptible immortality of joy and happiness; where no more trouble and sorrow shall afflict him, but all tears be wiped away; when the just shall be incorporated as members of Christ their head, and reign with Him as kings and priests for ever.