displeasure. His joy seemed truly to be a rejoicing with trembling. His assurance and comfort differed greatly from a false enthusiastic confidence and joy, in that it promoted and maintained mourning for sin. Holy mourning with him, was not only the work of an hour or a day, at his first conversion; but sorrow for sin was like a wound constantly running; he was a mourner for sin all his days. He did not, after he received comfort and full satisfaction of the forgiveness of all his sins, and the safety of his state, forget his past sins, the sins of his youth, committed before his conversion; but the remembrance of them, from time to time, revived in his heart, with renewed grief. That passage [Ezek xvi. 63.] was evidently fulfilled in him, "That thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy shame; when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done." And how lastingly did the sins he committed after his conversion affect and break his heart! If he did any thing whereby he thought he had in any respect dishonoured God, and wounded the interest of religion, he had never done with calling it to mind with sorrow and bitterness; though he was assured that God had forgiven it, yet he never forgave himself; his past sorrows and fears made no satisfaction, with him; but still the wound renews and bleeds afresh, again, and again. And his present sins, those he daily found in himself, were an occasion of daily, sensible, and deep sorrow of heart.

His religion did not consist in unaccountable flights and vehement pangs; suddenly rising, and suddenly falling; at times exalted almost to the third heavens, and then negligent, vain, carnal, and swallowed up with the world, for days and weeks, if not months together. His religion was not like a blazing meteor, or like a flaming comet, (or a wandering star, as the apostle Jude calls it, ver. 13.) flying through the firmament with a bright train, and then quickly departing into perfect darkness; but more like the steady lights of heaven, constant principles of light, though sometimes hid with clouds. Nor like a land-flood which flows far and wide with a rapid stream, bearing down all before it, and then dries up; but more like a stream, fed by living springs; which, though sometimes increased by showers, and, at other times diminished by drought, yet is a constant stream.

His religious affections and joys were not like those of some who have rapture and mighty emotions from time to time in company; but have very little affection in retirement and secret places. Though he was of a very sociable temper, and loved the company of saints, and delighted very much in religious conversation, and in social worship; yet his warmest affections, and their greatest effects on animal nature, and his sweetest joys, were in his closet devotions, and solitary transactions between God and his own soul: as is very observable through his

whole course, from his conversion to his death. He delighted greatly in sacred retirements; and loved to get quite away from all the world, to converse with God alone in secret duties.

BRAINERD'S experiences and comforts were very far from being like those of some persons, which are attended with a spiritual satiety, and which put an end to their religious desires and longings, at least to the edge and ardency of them; resting satisfied in their own attainments and comforts, as having obtained thei chief end, which is to extinguish their fears of hell, and give them confidence of the favour of God. On the contrary, they were always attended with longings and thirstings after greater degrees of conformity to God! The greater and sweeter his comforts were, the more vehement were his desires after holiness. His longings were not so much after joyful discoveries of God's love, and clear views of his own title to future advancement and eternal honours in heaven, as after more of present holiness, greater spirituality, an heart more engaged for God, to love, and exalt, and depend on him. He earnestly wished to serve God better, to do more for his glory, to do all that he did with more of a regard to Christ as his righteousness and strength, and to behold the enlargement and advancement of his kingdom on earth. His desires were not idle wishes, but such as were powerful and effectual, to animate him to the earnest, eager pursuit of these things, with the utmost diligence and unfainting labour and self-denial. His comforts never put an end to his seeking after God, and striving to obtain his grace; but, on the contrary, greatly engaged him therein.

IV. His religion did not consist in experience without practice. All his inward illuminations, affections, and comforts, seemed to have a direct tendency to practice, and to issue in it and this, not merely a practice negatively good, free from gross acts of irreligion and immorality; but a practice positively holy and christian, in a serious, devout, humble, meek, merciful, charitable, and beneficent conversation, making the service of God and our Lord Jesus Christ, the great business of life, to which he was devoted, and which he pursued with the greatest earnestness and diligence to the end of his days, through all trials. In him was to be seen the right way of being lively in religion. His liveliness in religion, did not consist merely, or mainly, in his being lively with the tongue, but in deed; not in being forward in profession and outward show, and abundant in declaring his own experiences; but chiefly in being active and abundant in the labours and duties of religion; "not slothful in business, but fervent in spirit serving the Lord, and serving his generation, according to the will of God." By these things, many high pretenders to religion, and professors of extraordinary spiritual experience, may be sensible that BRAINERD did greatly condemn their kind of religion; and that not only in word, but

by example, both living and dying; as the whole series of his christian experience and practice, from his conversion to his death, appears a constant condemnation of it.

It cannot be objected, that the reason why he so much disliked the religion of these pretenders, and why his own so much. differed from it, was, that his experiences were not clear. Their is no room to say, they were otherwise, in any respect, in which clearness of experience has been wont to be insisted on; whether it be the clearness of their nature or of their order, and the method in which his soul first found rest and comfort in his conversion. I am far from thinking, and so was he, that clearness in the order of experiences is, in any measure, of equal importance with the clearness of their nature. I have sufficiently declared in my discourse on religious affections, which he expressly approved of and recommended, that I do not suppose, a sensible distinctness of the steps of the spirit's operation and method of successive convictions and illuminations, is a necessary requisite to persons being received in full charity, as true saints; provided the nature of the things which they profess be right, and their practice correspondent. Nevertheless, it is observable, a fact which cuts off all objection from such as would be most unreasonably disposed to object and cavil in the present case, that BRAINERD's experiences were not only clear in the latter respect, but remarkably so in the former; so that there is not perhaps one instance in five hundred true converts, which on this account can be paralleled with him.

It cannot be pretended, that the reason why he so much condemned the experiences of those whose first faith consists in believing that Christ is theirs, and that Christ died for them; without any previous experience of union of heart to him, for his excellency as he is in himself, and not for his supposed love to them--and who judge of their interest in Christ, their justification, and God's love to them, not by their sanctification, and the exercises and fruits of grace, but by a supposed immediate witness of the Spirit, by inward suggestion was that he was of a too legal spirit, or that he never was dead to the law, never experienced thorough work of conviction, was never fully brought off from his own righteousness, and weaned from the old covenant by a thorough legal humilation; or that afterwards he had no great degree of evangelical humiliation, not living in a deep sense of his own emptiness, wretchedness, poverty, and absolute dependence on the mere grace of God through Christ. His convictions of sin preceding his first consolations in Christ, were exceedingly deep and thorough; his trouble and exercise of mind, from a sense of sin and misery, very great, and long continued, and the light let into his mind at his conversion, and in progressive sanctification, appears to have had its genuine humbling influence upon him, to have kept him low in his own eyes,

not confiding in himself, but in Christ," living by the faith of the son of God, and looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus to eternal life."

Nor can it be pretended, that the reason why he condemned these, and other things, which this sort of people call the very essence of vital religion, and the power of godliness, was, that he was a dead Christian, and lived in the dark, as they express themselves; that his experiences, though they might be true were not great; that he did not live near to God; that he had but a small acquaintance with him; or that he had but a dim sight of spiritual things. If any, after they have read the preceding account of BRAINERD's life, will venture to pretend this, they will only show that they themselves are in the dark, and do indeed "put darkness for light, and light for darkness."

It is common with this sort of people, if there are any, whom they cannot deny to exhibit good evidences of true godliness, who yet appear to dislike their notions-and condemn those things, wherein they place the height of religion—to insinuaté, that they are afraid of the cross, and have a mind to secure the favour of the world and the like. But this will not be alleged concerning BRAINERD, by any one who has read the preceding account of his life. It must be obvious to every one, that he was an extraordinary, and almost unparalleled instance in these times, and these parts of the world, of the contrary disposition; and that, whether we consider what he has recorded of his inward experience from time to time; or his practice, how he in fact took up and embraced the cross, and bore it constantly, in his great self-denials, labours and sufferings for the name of Jesus, and went on without fainting, without repining, to his dying illness; how he did not only, from time to time relinquish and renounce the world secretly in his heart, with the full and fervent consent of all the powers of his soul; but openly and actually forsook the world, with its possessions, delights, and common comforts, to dwell as it were with wild beasts, in a howling wilderness; with constant cheerfulness, complying with the numerous hardships of a life of toil and travail there, to promote the kingdom of his dear Redeemer. Besides, it appears by the preceding history, that he never did more condemn the things referred to, never had a greater sense of their delusion, pernicious nature, and ill tendency, and never was more full of pity to those who are led away with them, than in his last illness, and at times when he had the nearest prospect of death, and supposed himself to be on the very brink of eternity. Surely he did not condemn those things at these seasons, only to secure the favour of the world.

V. Beside what has been already related of BRAINERD's sentiments in his dying state concerning true and false religion, we have his deliberate and solemn thoughts on this subject in his

preface to Mr. SHEPARD's diary, before mentioned, which, when he wrote it, he supposed to be, as it proved, one of the last things he should ever write. I shall here insert a part of that preface, as follows:

* "How much stress is laid by many upon some things as being effects and evidences of exalted degrees of religion, when they are so far from being of any importance in it, that they are really irreligious, a mixture of self-love, imagination, and spiritual pride, or perhaps the influence of Satan transformed into an angel of light; I say, how much stress is laid on these things by many, I shall not determine : but it is much to be feared, that while God was carrying on a glorious work of grace, and undoubtedly gathering a harvest of souls to himself, which we should always remember with thankfulness, numbers of others have, at the same time been fatally deluded by the devices of the devil, and their own corrupt hearts. It is to be feared, that the conversions of some have no better foundation than this; viz. that after they have been under some concern for their souls for a while, and it may be manifested some very great and uncom mon distress and agonies, they have on a sudden imagined that they saw Christ, in some posture or other, perhaps on the cross, bleeding and dying for their sins; or it may be, smiling on them and thereby signifying his love to them; and that these and the like things, though mere imaginations, which have nothing spiritual in them, have instantly removed all their fears and distress. es, filled them with raptures of joy and made them imagine, that they loved Christ with all their hearts; when the bottom of all was nothing but self-love. For when they imagined that Christ had been so good to them as to save them, and as it were to single them out of all the world, they could not but feel some kind of natural gratitude to him; although they never had any spiritual view of his divine glory, excellency, and beauty, and consequently never had any love to him for himself. Others having had a passage, or perhaps many passages of scripture, brought to their minds with power, as they express it, such as that, "Son be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee," and the like; have immediately applied these passages to themselves, supposing that God hereby manifested his peculiar favour to them, as if mentioned by name; never considering, that they are now giving heed to new revelations, there being no such thing revealed in the word of God, as that this or that particular person has, or ever shall have his sins forgiven; nor yet remembering, that Satan can with a great deal of seeming pertinency, and perhaps also with considerable power, bring scripture to the minds of men, as he did to Christ himself. Thus these persons rejoice in having a passage of scripture suddenly suggested to them or impressed upon their minds, supposing they are now the chil

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