'
Lord Rochester had not attained the age of thirty, when he was
mercifully awakened to a sense of his guilt here, his peril hereafter.
It seemed to many that his very nature was so warped that penitence in
its true sense could never come to him; but the mercy of God is
unfathomable; He judges not as man judges; He forgives, as man knows not
how to forgive.
'God, our kind Master, merciful as just,
Knowing our frame, remembers man is dust:
He marks the dawn of every virtuous aim,
And fans the smoking flax into a flame;
He hears the language of a silent tear,
And sighs are incense from a heart sincere.'
And the reformation of Rochester is a confirmation of the doctrine of a
special Providence, as well as of that of a retribution, even in this
life.
The retribution came in the form of an early but certain decay; of a
suffering so stern, so composed of mental and bodily anguish, that never
was man called to repentance by a voice so distinct as Rochester. The
reformation was sent through the instrumentality of one who had been a
sinner like himself, who had sinned _with_ him; an unfortunate lady,
who, in her last hours, had been visited, reclaimed, consoled by Bishop
Burnet.
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