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3. FRANCIS NEWPORT.

"The wicked is driven away in his wickedness."

FRANCIS NEWPORT, who died in the year 1692, was favoured with both a religious and liberal education. After spending five years in the university, he was entered in one of the Inns of Court. Here he fell into the hands of infidels, lost his religious impressions, forsook the paths of virtue, became an avowed infidel, and associated himself with a club of educated but abandoned wretches, who met regularly to encourage and confirm each other in wickedness.

He continued thus for several years, till habits of dissipation and vice brought on an illness, during which his former religious impressions revived with invincible force. The horror of his mind was inexpressible; the sweat poured from his system; and in nine days he was reduced, principally through mental anguish, from a robust state of health to perfect weakness. His expressions and language, all the while, were the most dreadful that imagination can conceive.

Writing to his companions, he said, "Who, alas! can write his own tragedy without tears, or copy out the seal of his own damnation without horror? That there is a God I know, because I continually feel the effects of his wrath; that there is a hell I am equally certain, having received an earnest of my inheritance there already in my breast."

His friends, who had only heard he was distracted, hearing him deliver himself in such terms, were amazed, and began to inquire of those around, what made him talk at such a rate? He, hearing them whispering together, and imagining the cause, called them all to him, and said, "You imagine me melancholy or distracted; I

wish I were either, but it is part of my judgment that I am not. No; my apprehension of persons and things is rather more quick and vigorous than it was when I was in perfect health; and it is my curse, because thereby I am more sensible of the condition I am fallen into. Would Would you be informed why I am become a skeleton in three or four days? See how then I have despised my Maker, and denied my Redeemer; I have joined myself to the atheists and profane, and continued this course under many convictions, till my iniquity was ripe for vengeance, and the just judgment of God overtook me when my security was the greatest and the checks of my conscience were the least. How idle is it to bid the fire not burn when fuel is administered, and to command the seas to be smooth in the midst of a storm! Such is my case; and what are the comforts of my friends? But I am spent,-I can complain no more. Would to God that the cause of my complaining would cease. The cause of my complaining! this renews my grief, and summons up the little strength I have left to complain again, like an expiring blaze before it is extinguished. It is just so with me; but whither am I going?"

As he said this he fainted away, and lay in a swoon for a considerable time; but by the help of some spirits, he was brought to himself again.

"My business," says the writer, "calling me.away for a day or two, I came again on Thursday morning pretty early. When I came in I inquired of his friends how he spent his time. They told me he had had little company; and his expressions were much shorter; but what he did speak seemed to have more horror and despair than before. I went to his bedside, and asked him how he did. He replied, 'Damned and lost forever.' I told him the purposes of God were hidden; perhaps he was punished in this life to fit him for a better. He

answered, 'They are not hidden to me, but discovered; and my greatest torment, my punishment here, is for an example to others. O that there was no God, or that this God could cease to be, for I am sure he will have no mercy upon me!'

"Alas!' said I, 'there is no contending with our Creator, and therefore avoid such words as may provoke him more.'

"True,' replied he, 'there is no contending; I wish there was a possibility of getting above God-that would be a heaven to me.'

"I entreated him not to give way to such blasphemous thoughts, for. Here he interrupted me. 'Read we not in the Revelation of them that blasphemed God because of their pains? I am one of their number. O how do I envy the happiness of Cain and Judas!'

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'But,' replied 1, 'you are yet alive, and do not feel the torments of those that are in hell.'

"He answered, 'This is either true or false; if it be true, how heavy will those torments be, of which I do not yet feel the uttermost? But I know it is false, and that I endure more than the spirits of the damned; for I have the very same tortures upon my spirit that they have, beside those I endure in my body. I believe at the day of judgment the torments of my mind and body will both together be more intense; but, as I now am, no spirit in hell endures what I do. How gladly would I change my condition for hell! How earnestly would I entreat my angry Judge to send me thither, were I not afraid that out of vengeance he would deny me!' Here he closed his eyes a little, and began to talk very wildly, every now and then groaning and gnashing his teeth; but soon after, opening his eyes, he grew sensible again, and felt his own pulse, saying, 'How lazily my minutes go on! When will be the last breath, the last pulse, that shall beat my spirit out of this decayed mansion,

into the desired regions of death and hell? O, I find it is just now at hand! And what shall I say now? Am not 1 afraid again to die? Ah! the forlorn hopes of him that has not God to go to! Nothing to fly to for peace and comfort!' Here his speech failed him: we all, believing him to be dying, went to prayer, which threw him into an agony; in which, though he could not speak, he turned away his face, and made what noise he could to hinder himself from hearing. Perceiving this we gave

over.

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'As soon as he could speak, (which was not till after some time,) he said, 'Tigers and monsters, are ye also become devils to torment me, and give me a prospect of heaven, to make my hell more intolerable?'

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Alas! sir,' said I, 'it is our desire of your happiness that casts us down at the throne of grace; if God denies assistance, who else can give it? If he will not have mercy, whither must we go for it?'

"He replied, 'O! that is the dart that wounds me! God is become my enemy, and there is none so strong as to deliver me out of his hands. He consigns me over to eternal vengeance, and there is none able to redeem me! Were there such another God as he, who would patronize my cause; or were I above God, or independent of him; could I act or dispose of myself as I pleased; then would my horrors cease, and the expectations and designs of my formidable enemies be frustrated. But O! this cannot be, for I.”

"His voice failed again, and he began to struggle and gasp for breath; which, having recovered, with a groan dreadful and horrid as if it had been more than human, he cried out, O! the insufferable pangs of hell and damnation!' and then expired.

4. SERVIN.

THE account which the celebrated Sully gives us of young Servin is uncommon. "The beginning of June, 1623," says he, "I set out for Calais, where I was to embark, having with me a retinue of upwards of two hundred gentlemen, or who called themselves such, of whom a considerable number were really of the first distinction. Just before my departure, old Servin came and presented his son to me, and begged I would use my endeavours to make him a man of some worth and honesty; but he confessed he dared not hope, not through any want of understanding or capacity in the young man, but from his natural inclination to all kinds of vice. I found him to be at once both a wonder and a monster; I can give no other idea of that assemblage of the most excellent and most pernicious qualities. Let the reader represent to himself a man of genius so lovely, and an understanding so extensive, as rendered him scarce ignorant of anything that could be known; of so vast and ready a comprehension, that he immediately made himself master of what he attempted; and of so prodigious a memory, that he never forgot what he had once learned; he possessed all parts of philosophy and the mathematics, particularly fortification and drawing; even in theology he was so well skilled, that he was an excellent preacher whenever he had a mind to exert that talent, and an able disputant for and against the reformed religion indifferently; he not only understood Greek, Hebrew, and all the languages which we call learned, but also the different jargons or modern dialects; he accented and pronounced them so naturally, and so perfectly imitated the gestures and manners both of the several nations of Europe, and the particular provinces

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