dead, it was fome days before he perfectly recovered. On his master coming to town, he was informed of what had happened to his favourite fhopman; he heard the relation with the utmost astonishment, and took great pains to discover the caufe of fo fatal a refolution, but to no purpofe. However, he endeavoured to reconcile this unhappy man to life, was very tender towards him, and gave him more encouragement than ever; but the more the master did to encourage and make him happy, the more the poor wretch appeared to be dejected; in this unhappy state of mind he lived about fix months, when one morning, not appearing at his ufual time, the fervant maid went to fee if he was well, and found him very weak in bed; a day or two after, his mafter came to town, and being told of his fituation, went up to fee him, and finding him in bed, and apparently very ill, propofed fending for a physician, but the poor devil refused to take any thing, and rejected every affiftance, faying his time was nearly The nearly come. Soon after this the fervant informed her mafter that he would not have the bed made, and that she had just observed fome blood on one corner of the fheet. mafter then went up stairs again, and by lifting up the bed-clothes found that he had stabbed himself in feveral places, and that in this ftate he had lain three or four days. "When innocence and peace are gone, "How fad, how teazable to live!" SECUNDUS. On the furgeon's appearance, he refused to have the wounds infpected, and the furgeon being of opinion that is was too late to render him any kind of fervice, they let him lie ftill. The mafter foon after this preffed him much to know the mysterious cause of so much mifery, and fo unnatural an end. The dying wretch exclaimed, "a wounded confcience, who can bear." The mafter then endeavoured to comfort him, and affured him that his confcience ought not to wound him. "I know you (continued he) to be a good man, and the best of fervants." Hold! hold! exclaimed the wretch, your words are dag gers gers to my foul! I am a villain, I have robbed you of hundreds, and have long fuffered the tortures of the damned for being thus a concealed villain; every act of kindness fhewn to me by you has been long like vultures tearing my vitals. Go, fir, leave me, the fight of you causes me to suffer excruciating tortures; he then shrunk under the bed-clothes, and the fame night expired in a state of mind unhappy beyond all description. "Hope gone! the guilty never reft! "Difmay is always near; "There is a midnight in the breast, "No morn can ever cheer." Night Scenes. Terrible as the above relation is, I affure you that I have not heightened it: when an ungrateful villain is punished by his own reflections, we acknowledge it to be but just. In Morton's History of Apparitions are several fhocking stories of perfons, who by their abandoned practices, have brought on themfelves all the horrors of a guilty confcience. "O treacherous confcience; while fhe feems to fleep "And "And gives up to licence unrecall'd, "Unmarked; fee from behind her fecret ftand, "The fly informer minutes every fault, "A watchful foe! the formidable spy, Lift'ning, o'erhears the whifpers of our camp: "Our dawning purposes of heart explores, "And fteals our embryos of iniquity. "As all rapacious ufurers conceal, "Their doomsday-book from all confuming heirs, "Thus with indulgence most severe she treats, "Writes down our whole history, which death shall read, "In ev'ry pale delinquent's private ear.” Night Thoughts. But the cafe is otherwise amongst the metho difts, they work on the fears of the most virtuous; youth and innocence fall victims daily before their threats of hell and damna'tion, and the poor feeble-minded, instead of being comforted and encouraged, are often by them funk into an irrecoverable state of gloomy despondence and horrible despair. It is true that many of their hearers are not only methodistically convinced, or alarmed, but are alfo hocus pocully converted, for as fome of their preachers employ all their art and rhetoric, to alarm and terrify, fo others of them use their utmost skill, to give them affurance of their fins being pardoned; which remind us of the law-fuit, where one party fued for a forged debt, and the other produced a forged receipt. But with thoufands that is not the cafe, even with those who join their fociety, where so much of divine love, affurance, and extafies are talked of, where enthufiaftic, rapturous, intoxicating hymns are fung, and befides the unhappy mortals in their own community, thousands there are who have loft their peace of mind by occafionally hearing their sermons. And even thofe among them who have arrived to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and who at times talk of their foretaste of heaven, and of their full affurance of fins forgiven, and of talking to the Deity as familiarly as they will to one another; (all which, and much more, I have heard a thousand times) yet even those very pretended favorites of heaven are (if we believe themselves) miferable for the greatest part |