LETTER XXIV.
Miss Clarissa Harlowe, To her Mother.
Sat. Aug. 5.
Honoured Madam,
No self-convicted criminal ever approached her angry and just judge with greater awe, nor with a truer contrition, than I do you by these lines.
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Indeed I must say, that if the matter of my humble prayer had not respected my future welfare, I had not dared to take this liberty. But my heart is set upon it, as upon a thing next to God Almighty's forgiveness necessary for me.
Had my happy Sister known my distresses, she would not have wrung my heart, as she has done, by a Severity, which I must needs think unkind and unsisterly.
But complaint of any unkindness from her belongs not to me: Yet, as she is pleased to write, that it must be seen that my penitence is less owing to disappointment, than to true conviction, permit me, Madam, to insist upon it, that, if such a plea can be allowed me, I am actually entitled to the Blessing I sue for; since my humble prayer is founded upon a true and unfeigned repentance: And this you will the readier believe, if the creature who never, to the best of her remembrance, told her Mamma a wilful falshood, may be credited, when she declares, as she does, in the most solemn manner, that she met the Seducer, with a determination not to go off with him: That the rash step was owing more to compulsion than to infatuation: And that her heart was so little in it, that she repented and grieved from the moment she found herself in his power; and for every moment after, for several weeks before she had any cause from him to apprehend the usage she met with.
Wherefore, on my knees, my ever-honoured Mamma, (for on my knees I write this Letter) I do most humbly beg your Blessing: Say but, in so many words (I ask you not, Madam, to call me your Daughter)---Lost, unhappy wretch, I forgive you! and may God bless you!---This is all! Let me, on a blessed scrap of paper, but see one sentence to this effect, under your dear hand, that I may hold it to my heart in my most trying struggles, and I shall think it a passport to Heaven. And, if I do not too much
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presume, and it were We iustead of I, and both your honoured names subjoined to it, I should then have nothing more to wish. Then would I say, "Great and merciful God! thou seest here in this paper thy poor unworthy creature absolved by her justly offended Parents: O join, for my Redeemer's sake, thy all-gracious Fiat, and receive a repentant sinner to the arms of thy mercy!"
I can conjure you, Madam, by no subject of motherly tenderness, that will not, in the opinion of my severe censurers (before whom this humble address must appear) add to my reproach: Let me therefore, for God's sake, prevail upon you to pronounce me blest and forgiven, since you will thereby sprinkle comfort thro' the last hours of
Your Clarissa Harlowe.