Whenever he came he found me weeping, and was
therefore less delightfully entertained than he
expected. After frequent expostulations upon the
unreasonableness of my sorrow, and innumerable
protestations of everlasting regard, he at last found
that I was more affected with the loss of my
innocence, than the danger of my fame, and that he
might not be disturbed by my remorse, began to
lull my conscience with the opiates of irreligion.
His arguments were such as my course of life has
since exposed me often to the necessity of hearing,
vulgar, empty, and fallacious; yet they at first
confounded me by their novelty, filled me with doubt
and perplexity, and interrupted that peace which I
began to feel from the sincerity of my repentance,
without substituting any other support. I listened
a while to his impious gabble, but its influence was
soon overpowered by natural reason and early education,
and the convictions which this new attempt
gave me of his baseness completed my abhorrence.
I have heard of barbarians, who, when tempests
drive ships upon their coast, decoy them to the rocks
that they may plunder their lading, and have always
thought that wretches, thus merciless in their
depredations, ought to be destroyed by a general
insurrection of all social beings; yet how light is this
guilt to the crime of him, who, in the agitations of
remorse, cuts away the anchor of piety, and, when
he has drawn aside credulity from the paths of
virtue, hides the light of heaven which would direct
her to return.
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