260 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. laborious exercises with great difficulty. By extreme fatigue for many years, his constitution wasworn down, and his health much impaired. He thus expressed himself in a letter to a friend " To sustain all these travels and troubles, 1 have a very weak body, subject to many diseases ; by the motions whereof; I am daily warned to remember death. My, greatest griefof all is, that my memory isquite decayed : my sight faileth ; my hearing faileth ; with other ailments, more than I can well express." While he was thus strug- gling with old age and an impaired constitution, as he was one day crossing the market-place at Durham, an ox ran at him, and pushed him down with such violence, that it was thought it would have occasioned his death. Though he survived the shock and bruises he received, he was long confined to his house, and continued lame as long as he lived. During his last sickness, he made known his apprehen- sions to his friends, and spoke of death with happy composure of mind. A few days previous to his departure, he requested that his friends, acquaintance, and dependents, might be called into his chamber ; and being raised in his bed, he delivered to each of them the pathetic exhortation of a dying man. His remaining hours were employed in prayer, andbroken conversation with select friends, speaking often of the sweet consolations of the gospel. He finished his laborious life, and entered upon his rest, March 4, 1583, aged sixty-six years. Such was the end of Mr. Bernard Gilpin, whose learning, piety, charity, labours, and usefulness, were almost un- bounded. He possessed a quick imagination, a strong memory, and a solid judgment ; and greatly excelled in the knowledge of languages, history, and divinity. He was so laborious for the good of souls, that, hewas usually called the NORTHERN APOSTLE ; and he was so universally benevolent to the necessitous, that he was commonly styled the FATHER OF THE POOR. He was a thorough puritan in principle, and a most conscientious nonconformist in practice, but against separation. Being full of faith and good works, hewas accounted a saint by his very enemies; and was at last gathered in as a shock of corn fully ripe. By his last will and testament, he left half of his property to the poor of Houghton, and the other half to a number of poor scholars at theuniversity.. * Wood's Athena than. vol. i. p. 703.
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