How dark the day in which I live! Watchman, What of the night? Watchman, What of the night?

19.-I have this day had a proof of my weakness. Being engaged in a controversy, I found my spirit too much stirred. O how unfit am I for controversy! *

"20.-O peace, thou inestimable jewel! The Lord grant I may never enter the polemical lists.

"21.-Dejected through worldly and church concerns, but had some relief to-night in casting all my care upon the Lord, hoping that he careth for me. The Lord undertake for me! O thou that managest worlds unknown, without one disappointment, take my care into thy hand, and fit me for thy pleasure. If poverty must be my portion, add thereto

contentment.

"22.-Ah how heavily do I drag on without the Lord. I can neither think nor do any thing to purpose. Lord help me. Sin how deceitful! While we may obtain an apparent

As little also did he imagine how much of this sort of work he must do for God; who intended to make him valiant for the truth on the earth, and to render him one of the most able, temperate, cautious, and useful controversial writers of his time; a strenuous defender of evangelical truth, against False Calvinism and Antinomianism, and likewise against the Arminians, Socinians, Deists, Universalists, and Sandemanians.

victory over one sin, we may be insensibly enslaved to another: it may seem to flee before us, like the Benjamites before Israel, and yet retain an ambushment to fall upon our rear.

"27.-O what an ocean of impurity have I still in me. What vain desires lodge in my sinful heart. Rich must be the blood that can atone, infinitely efficacious the grace that can purify, and inconceivable the love that can remain without the shadow of turning, amidst all this vileness. O had every creature in heaven and earth joined in assuring me of God's love to me, surely I could never have believed it but for the assurances grounded on his own word.

"29. Surely I do not study the cases of the people enough in my preaching. I find by conversation to-day, with one seemingly in dying circumstances, that but little of my preaching has been suited to her case. Visiting the sick, and conversing sometimes even with the unconverted part of my hearers about their souls, and especially with the godly, would have a tendency to make my preaching more experimental.

"Am not I a fool and slow of heart to believe? Notwithstanding all the scripture says of my impotency, all the experience 1 have had of it, and all my settled and avowed principles, how hard is it for me to believe that I am nothing! Ah! can I live near to

God, set or keep the springs of godliness a-going in my soul, or investigate the things of God, to any purpose? No, I cannot. • When

I am weak, then (and then only,) am I strong.' "When Ephraim spake tremblingly, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died.'

Omitting the frequent repetition of such exercises as are common to all Christians, 1 shall no longer follow the order of time, but select such extracts as seem most important, and arrange them under five or six different heads.

(1.)

Personal Religion exemplified in both the painful and pleasant exercises of his mind.

I begin with the former; but cautioning my readers against being in any degree reconciled to the workings of evil, because the same defects and defilements have been acknowledged by other good men. My soul has long nauseated the thought of taking comfort from the hope, that if I knew all of the best of men, 1 should find they were nearly as poor creatures as myself. All have doubtless to maintain a daily conflict; but God forbid I should please myself with the idea, that they do not more frequently get the victory than I. I never wish to think otherwise, than that thousands of saints on earth have lived nearer to God

R

than I ever did: though I am sure they will give all the praise to him that worketh in them to will and to do of his good pleasure.

I have no wish, however, to conceal the humiliating complaints of my dear Brother, who will no more complain again, as he did in the following extracts.

"Sept. 12, 1780.-Very much in doubt respecting my being in a state of grace. I cannot see that I have, or ever had, for any constancy, such an idea of myself as must be implied in true humility. The Lord have mercy upon me, for I know not how it is with me. One thing I know, that if I be a Christian at all, real Christianity in me is inexpressibly small in degree. O what a vast distance is there between what I ought to be, and what I am! If I am a saint at all, I know I am one of the least of all saints: I mean, that the workings of real grace in my soul are so feeble, that I hardly think they can be feebler in any true Christian.

"There is not only an inexpressible distance between what I ought to be and what I am, but between what primitive believers, yea the scripture saints in all ages, seem to have been, and what I am. I think of late, I cannot in prayer consider myself as a Christian, but as a sinner casting myself at Christ's feet for mercy.

"Oct. 11. Surely my soul is, in general, like the earth when it was a confused chaos, 'without form and void,' and as when darkness covered the face of the deep.' I think I know but little of the power of religion. Surely I am a novice in experience. I find my heart somewhat tender to-night; but feel myself full of darkness, deadness, and pollution. The Lord have mercy upon me!

"What an emptiness in all earthly enjoyments nothing therein is suited to my immortal thirst. I must go in quest of a better country, even an heavenly one: there I shall be satisfied.

"12.-O what a world is this; and what a life do I live. I feel myself the subject of much evil. Real religion seems to be something at which I aim; but cannot attain.

I

may say of it, as Solomon said of wisdom'I thought to be religious, but it was far from

me.'

"Nov. 7.-Somewhat affected in thinking on the annoyances of the spiritual life; stupidity, coldness, confusion, sin of all kinds-O what annoyances!

Affected also to-night with the goodness of God to me, as a God of providence.— I enjoy what the holy apostles, and what even the King of the Universe, when an inhabitant here, did not enjoy-yet O how ungrateful!"