PERKINS. 133 cross still standeth in the window, and why we turn our- selves toward the end of the chapel, at the end of the first and second lesson. We are commanded to flee from every appearance of evil.-These things I have said to satisfy every man in the congregation, and to shew that I despise not authority : which, if this will do, God be praised ; but- if not, God's will be done. I confess most freely this thing. I did not seek the disquiet of this con- gregation ; yet I might have spoken these things at a more convenient time. It does not appear whether Mr. Perkins's defence gave satisfactionto his ecclesiastical judges, or whether he suffered someparticular censure or further prosecution. This, how- ever, was not the end of his troubles. He was apprehended, with many others, and carried before the star-chamber, on account of the associations. Upon his appearance before this high tribunal, he took the oath ex officio, discovered the associations, and confessed that Mr. Cartwright, Mr. Snape, and others, had met at Cambridge, to confer about matters of , discipline.t He was once or twice convened before the high commission ; and though his peaceable behaviour, and great fame in the learned world, are said to have procured him a dispensation from the persecutions of his brethren,1: he was, nevertheless, deprived by Archbishop Whitgift.§ Mr. Perkins, writing at the above period, in 1592, when many of his brethren were cruelly imprisoned for nonconformity, styles it, " The year of the last patience of the saints.') Towards theclose of life, Mr. Perkins was much afflicted with the stone, the frequent attendant on a sedentary life, which he bore with remarkable patience. In the last fit of his complaint, a little before his death, a friend praying for the mitigation of his pains, he cried out, "Hold, hold ! do not pray so ; but pray the Lord to give me faith and patience, and then let him lay on me what he pleases." At length his patience had its perfect work. He was finally delivered from all his pains, and crowned with immor- tality and eternal life, in the year 1602, aged forty-four years.1i He was born in the first, and died in the last year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He left the world rich Baker's MS. Collec. vol. xxx. p. 292, 293. + Strype's Whitgift, p. 254, 371, 372. l Neal's Puritans, vol. i. p. 509. Granger's Biog. Hist. vol. i. p. 219. Churton's Life of Nowell, p. 323. 2 Fuller's Hist. of Cam. p. 157.
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