B.'s morals, as well as for my repose.
I will now (because I can do it with the highest pleasure, by reason
of the event it has produced), explain that dark affair so far as
shall make you judges of my present joy: although I had hitherto
avoided entering into that subject to you. For now I think myself,
by God's grace, secure to the affection and fidelity of the best of
husbands, and that from the worthiest motives; as you shall hear.
There was but one thing wanting to complete all the happiness I wished
for in this life; which was, the remote hope I had entertained, that
one day, my dear Mr. B. who from a licentious gentleman became a
moralist, would be so touched by the divine grace, as to become in
time, more than moral, a religious man, and, at last, join in the
duties which he had the goodness to countenance.
For this reason I began with mere _indispensables_. I crowded not
his gates with objects of charity: I visited them at their homes,
and relieved them; distinguishing the worthy indigent (made so
by unavoidable accidents and casualties) from the wilfully, or
perversely, or sottishly such, by _greater_ marks of my favour.
I confined my morning and evening devotions to my own private closet,
lest I should give offence and discouragement to so gay a temper, so
unaccustomed (poor gentleman!) to acts of devotion and piety; whilst
I met his household together, only on mornings and evenings of the
Sabbath-day, to prepare them for their public duties in the one,
and in hopes to confirm them in what they had heard at church in the
other; leaving them to their own reflections for the rest of the week;
after I had suggested a method I wished them to follow, and in which
they constantly obliged me.
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