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Husb. May God keep the remembrance of it always upon thy mind, my dear.

Wife. I am assured he will do so.

She breaks out into an extasy of thankfulness, and repeats the 2d, 3d, and 4th verses of the 103d Psalm"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his bene. fits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities: who healeth all thy diseases. Who redeemed thy life from destruction: who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies."

Husb. Let me join, my dear, said her husband. Psalm lxxxvi. 2, 3, 5—“O thou my God, save thy servant that trusted in thee. Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I cry unto thee daily. For thou, O Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee."

Wife. Psalm lxxxviii. 9, 10-" Lord, I have called daily upon thee, I have stretched out my hands unto thee. Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee?"

Husb. My dear, I will be an echo to all thy breathings of this kind. Psalm xcii. 1, 2-"It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord; and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High; to show forth thy loving kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night." Wife. Psalm cii. 11, 24-" I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days. My days are like a shadow that declineth, and I am withered like grass." Psalm cxvi. 1-3-"I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice, and my supplications; because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I hve."

Husb. "The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that are bowed down. He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will bear their cry, and will save them. The Lord is high unto all

them that call upon him, to all them that call upon him in truth."

They continued thus in this blessed extasy of praising and giving thanks to God for some time every day; and whenever he came into the chamber to see her, he came always with some comforting text of scripture in his mouth, which he had found out while he had been absent, and this way of conversation between them lasted till she was thoroughly well; when, being come down stairs, and beginning to take upon her again the affairs of her family, after having been at church, to render more solemnly her thanks to God in public for her recovery, she called her husband to her, and began this short discourse with him.

Wife. My dear, now God has been pleased to give me a new life, and restore me to thee, and to my family; it is my part to testify my thankfulness to his goodness, by a new way of living; and therefore I wish you would begin with a solemn giving thanks in the family, at your usual time of family worship.

Husb. With all my heart, my dear.

Wife. You shall see, my dear, I shall no more discountenance the service and worship of God in my family, as I formerly did, to my shame be it spoken.

Husb. Do not mention that any more, my dear; I hope it is forgotten above. He remembereth our sins no more, and it is meet it should be forgotten with me.

Wife. But I shall never forget to mention it with shame and reproach upon myself, as long as I live; and therefore it is that I desire to be now the first to promote and forward that blessed work which I was so much the hindrance of before.

Husb. I rejoice, my dear, at the encouragement you will give to our doing the duty of our station: but the bare performance of a course of worship is the meanest part of what is required: our whole lives must be squared accord

ing to those rules which God has set us to walk by, that we may adorn the profession we make of religion, and "walk in the commandments and ordinances of God blameless." Luke i. 6.

Wife. My dear, I am not supposing that the form of our duty is the substance of it: but as it is true, that there may be the outward performance without the heart, it is as true, that where the heart is engaged, there will be no omission of the outward performance: and therefore I first thought myself obliged to give you this assurance of my willingness to comply with the outward performance, and the rather because of what is past.

Husb. My dear, let us have no more reflections on what is past between us; the remembrance of it is, with great satisfaction, buried with me.

Wife. But, my dear, you must allow me to look back with regret, and keep it always in my view; I shall endeavour to remember you of it no otherwise, than by showing you the reverse of it in my future behaviour.

Husb. That shall be a remembrance that will issue only in praises and thankfulness to God's infinite goodness, and in an increase, if that be possible, of my affection too, and delight in thee, while I live.

Wife. First, then, my dear, be satisfied and assured I have entirely done with the follies of my former life, and that I shall throw away no more time at the play-house, or in gaming, those thieves of the affections, and prodigal wasters of time; which time I have learned to know the value of, at the appearance of eternity; and I hope I have been furnished with knowledge from experience how to employ it to better advantage.

[He embraces her with tears of joy running down his cheeks.]

Husb God of his infinite mercy support those resolu

tions.

Wife. My dear, why do you show a concern at it? why those tears?

Husb. They are tears of joy, my dear, tears proceeding from a satisfaction otherwise inexpressible.

Wife. Are they not mingled with some doubt, and proceeding from some fear, that I shall break in again upon those resolutions, as I have oftentimes done before, and as many people do after their death-bed astonishments are over?

Husb. No, my dear, I hope God, in whose strength you have made those vows, will give you grace and strength to keep them.

Wife. My dear, those thoughts of mine are not digested into formal vows and protestations; things which, often being made in our strength, we are justly forsaken by the Divine assistance in, and are left to break and fall from, relapsing with greater violence into the very sins we in that manner abjure. But I find my heart so fully convinced of the folly and vanity of those diversions, the unsatisfying, uninstructing pleasures in them, which at death we would give millions to retrieve, and the many other attending snares they are inseparable from, that I look on them with the utmost detestation, and reproach myself with the greatest admiration, at the influence which those things had upon me.

Husb. My dear, this is a greater assurance to me of the stability of thy resolutions, than a thousand formal oaths and vows against them; which, as you well observe, being often made in our own strength, God is pleased for our mortification, to leave us to break, and which also the devil never gives over soliciting us to forget and undervalue.

Wife. Well, my dear, I hope I shall never alter my sentiments of these things; and you may, I hope, depend upon it, that neither the practice itself, nor the company that used to make those things delightful to me, will ever be tolerable to me again.

Husb. My dear, you must be civil to your acquaint

ance.

Wife. Truly it will be with difficulty that I shall be so to some of them; and I shall miss no occasion of wearing out the acquaintance with them, especially that of Sir Anthony and my Lady Lighthead.

Husb. I believe, my dear, their company can be little diversion to you; I cannot think they ever really were; they have so little in them, I think it was impossible.

Wife. They have been engines in the hand of the devil to do me mischief, and to make me run a dreadful length in my own ruin, both of soul and body.

Hush. It must be by mere drollery and mimic then, for they have neither of them any such thing as solid wit or agreeable behaviour.

Wife. It has been by that bewitching thing called gallantry and honour, by which my lady especially, as it were, bantered me out of my sense of all kind of duty either to God or man,-made me think it below me to regard relative obligations, and ungenteel to be bound by the duties either of a child to my father, or of a wife to my husband.

Husb. She has done thee no harm in the main, I hope. Wife. She has employed me, my dear, these five years, in diligently laying up a vast stock for repentance, and making work for tears and reproaches, as long as I live.

Husb. Those things often end worse, my dear; I fear they will end worse with them.

Wife. If the end is any thing with me but ruin of soul and body, it must be the effect of infinite mercy and the free grace of God.

Husb. And is not that a blessed fruit?

Wife. But in the mean time it is a fountain of secret regret, self-abhorrence, constant reproaches, and sighs that break the very soul. This is the fruit I have of those things whereof I am now ashamed.

Husb. A blessed fruit it is, however, in the end, viz. the peaceable fruit of righteousness to the saving of the soul.

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