It was his prayer to devote the remnant of
his days to peace and privacy. He returned to Ribblesdale (now endeared
to him by the attachments of its inhabitants, and the change which his
truly pastoral labours had produced,) in the same state of respectable
mediocrity, with regard to worldly wealth, as he enjoyed before the
commencement of the troubles; his worthy heart glowing with the honest
pride, that though he had shared in the sorrows, he had not partaken of
the spoils, of his country. His return was welcomed with rapture. He
found no pseudo-shepherd to dispute his right of reclaiming the church
he had wedded with primitive simplicity of affection. Davies had died
of an apoplexy; and Priggins, after giving indubitable proofs that
conversion was in him merely the turned coat of knavery, while, to weak
understandings and bad hearts, he made religion itself contemptible by
dressing it in the cap and bells of folly, had gradually lost all his
auditors. The return of the King made his spiritual wares wholly
unsaleable.
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