My relation remitted none of his fondness, but visited me so often, that
I was sometimes afraid lest his assiduity should expose him to
suspicion. 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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