I took no more notice of it than to tell him that I was sorry I had asked him about it, but that it was my curiosity. When I saw that ignorant, untaught, untractable creatures come into misery and shame, I made no inquiry after their affairs; but when I saw men of parts and learning take such steps, I concluded it must be occasioned by something exceeding wicked. “So, indeed,” said he, “the judge said to me when I begged mercy of him in Latin. He told me that when a man with such learning falls into such crimes he is more inexcusable than other men, because, his learning recommending him, he could not want advantages and had the less temptation to crimes.”
“But, sir,” said he, “I believe my case was what I find is the case of most of the wicked part of the world, viz., that to be reduced to necessity is to be wicked; for necessity is not only the temptation, but is such a temptation as human nature is not empowered to resist. How good, then,” says he, “is that God which takes from you, sir, the temptation, by taking away the necessity!”
I was so sensible of the truth of what he said, knowing it by my own case, that I could not enter any further upon the discourse; but he went on voluntarily. “This, sir,” says he, “I am so sensible of that I think the case I am reduced to much less miserable than the life which I lived before, because I am delivered from the horrid necessity of doing such ill things which was my ruin and disaster then, even for my bread, and am not now obliged to ravish my bread out of the mouths of others by violence and disorder, but am fed, though I am made to earn it by the hard labour of my hands, and I thank God for the difference.” He paused here, but went on thus:—
“How much is the life of a slave in Virginia to be preferred to that of the most prosperous thief in the world! Here I live miserable, but honest; suffer wrong, but do no wrong; my body is punished, but my conscience is not loaded; and as I used to say that I had no leisure to look in, but I would begin when I had some recess, some time to spare, now God has found me leisure to repent.” He run on in this manner a great while, giving thanks, I believe most heartily, for his being delivered from the wretched life he had lived, though his misery were to be tenfold as much as it was.
I was sincerely touched with his discourse on this subject. I had known so much of the real difference of the case that I could not but be affected with it, though till now, I confess, I knew little of the religious part. I had been an offender as well as he, though not altogether in the same degree, but I knew nothing of the penitence; neither had I looked back upon anything as a crime, but as a life dishonourable and not like a gentleman, which run much in my thoughts, as I have several times mentioned.
“Well, but now,” says I, “you talk penitently, and I hope you are sincere; but what would be your case if you were delivered from the miserable condition of a slave sold for money, which you are now in? Should you not, think you, be the same man?”
“Blessed be God,” says he, “that, if I thought I should, I would sincerely pray that I might not be delivered, and that I might for ever be a slave rather than a sinner.”
“Well, but,” says I, “suppose you to be under the same necessity, in the same starving condition, should you not take the same course?”
He replied very sharply, “That shows us the need we have of the petition in the Lord’s prayer, ‘Lead us not into temptation;’ and of Solomon’s or Agar’s prayer, ‘Give me not poverty, lest I steal.’ I should ever beg of God not to be left to such snares as human nature cannot resist. But I have some hope, that I should venture to starve rather than to steal; but I also beg to be delivered from the danger, because I know not my own strength.”
This was honestly spoken, indeed; and there really were such visible tokens of sincerity in all his discourse that I could not suspect him. On some of our discourses on this subject, he pulled out a little dirty paper-book, in which he had wrote down such a prayer in verse as I doubt few Christians in the world could subscribe to; and I cannot but record it, because I never saw anything like it in my life. The lines are as follow:—