What more, now, my brethren, can I say unto you? With what additional words of mine, can you be helped forward, in the way you are to go? I can only, with earnestness, entreat you to meditate upon what has been said; and fervently implore our gracious God to make it effectual to your edification.

Once more then, let us together bend our knees, and offer up the sacrifice of united prayer.

O almighty and everlasting God, thou glorious and most righteous Judge, we again become humble suppliants, in behalf of these thy sinful creatures; and fervently pray, that thy grace may enable them meekly to receive their sentence, as the due reward of their sins. As their iniquities have brought upon them an untimely and shameful death, Olet their repentance and conversion, through the merits of our dear Lord and Saviour, secure the blotting out-the forgiveness of their sins, and bring them to everlasting life. O blessed Jesu, who didst not disdain to cast an eye on the penitent' thief on the cross, despise not these thy servants, who are now shortly to suffer a like ignominious death; and who, we hope, repent them of their sins, and fix all their hopes on thee, in their distress, as he did in his. Thou, who for the sins of others, didst thyself hang on the cursed tree, by the blood of thy cross save them, who are justly condemned for their own sins. In thy merits, cause them to trust into thy mer

.

ciful hands, we commend their spirits. O, rescue their departing souls, from eternal misery. Forgive them, in the abundant riches of thy mercy, and save them in the hour of judgment. Let the example of their fall be a warning to others, that they come not into the same condemnation :-and though they taste thy justice in their ignominious death, let them find the sweetness of thy mercy after it.-Amen, Amen.

THE

CONVICT'S ADDRESS

TO HIS

UNHAPPY BRETHREN*

My dear and unhappy Fellow-prisoners, CONSIDERING my peculiar circumstances and situation, I cannot think myself justified, if I do not deliver to you, in sincere Christian love, some of my serious thoughts on our present awful state.

In the sixteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, you read a memorable story respecting Paul and Silas, who, for preaching the Gospel,

*This address was delivered in the chapel of Newgate by an unhappy clergyman a few days before his execution.

were

were cast by the magistrates intò prison, ver. 23. -and, after having received many stripes, were committed to the jailor, with a strict charge to keep them safely. Accordingly he thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. At midnight Paul and Silas, supported by the testimony of a good conscience, prayed, and sung praises to God, and the prisoners heard them; and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's chains were loosed. The keeper of the prison, awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, in the greatest distress, as might well be imagined, drew his sword, and would have killed. himself, supposing the prisoners to have been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, "Do thyself no harm, for we are all here."-The keeper calling for a light, and finding his prisoners thus freed from their bonds by the imperceptible agency of divine power, was irresistibly convinced that these men were not offenders against the law, but martyrs to the truth: he sprang in therefore, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, "SIRS, WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?"

"What must I do to be saved ?" is the important question, which it becomes every human being to study from the first hour of reason to the last: but which we, my fellow-prisoners,

ought

ought to consider with particular diligence and intenseness of meditation. Had it not been forgotten or neglected by us, we had never appeared in this place. A little time for recollection and amendment is yet allowed us by the mercy of the law. Of this little time let no particle be lost. Let us fill our remaining life with all the duties which our present condition allows us to practise. Let us make one earnest effort for salvation !-And oh! heavenly Father, who desirest not the death of a sinner, grant that this effort may not be in vain!

To teach others what they must do to be saved, has long been my employment and profession. You see with what confusion and dishonour I now stand before you-no more in the pulpit of instruction, but on this humble seat with yourselves. You are not to consider me now as a man authorised to form the manners, or direct the conscience, and speaking with the authority of a pastor to his flock.-I am here guilty, like yourselves, of a capital offence; and sentenced like yourselves, to a public and shameful death. My profession, which has given me stronger convictions of my duty than most of you can be supposed to have attained, and has extended my views to the consequences of wickedness farther than your observation is likely to have reached, has loaded my sin with peculiar aggravations; and I entreat you to join your prayers with mine, that my sorrow may be proportionate to my guilt.

I am now, like you, 'enquiring "what I must do to be saved "and stand here to communicate to you what that enquiry suggests. Hear me with attention, my fellow-prisoners; and in your melancholy hours of retirement, consider well what I offer to you from the sincerity of my good-will, and from the deepest conviction of a penitent heart.

Salvation is promised to us Christians, on the terms of Faith, Obedience, and Repentance. I shall therefore endeavour to shew, how, in the short interval between this moment and death, we may exert faith, perform obedience, and exercise repentance, in a manner which our heavenly Father may, in his infinite mercy, vouch

safe to accept.

I. Faith is the foundation of all Christian virtue. It is that without which it is impossible to please God. I shall therefore consider, first, How faith is to be particularly exerted by us in our present state.

Faith is a full and undoubting confidence in the declarations made by God in the holy Scriptures; a sincere reception of the doctrines taught by our blessed Saviour, with a firm assurance that he died to take away the sins of the world, and that we have each of us, a part in the boundless, benefits of the universal sacrifice.

To this faith we must have recourse at all times, but particularly if we find ourselves tempted to despair. If thoughts arise in our minds, which suggest that we have sinned

beyond