g to recollect, not one worthy intention to revolve, it
will be all reproach and horror; and you will wish to have it in your
power to compound for annihilation.

Reflect, Sir, that I can have no other motive, in what I write, than your
good, and the safety of other innocent creatures, who may be drawn in by
your wicked arts and perjuries. You have not, in my wishes for future
welfare, the wishes of a suppliant wife, endeavouring for her own sake,
as well as for your's, to induce you to reform those ways. They are
wholly as disinterested as undeserved. But I should mistrust my own
penitence, were I capable of wishing to recompense evil for evil--if,
black as your offences have been against me, I could not forgive, as I
wish to be forgiven.

I repeat, therefore, that I do forgive you. And may the Almighty forgive
you too! Nor have I, at the writing of this, any other essential regrets
than what are occasioned by the grief I have given to parents, who, till
I knew you, were the most indulgent of parents; by the scandal given to
the other branches of my family; by the disreputation brought upon my
sex; and by the offence given to virtue in my fall.

As to myself, you have only robbed me of what once were my favourite
expectations in the transient life I shall have quitted when you receive
this. You have only been the cause that I have been cut off in the bloom
of youth, and of curtailing a life that might have been agreeable to
myself, or otherwise, as had reason to be thankful for being taken away
from the evil of supporting my part of a yoke with a man so unhappy; I
will only say, that, in all probability, every hour I had lived with him
might have brought with it some new trouble. And I am (indeed through
sharp afflictions and distresses) indebted to you, secondarily, as I
humbly presume to hope, for so many years of glory, as might have proved
years of danger, temptation, and anguish, had they been added to my
mortal life.

So, Sir, though no thanks to your intention, you have done me real
service; and, in return, I wish you happy. But such has been your life
hitherto, that you can have no time to lose in setting about your
repentance. Repentance to such as have lived only carelessly, and in the
omission of their regular duties, and who never aimed to draw any poor
creatures into evil, is not so easy a task, nor so much in our own power,
as some imagine. How difficult a grace then to be obtained, where the