unaccustomed as he was to discourses of this nature, he had an unusual
command both of thought and expression, so that he recollected and
uttered every thing as he could have wished. The lady heard with
attention; and though he paused between every branch of the argument, she
did not interrupt the course of it till he told her he had finished
his design, and waited for her reply. She then, produced some of her
objections, which he took up and canvassed in such a manner that at
length she burst into tears, allowed the force of his arguments and
replies, and appeared for some time after so deeply impressed with the
conversation, that it was observed by several of her friends; and there
is reason to believe that the impression continued, at least so far as to
prevent her from ever appearing under the character of an unbeliever or a
sceptic.

This is only one specimen among many of the battles he was almost daily
called out to fight in the cause of religion and virtue; with relation to
which I find him expressing himself thus in a letter to Mrs. Gardiner,
his good mother, dated from Paris the 25th of January following, that
is 1719-20, in answer to one in which she had warned him to expect such
trials: "I have (says he) already met with them, and am obliged to fight,
and to dispute every inch of ground. But all thanks and praise to the
great Captain of my salvation. He fights for me, and then it is no wonder
that I come off more than conqueror:" by which last expression I suppose
he meant to insinuate that he was strengthened and established, rather
than overborne, by this opposition. Yet it was not immediately that he
gained such fortitude. He has often told me how much he felt in those
days of the emphasis of those well-chosen words of the apostle, in which
he ranks the trial of cruel mockings, with scourgings, and bonds, and
imprisonments. The continual railleries with which he was received, in
almost all companies where he had been most familiar before, did often