366 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. said, " What, flesh ! art thou unwilling to go to God through thefire andjaws of death .? Oh," said he, " this is a good day. He is come whom .1 have long lookedfor, and I shall be with him in glory;" and went off with a smile on his countenance.. He suffered October 16, 1660, aged sixty-one years; and his head was set upon a pole on Lon- don-bridge. Mr. Peters, it is allowed by all, intermeddled too much in state matters, andwas too much the tool of the ruling party, which evidently brought him to this disgraceful end. Few men have suffered greater infamy and reproach. He is accused of manyenormous crimes, but whetherjustly or not, we leave it with God to judge. Bishop Burnet, speaking of the triumphant death of the regicides, says, "It was indeed remarkable that Peters, a sort of enthusiastical buffoon preacher, though a very vicious man, who had beenof great use to Cromwell, and had been outrageous in pressing the king's death with the cruelty and rudeness of an inquisitor, was the man of them all that was the most sunk in hisspirit, and could not in any sortbear his punishment. He had neither the honesty to repent of it,nor the strength of mind to suffer for it as all the rest of them did. He," our author adds, " was observed all the while to be drinking some cordial liquors to keep him from fainting."+ Kennet styles him a virulent incendiary in the king's death, and says he was not fit to die, and was unable to bear up under the prospect of it. "And," he adds, " without any reflection on the wickedness,of the man, there neverwas a person suffered death so unpitied ; and, which is more, whose execution was the delight of the people, which they expressed by several shouts and acclamations, when they saw him go up the ladder, and again when the halter was putting about his neck ; but when his head was cut off, and held up aloft on the end of a spear, there was such a shout as if the people of England had acquired avictory."# Such was their loyal infatuation, brutality, and outrage! Granger says that Mr. Peters, together with his brethren, went to his 'execution with 'an air of triumph, rejoicing that he was to suffer in so good a cause. But, he adds,, it appears from this instance, and many others, that the presumption' of an enthusiast is much greater than that of a saint. He Speeches and Prayers, p. 59-62. fi Burnet's. Hist. of his Time, vol. 1. p. 162. t Kennet's Chronicle, p. 169, 282.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=