Page:Life of the honourable Col. James Gardiner (1).pdf/7

 envied him, and called him by a dreadful kind of compliment, "the happy rake."

Yet the cheeks of conscience, and some remaining principles of so good an education, would break in upon his most licentious hours; and when some of his dissolute companions were once congratulating him upon his felicity, a dog happening at that time to come into the room, he could not forbear groaning inwardly, and saying to himself, “Oh! that I were that dog!" Such was then his happiness, and such perhaps is that as hundreds more, who bear themselves highest in the contempt of religion, and glory in that infamous servitude which they affect to call liberty.

Yet in the most abandoned days, he was never fond of intemperate drinking, from which he used to think a manly pride might be sufficient to preserve persons of sense and spirit: so that, if he ever fell into any excess of that kind, it was merely cut of complaisance. His frank, obliging, and generous temper, procured him many friends; and those principles, which rendered him amiable to others, not being under the direction of wisdom and piety, sometimes made him more uneasy to himself, than he perhaps might have been if he could entirely have outgrown them; especially as he was never a sceptic in his heart; but still retained a secret apprehension, that natural and revealed religion was founded in truth. And with this conviction, his notorious violations of the most essential precepts of both could not but occasion some secret misgivings of heart. His continual neglect of the great Author of his being, of whose perfections lie could not doubt, and to whom he knew himself to be under daily and perpetual obligations, gave him, in some moments of involuntary reflection, inexpressible remorse; and this, at times, wrought upon him to such a degree that he resolved he would attempt to pay him some acknowledgements. Acordingly, for a few mornings he did it; repeating, in retirement, some passages out of the Psalms and other scriptures, which he still retained in his memory;