Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/204

194 hazard." Be it so, I returned, the debt of nature must be paid, and I am as ready, and as willing, to discharge it now, as I shall be fifty years hence. Yet, for your consolation, suffer me to say, I am immortal, while He who called me into existence has any business for me to perform; and when He has executed those purposes, for which He designed me, He will graciously sign my passport to realms of blessedness. With your good leave, then, I will pursue my subject, and while I have a——for every point of doctrine which I advance, not all the stones in Boston, except they stop my breath, shall shut my mouth, or arrest my testimony. The congregation was, as I have said, astonishingly large; but order and silence were gradually restored, and I had uncommon freedom in the illustration, and defence of those sacred truths, which will be ultimately triumphant. Two or three succeeding lecture evenings were unmolested, when the business of stoning me in the pulpit, was again resumed; my friends were in terror, and, after I had closed, forming a strong phalanx around me, they attended me home. Many religious people were violent in their opposition; they insisted that I merited the severest punishment; that the old discipline for Heretics ought to be put in force, and I was thus furnished with abundant reason to bless God for the religious liberty of the country of my adoption, else racks and tortures, would have been put in operation against me, nor would these holy men, moved by the spirit, have stopped short of my destruction. Yet was the charge of heresy never proved against me. I was never silenced either by reason or scripture—I had called upon men every where, clergymen, or laymen, to step forward, and convict me of error; promising, solemnly promising, immediately upon conviction, to relinquish the obnoxious tenet, whatever it might chance to be, and to adopt that better way, which would, in such an event, become luminous before me. Truth, and gratitude, originates the confession, that in all circumstances, I have hitherto had reason to bless the God of my life, who hath promised He will be with me to the end of the world, and that all things shall work together for good. Amen, and amen.