Note 19 — THE LIFE OF COWPER. PART THE FIRST. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Dr. Conyers.—The circumstances attending the death of this truly pious and eminent servant of God are too affecting not to be deemed worthy of being recorded. He had ascended the pulpit of St. Paul's, Deptford, of which he was rector, and had just delivered his text, "Ye shall see my face no more," when he was seized with a sudden fainting, and fell back in his pulpit: he recovered, however, sufficiently to proceed with his sermon, and to give the concluding blessing, when he again fainted away, was carried home, and expired without a groan, in the sixty-second year of his age, 1786. The affecting manner of his death is thus happily adverted to in the following beautiful lines:—
Sent by their Lord on purposes of grace, Thus angels do his will, and see his face; With outspread wings they stand, prepar'd to soar, Declare their message, and are seen no more.
Underneath is a Latin inscription, of which the following is the translation.
I have sinned. I repented. I believed. I have loved. I rest. I shall rise again. And, by the grace of Christ However unworthy, I shall reign.