returned home in hope of reformation. But alas, alas! my resolutions were written, as it were, in sand; the power of habit had enslaved me, and almost the next invitation of my associates, overcame all my engagements. The eagerness of desires for divertisements and pastime, brake through all the sanctions of vows, and violated the solemnity of sacred promises to my God. I rushed again into transgression, as a horse rushes into the battle: again and again I took my sing, and drank my fill; and again and again remorse and compunction seized upon Adored forever be the name of the Lord, he forsook me not, but followed me still closer and closer, and sounded the alarm louder and louder in mine ears. There was in me an immortal part, which his love was towards; the recovery of which, from the thraldom of sin and corruption, his goodness engaged him to seek by mercy and by judgment, frowns and smiles, chastisements and endearments, and all in love inexpressible.

me.

Thus dealt he with me. When I turned at his reproofs, he smiled graciously upon me, and relieved my soul's anxiety, but when I again revolted, his rod was lifted up in fatherly correction. The still small voice was uttered in my dwelling, as in the cool of the day, when a little retired from noise and commotion, Adam, where art thou? There was no hiding from him, whose penetrating eye no secret can escape, and whose aim in reproving was only to save. He still reproved my wanderings, and pointed out the right way, according to scripture declaration, "Thou shalt hear a voice behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk in it." Indeed the way was shown me; it was often plainly cast up before me; but I would not walk in it. I knew my Lord's will, but did it not; mine own, I still delighted in the indulgence of. Oh! that others may escape my load of guilt, and, may I say, my bed of hell, or inward tormenting agony, by a timely submission to the reproofs of instruction.

Sometimes I spent near all the first-day of the week, when I should have been at meeting, in playing cards, idle, if not dissolute conversation, and other vain amusements, returning home at night in condemnation, and sometimes sighing and crying; and yet through all this the Lord preserved me from hard drinking, though often in the way of temptation and solicitation

to it. Swearing I also mostly refrained from. Jesting, joking, and vain conversation, I went considerable lengths in, and sometimes joined the foremost in filthy and obscene discourses. Then again great shame and self-abhorrence would overwhelm me; again I vowed, promised, and renewed my convenant: but all in vain; I had not got deep enough; nor were my covenants made or renewed in the right ability, but too much in my own strength and creaturely resolutions, so they soon were broken. Sometimes I held out a week or two, other times only a day or two. Thus time passed on, and, with an increase of years, I found an increasing propensity to wantonness and dissipation. But blessed be the God of my salvation, he propor tionately increased my sense of guilt and condemnation.

I had seasons of very serious consideration upon religion. What instructions I had outwardly received, were mostly in the way of Friends; but when I came near to man's estate, falling in company with some of the Baptist society, I was drawn to attend their meetings in Providence. Friends' meetings were oftener held in silence than suited my itching ear. I loved to hear words, began to grow inquisitive, and to search pretty deeply into doctrines and tenets of religion; and the Baptist preachers filled my ears with words, and my head with arguments and distinctions; but my heart was little or not at all improved by them. I almost forsook the meetings of Friends, except yearly meetings, and meetings appointed by travellers in the service of the gospel. But when I went to these, Oh! how livingly I still remember the heavenly and heart-ter dering impressions I sometimes, received under the lively, animating testimonies delivered in the evidence and demonstration of the holy spirit, and in the very life of the gospel. Here my heart was helped, though my head was less amused than among the Baptists: however, as I knew not clearly what caused the dif ference, as Friends' meetings remained still often silent, and as I still wished the gratification of argumentative, systematic discourses, I still pretty diligently attended the Baptist meeting; and, in my most religious seasons, I began to think of being baptized in water. For the head-work so far outran the heartwork, during my attendance of these wordy meetings, that I

became convinced in speculation, that that outward performance was an ordinance of Christ; though I have since seen, as clear as day-light, that it never was ordained by Jesus; but was a forerunning, preparatory, and decreasing institution, and has long since done its office, and ceased in the church in point of obligation; and that there is now to the true church but one Lord, one faith, and one baptism, that of the holy ghost and fire, which only can purify and make clean the inside. Oh! my heart, my very soul is fully satisfied in this matter; having felt the living efficacy of this one saving baptism, and known its full sufficiency, without any other.

What first turned my mind to believe the outward a christian ordinance, was this one argument of the Baptists:-" Christ commanded his disciples to baptize: no man can baptize with the holy ghost; therefore the baptism he commanded was not that of the holy ghost, but that of water." This then appeared to me conclusive and unanswerable. But it was my ignorance of that baptizing power which attends all true gospel ministry, that made me assent to this false position, "no man can baptize with the holy ghost." Man himself, in his own mere ability, I know cannot; but I also know, that of himself he cannot preach the gospel. This assertion, no man can preach the gospel, is just as true as that "no man can baptize with the holy ghost." As man merely, he can do nothing at all of either; but it still stands true, man can, man does, through divine assistance, do both. The real gospel was never yet preached, but "with the holy ghost sent down from heaven." Thus the apostles preached it, and thus alone it is still preached; and so preaching it, it was a baptizing ministry. As they spake, the holy ghost fell on them that heard them; that is, where faith wrought in the hearts of the hearers, and the living eternal word preached, through the power of the holy ghost, was mixed with faith in them that heard it; the holy ghost fell on them, baptizing them into a living soul-saving sense of the "power of God unto salvation," which is the true life of the gospel. Thus the apostles fulfilled the commission. They taught baptizingly. The commission is not, "teach, and then, baptize," as two separate acts: it is VOL. I.-6

"teach, baptizing." It is one and the same act; and those who livingly witness the gospel, the power of God unto salvation, preached unto them, they feel it, and receive it in, and only in, "the holy ghost sent down from heaven;" they are taught baptizingly, "in the demonstration of the spirit and of power.' And no preaching has a whit more of the gospel in it, than it has of the holy ghost, the alone true baptizing power. I don't marvel that the letter-learned teachers of our day who run unsent, who are always ready, are ignorant that a true gospel minister is clothed with baptizing authority from on high. I may not now go much further into the discussion of the subject of baptism, though I scarce know how to dismiss it, so many things occur in evidence that there is and can be but one in the gospel, and that this is and must be spiritual.

There is not a text in the Bible, but what appears to me perfectly consistent with the entire disuse of outward water in baptism, under the new covenant; and I am fully persuaded, that the use of it, after Christ's resurrection, was merely in condescension. But whilst the veil is over people's understandings, perhaps they will never see clearly the spirituality of the gospel dispensation; nor how it happened that the old things of John, and of Moses, were not immediately and totally disused, as soon as they were fulfilled. Though to the single eye, it is not at all mysterious, nor could it well have been otherwise. It requires a great deal of care, caution, and moderation, rightly to lay aside superseded observations. The practice of circumcision continued a considerable number of years, after the ascension of the Lord Jesus, and was in such veneration, that, I think, Paul feared, after he had preached the gospel among the Gentiles, well on towards twenty years, to let it be generally known among the brethren at Jerusalem, that he had preached to those Gentiles without the inculcation of circumcision, or any such outward ordinance, lest he should run in vain, or labour in vain at Jerusalem. For they were there so zealous of the ceremonies of the law of Moses, that even the few, to whom he did declare his practice, were very apprehensive he would be obnoxious to the zeal of the Jewish

brethren; and so, in order to keep the way open among them, he was advised to purify, and be at charges, that they might see he walked in the way they thought "orderly."

Thus, we see how hard it was to drop circumcision and water-baptism all at once. The people could scarcely bear it, and prudence might require a great deal of condescension and indulgence for a time, in their continuance.

But to return to my own early exercises about receiving this watery symbol. I could not, at that time, persuade myself, that I was fit for it. I thought it was a sacred ordinance, which none had a right to, but such as, I now see, have no need of it, and can receive no benefit from it, that is, those who had first received its antitype, the saving baptism of Christ. This I was too much a stranger to, and my being so, was the reason that I could be so weak and ignorant, as to think them the proper persons to be abiding in the type who had come to the enjoyment of the antitype, which the type was, at best, but to point out and lead to.

I had not yet fully given up to the motions of divine life in my own heart. My mind was too much turned outward; and the preaching of those I sometimes went to hear, who preached in their own time, had a powerful tendency to keep it outward. In this state of outward attention and inquiry, I found nothing that could give me power over sin and corruption; but notwithstanding all my serious thoughtfulness, and frequent and ardent desires to become truly religious, I still, once in a while, broke loose, and launched forth into as great degrees of vanity and wickedness as ever: and then again a turn of seriousness would come over me. One time under deep exercise, after reasoning and hesitating great part of a day, whether I had best give up with full purpose of heart, to lead a religious life or not; at length I gave up, and entered once more into solemn covenant, to serve God, and deny myself, according to the best of my understanding. Almost as soon as I had thus given up, and come to this good conclusion, in stepped the grand adversary, and blundered and distressed my mind exceedingly with the doctrine of predestination; powerfully insinuating that a certain number were infallibly ordained to eternal salvation, the rest to