Postscript

Summary

In Compliance with the Request of a valuable Friend, who is Father of a numerous Family, and has been particularly affected by the following melancholy Letter, we insert it here. It was publish’d in one of the Weekly Papers in September last; and contains an Account of a Case that seems a Second to that of the unhappy Gentleman in the Temple, which we hinted at p. <549> who, unable to contend with the shocking Uncertainties that his Deistical Acquaintance had involved him in, laid violent Hands on himself to experience the Certainty of those Truths which he had been taught to question.

SIR,

I am a constant Reader of your Papers, and like them very well, and am, above all Things, satisfied with those excellent Pieces in them that so pathetically represent the Decay of Religion and Morality amongst us in this Age; and I assure you, if a Stop be not put to the Corruption both of Principles and Practices which now prevail among the younger Sort, that I firmly believe, Heaven, by some heavy Judgments, will interpose, and work our Reformation; for there's no correcting and reforming of Nations, when their Iniquities are full, but in this Way.

There is no Man living upon the Face of the Earth hath so much Reason to complain of this as I have,——and I am persuaded that you will join Issue with me in the following Account.

I had a Son, who was always brought up under my Eye; in Religion and Learning he made an equal Progress; he was a Comfort to his Parents, and a Credit to our Minister, who instructed him. All that examined him declared, that his Judgment in Things was solid beyond his Years, and that he had Learning, without its Attendants in our public Places of Literature at this Day, viz. Vice and Immorality.

I was over-persuaded to put him in the Temple, where he had continued almost a Year; he came down in the Vacation Time to see us; but I found a strange Alteration in him as to Religion; he had entirely lost that Seriousness in it that he had from his Infancy;