gone but a little way in my reflections, I hope they shall increase yet it is the anguish of my very soul, that I have sold myself, as it were, to the devil, for the most empty unsatisfying things called pleasures, that can be imagined, and that in themselves cannot bear the name of pleasures: that to gratify the madness of youth, I have given a full swing to every appetite, an unrestrained liberty to every passion, and a loose to the wicked gust of an unbridled perverse inclination: if you were able to know how loathsome these things look now, when I hope my judgment is a little at liberty to discern better, you would see nothing in all the pleasures of life, but madness, folly, and a making sad work for repentance: and let me add, sister, that it is my opinion, that this is a great part of the insufferable torments of hell, (viz.) that they see with dreadful self-reproaches, for what sordid trifles, what empty, abhorred, ridiculous things they have forfeited the highest felicity, and lost themselves, soul and body, for ever. I am but a mean teacher, sister; you have been a good instructor to me, though you have no sense of it yourself; I pray God

open your eyes.

The sister was partly provoked and partly affected with this surprising discourse of her brother; and falling out into tears, their discourse ended, and Sir Richard went away; going soon after to find her husband, with whom he hoped to have had a long discourse, relating both to his sister and to himself.

But he was disappointed; for when he came to her husband's house, he was just gone away for London. Sir Richard was so disturbed at his being gone, that he could hardly be persuaded from riding after him; but the servant assured him it would be impossible to overtake him, so he gave it over.

The servant wrote an account of it to his master, as is related above; and that circumstance added to his eager desire of coming home, not doubting but something extraordinary had happened about his wife; and it was very happy that

he had these thoughts, on account of what fell out afterwards, as shall be related in its course.

But Sir Richard's business was of another kind; we have seen what discourse he had been engaged in with his sister; the serious and kind arguings he made use of to move her to a sense of her duty to her husband, to her family, and indeed to herself; and especially what answers she gave him how profane, and even blasphemous, representing a mind perfectly destitute of the knowledge of good things, and of any desire to be instructed; contemning God, religion, duty, the worship of God, or the common regard to his commands.

:

Sir Richard was a man as void of religion as could well be supposed of any man bred up in a Christian country: he was a drunken, swearing, ranting gentleman; a man of pleasure; kept his hounds and horses, loved his sport and his bottle, and had his companions for the purpose; drank hard, kept great company; and in a word, swam down the common stream of vice, as a man that never looked behind him. As to religion he used to say, he had as much as a gentleman of 20007. a year had occasion for; he knew very little of it, and minded it less,-nor was there the least concern about such things made in the family.

But otherwise, he was a man of a clear head understood the world and himself perfectly well: was, as is said before, of an excellent temper, easily reasoned into or out of any thing very sincere, and without any ill meaning to his neighbours; beneficent to his tenants; compassionate to all: and charitable, not from a principle of religion, but of mere good nature.

When first he took notice of this breach between his sister and her husband, he was extremely concerned to make it up: but when he came to know the reason of it, he was as much surprised,-his reason dictated, that her husband was in the right, that God was to be worshipped 1 and he was astonished that a woman should make it a crime, or a thing to dislike any man for: revolving those things in

his mind, and being by the natural consequence of the facts, and of his reason, led to take the part of her husband; that consequence came back upon himself, and brought the conviction home to his own case.

Immediately after he came out of his sister's chamber, he went into his own parlour, where musing a while upon what they had been talking of, Well, says he, it is plain my brother is right, he is a good man, and my sister is a brute to use him thus, for doing what every body must own is his duty to do. While he revolved the case thus in his mind, the word duty seemed to bear a kind of emphasis in it, more than ordinary, and hung upon his lips. She is a brute, says he to himself, for it was his duty; he ought not to omit it to gratify her, for it was his duty; he must have acted against his conscience if he had done otherwise, for he knew it was his duty. This followed him so much, and the word duty lay upon his thoughts so much, that he could think of nothing else; and some time after, taking a walk in his garden, he began to talk to himself thus.

Let me see, I justify this man upon the foot of this word duty,-what is duty? And what sense are we to take the word in, as it is used in this case? Do I understand it myself? Then he revolved it in his thoughts farther, thus:

Duty is a debt, not of money to be paid, but of service to be done.

Duty is a homage; it is due from a vassal to its lord; a subject to its sovereign; a creature to its Maker; and indeed from all creatures to their Maker.

He halted there; and with a kind of smile, but with just reflection, added, Now I shall hook myself in; I need not inquire much about it; I am sure I have done none of my duty.

I have paid no homage to him that made me; I am an ungrateful, unthankful dog, to him that has given me life estate, and every thing I have in the world.

I have lived as if there was nothing due from me because I am a gentleman. Well, says he, I love my bro

ther -; though I do not do my duty, I must acknowledge he doth his, and I can't but value him for it; and that brute my sister, what can she be made of, that she should break with him for that which he does, and which we all ought to blush for not doing? I'll go and talk to her about it again; sure I shall make her change her mad resolution.

All this was upon the discourse already related; and he had by this little turning the thing in his thoughts, mightily possessed himself with the notion of serving and worshiping God, as a homage due to him, and a debt most reasonable to be paid.

The power of natural religion having gone thus far, be was prepared by it to have an awful reverence for the serious part of religion, and a love to those that practised it; and, as we have seen the profaneness and wickedness of his sister brought him to a horror of her practice; especially that kind of triumphing in sin, which both she and he too had been always guilty of before: it is true, he was not yet brought to a sense of the nature of offending God, rebelling against divine love, the insulting sovereign mercy, and acting in opposition to the dominion of grace in the heart in a word, he was not come to the two great fundamentals of religion, faith and repentance; but we shall soon see him advance.

The wicked and blasphemous answers his sister gave to every thing that he offered to say in defence of religion, filled him with horror; his soul abominated to see religion, the name and worship of God made a jest of, and the honour due to God his Maker treated with contempt, and yet he owned himself to be a creature void of all religion himself, it was true that the pleading of religion was perfectly casual to him, but his reason told him he was right; and it was a shock to his very understanding, at last to think, that he was then strongly pleading for what he did not practise.

Wherefore it often retorted upon him, even in their very

discourse, I am telling her of duty, what is her duty,-and of her husband doing his duty; but what is my duty? And why do I not inquire a little about that? This reflection brought that expression again from him, mentioned a little before, p. 88, when he told her she had been preaching to him, and her words were as good as a sermon ; for, says he, you have exposed the folly and brutality of an irreligious conversation so much, by your way of practising it, that I resolve from this time to amend my life, &c. And this he repeated often to himself.

This I may venture to call a full conviction, and she gave him abundance of other occasions to increase it several times after the first; for she talked so profanely, and had such horrid expressions, that I have not thought it proper to acquaint the mouths, especially of young readers, with the very sound of the words; it is enough to tell you, that she struck him with a kind of terror, to hear her blaspheme and insult her Maker; and he was carried to that length by it afterward, as to desire her, as civilly as his passion would allow him, to leave his house, telling her very plainly, that he could not suffer his Maker to be used at that rate in his hearing, or under his roof.

But the good knight, for such I may now begin to call him, received a wound from her in the beginning of his convictions that had like to have proved mortal to his reformation, and to have driven him back to his former loose course of life, merely by despair.

This was when she told him, upon his saying he would pray for her, that he might as well let it alone, intimating that his prayers would not be heard; for, says she, “the prayer of the wicked is an abomination," &c. See p. 88. This expression, as it is observed there, was a stab to his heart, and he stopped in his discourse, looked pale, and his sister was frighted, thinking he would have fainted. He recovered, indeed, and talked a great while with he. But the arrow was shot into his vitals, and the poison drank up his spirits; he hastened the discourse with his sister, and