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 28 Prayers and Meditations.

diligent in the lawful employments which shall be set before me ; Grant me purity of thoughts, words, and actions. Grant me to love and study thy word, and to frequent thy worship with pure affection. Deliver and preserve me from vain terrours, and grant that by the Grace of thy Holy Spirit I may so live that after this life ended, I may be received to everlasting happiness for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

46.

April 20, 1764, GOOD FRYDAY.

I have made no reformation, I have lived totally useless, more sensual in thought and more addicted to wine and meat r, grant me, O God, to amend my life for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

I hope

To put my rooms in order *.

I fasted all day.

^Disorder I have found one great cause of idleness 2.

47.

April 21, i764,-3-m.

x~ My indolence, since my last reception of the Sacrament 3, has

I sunk into grosser sluggishness, and my dissipation spread into

/ wilder negligence. My thoughts have been clouded with sen-

<, suality, and, except that from the beginning of this year I have

I in some measure forborn excess of Strong Drink my appetites

have predominated over my reason. A kind of strange oblivion

has overspread me, so that I know not what has become of the

\ last year, and perceive that incidents and intelligence pass over

^me without leaving any impression.

This is not the life to which Heaven is promised 4. I purpose

1 Quoted in the Life, i. 482. pulse to action, either corporal or

2 ' We cannot but reflect on that mental.' Hawkins, p. 205. inertness and laxity of mind which 3 In only two or three instances is the neglect of order and regularity in mention made of his reception of living, and the observance of stated the Sacrament on any other day but hours, in short the waste of time, is Easter Sunday. See post, under apt to lead men to: this was the April 18, 1779.

source of Johnson's misery through- 4 The whole of the above passage out his life ; all he did was by fits and is quoted in the Life, i. 482. starts, and he had no genuine im-

to

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