Alas: he's gone! that groan, that dreadful groan,
Was the last farewell of the parting mind!
The struggling soul has bid a long adieu
To its late mansion--Fled! Ah! whither fled?
Now is all indeed over!--Poor, poor Belton! by this time thou knowest if
thy crimes were above the size of God's mercies! Now are every one's
cares and attendance at an end! now do we, thy friends,--poor Belton!--
know the worst of thee, as to this life! Thou art released from
insufferable tortures both of body and mind! may those tortures, and thy
repentance, expiate for thy offences, and mayest thou be happy to all
eternity!
We are told, that God desires not the death, the spiritual death of a
sinner: And 'tis certain, that thou didst deeply repent! I hope,
therefore, as thou wert not cut off in the midst of thy sins by the sword
of injured friendship, which more than once thou hadst braved, [the
dreadfullest of all deaths, next to suicide, because it gives no
opportunity for repentance] that this is a merciful earnest that thy
penitence is accepted; and that thy long illness, and dreadful agonies in
the last stages of it, were thy only punishment.
I wish indeed, I heartily wish, we could have seen one ray of comfort
darting in upon his benighted mind, before he departed. But all, alas!
to the very last gasp, was horror and confusion. And my only fear arises
from this, that, till within the four last days of his life, he could not
be brought to think he should die, though in a visible decline for
months; and, in that presumption, was too little inclined to set about a
serious preparation for a journey, which he hoped he should not be
obliged to take; and when he began to apprehend that he could not put it
off, his impatience, and terror, and apprehension, showed too little of
that reliance and resignation, which afford the most comfortable
reflections to the friends of the dying, as well as to the dying
themselves.
But we must leave poor Belton to that mercy, of which we have all so much
need; and, for my own part (do you, Lovelace, and the rest of the
fraternity, as ye will) I am resolved, I will endeavour to begin to
repent of my follies while my health is sound, my intellects untouched,
and while it is in my power to make some atonement, as near to
restitution or reparation, as is possible, to those I have wronged or
misled. And do ye outwardly, and from a point of false bravery, make as
light as ye will of my resolution, as ye are none of ye of the class of
abandoned and stupid sots who endeavour to disbelieve the future
existence of which ye are afraid, I am sure you will justify me in your
hearts, if not by your practices; and one day you will wish you had
joined with me in the same resolution, and will confess there is more
good sense in it, than now perhaps you will own.