My guide finishing here, I thought in my dream, that her physician entered the chamber, and feeling the lady's pulse, she asked him if he thought there were any hopes of her recovery? The doctor replied, "I am afraid, Madam, there is not." Then she fell into a fit of visible discontent, and sinfully uttered many things against the ways of the Almighty; and continued to her last, charging him with inequality.

The time of her departure being come, I saw terrible sights; her life being spent in gaiety and madness, her latter end was without honour: for no sooner was the unhappy soul drove forth from the once delicate body, now the vanquished prey of relentless Death, than she was seized by the cruel messengers of destruction, and forcibly dragged to appear at the equitable bar of a pride-resisting God; from whence, as a just reward of her unholy life, she was sent bound hand and foot to be "cast into utter darkness, where the worm dieth not, and where the fire is not quenched:" there she wept, she wailed, and gnashed her teeth. There she found many of her former companions; but, alas! their wonted mirth was departed, and horrid despair sat louring on every countenance; whilst the convulsive bowels of ever-dismal hell rolled

her impetuous billows upon them, and every single sense drank in the unutterable torment.

The miserable end of Letitia thus surveyed, I cried out, O God! who hath hardened himself against thee, and hath prospered? If a self-adoring Pharaoh says, "who is the Lord, that I should obey him?" Thou hast a Red Sea, in which he and his hosts shall be drowned. If an haughty Nebuchadnezzar say in his heart, "This is great Babylon, which I have built for the house of my kingdom, and for the glory of my majesty," the heart of a beast shall be given to him, and he shall eat grass like the oxen in the field. And if a God-forgetting lady should spend her life in the pursuit of transitory pleasures, the sequel shall prove, that she has been dead to God, whilst she lived to herself.

Then turning to my guide, I said, I perceive, Sir,

that Death is no respecter of persons, knoweth no distinctions, can neither be bribed or moved by intreaty, much less can be resisted by power. No, no, replied Veratio, Death cannot be intreated, is an utter enemy to mercy, and a perfect stranger to distinctions; the majestic prince, and the rustic peasant; the noble earl, and his servile groom; the amiable lady and the scorched cook maid, are equally the same to his indiscriminating shaft; all distinctions vanish in the grave, that common receptacle of rich and poor, noble and ignoble, beauteous and unseemly, old and young, the lordly prelate and famished curate, all ranks and degrees of men meet here on a common level; in this respect one end happeneth unto all men. People of distinction too often desire no other heaven besides the vain and fantastic pleasures of life; little considering, that, ere long, they must bid adieu to sublunary enjoyments, and the most high God hath fixed it as an invariable maxim, that the desire after must precede the enjoyment of heaven; hence, no desires after the future enjoyment of God being possessed in this life, it is not rationally to be expected that they can enter into the celestial felicity at their death.

These earthly gods, continued Veratio, are much dissatisfied if they receive not a great degree of homage from their inferiors in life; but, believe me, nothing is more common than for them at death to stand trembling under the force of self-conviction, before the judgment-seat of the King of Kings, who hath declared himself to be no respecter of per

sons.

Then, said I, woe is me for my fellow-creatures ! into what destruction has sin involved them! How few, alas! are they who know the things which make for their eternal peace, before they be for ever hid from their eyes? Unhappy, most emphatically unhappy indeed are they, whose only heaven consists of glittering dust, and whose bliss is composed of the empty honours and wretched pleasures of this seducing and bewitching world. Let honours in the

highest degree be imposed upon me, and let me enjoy all that men call happiness; what will it profit if my soul must be banished, for ever banished, from the amiable presence of my God? Can these, Veratio, ever be deemed an ample compensation for the loss of God, in his divine excellencies and glorious subsistencies? A lean, an empty heaven indeed it must be where this is wanting. O, my soul, let thy delights for ever be attracted by the refined, the sublime pleasures of our holy religion! and thou, my heart, look down with indifference upon all those fineries which worldlings so much admire!

PART IV.

HAVING thus spoken, I thought my guide, the good Veratio, led me from this to another apartment in the opposite side of this stately building; and as we entered the apartment, I heard a person, with a mournful tone of voice, thus express himself: "Few and evil have been the days of the years of my pilgrimage, a few days, and full of sorrow." What is the meaning of this? said I, this is a strange kind of saying. To which he replied, "You will understand this better hereafter." When we entered the chamber, I saw a grave man, of advanced years, who seemed to be in great distress both of body and mind; and thus he addressed some of his friends, who, it seems, had been endeavouring to comfort and strengthen him on the prospect of dissolution.

O my friends, you little know what a sinner I have been! let sinners of highest rank be thought of, and I assure you I am worse than all; yea, I am the very chief of sinners; the vilest and most unworthy creature in the world. O! how justly doth the Lord afflict me now! he leaves me not comfortless in my last trials without dreadful provocations: such provocations as make my very heart bleed to think of them: justly, alas! am I left to the scourge of an evil conscience, and made an instance of the terrible displeasure of an offended God. O, what innumerable mercies have I enjoyed at his hand! but such hath been the depravity of my nature, the sinfulness and rebellion of my life, that I have grossly abused and trampled them all under my feet; and what can I now expect, but to be for ever banished from the presence of him whose goodness I have so grossly abused, and against whom I have most ungratefully sinned. I tremble to think of enduring his displeasure; but, if I must en

dure it, I know it is my desert, and in my condemnation I will confess him righteous; for I, only I have destroyed myself.

Here he was stopped by excess of grief, which vented itself in a flood of tears, and one of his friends, who sat by him, thus replied. My dear friend, I am exceedingly surprized to hear you lay such heavy accusations against yourself. You charge yourself with the worst and basest of crimes; whereas all we, your friends and acquaintance, who have been witnesses of your conduct, are fully convinced, that ever since you made a profession of religion, your whole conversation hath been unblamable, and becoming true godliness.

To which the sick man replied: O my friend! it is that, it is that which grieves me now! O how it pains me to think, that people who could only see my outside appearance took me to be somewhat, when, alas! my own heart all along told me that I was nothing. Even now, the discovery of the pride and hypocrisy of my heart is a burden intolerable. I would fain have been sincere, it is true, and I often thought that I strove for it: but, O wretched and miserable creature that I am! I never could attain it. Sometimes, formerly, I flattered myself that I was one of the Lord's people; but now the disguise is taken off, and I am convinced that I have been, and still am, an enemy to all real righteousness, an utter stranger to the heart-purifying religion of the holy Jesus.

O! it grieves me to think how I have imposed upon the church of Christ, where I have only been an intruder, a vile tare growing up among the Lord's wheat, a filthy goat amongst the innocent sheep of the Redeemer! but now it is my greatest fear, that I shall be for ever separated from both him and them.

Here he was again stopped by the anguish of his spirit, and, after a few minutes, another friend of his, in a spirited manner, replied; My dear brother, this is only a temptation of the enemy; and such, I trust, ere long, you will find it to be. It hath pleased the Lord to withdraw from you for a moment, and, for