Page:Causes and cure of spiritual darkness.pdf/14

14 and arrived at such a sad pre-eminence in sin, that he became the ring-leader of the profane.

Yet, amidst all these enormities, God left not himself without a witness in his bosom. He had many severe checks of conscience, and terrifying thoughts of hell. After days spent in sin, his dreams were sometimes peculiarly frightful. The fear of death and judgment intruded into his gayest hours of vanity and pleasure. The Lord was also pleased to mingle mercies with his judgments, by granting him several remarkable deliverancee fron death. Once he fell into the river Ouse ; at another time he fell into an arm of the sea, and narrowly escaped being drowned. When he was 17 years of age, he became a soldier ; and at the siege of Leicester, being drawn out to stand sentinel, another desired to take his place : he consented, and thereby escaped being shot through the head with a musket-ball, which took off his comrade.

But neither mercies nor judgments made any durable impression on his hardened heart. He was not only insensible of the evil and danger of sin, but an enemy to every thing serious. The thought of religion, or the very appearance of it in others, was an intolerable burden to him.

The first step towards his reformation was his marriage with a woman, whose parents were accounted religious. Though extremely poor, she bad two books left her by her father, The Practice of Piety, and The Plain Man's Path-way to Heaven. In these they read together occasionally ; and though not convinced of his lost condition, upon reading and hearing a Sermon against Sabbath-breaking, he formed some