nobody will buy it, for they cannot make a title, as Sir Harry has
not forfeited, and may be alive. Beside, people said the house was
haunted, so it has never been tenanted; and whoever wants to build,
fetches it away piece-meal; and the gypsies camp in the Park when they
come from the neighbouring fairs, and all goes to ruin like the
time-serving family who lived there."

The awful reflections on retributive justice which the fate of this
unprincipled man excited, were interrupted by the return of Humphreys,
who ushered in some of his divines. The change which his wife described
was visible in his horror-stricken countenance. He had been formerly a
man of a sordid worldly disposition and hard unyielding temper, on whom
the mild Christian persuasions of Dr. Beaumont had occasionally made
good impressions, though these were as often blunted by the power of
long indulged habits. But when such a man was roused from his stupor by
the cauteries of Calvinism, despair was more likely to take possession
of his mind than the pious energy and humble hopes which follow true
repentance. Priggins indeed boasted of Humphreys as a convert, on the
ground of his being restrained from the public commission of some faults
in which he had formerly indulged; but if one evil spirit had been
dispossessed, seven more wicked had taken up their abode in his heart.
He was terrified, not awakened; plunged in an abyss of desperation and
misanthropy, not excited to a life acceptable to God or useful to man.
The sight of Dr. Beaumont recalled to his mind many acts of fraud and
injustice which he had formerly committed against him; but the long
exercises, as they were called, to which he had been listening, had not
illustrated the universal promise of mercy to penitent sinners; they
held out no encouragement to co-operate with the divine call to newness
of life which the gospel gives to all mankind; they gave no explanation
of reformation and restitution as necessary parts of repentance. Much to
their own ease, and with daring disregard of all the plain and practical
parts of Scripture, the preachers successively employed themselves in
expounding what they called dark texts, on which they built their
favourite system; impious in theory and destructive in practice. They
spoke of election and reprobation as positive, irreversible decrees of
God, no ways resulting from the conduct of man, whom they stated to be a
mere inefficient vessel filled with grace