all your sorrows; trusting in God, that you are now blessed with repentance unto life.-But continue your story.

Chipm. After my birth, it was near seven years before my mother had another living child; but her constitution having been broken by different miscarriages, she did not long survive the birth of my sister. Before I was seduced, by that man who has left me to curse my folly, it was my greatest consolation, to alleviate my father's sorrows, and to be my husband's joy. And when but a child, I could in those days, with the greateat tenderness, wait on my dear mother till I closed her eyes in death; and if all the world had told me, that I should have been such a monster of iniquity; I could not have believed them!

Loveg. Yes; but then you did not know the deceitfulness and wickedness of your sinful heart: you had nothing proposed to you which was calculated to draw forth its evil propensities into action.

Chipm. No; nor for some time afterwards could I have believed that I should have turned out so vile a creature. Though so young as I then was, I cannot tell how much I was affected at my mother's death; and how I wept while I followed her to the grave; and afterwards how glad I was to wait on my dear father, who would never marry again because his family was already too large; and what diligence did I then show, though so young, to my poor brother and my sickly

sister;

Wor. And what became of your sickly sister?

Chipm. Sir from her birth she continued in an ill state of health; grew quite deformed; and when she was about thirteen years of age, died of a decline. I followed her to the grave, and saw her laid upon my mothers' coffin, who had been buried about twelve years before. After hearing no more than this, surely you will say 1 am the most abominable wretch that

ever lived

Wor. But we wait to hear more of your story; especially that part of it whereby you were led into your present unhappy situation of distress.

Chipm. Oh Sir! the nearer I come to that part of my most vile conduct, the more I feel myself ashamed to relate it.

Loveg. But the more you are ashamed of your conduct, the better we shall be inclined to assist and relieve you. Tell us the whole without reserve.

Chipm. Sir, there lived a young man in our town, whose name was Chipman; he was an early scholar of my father's, and from his attention and good disposition, he much esteemed him. He was by occupation a carpenter and joiner, and having an opportunity to do some business for himself, he again returned to my father for some farther instructions in drawing, and arithmetic. It was from that time a connexion was formed between us. After he was somewhat established in business, he mentioned to my father his attachments and inclinations towards me; and I am sure from the purest motives. I also was happy to confess my real affection towards him.—— O! how it cuts my heart to tell, how my dear father acted on this occasion. He called me his dearest right hand; I was his dear Jemima, the name he gave me ; being his only earthly comforter, after all his most severe family afflictions; but, however ill he could spare me from his family yet as he had no fortune to give me, he would not prevent so good an offer for my future settlement in life; as Mr. Chipman was a very sober and industrious man, and advancing in a good line of business. Soon afterwards we were married. [She again weeps and then adds,] and I shall never, never forget, when my dear father gave me away at the Church, after the service, how he embraced and kissed me; then, how he embraced me and my husband both together, intreating him to be tender and affectionate to the best of daughters, and me to be obedient and loving to the very worthy man that was now become my husband! and O! to treat

such a parent, and such a husband, as I have done, did ever such a monster live before?

Loveg. But then you were a stranger to those divine principles, whereby the power of corruption can be effectually subdued. You have now been arrested in the mad career of sin; and your vile misconduct is become your grief.

Wor. By what you have hitherto related, if some parts of your conduct may have been highly culpable, yet we rather feel for you as an object of commiseration than of contempt. But when you have given us a farther narration of those circumstances, which have brought you into this present state of embarrassment, we shall be better able to give you our advice.

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Chipm. O Sir! there never lived a happier pair than Mr. Chipman and I were. For above eighteen months after our marriage, it seemed to be our whole study to please and oblige each other and when 1 became pregnant, he was doubly attentive to make me the happiest woman upon earth; and how have I rewarded him by my brutal conduct! I have done enough to send the best of husbands with a broken heart to the grave. [Again her grief is excessive.]

Loveg. Let not these exclamations against yourself interrupt your story; we serve "the God of patience," and with much patience and forbearance, we wish to hear you farther.

Chipm. About a year and a half after our marriage, that artful vile man, Sir Charles Dash, who has an estate in our parts, though he seldom lives there, began to lay his plans for my ruin. He first used to feign excuses to call at our house, when he knew my husband was from home. In the midst of his filthy and frothy conversation, I too often gave him a smile, when I should have turned upon him with indignation and disgust; though for a while I treated all other familiarities with the abhorrence they deserved. Mr.

Chipman, my husband, now began to get into a considerable way of business in the building line; and was frequently called at a distance from home, to undertake the alterations and repairs of gentlemen's houses in the neighbourhood; and for a while, I could count the hours with anxiety until his return ; until I had the folly to suffer that vile wretch to entangle me in his affections, who took every opportunity to accomplish my ruin, through my husband's necessary long absence from home.

Wor. But this accidental circumstance, must be considered as an alleviation of your crime.

Chipm. O no Sir!-I should have been disgusted at every word he said. And while I continued for a season, to resist his vile designs, he would laugh at my prudish formality, and ask me, how I could confine myself to be the drudge of a carpenter, when I had sufficient charms to manage the person and fortune of the first man of pleasure in the land? and how deservedly I now suffer for submitting to the disgustful flatteries of this abominable seducer! [To Mr. Lovegood] O Sir! had I been possessed of the real influence of that religion, which since then, I have heard you preach; the empty flattery of this vile seducer, would never have been my ruin.

Loveg. Had you then, no religious impressions to guard your heart, against the horrid purposes of this artful man?

Chipm. O Sir! I am sorry to say, they were so faint, that I knew not how, either answer his flatteries, or resist his importunities; while on every occasion he would treat the religion of the Bible, with the utmost ridicule and contempt.

Loveg. Then, to the eternal reproach of infidelity, it seems he ever declared himself to be one of that stamp; and knew that he could never accomplish his vile designs to ruin you and the peace of your family,

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until he could persuade you that the pure and holy religion of the Bible, was not worth your minding.*

Chipm. Sir, he was ever telling me, that the injunctions of a strict adherence to the marriage contract was nothing but an artful design of the priests, and calculated only to restrain our natural passions, which all had a right to indulge as they chose best. Loveg. And could you give credit, to all this abominable and beastly talk?

Chipm. Credit to such talk!-O no Sir! but infatuated by his enchanting promises, and by the splendour of his appearance in life, my ruin was accomplished. What could possess me to be so beastly and so vile? [She weeps excessively.]

Wor. [To Mr. Lovegood.] As this unhappy young woman has told us the substance of her story, it appears to me, that notwithstanding her indiscretion in her unguarded days; it may not be impractible to restore her to her former connexions, and to render her future life a comfort to herself and family. Chipm. Sir, it is utterly impossible. Wor. Why should you say so?

Chipm. I shall be eternally ashamed, again to enter a town, in which I must live the contempt, the abhorrence, and the disgrace of all who know me.

The reading of Sir Charles, was entirely limited to the writings of the modern infidels of the day; from them he had collected the following passages, which he would quote with an air of impious triumph: "The God of the philosophers, of the Jews, and the Christians, is nothing more than a chimera and a phantom." He was fool enough to conceive, from another Atheist, that "the wonders of nature are far from proclaiming a God, and that they are but the necessary effects of matter prodigiously diversified ;" so that according to these fools, there is infinite wisdom, contrivance, and order in dead matter. In the midst of all his wickedness he would say," there is no means of knowing, whether there be a God or not: whether there be any difference between good and evil :" and, if God be the author of evil, according to Dr. Priestley, Sir Charles's notions are nearly right; and a Socinian and an Atheist are no very distant relations. And Sir Charles was so near a brute, he could not bear the thoughts of life without his body; he would therefore say, that "the immortality of the soul was a VOL. II.

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