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.