V. COALS FOR FAGOT.²²²²Prov.xxv. 22.

IN the days of King Edward the Sixth, when Bonner was kept in prison, reverend Ridley having his bishopric of London, would never go to dinner at Fulham without the company of Bonner’s mother and sister;²³²³Fox’s Martyrol. vol. iii. p. 432. the former always sitting in a chair at the upper end of the table; these guests were as constant as bread and salt at the board, no meal could be made without them.

O the meekness and mildness of such men as must make martyrs! Active charity always goes along with passive obedience.

How many ministers’ wives and children now-a-days are outed of house and home, ready to be starved! How few are invited to their 128tables who hold the sequestrations of their husbands’ or fathers’ benefices! Yea, many of them are so far from being bountiful, that they are not just, denying or detaining from those poor souls that pittance which the Parliament hath allotted for their maintenance.