Page:Most remarkable passages in the life of the honourable Colonel James Gardiner.pdf/10

 immediately presented themselves to him, unacquainted as he was with the niceties of the controversy.

When his liberty was regained by an exchange of prisoners, and his health thoroughly established, he was far from rendering unto the Lord according to that wonderful display of divine mercy which he had experienced. I know very little of the particulars of those wild, thoughtless, and wretched years, which lay between the 19th and the 30th of his life; except it be, that he frequently experienced the divine goodness in renewed instances, particularly in preserving him in several hot military actions, in all which he never received so much as a wound after this, forward as he was in tempting danger; and yet, that all these years were spent in an entire alienation from God, and an eager pursuit of animal pleasure, as his supreme good. The series of criminal amours in which he was almost incessantly engaged during this time, must probably have afforded some remarkable adventures and occurrences; but the memory of them is perished. Nor do I think it unworthy notice here, that amidst all the intimacy of his friendship, and the many years of cheerful as well as serious converse which we spent together, I never remember to have heard him speak of any of these intrigues, otherwise than in the general, with deep and solemn abhorrence. This I the rather mention, as it seemed a most genuine proof of his unfeigned repentance; which, I think there is great reason to suspect, when people seem to take a pleasure in relating scenes of vicious indulgence, which yet they profess to have disapproved and forsaken.

Amidst all these pernicious wanderings from the paths of religion, virtue, and happiness, he approved himself so well in his military character, that he was made a lieutenant in that year, viz. 1706: and I am told, he was very quickly promoted to a Cornet's commission in Lord Stair's regiment of Scotch Greys;