Nor have I yet, as you will see by the pains I take, on this solemn occasion, to awaken you out of your sensual dream, given over all hopes of this nature.

Hear me, therefore, O Lovelace! as one speaking from the dead.—­Lose no time—­set about your repentance instantly—­be no longer the instrument of Satan, to draw poor souls into those subtile snares, which at last shall entangle your own feet.  Seek not to multiply your offences till they become beyond the power, as I may say, of the Divine mercy to forgive; since justice, no less than mercy, is an attribute of the Almighty.

Tremble and reform, when you read what is the portion of the wicked man from God.  Thus it is written: 

’The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment.  He is cast into a net by his own feet—­he walketh upon a snare.  Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet.  His strength shall be hunger-bitten, and destruction shall be ready at his side.  The first born of death shall devour his strength.  His remembrance shall perish from the earth; and he shall have no name in the streets.  He shall be chaced [sic] out of the world.  He shall have neither son nor nephew among his people.  They that have seen him shall say, Where is he?  He shall fly away as a dream:  He shall be chased away as a vision of the night.  His meat is the gall of asps within him.  He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through.  A fire not blown shall consume him.  The heaven shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him.  The worm shall feed sweetly on him.  He shall be no more remembered.—­This is the fate of him that knoweth not God.’

Whenever you shall be inclined to consult the sacred oracles from whence the above threatenings are extracted, you will find doctrines and texts which a truly penitent and contrite heart may lay hold of for its consolation.

May your’s, Mr. Lovelace, become such! and may you be enabled to escape the fate denounced against the abandoned man, and be entitled to the mercies of a long suffering and gracious God, is the sincere prayer of

CLARISSA HARLOWE

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LETTER XXXVII

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq. 
M. Hall, Thursday, Sept. 14.

Ever since the fatal seventh of this month, I have been lost to myself, and to all the joys of life.  I might have gone farther back than that fatal seventh; which, for the future, I will never see anniversarily revolve but in sables; only till that cursed day I had some gleams of hope now-and-then darting in upon me.

They tell me of an odd letter I wrote to you.* I remember I did write.  But very little of the contents of what I wrote do I remember.