cannot describe to you, nor shall ever be able to describe, what I felt in the moment when it was given to me. May I make a good use of it! How I shudder when I think of the danger I have just escaped! I had made up my mind upon these subjects, and was determined to hazard all upon the justness of my own opinions.

Speaking of his illness, he said, he had been followed night and day from the very beginning of it with this text: I shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord. This notice was fulfilled to him, though not in such a sense as my desires of his recovery prompted me to put upon it. His remarkable amendment soon appeared to be no more than a present supply of strength and spirits, that he might be able to speak of the better life which God had given him, which was no sooner done than he relapsed as suddenly as he had revived. About this time he formed a purpose of receiving the sacrament, induced to it principally by a desire of setting his seal to the truth, in presence of those who were strangers to the change which had taken place in his sentiments. It must have been administered to him by the master of the college, to whom he designed to have made this short declaration. "If I die, I die in the belief of the doctrines of the reformation, and of the Church of England, as it was at the time of the reformation." But his strength declining apace, and his pains becoming more severe, he could never find a proper opportunity of doing it. His experience was rather peace than joy, if a distinction may be made between joy and that heartfelt peace which he often spoke of in the most comfortable terms; and which he expressed by a heavenly smile upon his countenance under the bitterest bodily distress. His words upon this subject once were these-" How wonderful is it, that God should look upon man, especially that he should look upon me? Yet he seeş

me, and takes notice of all that I suffer. I see him too; he is present before me, and I hear him say, Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Matt. xi. 28. On the 14th, in the afternoon, I perceived that the strength and spirits, which had been afforded him, were suddenly withdrawn, so that by the next day his mind became weak, and his speech roving and faultering. But still, at intervals, he was enabled to speak of divine things with great force and clearness. On the evening of the 15th he said, "There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance. That text has been sadly misunderstood, by me, as well as by others. Where is that just person to be found? Alas! what must have become of me, if I had died this day se'nnight? What would I have had to plead? My own righteousness! That should have been of great service to me, to be sure. Well, whither next? Why, to the mountains to fall upon us, and to the hills to cover us. I am not duly thankful for the mercy I have received. Perhaps I may ascribe some part of my insensibility to my great weakness of body. I hope at least, that if I was better in health, it would be better with me in these respects also."

The next day, perceiving that his understanding began to suffer by the extreme weakness of his body, he said; " I have been vain of my understanding and of my acquirements in this place; and now God has made me little better than an ideot, as much as to say, now be proud if you can. Well, while I have any senses left, my thoughts will be poured out in the praise of God. I have an interest in Christ, in his blood and sufferings, and my sins are forgiven me. Have I not cause to praise him? When my understanding fails me quite, as I think it will soon, then he will pity my weakness."

Though the Lord intended that his warfare should be short, yet a warfare he was to have, and to be exposed to a measure of conflict with his own corruptions. His pain being extreme, his powers of recollection much impaired, and the Comforter withholding for a season his sensible support, he was betrayed into a fretfulness and impatience of spirit which had never been permitted to show itself before. This appearance alarmed me, and having an opportunity afforded me by every body's absence, I said to him, "You was happier last Saturday than you are to-day. Are you entirely destitute of the consolations you then spoke of? and do you not sometimes feel comfort flowing into your heart from a sense of your acceptance with God?" He replied, "Sometimes I do, but sometimes I am left to desperation." The same day in the evening he said. "Brother, I believe you are often uneasy, lest what lately past should come to nothing." I replied by asking him, whether, when he found his patience and his temper fail, he endeavoured to pray for power against his corruptions? He answered "Yes, a thousand times in a day. But I see myself odiously vile and wicked. If I die in this illness, I beg you will place no other inscription over me than such as may just mention my name and the parish where I was minister; for that I ever had a being, and what sort of a being I had, cannot be too soon forgot. I was just beginning to be a deist, and had long desired to be so; and I will own to you what I never confessed before, that my function and the duties of it were a weariness to me which I could not bear. Yet, wretched creature and beast as I was, I was esteemed religious, though I lived without God in the world." About this time I reminded him of the account of Janeway's, which he once read at my desire. He said he had laughed at it in his own mind, and accounted it mere madness and folly. "Yet base as I am," said he, " I have no doubt now but God has accepted me also, and forgiven me all my sins."

I then asked him what he thought of my narrative? He replied "I thought it strange, and ascribed much of it to the state in which you had been. When I came to visit you in London, and found you in that deep distress, I would have given the universe to have administered some comfort to you. You may remember that I tried every method of doing it. When I found that all my attempts were vain, I was shocked to the greatest degree. I began to consider your sufferings as a judgment upon you, and my inability to alleviate them as a judgment upon myself. When Mr. M. came, he succeeded in a moment. This surprised me; but it does not surprise me now. He had the key to your heart, which I had not. That which filled me with disgust against my office as a minister, was, the same ill success which attended me in my own parish. There I endeavoured to sooth the afflicted, and to reform the unruly by warning and reproof; but all that I could say in either case, was spoken to the wind, and attended with no effect."

There is that in the nature of salvation by grace, when it is truly and experimentally known, which prompts every person to think himself the most extraordinary instance of its power. Accordingly, my brother insisted upon the precedence in this respect, and, upon comparing his case with mine, would by no means allow my deliverance to have been so wonderful as his own. He observed that, " from the beginning, both his manner of life and his connexions had been such as had a natural tendency to blind his eyes, and to confirm and rivet his prejudices against the truth. Blameless in his outward conduct, and having no open immorality to charge himself with, his acquaintance had been with men of the same stamp, who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised the doctrines of the cross. Such were all who from his, earliest days he had been used to propose to himself as patterns for his imitation.

Not to go further back, such was the clergyman under whom he received the first rudiments of his education; such was the school-master, under whom he was prepared for the university; and such were all the most admired characters there, with whom he was most ambitious of being connected. He lamented the dark and Christless condition of the place, where learning and morality were all in all, and where if a man was possessed of these qualifications, he neither doubted himself, nor did any body else question the safety of his state. He concluded therefore, that to show the fallacy of such appearances, and to root out the prejudices which long familiarity with them had fastened upon his mind, required a more than ordinary exertion of divine power, and that the grace of God was more clearly manifested in such a work, than in the conversion of one like me, who had no outside righteousness to boast of, and who, if I was ignorant of the truth, was not however so desperately prejudiced against it."

His thoughts, I suppose, had been led to this subject, when one afternoon, while I was writing by the fire side, he thus addressed himself to the nurse, who sat at his bolster. "Nurse, I have lived three and thirty years, and I will tell you how I have spent them. When I was a boy, they taught me Latin; and because I was the son of a gentleman, they taught me Greek. These I learned under a sort of private tutor; at the age of fourteen, or thereabouts, they sent me to a public school, where I learned more Latin and Greek, and, last of all, to this place, where I have been learning more Latin and Greek still. Now has not this been a blessed life, and much to the glory of God?" then directing his speech to me, he said; "Brother, I was going to say I was born in such a year; but I correct myself: I would rather say, in such a year I came into the world. You know when I was born,"