that he must in all probability quickly perish. Nevertheless, he had such
a sense of the evil of sin, of the goodness of the Divine Being, and of
the admirable tendency of the Christian revelation, that he resolved to
spend the remainder of his life, while God continued him out of hell, in
as rational and as useful a manner as he could; and to continue casting
himself at the foot of divine mercy every day, and often in a day, if
peradventure there might be hope of pardon, of which all that he could
say was, that he did not absolutely despair. He had at that time such a
sense of the degeneracy of his own heart, that he hardly durst form any
determinate resolution against sin, or pretend to engage himself by any
vow in the presence of God; but he was continually crying to him, that he
would deliver him from the bondage of corruption. He perceived in himself
a most surprising alteration with regard to the dispositions of his
heart; so that, though he felt little of the delight of religious duties,
he extremely desired opportunities of being engaged in them; and
those licentious pleasures which had before been his heaven, were now
absolutely his aversion. And indeed, when I consider how habitual all
those criminal indulgences were grown to him, and that he was now in the
prime of life, and all this while in high health too, I cannot but
be astonished to reflect upon it, that he should be so wonderfully
sanctified in body, as well as in soul and spirit, as that, for all the
future years of his life, he from that hour should find so constant a
disinclination to, and abhorrence of, those criminal sensualities to
which he fancied he was before so invincibly impelled by his very
constitution, that he was used strangely to think, and to say; that
Omnipotence itself could not reform him, without destroying that body,
and giving him another.[*]

[*Note: Mr. Spears expresses this wonderful circumstance in these
remarkable words "I was (said the colonel to me) effectually cured of all