Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A61480
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A narrative of the extraordinary penitence of Rob. Maynard who was condemned for the murder of John Stockton ... and executed at Tyburn, May the 4th : together with the several conferences held with him in Newgate : as also a copy of the papers which he left to be published after his death / by Joseph Stevens.
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Stevens, Joseph.; Maynard, Robert.
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1696
(1696)
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Wing S5498; ESTC R29534
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14,857
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57
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would have gone back again and killed the Woman for then says he we shall have no body to Witness against us but I restrain'd him from that Bloody Action and so we went to my House and there Shared the Money amongst us and sent the Plate away to be Melted down ' And this said he is the great Burden that has Oppressed and Wounded my Conscience For though says he I did not actually Commit the Murther yet I was in their Company that perpetrated it and therefore hold my self equally Guilty with them and am not only justly Condemned to Dye a Temporal Death but without Infinite Mercy must Dye Eternally ' That which most troubles me is that I should be Instrumental of sending a Man into another World without any Intimation of his Sudden Death or giving him Time to Beg God's Pardon and Mercy ' I am not so Rigidly dealt with though the Law has Condemned me yet it gives me time to Repent of this and all other my Sins and the Lord grant I may Improve the Time so Mercifully allowed me Here I Suited my Discourse to his Ingenuous Confession and Laboured to make him yet more and more sensible of this Horrid Fact and indeed in his general Deportment I saw visible Characters of Sorrow and Penitency I Visited him several times after this But that which I shall further take notice of is That on Monday Morning the 4th of this Instant the Day appointed for Execution by the Sheriffs tho' the Keepers of the Prison knew nothing of it certainly between the Hours of Six and Seven I went into the Prison and desired to speak with this Robert Maynard who was brought out to me I Asked him how Affairs stood between God and his Soul He told me He hoped his Condition was Hopeful onely says he I am troubled with abundance of vain wandring Thoughts which very much interrupt me when I am Praying To this I answered That this is a common Calamity and no Christian is freed from it but more or less is unhappily disturbed by wandring thoughts I urged that God would not impute these unto him if he did not nourish and entertain them with delight and complacency but upon the first knowledge of them laboured to cast them out of his Mind that Men are accountable for Evil Thoughts when they are Entertained with Desire and harbour'd as Incentives to Sin He Answer'd I have and yet do strenuously endeavour to eject them as Perverters of God's Worship and Enemies to the Preparation of my Soul for his Embraces In the Interim the Great Bell in the Neighbouring Steeple began to Tole he listens and in a Great Agony cryes out What we dye to day I did not know it before this is my Passing-Bell it would have much troubled me to have heard it and had left the Work of my Soul unwrought but blessed be my good God who has assisted me by his Grace and Blessed Spirit I am not afraid to Dye nor nor doth the Noise of that Bell cast me down but rather urges me to be still working on till my last period Come says he once more to Prayers it is a blessed thing to approach God in Prayer and I am never better then when I am upon my knees When the Solemnity was over He asked me to go with him to the Place of Execution and I did He told me that he had left SOME PAPERS which he desired me to Print for the Good of all those who survived him and would not be easie before I had made him a Promise that I would Print them I have therefore affixed them as his Own Copy which I have by me making no Deviations from his Sense only Correcting some Passages which through Distraction of his Thoughts and other Inconveniences which attended him might be indigestedly Penned THE PAPERS Left by Robert Maynard Which he desired might be Publisht after his Death I Considering that being now summoned to a speedy appearance before the impartial and most dreadful tribunal of the just and Righteous Judge of all the Earth there to answer for those many and heinous sins visible in my vicious and ill lead Life I hold my self obliged to enter into a narrow search and a very close Inspection of my heart and all my ways indeed are great and many so great that they justly bring my body to shame and ruine and my Soul if God have not mercy upon it to endless misery These general Considerations have almost distracted my thoughts yet I cannot find any rest till I have made a more diligent search a more distinct and particular discovery of all that wickedness that has been dam'd up in my heart My sins have now found me out and Gods Justice has overtaken and arrested me So that now being to be made a spectacle of shame to the world I leave these as a warning behind me that all who hear or read them may fear to do wickedly Let the consideration of my unhappy condition add weight to my words Dying men surely will not dissemble and put the World off with shams and lyes I will speak the Truth to God's Glory and my own shame I confess then that the Hand of Heaven has been exceeding Bountiful to me he has given me all things richly to enjoy I had no reason to murmur as if my Portion had been sparing either in Spiritual or Temporal things For First I came of very Honest and Godly Parents who took great care to bring up their Children to know their Duty toward God and Men. But I the worst of all after my good Father and Mother had instilled what Goodness they could into me would not thankfully receive the Grace of God tendered to me to Cultivate and Rectify my Rude Nature nor be subject to their wholsome instructions but followed the Notions of my corrupt Heart seldom served God but often doing the Devils drudgery sometimes diverting my self by excessive Drinking sometimes Gameing and other Immoral Exercises till I became a Monster in Sin and an Hero in Iniquity Now Nature which blushed at a Sin and at first made modest Refusals is become impudent and bare faced and sticks not at the Vilest Perpetration Now Conscience which was tender and sensible is by my repeated imprudences become Callous and past seeling Little did I think of afterolaps that there was so much bitterness in the seemingly delicious Draughts of Sin I was not aware of these furious â—â—â—uptions and violent Thunderings of an injured mind But this was my course of Life while a single Man When I was about Eighteen or Nineteen Years Old I began to think of Marriage and at length got me a Wife descended from Honest Parents who was well inclined and frequently importuned me to be so too often soliciting me to go to Church and spend the Lord's Day in his Service but I was altogether deaf to her Pious Councels and followed my own heady Humour and finding by my Extravigant Courses that my
Substance wasted and I began to be in penury and want I betook my self to the last shift which usually loose Livers do namely To List my self for a Soldier I was not long in that imploy but I began to think of getting a Discharge which I did but when returned Home I could not settle to any business whereby to get an honest lively-hood but alienating my Affections from my Wife perfideous wretch that I was I soon contracted with another Woman who in a little time discovered my Villany and with too much reason feared her Life would be miserable with me for that if I could violate my Sacred Vows in Matrimony it was her just suspicion I should prove false to her and so I did for I took no care to provide for her nor for the Issue of her Body but run into daily Extravigancies All therefore that I can do by way of Reparation for the Injuries I have done to these miserable Women is heartily to beg their Pardon to beseech God to bless and keep them from such base and inhuman usage for the future You that know not the depths of Satan and make light of some sins especially the to too fashionable sin of uncleanness beware in time as you love your Souls Delude not your selves with these vain Thoughts and Arguments I will only commit such and such a sin and stop at such a state in wickedness and proceed no further By these Decoys I have plunged my Soul into this great Thraldome Therefore do not thus provoke God as I have done For when once Men arrive to such a height of imprudence as to cast off all awful Apprehensions of God they are readily prepared to commit all manner of Wickedness and insensibly plunge themselves into manifold Mischeifs Let my down-fall then scare you into a Reverential fear of God or otherwise if my Fate be not yours yet hell will be your after-reward from which I hope the good God for Christ Jesus sake will deliver me As I am a Monument of shame an object of Scorn and redicule of Mankind so I am the subject of my own sorrows I weep lament and bewail the Fruits of my Folly but let none so rejoice at my misery as to forget themselves and run into mischiefs forbidden Believe it a wounded Conscience in this Life is an insupportable Burden but will prove a never Dying Worm in the World to Come it will be gnawing and griping to eternal Ages If you were but sensible of the bitter Agonies and strong Convulsions which have seized and overwhelmed me as the just effects of a vicious Life you would be afraid of sin and dread every incentive to it Pray credit my experience to be summoned before an earthly Judg to be Arreigned and Tried for Life to be pronounced by the Virdict of the Jury guilty of Death to be Tyed up and sentence past accordingly these are affrighting and amasing considerations which cease the Spirits and put the Powers into confusion but I am able to give you assurance that these are by vast degrees inferiour to that Consternation which arrests my trembling and guilty Soul at the consideration of its sudden appearance before the Judgment Seat of Christ upon whom I entirely depend and hope will shew Mercy upon me as he has promised he will upon all Penitent and Believing Sinners That therefore you may avoid the Shame Reproach and Ignominy which I endure be prevailed with to Keep Holy the Sabbath Day which I too much Neglected and which was an Inlet to all the Sins I am guilty of Let not one Sin get the Ascendant over you for one attracts another a second a third and so on even to an infinite number When once a Man gives way to the insinuations and fair pretences of any one Vice he is insensibly wrought upon by another and at length becomes subservient to those sins he had the least thoughts of and most aversion from I shall instance in my Self When first I entered upon a Sinful Course I thought no wrong to any one I was only injurious to my self pestering my Body with Diseases by excessive Drinking wasting my Substance by immoderate Gaming but being reduced to Poverty thereby I was tempted to supply my Extravigances by Pilfering and Stealing from others and at length to be instrumental in the Murthering of a Man for which I now stand justly Condemned to Dye Though I did not actually Murder him nor knew nothing of his Death till I came down Stairs from Rifling yet I hold my Self equally Guilty with those who did And I beseech God to Pardon this presumptuous inhumane Act Deliver me from Blood-guiltiness and accept of my late Repentance for all the Sins committed in my Life Amen May the 1st 1695. My most Affectionate but unhappy and sorrowful Wife IT is now too late to wish I had been so ingenuous and governable as to have listned to your affectionate and Pious Counsels which you often and readily tendered out of no other design but to be my own friend and to make me Live in favour with God and Man I cannot but call to mind how often thou hast followed me with weeping Eyes and a sorrowful Heart Praying beseeching and entreating me to forsake my loose and idle Company to leave that abominable sin of Cursing and Swearing to serve God and follow an honest imployment and how indecently and inhumanly I behaved my self towards thee for so doing It cuts me to the Heart that I should abuse my best Friend and cast all thy Exhortations behind me which were expressed with so much candor love and condescention for these my absurd and unchristian dealings towards thee God Allmighty who is a most Just and Righteous Being has permitted me to be plunged into my present unhappy circumstances and given me to understand that I have obstinately withstood my own Good and refused many fair opportunities of being a happy Man But dear Wife being convinced of thy entire affections towards me I am bigg with hope that you will Pardon my former Insolencies and perversnesses for though I have foolishly sunk into degeneracy yet I am perswaded thou hast not lost thy wonted Tenderness of Spirit which indeed may be justly hardned against me because I have endeavoured always to make thee unsuitable returns and if still thou hast any yearning Bowels after me I cannot but conclude thou art one of the best Wives in Nature I could wish I were in a condition to make thee satisfaction for those many days of Grief those broken sleeps those sighs sobs and heart-akings I have been the sole cause of Methinks I hear thy sweet Expressions mingled with Love and fear Methinks I see thee dull and drooping at the rerefractoriness of thy Husband lamenting and almost distracted because of his inflexible Humour Was there ever such a wretch in Nature as I Accept therefore of these Lines from thy sorrowful and distressed Husband accept them as the Characters of his