long time kept it to myself; but I can no longer conceal it.'

"It is well for you to acknowledge your sins. But you should confess to God, as well as to your fellow-men. He has said, "acknowledge thy transgressions ;" and moreover, "He that confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall find mercy."

"No, no, I cannot approach God, I cannot meet him, I cannot ! Oh that the same grave which will soon bury my body, could bury my soul with it, oh that I might be annihilated! this is what I have long hoped for and expected; but this hope has failed me. I never before realised the meaning of that scripture," when a wicked man dieth, his expectations shall perish." All my expectations have perished. I have been for some time reviewing my past life, and during the last night, that passage kept passing like a burning arrow through my spirit, "rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Yes, I have walked in the way of my heart, and in the sight of my eyes, and now God is bringing me into judgment. The arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit. You can pray for me, but it is of no use. You are very kind; the family here are very kind; I thank you all, but you

cannot save me. MY SOUL IS DAMNED! the seal of reprobation is already upon me !'

"These last were precisely his words; and they were uttered with a pathos, a sort of calm, fixed, significant earnestness, which almost overcome us. I can never forget his expression, when he fixed his dark, restless, glassy eyes upon us and uttered these last words. Perceiving it in vain to say any thing more to him while in that state we withdrew, that he might, if possible, be composed to rest.

"The next day I called again to see him, and found him dying. His power of utterance had almost failed. I took hold of his hand, and told him it would afford us great relief to know that he left the world reconciled to God, and trusting in the Saviour's grace. His only reply was, and they were the last words I heard him utter, if the grave would bury my soul with my body, I should consider it my best friend, that would be immeasurably better for me than my present condition, or anything I have a right to expect.' After again commending him in a short prayer to the mercy of God I was obliged to leave him. In about an hour

afterwards he died."

These fearful instances of God's avenging hand fall strictly within the compass of this awful passage of Scripture. No doubt many enlightened unbelievers, who have, after a brief but fruitless and inglorious profession, apostatized from Christ, and have never

been restored, have died pretty much as they have lived, without "hope and without God in the world" (Eph. ii. 12); but yet without exhibiting in themselves any particular manifestation of God's wrath against them for their sin. Their "judgment" has seemed to "linger," and their "damnation" to "slumber" (2 Pet. ii. 3); although this will in the end only make it the more intolerable and awful.

God sometimes, however, as it were, steps out of his way to execute judgment upon a hardened reprobate, or to inflict summary punishment upon one who has more than ordinarily braved his justice; but it is as much for the benefit of others, as for the punishment of the transgressor himself. "Suppose ye," said our Lord, "that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke xiii. 2, 3). "Extraordinary examples of Divine Justice," says the English Editor of the Relation, from which we have before so largely quoted, "God never intended for a nine dayes wonder: else would hee when he exemplified Lot's wife have turned her into a statue of melting snow, not of lasting salt; which stood, as Josephus tells us, till his age, after the destruction of Jerusalem: and as some travellers report, till at this day (A. D. 1638): ut quoddam hominibus præstaret condimentum quo sapiant unde

illud caveatur exemplum (Aug. de Civit. Dei. Lib. 16, c. 30); for a season against corruption, a preservative against Apostacie.' This was remarkably so with the case of Spira, which was not only "the conversion and confirmation of sundry worthies" in his time, including the before-mentioned Vergerius, who "forsaking a rich bishopricke of Justinopolis, and tents of Antichrist, went to Basil, and dyed a worthy Protestant;"+ but has likewise, by means of its relation, been blessed to the quickening of many souls in after ages. May it have this blessed effect again.

We must conclude our observations upon the passage of Scripture which we have been considering, with some reflections upon the subject, of a practical character, without which it could scarcely be said to be complete; and for greater clearness and perspicuity we shall address them to different classes of persons.

Let us address a few words, in the first instance, to the unconverted generally.

What effect has the reading of these pages had upon you, dear fellow-sinners? Have these "words seemed to you as idle tales" which you "believe not"

Relation, pp. 178, 179.

Relation, p. 180.

(Luke xxiv. 11); or the subject one of a doubtful, curious, or speculative character, with which you have no concern? If so, we fear you have never been awakened to a sense of your position as sinners in the sight of God. You have never had any right perceptions of your obnoxiousness to God's justice on account of sin. If you know nothing of what it is to be "enlightened," to "have tasted of the heavenly gift," to have been "made a partaker of the Holy Ghost," to have "tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come," then it is manifest that, however clear your "understanding" may be in other respects, yet in this respect it is "darkened;" however alive you may be to the world, and to the things of the world, yet you are "alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in you, because of the blindness of your heart" (Eph. iv. 18). You "walk according to the course of this world" (Eph. ii. 2), and you are therefore "dead in trespasses and sins” (ver. 1). You "fulfil the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and are," therefore, for all are "by nature-the children of wrath, even as others" (ver. 3). You are yet “in the flesh," and therefore you “cannot please God" (Rom. viii. 8): "because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (ver. 7).

Then you are under the power of death eternal, because "to be carnally minded (i. e. uncouverted)