"I begged of God to show me all the wickedness of my heart, and to fit
me for His mercy. I besought Him to increase my convictions, for I was
afraid I did not _mourn_ enough for my sins. But I found relief
in Mr. Wesley's Journal, where I learned that we should not build on
what we feel, but that we should go to Christ with all our sins and
all our hardness of heart.

"On January 21st I began to write a confession of my sins, misery, and
helplessness, together with a resolution to seek Christ even unto
death, but, my business calling me away, I had no heart to go on with
it. In the evening I read the Scriptures, and found a sort of pleasure
in seeing a picture of my wickedness so exactly drawn in the third
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and that of my condition in the
seventh; and now I felt some hope that God would finish in me the work
He had begun."

It would have been strange if at this important crisis the devil had
let him alone. In many ways the enemy fought for his soul. Among other
hindrances he was beset with temptations to evil thoughts, and,
distressed beyond measure, he cried to God with a _definite_
faith which grew out of the very desperateness of his immediate need
of help. Hope grew within his cheerless soul, for, as he says:--

"Having withstood two or three temptations, and feeling peace in my
soul through the whole of them, I began to think it was the Lord's
doing. Afterwards it was suggested to me that it was great presumption
for such a sinner to hope for such a mercy. I prayed I might not be
permitted to fall into a delusion; but the more I prayed the more I
saw it was real, for though sin stirred all the day long, I always