Fr. How came you to reach my case so effectually, and so very particularly?

Cit. Not that I know any thing of it, I assure you; but I am too much concerned; I know one too like it.

Fr. It is my case exactly, as I will tell you at large. Cit. But before you come to that part, pray tell me how you came to link yourself to such a family of heathens. I know you had been otherwise taught.

Fr. I'll answer you in one word-money! money! This was the snare; the devil laid the hook, and I bit at the bait. It is true, I was better taught, and my father had proposed several tolerable matches for me; agreeable women, valuable for their virtue, of religious education, and with good portions too, with whom I might have been very happy; but I rejected them all.

Cit. You have been very ill advised.

Fr. No, indeed, I have not been advised at all; but I got the cant of your town-gentlemen at my tongue's end, and made it my catch-word for a long time, viz. that I cared not what religion my wife was of, or whether she had any religion or no, if she had but money; and now I am filled with my own desires. Nor were my measures for furnishing myself with a wife less extravagant than the humour I professed to act by; for as I cared not whom I took, so I cared not where I found her: and as he that abandons himself is justly abandoned by Providence, so, in pursuit of the idol I worshipped, I went to the temple of wickedness, the play-house, a thing I had not been bred to I assure you; and, when the devil had me in his bounds, he took care to hold me fast: there I chose me a wife.

Cit. I thought you said you chose for money? Fr. Yes, yes, so I did too; I was showed her there for a fortune.

Cit. And perhaps missed your aim too.

Fr. No, no, I have the idol, and the idolatry too. I have the money and the woman, but not the wife. She is

no wife to me, nor does she concern herself about the duty of a wife to do it, or to know it.

Cit. Then I shall find she has very little love for you.

Fr. I cannot say, but that, if I would have conformed to her wicked abominable loose way of living, she would have loved me well enough; but, as soon as she found my way was different from what she expected, she became so uneasy and indifferent, that it grew up to a perfect contempt; and it often makes such breaches between us, as in time must certainly root out all manner of conjugal affection on either side.

Cit. It is no doubt very afflicting to you, especially if you have a real love for her.

Fr. I confess, I cannot say but it wears out what love I had for her, apace; it is impossible, while I abhor her conduct, and cannot reclaim her, that I can preserve my affection. Virtuous love is founded upon two things only, both which are wanting in her, merit and suitability. What merit can there be in one who appears to have a general contempt of all that is good? And what suitability can there be in tempers so extremely opposite?

Cit. Well, but it is afflicting to you too, I dare say.
Fr. Indeed it is so many ways.

Cit. And without doubt, as I observed before, it is a strange obstruction to you in the exercise of your duty in your family; for what performance of duty, what good government of servants or children, what religious order can there be in a family where constant breaches obstruct the charity and understanding between those upon whom the performance and support of those duties lie? I know it by myself, there can be no family-worship where there is no family love. Who can kneel down to pray with those that ridicule and contemn it? For my part, I do not think it a husband's duty in such a case; let the blame be on those who are the cause.

Fr. Though you say true in part, yet I cannot go your length neither. I acknowledge it is a sad obstruction to

the carrying on a religious government in the family, and the first beginnings of this refractory carriage of my wife were a great snare to me that way; nay, I had almost thrown up all family religion, in compliment to her folly: and doubtless, if I had, all personal religion had gone after it; but, I bless God, I got the better of her in that point.

Cit. I wish you would give me some account of your management then, for a reason that I will tell you after

ward.

Fr. Alas! it is a long melancholy story, and will be but of small use to you.

Cit. It will be of great use, I assure you, and may do more good than you imagine. There are other people in the world in your case, and example is often a caution and direction to others.

Fr. Nay, you will make sad work if you propose me for an example to any body. I am fit for nothing but a memento mori, a beacon, or buoy, to show where the rock lies that I have split upon.

Cit. Leave that part to farther discourse, and pray let me into the story, that I may know how you managed yourself in the matter of religious worship in your family. I assure you, there's a great deal depends upon the question, and more upon the answer.

Fr. Why, then, I'll tell you as distinctly as I can, not to make the story too long.-When first I married, I continued some time in the family of Sir Richard whose sister my wife was, and with whom she lived, her father and mother being dead. The family, you know, had never been famous for any thing of religion. As for Sir Richard, he was no hypocrite; for, to give him his due, as he practised nothing, so he professed nothing. He really made no pretence to religion; nay, so far are they from any sense of religion in that family, that I never heard any one, till very lately, say grace at the table, or return thanks after meat, or ask any body else to do it; except in compli

ment, when any clergyman happened to be there, or except as I shall have occasion to tell you in the consequence of this story.

Cit. That's a strange family, indeed.

Fr. It would be strange if they should be otherwise, in a house where you have nothing but luxury, rioting, gaming, swearing, and drinking, all day and all night; master, and mistress, and servants, all alike.

Cit. How could you think of tying yourself to such a family?

Fr. Nay, that's unkind, after what I have said already: the thing is done and over. I told you the wretched reason of it, the business now is to tell you the story.

Cit. I ask you pardon. Pray go on.

Fr. I lived there, as I tell you, near half a year, till some apartments which my wife desired to have added to my own house were finished.

Cit. And were you not heartily tired of such a heathenish life?

Fr. Let me tell you, my friend, with sorrow, I really cannot say I was at first; and let all wise men beware how they make an irreligious way of living too familiar to them. I can assure them, by sad experience, it is very dangerous, and they will run great risk of their principles; for habits of levity grow insensibly natural, sapping the foundation of all religious inclination, and preparing the mind to approve the practice. I was new married; the circumstance joined with the usage of the family, and it seemed to be a time when mirth and diversion might be reasonably indulged.

Cit. That's true, but not so as to exclude religion.

Fr. I know that very well; but what could I do? I was not master of the house, it was none of my business to meddle with things there, and it was too soon to begin to dictate to my wife; and, besides, do I not confess to you, that my heart was devoured with pleasure, and engrossed with the mirth and usual jollity of the occasion, and that it

began to make all their levity natural to me?

Do I not say, every man should take heed of the example? I am sure it was a dreadful one to me.

Cit. Well, but you were there but half a year.

Fr. Do you say, but half a year; is that but a little time to live without a sense of duty, without fear, as I may say, of God or devil? But, as if it were but a little time, I must tell you it did not end there, I have worse yet behind.

Cit. But pray let me interrupt you a little. Did you never discourse with your wife all that while about it, or inquire how she liked it.

Fr. Yes, yes, I did; but I received poor sorry empty answers, such as evidently showed she made no great matter of it, and would never complain if she lived so all her days.

Cit. Pray be particular in that part if you can.

Fr. Why, I will give you a passage or two. You must know, that for three or four days, while our wedding was upon the wheel, and a pretty many friends in the house, some of the neighbouring clergy were continually there; either the minister of the parish, or of the next parish, or a gentleman's chaplain that lived about a mile off; and once or twice a Presbyterian clergyman, who kept the meetinghouse in the town, and to whom I found not Sir Richard

only, but even the minister of the parish, behaved very respectfully; and as he was a man of worth, and a very good scholar, they were very intimate together. While these were there, as I said, there was always some or other to say the grace, as they call it, at table. But as for prayers at night, that was never offered, or perhaps thought

on.

But it happened once we all went to dinner without a chaplain, and as Sir Richard made no offer to stand up, so no sooner was the dinner served up, and the ladies placed, but my lady had her knife in a boiled turkey, and we all fell to work as decently, and with as little regard to