There, for a whole morning
did he detain me, tormenting me with reflections on the past, and
pointing out the horrors of the future, until a thousand times I
wished myself non-existent. "I have attached myself to your
wayward fortune," said he, "and it has been my ruin as well as
thine. Ungrateful as you are, I cannot give you up to be devoured;
but this is a life that it is impossible to brook longer. Since our
hopes are blasted in this world, and all our schemes of grandeur
overthrown; and since our everlasting destiny is settled by a
decree which no act of ours can invalidate, let us fall by our own
hands, or by the hands of each other; die like heroes; and,
throwing off this frame of dross and corruption, mingle with the
pure ethereal essence of existence, from which we derived our
being."
I shuddered at a view of the dreadful alternative, yet was obliged
to confess that in my present circumstances existence was not to
be borne. It was in vain that I reasoned on the sinfulness of the
deed, and on its damning nature; he made me condemn myself
out of my own mouth, by allowing the absolute nature of
justifying grace and the impossibility of the elect ever falling
from the faith, or the glorious end to which they were called; and
then he said, this granted, self-destruction was the act of a hero,
and none but a coward would shrink from it, to suffer a hundred
times more every day and night that passed over his head.
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