shows them that mansion at every turn and every step.

It might be supposed, that after what I have already related, respecting my superstitious attention to literal meats, and drinks, and smoking tobacco; as well as the dissipation of my fears of figurative meats, or doctrines concerning an universal analogy; that what I had suffered from my folly and want of faith would have been quite sufficient to preserve me from similar doubts and scruples in future: yet such was my weakness, and so numerous were the artifices of my enemy, that I again fell, and repeatedly, into the same or similar snares; but providentially, I was preserved from the terrors of a broken vow that I once groaned under, in resuming the practice of smoking, which I had relinquished as thinking it would be an acceptable sacrifice. After some lapse of time, and acquisition of knowledge by experience, I altered my opinion, and became persuaded that my scruples were vain; in consequence of this change of opinion, I again began to smoke. Here my conscience, and perhaps my enemy, accused me of impiety and sacrilege; and it was long, very long, before I could obtain any peace of mind. Even years elapsed before I could be delivered from the overwhelming fear that I was under the curse of God; not always, but from time to time, as the never

dying worm took occasion to gnaw the sensibility of my conscience.

These attacks upon the tenderness, or scrupulosity of my conscience, for I am not able to determine what it should be called, resembled the irritating stings and buzzings of musquitos and flies, and sometimes of scorpions; which I by experience discovered to be in some measure natural to my moral and intellectual temperament; for it bred these plagues as naturally as a hot and moist climate does flies, scorpions, and serpents.

In fact, (analogical fact, I mean) heat of climate is emblematic of heat of passion; and much moisture is emblematic of an abundant flow of imagination; and these causes act similarly in the moral and natural cases. A more rational temper is similar to a colder climate, which kills all these tormenting vermin; or rather does not permit them to exist. And the human frigid zone is that of selfish insensibility and philosophical infidelity. Thus both extremes are near death, but by opposite routes.

In reading the New Testament, I particularly attached myself to our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, which I considered as the measure which I was to fulfil, in order to obtain the promises of the Gospel. In meditating upon it, I was astonished and staggered at the following Scripture, viz. "But I say unto you, that ye I's

"resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee

on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,” &c. &c. I immediately applied this text to the vexatious, careless, and dishonest conduct of my native servants; for though I had, since my supposed conversion, left off chastising them for their faults, and even speaking roughly to them; yet this was by no means a strict and full obedience to the command; which seemed rather to require me to encourage them always to act still worse and worse, and to repeat and aggravate every offence. Nevertheless, my mind and heart both revolted in secret against this intolerable severity, as it often seemed to me to be, in spite of all my endeavours to smother my thoughts.

But on the other hand, our Lord says in another chapter of St. Matthew, "Therefore "all things whatsoever ye would that men should "do to you, do ye even so to them for this is "the Law and the Prophets." This then was to direct every man to weigh his duty and regulate his conduct in the balance of reason and conscience. How to reconcile this law of true liberty and right reason, with the stern and seemingly unjust injunction laid down in the former Scripture, I could not conceive. To obey both, appeared to me to be impracticable. Yet as an opening of option was evidently given by these two distinct, and to my mind opposite

rules; and as one of them appeared to be in some degree practicable to the weakness of fallen humanity, assisted by divine grace; and the other absolutely impracticable without death, among sinful men, though doubtless perfectly holy and right in itself; so I thought I might venture to choose that which seemed most practicable and intelligible to my corrupt

nature.

But in course of time and reading the Gospels, I afterwards observed, that in Mark, ix. our Lord directs His disciples" to have salt in "themselves," and that "every sacrifice must be "salted with salt." I understood that salt was an emblem of understanding and discernment; and therefore, that this precept implied, that our obedience and our whole conduct must be seasoned with understanding and discrimination in order to be acceptable; and that no sacrifice could be pleasing to God, which was not thus salted; for Solomon also says in his Proverbs, that "the sacrifice of fools is an "abomination." Now, allowing this interpretation to be just, which I believed it to be, not only from the analogy of the thing, but also from the common observations of men on the same subject; such as attic salt, or wit, and the custom of the orientals, who say of a foolish looking man, that there is no salt in his face; also, from the common expression, that hard

sayings must be understood " cum grano salis *. From all this evidence I concluded, that all texts of Scripture were not to be taken and obeyed altogether literally, but seasoned with salt of understanding. That is to say, the spirit was to be adopted, and not the letter; for as St. Paul says, 2 Cor. iii. "The letter "killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. Now the "Lord is that Spirit; and where the Spirit of "the Lord is, there is liberty." Also our Lord says in the sixth chapter of St. John, " It is "the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth

nothing." And again, "Judge not according "to the appearance, but judge righteous judg"ment."

In proportion, therefore, as I studied the Scriptures with a more liberal confidence in the goodness and mercy of God; or in other words, in the spirit of adoption, and not in the letter of the law of bondage; I found my slavish, legal, superstitious fears and repulsions to yield by degrees to the clear evidence of the truth. I found, in short, that, as St. Paul informed me, I was called unto liberty;

* That is to say, a proper degree of discernment, to taste, as it were, the hidden sense; and not (as I have heard some persons say) with a sufficient degree of allowance for the loose, indefinite, and figurative style of Scripture parables.