for ever. Heretofore, (woe is me!) when God called, I refused; when He invited, I was one of them that made excuse; now, therefore, I receive the reward of my deeds. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me. I smart; I am in anguish already; and yet this is but the beginning of sorrows! It doth not yet appear what I shall be;—but sure I shall be ruined, undone, and destroyed with an everlasting destruction.’ “This sad scene I saw with my eyes; these words, and many more equally affecting, I heard with my ears; and soon after attended the unhappy gentleman to his tomb. The poor breathless skeleton spoke in such an accent, and with so much earnestness, that I could not easily forget him or his words; and, as I was musing upon this sorrowful subject, I remembered Mr. Nash;—I remembered you, sir;—for I discerned too near an agreement and correspondence between the deceased and yourself. They, are alike, said I, in their ways; and what shall hinder them from being alike in their end? The course of their actions was equally full of sin and folly; and why should not the period of them be equally full of horror and distress? I am grievously afraid for the survivor, least, as he lives the life, so he should die the death of this wretched man, and his latter end should be like his. “For this cause, therefore, I take my pen, to advise,—to admonish,—nay, to request of you to repent while you have opportunity, if happily you may find grace and forgiveness. Yet a moment, and you _may_ die: yet a little while, and you _must_ die; and will you go down with infamy and despair to the grave, rather than depart in peace, and with hopes full of immortality? “But I must tell you plainly, sir, with the utmost freedom, that, your present behaviour is not the way to reconcile yourself to God. You are so far from making atonement to offended justice, that you are aggravating the former account, and heaping up an increase of wrath against the day of wrath. For what say the Scriptures? Those books which, at the consummation of all things, the Ancient of days shall open, and judge you by every jot and tittle therein—what say these sacred volumes? Why, they testify and declare to every soul of man, ‘That, whosoever liveth in pleasure is dead while he liveth’; so that, so long as you roll on in a continued circle of sensual delights and vain entertainments, you are dead to all the purposes of piety and virtue; you are odious to God, as a corrupt carcass putrifying in the church-yard; you are as far from doing your duty, or working out your salvation, or restoring yourself to the divine favour, as a heap of dry bones nailed up in a coffin is from vigour and activity.