by Daniel Defoe
another shape, thanthey did before. The greatest and best things, the views of felicity,the joy, the griefs of life, were quite other things; and I had nothingin my thoughts but what was so infinitely superior to what I had knownin life, that it appeared to me to be the greatest stupidity in natureto lay any weight upon anything, though the most valuable in this world.
The word eternity represented itself with all its incomprehensibleadditions, and I had such extended notions of it, that I know not howto express them. Among the rest, how vile, how gross, how absurd didevery pleasant thing look!--I mean, that we had counted pleasantbefore--especially when I reflected that these sordid trifles were thethings for which we forfeited eternal felicity.
With these reflections came, of mere course, severe reproaches of myown mind for my wretched behaviour in my past life; that I hadforfeited all hope of any happiness in the eternity that I was justgoing to enter into, and on the contrary was entitled to all that wasmiserable, or had been conceived of misery; and all this with thefrightful addition of its being also eternal.
I am not capable of reading lectures of instruction to anybody, but Irelate this in the very manner in which things then appeared to me, asfar as I am able, but infinitely short of the lively impressions whichthey made on my soul at that time; indeed, those impressions are not tobe explained by words, or if they are, I am not mistress of wordsenough to express them. It must be the work of every sober reader tomake just reflections on them, as their own circumstances may direct;and, without question, this is what every one at some time or other mayfeel something of; I mean, a clearer sight into things to come thanthey had here, and a dark view of their own concern in them.
But I go back to my own case. The minister pressed me to tell him, asfar as I thought convenient, in what state I found myself as to thesight I had of things beyond life. He told me he did not come asordinary of the place, whose business it is to extort confessions fromprisoners, for private ends, or for the further detecting of otheroffenders; that his business was to move me to such freedom ofdiscourse as might serve to disburthen my own mind, and furnish him toadminister comfort to me as far as was in his power; and assured me,that whatever I said to him should remain with him, and be as much asecret as if it was known only to God and myself; and that he desiredto know nothing of me, but as above to qualify him to apply properadvice and assistance to me, and to pray to God for me.
This honest, friendly way of treating me unlocked all the sluices of mypassions. He broke into my very soul by it; and I unravelled all thewickedness of my life to him. In a word, I gave him an abridgment ofthis whole history; I gave him a picture of my conduct for fifty yearsin miniature.
I hid nothing from him, and he in return exhorted me to sincererepentance, explained to me what he meant by repentance, and then drewout such a scheme of infinite mercy, proclaimed from heaven to sinnersof the greatest magnitude, that he left me nothing to say, that lookedlike despair, or doubting of being accepted; and in this condition heleft me the first night.
He visited me again the next morning, and went on with his method ofexplaining the terms of divine mercy, which according to him consistedof nothing more, or more difficult, than that of being sincerelydesirous of it, and willing to accept it; only a sincere regret for,and hatred of, those things I had done, which rendered me so just anobject of divine vengeance. I am not able to repeat the excellentdiscourses of this extraordinary man; 'tis all that I am able to do, tosay that he revived my heart, and brought me into such a condition thatI never knew anything of in my life before. I was covered with shameand tears for things past, and yet had at the same time a secretsurprising joy at the prospect of being a true penitent, and obtainingthe comfort of a penitent--I mean, the hope of being forgiven; and soswift did thoughts circulate, and so high did the impressions they hadmade upon me run, that I thought I could freely have gone out thatminute to execution, without any uneasiness at all, casting my soulentirely into the arms of infinite mercy as a penitent.
The good gentleman was so moved also in my behalf with a view of theinfluence which he saw these things had on me, that he blessed God hehad come to visit me, and resolved not to leave me till the lastmoment; that is, not to leave visiting me.
It was no less than twelve days after our receiving sentence before anywere ordered for execution, and then upon a Wednesday the dead warrant,as they call it, came down, and I found my name was among them. Aterrible blow this was to my new resolutions; indeed my heart sankwithin me, and I swooned away twice, one after another, but spoke not aword. The good minister was sorely afflicted for me, and did what hecould to comfort me with the same arguments, and the same movingeloquence that he did before, and left me not that evening so long asthe prisonkeepers would suffer him to stay in the prison, unless hewould be locked up with me all night, which he was not willing to be.
I wondered much that I did not see him all the next day, it being theday before the time appointed for execution; and I was greatlydiscouraged, and dejected in my mind, and indeed almost sank for wantof the comfort which he had so often, and with such success, yielded meon his former visits. I waited with great impatience, and under thegreatest oppressions of spirits imaginable, till about four o'clock hecame to my apartment; for I had obtained the favour, by the help ofmoney, nothing being to be done in that place without it, not to bekept in the condemned hole, as they call it, among the rest of theprisoners who were to die, but to have a little dirty chamber to myself.
My heart leaped within me for joy when I heard his voice at the door,even before I saw him; but let any one judge what kind of motion Ifound in my soul, when after having made a short excuse for his notcoming, he showed me that his time had been employed on my account;that he had obtained a favourable report from the Recorder to theSecretary of State in my particular case, and, in short, that he hadbrought me a reprieve.
He used all the caution that he was able in letting me know a thingwhich it would have been a double cruelty to have concealed; and yet itwas too much for me; for as grief had overset me before, so did joyoverset me now, and I fell into a much more dangerous swooning than Idid at first, and it was not without a great difficulty that I wasrecovered at all.
The good man having made a very Christian exhortation to me, not to letthe joy of my reprieve put the remembrance of my past sorrow out of mymind, and having told me that he must leave me, to go and enter thereprieve in the books, and show it to the sheriffs, stood up justbefore his going away, and in a very earnest manner prayed to God forme, that my repentance might be made unfeigned and sincere; and that mycoming back, as it were, into life again, might not be a returning tothe follies of life which I had made such solemn resolutions toforsake, and to repent of them. I joined heartily in the petition, andmust needs say I had deeper impressions upon my mind all that night, ofthe mercy of God in sparing my life, and a greater detestation of mypast sins, from a sense of the goodness which I had tasted in thiscase, than I had in all my sorrow before.
This may be thought inconsistent in itself, and wide from the businessof this book; particularly, I reflect that many of those who may bepleased and diverted with the relation of the wild and wicked part ofmy story may not relish this, which is really the best part of my life,the most advantageous to myself, and the most instructive to others.Such, however, will, I hope, allow me the liberty to make my storycomplete. It would be a severe satire on such to say they do notrelish the repentance as much as they do the crime; and that they hadrather the history were a complete tragedy, as it was very likely tohave been.
But I go on with my relation. The next morning there was a sad sceneindeed in the prison. The first thing I was saluted with in themorning was the tolling of the great bell at St. Sepulchre's, as theycall it, which ushered in the day. As soon as it began to toll, adismal groaning and crying was heard from the condemned hole, wherethere lay six poor souls who were to be executed that day, some fromone crime, some for another, and two of them for murder.
This
was followed by a confused clamour in the house, among the severalsorts of prisoners, expressing their awkward sorrows for the poorcreatures that were to die, but in a manner extremely differing onefrom another. Some cried for them; some huzzaed, and wished them agood journey; some damned and cursed those that had brought them toit--that is, meaning the evidence, or prosecutors--many pitying them,and some few, but very few, praying for them.
There was hardly room for so much composure of mind as was required forme to bless the merciful Providence that had, as it were, snatched meout of the jaws of this destruction. I remained, as it were, dumb andsilent, overcome with the sense of it, and not able to express what Ihad in my heart; for the passions on such occasions as these arecertainly so agitated as not to be able presently to regulate their ownmotions.
All the while the poor condemned creatures were preparing to theirdeath, and the ordinary, as they call him, was busy with them,disposing them to submit to their sentence--I say, all
