��Prayers and Meditations.
��Enable me, O Lord, to glorify thee for that knowledge of my Corruption, and that sense of thy wrath, which my deasease and weakness, and danger awakened in my mind 1 . Give me such sorrow as may purify my heart, such indignation as may quench all confidence in myself, and such repentance as may by the intercession of my Redeemer obtain pardon. Let the commemoration of the sufferings and Death of thy Son which I am now, by thy favour, once more permitted to make 2 , fill me with faith, hope, and charity. Let my purposes be good and my resolutions unshaken, and let me not be hindred or distracted by vain and useless fears, but through the time which yet remains guide me by thy Holy Spirit, and finally receive me to everlasting life, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
168.
June 8, 9, and 10.
In Messrs. Sotheby & Co's Auction Catalogue of May 10, 1875, Lot 116 is 'brief autographic memoranda in Latin and English of Dr. Johnson's feelings &c. on the 8th, 9th, loth, June 1784. "Very breathless and dejected" on the first date/
It was sold for half a guinea 3 .
��1 On March 20 he had written to Mrs. Thrale : ' Write to me no more about dying with a grace ; when you feel what I have felt in approaching eternity in fear of soon hearing the sentence of which there is no revoca tion, you will know the folly ; my wish is, that you may know it sooner. The distance between the grave and the remotest point of human longevity, is but a very little ; and of that little no path is certain. You knew all this, and I thought that I knew it too; but I know it now with a new con viction. May that new conviction not be vain ! ' Letters, ii. 384.
a The next day he wrote to Dr. Taylor : ' I could not have the con sent of the physicians to go to church yesterday; I therefore received the holy sacrament at home, in the room
��where I communicated with dear Mrs. Williams a little before her death.' Life, iv. 270.
Hannah More says that 'in St. Clements she partook of the holy sacrament with Johnson, the last time he ever received it in public.' Me moirs, i. 397. This must have been after his return to London less than a month before his death.
3 Johnson was during these days the guest of Dr. Adams, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford. It was on June 10 that he said : ' I would be a Papist if I could. I have fear enough ; but an obstinate rationality prevents me. I shall never be a Papist, unless on the near approach of death, of which I have a very great terrour. I wonder that women are not all Papists.' BOSWELL. 'They OGod,
�� �
