th, and afraid when so near death to tell a
lie.

When under sentence of death, this unfortunate person began to have a
true sense of his own miserable condition; he was very far from denying
the crime for which he suffered, although he still continued to deny
some of the circumstances of it. The judgment which had been pronounced
upon him, he acknowledged to be very just and reasonable, and was so far
from being either angry or affrighted at the death he was to die that on
the contrary he said it was the only thing that gave his thoughts ease.
To say truth, the force of religion was never more visible in any man
than it was in this unfortunate malefactor. He was sensible of his
repentance being both forced and late, which made him attend to the
duties thereof with an extraordinary fervour and application. He said
that the thoughts of his dissolution had no other effect upon him than
to quicken his diligence in imploring God for pardon. To all those who
visited him either from their knowledge of him in former circumstances,
or, as too many do, from the curiosity of observing how he would behave
under those melancholy circumstances in which he then was, he discoursed
of nothing but death, eternity, and future judgment. The gravity of his
temper and the serious turn of his thoughts was never interrupted in any
respect throughout the whole space of time in which he lay under
condemnation; on the contrary, he every day appeared to have more and
more improved from his meditations and almost continual devotions,
appearing frequently when at chapel wrapped up as it were in ecstasy at
the thoughts of heaven and future felicity, humbling himself, however,
for the numberless sins he had committed, and omitting nothing which
could serve to show the greatness of his sorrow and the sincerity of his
contrition.

The day he was to die, the unfortunate old man his father, then upwards
of seventy years of age, came to visit him, and saw him haltered as he
went out to execution. Words are too feeble to express that impetuosity
of grief which overwhelmed both the miserable father and the dying son.
However, the old man, bedewing him with a flood of tears, exhorted him
not to let go on his hopes in Christ, even in that miserable
conjuncture; but that he should remember the mercy of God was over all
his works, and in an especial manner was promised to those who were
penitent for their sins, which Christ had especially confirmed in
sealing