The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

The word eternity represented itself with all its incomprehensible

additions, and I had such extended notions of it, that I know not how

to express them. Among the rest, how vile, how gross, how absurd did

every pleasant thing look!--I mean, that we had counted pleasant

before--especially when I reflected that these sordid trifles were the

things for which we forfeited eternal felicity.

With these reflections came, of mere course, severe reproaches of my

own mind for my wretched behaviour in my past life; that I had

forfeited all hope of any happiness in the eternity that I was just

going to enter into, and on the contrary was entitled to all that was

miserable, or had been conceived of misery; and all this with the

frightful addition of its being also eternal.

I am not capable of reading lectures of instruction to anybody, but I

relate this in the very manner in which things then appeared to me, as

far as I am able, but infinitely short of the lively impressions which

they made on my soul at that time; indeed, those impressions are not to

be explained by words, or if they are, I am not mistress of words

enough to express them. It must be the work of every sober reader to

make just reflections on them, as their own circumstances may direct;

and, without question, this is what every one at some time or other may

feel something of; I mean, a clearer sight into things to come than

they had here, and a dark view of their own concern in them.

But I go back to my own case. The minister pressed me to tell him, as

far as I though convenient, in what state I found myself as to the

sight I had of things beyond life. He told me he did not come as

ordinary of the place, whose business it is to extort confessions from

prisoners, for private ends, or for the further detecting of other

offenders; that his business was to move me to such freedom of

discourse as might serve to disburthen my own mind, and furnish him to

administer comfort to me as far as was in his power; and assured me,

that whatever I said to him should remain with him, and be as much a

secret as if it was known only to God and myself; and that he desired

to know nothing of me, but as above to qualify him to apply proper

advice and assistance to me, and to pray to God for me.

This honest, friendly way of treating me unlocked all the sluices of my

passions. He broke into my very soul by it; and I unravelled all the

wickedness of my life to him. In a word, I gave him an abridgment of

this whole history; I gave him a picture of my conduct for fifty years

in miniature.