Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/80

70 I delighted in convivial parties; Vaux-hall, the play-houses, were charming; I had never known life before. It is true, my secret Mentor sometimes embittered my enjoyments; the precepts, the example of my father stared me in the face; the secret sigh of my bosom arose, as I mournfully reflected on what I had lost. But I had not sufficient resolution to retrace my steps; indeed I had little leisure. I was in a perpetual round of company; I was intoxicated with pleasure; I was invited into one society, and another, until there was hardly a society in London, of which I was not a member. How long this life of dissipation would have lasted, had not my resources failed, I know not. I occasionally encountered one, and another, of my religious connexions, who seriously expostulated with me; but I generally extorted from them a laugh, which ultimately induced them to shun me. I had an interview with Mr. Barnstable, a preacher in Mr. Wesley's connexion, and questioning him respecting many, whom I had known, he informed me, that Mr. Trinbath, at whose house I had passed so delightful an evening with Mr. Whitefield, in the city of Cork, was no more! His beautiful wife had quitted her husband, her children, and her mother, and accompanied a private soldier to America!!! Her doting husband, thus cruelly deceived, lost first his reason, and afterwards his life. Mr. Barnstable inquired, what had become of me so long; and, after severely admonishing me, he pronounced upon me an anathema, and quitted me. It will be supposed, I was not much pleased with him, and, assuredly, I was at variance with myself; and above all, I was grievously afflicted for the misfortunes, and death of the once happy Trinbath. It has often been matter of astonishment to me, how, after such a religious education as I had received; after really, vitally entering into the spirit of the life, to which I was from infancy habituated; after feelingly bearing my public testimony against the follies, and the dissipation of the many, I should so entirely renounce a life of serious piety, and embrace a life of frolic, a life of whim! It is also wonderful, that, thus changed, I proceeded no further; that I was guilty of no flagrant vices; that I was drawn into no fatal snares. Many were the devices employed to entangle me; which devices I never deliberately sought to avoid. Doubtless, I was upheld by the good hand of God; for which sustaining power my full soul offers its grateful orisons.

I pursued this inconsiderate, destructive course, upwards of a year, never permanently reflecting where I was, or how I should terminate my career. My money was nearly exhausted: but this was beneath my consideration: and, as I have said, serious reflection was arrested by