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to spend the Sabbath afternoon in religious conference and prayer, and to this exercise they invited Mr. Porterfield, which he could not refuse, by which means he was not only diverted from his former sinful practice, but likewise brought to a more watchful, and edifying behaviour in his course of life.
He married Elizabeth Knox, daughter to the famous Mr. John Knox, minister at Edinburgh, the apostle of Scotland, and she lived with him from his youth till his death. By her I have heard he had three sons: the first was called Dr. Welch, a doctor of medicine, who was killed in the low countries, and of him I never heard more. Another son he had most lamentably lost at sea, for when the ship in which he was embarked was sunk, he swam to a rock in the sea, but starved there for want of necessary food and refreshment, and when sometime afterward his body was found upon the rock, they found him dead in a praying posture upon his bended knees, with his hands stretched out, and this was all the satisfaction his friends and the world had upon his lamentable death, so bitter to his friends. Another he had who was heir to his father's grace and blessings, and this was Mr. Josias Welch, minister at Temple-Patrick in the north of Ireland, commonly called the Cock of the Conscience by the people of that country, because of his extraordinary wakening and rousing gift: he was one of that blest society of ministers, which wrought that unparalleled work in the north of Ireland, about the year 1636, but was himself a man most sadly exercised with doubts about his own salvation all his time, and would ordinarily say, That ministers was much to be pitied, who was called to comfort weak saints and had no
