Early piety, exemplified in the life and death of Mr. Nathanael Mather, who ...…

After the many wearisome hours, days▪ months, nay, years, that I have spent it humane Literature; and after my many toilsome Studies in those Hours when the General silence of every House in Town, proclaimed it high time for me to put a stop unto my working Mind, and urged me to afford some Re• unto my Eyes, which have been almo•• put out by my Intenseness on my Studies; after these, I say, and when […] am ready to do it: Oh how unwilling am I to do it, considering; How litt•• I have served God in the day!

After the many wearisom hours, days▪ months, nay, years, that I have spent it humane Literature; and after my many toilsom Studies in those Hours when the General silence of every House in Town, proclaimed it high time for me to put a stop unto my workin• Mind, and urged me to afford some Re• unto my Eyes, which have been almo•• put out by my Intenseness on my Studies; after these, I say, and when 〈…〉 am ready to do it: Oh how unwilling am I to do it, considering; How litt•• I have served God in the day!

While he thus devoured Books, it came to pass that Books devoured him. His weak Body would not bear the Toils, and Hours, which he used himself unto; and his Neglect of Moderate Exercise, joined with his Excess of Immoderate Lucubration, soon destroyed the Digestion which his Blood should have had in the last Elaboration of it: by that time sixteen Winters had snowed upon him, he began to be Distempered, with many Pains and Ails, especially in some of his Joints, which at last were the Gates of Death unto him; not without such very afflictive touches of Melancholy, too, as made him sometimes to Write himself, Deodatus Melancholicus. This was his way of living, shall I say, or of Dying? And the success of this Diligence was according to the Temper of it Great. When he was but Twelve Years Old he was admitted into the College, by strict Examiners: And many Months after this passed not, before he had accurately gone over all the Old Testament in Hebrew, as well as the New in Greek, besides his going through all the Liberal Sciences, before many other designers for Philosophy do so much as begin to look into them. He Commenced Bachelor of Arts, at the Age of