xample
that nothing but an honest industry could procure the blessing of God.
This he assiduously begged for her in his prayers, imploring her at the
same time that he gave her this advice, to be careful of her young son
she had then at her breast, not only as to his education, but also that
he might never know his father's unhappy end, for that would but damp
his spirits, and perhaps force him upon ill-courses when he grew up,
from an apprehension that people might distrust his honesty and not
employ him. He professed himself much afflicted at the past follies of
his life, and with an outward appearance of true penitence, died on the
fourth of May, 1722, in the thirty-third year of his age, at Tyburn.

The Life of THOMAS REEVES, a Notorious Highwayman and Footpad

As it is not to be denied that it is a singular blessing to a nation
where no persecution is ever raised against persons for their religion,
so I am confident that the late Free Thinking principles (as they have
been called) have by their being spread amongst the vulgar, contributed
greatly to the many frauds and villainies which have been so much
complained of within these thirty years, and not a little to encouraging
men in obtaining a subsistence and the gratification of their pleasures
by rapines committed upon others rather than live in a laborious state
of life, in which, perhaps, both their birth and circumstances concurred
to fix them.

Thomas Reeves was a very remarkable as well as very unfortunate instance
of that depravity in moral principles of which I have been speaking. By
his friends he was bred a tinman, his father, who was of that
profession, taking him as an apprentice but using him with the most
indulgent fondness and never suffering him to want anything which was in
his power to procure for him, flattered himself with the hopes of his
becoming a good and happy man. It happened very unfortunately for Reeves
that he fell, when young, into the acquaintance of some sceptical
persons who made a jest of all religion and treated both its precepts
and its mysteries as inventions subservient to priestcraft. Such notions
are too easily imbibed by those who are desirous to indulge their
vicious inclinations, and Reeves being of this stamp, greedily listened
to all discourses of such a nature.

Amongst some of these companions who had cheated him out of his
religion, he found some also inclined to practise the same freedom they
taught, enc