CHARACTERS. 



335 



the road that led him to the Lamb," 

 was succeeded by impenetrable dark- 

 ness. After the clearest views of 

 the love of God, and the expansion 

 of heart which he had enjoyed in 

 his ways, his mind became ob- 

 scured, confused, and dismayed. — 

 He concluded, as too many others 

 have done under so sensible a 

 change, and as the psalmist in his 

 infirmity was tempted to do, that 

 " the Lord had cast him off; that 

 he would be favourable no more ; 

 that his mercy was clean gone for 

 ever !" That vivid imagination, 

 which often attained the utmost 

 limits of the sphere of reason, did 

 but too easily transgress them ; and 

 his spirits, no longer sustained upon 

 the wings of faith and hope, sunk 

 with their weight of natural depres- 

 sion into the horrible abyss of abso- 

 lute despair. In this state, his mind 

 became immoveaby fixed. He che- 

 rished an unalterable persuasion that 

 the Lord, after having renewed him 

 in holiness, had doomed him to ever- 

 lasting perdition. The doctrines in 

 which he had been established di- 

 rectly opposed such a conclusion ; 

 and he remained still equally con- 

 vinced of their general truth : but 

 he supposed himself to be the only 

 person that ever believed with the 

 heart unto righteousness, and was 

 notwithstanding excluded from sal- 

 vation. In this state of mind, with 

 a deplorable consistency, he ceased 

 not only from attendance upon pub- 

 lic and domestic worship,but like- 

 wise from every attempt at private 

 prayer; apprehending, that for him 

 to implore mercy would be oppo- 

 sing the determinate counsel of God. 

 Amidst these dreadful temptations, 

 such was his unshaken submission 

 to what he imagined to be the di- 

 vine f)leasure, that he was accus- 



tomed to say, " if holding up my 

 finger would save me from endless 

 torments, I would not do it against 

 the will of God." It was only at 

 seasons, when, racked by the imme- 

 diate expectation of being plunged 

 into everlasting misery, his mind 

 became wholly distracted, that he 

 ever uttered a rebellious word 

 against that God of love, whom his 

 lamentable delusion transformed in- 

 to an implacable oppressor. His 

 efforts at self-destruction were re- 

 peatedly renewed ; but they were 

 stimulated by a strong impression 

 that God bad commanded him to 

 perpetrate this act ; and he even 

 supposed that his involuntary failure 

 in the performance had incurred the 

 irrevocable vengeance of the Al- 

 mighty ! To this, and never to any 

 other deficiency of obedience, have 

 I heard him ascribe his imaginary 

 exclusion from mercy. 



Habituated to the fearful expec- 

 tation of judgment, it became, as 

 at the period formerly described, by 

 degrees less insupportable. He be- 

 came accessible to a few intimate 

 friends in succession, who laboured 

 to divert his thoughts from the 

 dreadful object that engrossed them, 

 and to excite them to activity on 

 different subjects. Thus originated 

 most of those poems, which, when 

 published, charmed, and surprised 

 both the literary and the religious 

 world. The attempt was successful 

 in that which interested him much 

 more than poetical fame, his partial 

 relief from self- torment . Some times 

 his mind was led so far from the 

 vortex of distress, as to indulge in 

 playful essays ; but these intervals 

 were extremely transient. In gene- 

 ral, his poems are the evident dic- 

 tates of that reverence for God, 

 that esteem for the gospel, and that 



