John Owen's goodbye world

The day before he died, John Owen dictated a final letter to a friend. Part of what he wrote was:

I am going to Him whom my soul hath loved, or rather who hath loved me with an everlasting love; which is the whole ground of all my consolation. The passage is very irksome and wearysome through strong pains of various sorts which are all issued in an intermitting fever . . . I am leaving the ship of the church in a storm, but whilst the great Pilot is in it the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable.

--quoted in Sinclair Ferguson, John Owen on the Christian Life (Banner of Truth, 1987), 18