Lord Rochester had not attained the age of thirty, when he was mercifully awakened to a sense of his guilt here, his peril hereafter.  It seemed to many that his very nature was so warped that penitence in its true sense could never come to him; but the mercy of God is unfathomable; He judges not as man judges; He forgives, as man knows not how to forgive.

    ’God, our kind Master, merciful as just,
     Knowing our frame, remembers man is dust: 
     He marks the dawn of every virtuous aim,
     And fans the smoking flax into a flame;
     He hears the language of a silent tear,
     And sighs are incense from a heart sincere.’

And the reformation of Rochester is a confirmation of the doctrine of a special Providence, as well as of that of a retribution, even in this life.

The retribution came in the form of an early but certain decay; of a suffering so stern, so composed of mental and bodily anguish, that never was man called to repentance by a voice so distinct as Rochester.  The reformation was sent through the instrumentality of one who had been a sinner like himself, who had sinned with him; an unfortunate lady, who, in her last hours, had been visited, reclaimed, consoled by Bishop Burnet.  Of this, Lord Rochester had heard.  He was then, to all appearance, recovering from his last sickness.  He sent for Burnet, who devoted to him one evening every week of that solemn winter when the soul of the penitent sought reconciliation and peace.

The conversion was not instantaneous; it was gradual, penetrating, effective, sincere.  Those who wish to gratify curiosity concerning the death-bed of one who had so notoriously sinned, will read Burnet’s account of Rochester’s illness and death with deep interest; and nothing is so interesting as a death-bed.  Those who delight in works of nervous thought, and elevated sentiments, will read it too, and arise from the perusal gratified.  Those, however, who are true, contrite Christians will go still farther; they will own that few works so intensely touch the holiest and highest feelings; few so absorb the heart; few so greatly show the vanity of life; the unspeakable value of purifying faith.  ‘It is a book which the critic,’ says Doctor Johnson, ’may read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, the saint for its piety.’

Whilst deeply lamenting his own sins, Lord Rochester became anxious to redeem his former associates from theirs.

’When Wilmot, Earl of Rochester,’[11] writes William Thomas, in a manuscript preserved in the British Museum, ’lay on his death-bed, Mr. Fanshawe came to visit him, with an intention to stay about a week with him.  Mr. Fanshawe, sitting by the bedside, perceived his lordship praying to God, through Jesus Christ, and acquainted Dr. Radcliffe, who attended my Lord Rochester in this illness and was then in the house, with what he had heard, and told him that my lord was certainly delirious, for