parents could not abandon their home; but as they abhorred the French troops, and hated the injustice of their invasion, they were anxious that I should quit the town. Here I saw the most favourable opening for executing my long delayed plan for escaping the religious tyranny under which I groaned and pretending that I did not feel secure at Cadiz, prepared in four days to leave my country for England. I knew it was for ever; and my heart bleeds at the recollection of the last view I took of my father and mother. A few weeks after I found myself on these shores. R. Indeed, Sir, I think you did right. Poor as I am had I known your case when you arrived, I would have shook you by the hand, and welcomed you to my cottage. A. If I should tell you all the gratitude I feel for this country, and my sense of the kindness and friendship with which I have met from the moment I landed, you might suspect me of flattery. But how different appeared England to me from what I had imagined it to be! R. What, Sir, did you fear that we should behave rudely to a foreigner who came for shelter among us? A. No, indeed; that was not my mistake. I found England as hospitable and generous as it had always been described to me. But one thing I found in it which I never expected; that was, true and sincere religion. I have told you that in Popish countries people are made to believe that whoever is not a Roman Catholic is only a Christian in name. I therefore supposed that in this Protestant country, though meni appeared externally to have a religion, few or none would care any thing about it. Now observe the merciful dispensations of Providence with regard to me.. Had I upon my first arrival fallen in with some of your infidels, I should have been confirmed in all my errors. But it pleased God so to direct events as to make me very soon acquainted with one of the most excellent and religious families in London. I had in my former blindness and ignorance, believed that since in Spain, which is the most thoroughly Roman Catholic country in the world, the morals in general are very loose; a nation of Christians only in name, (for such was my mistaken opinion of you) would be infinitely more addicted to vicious courses, But, when I began to look about me, and observed the modesty of the ladies, the quiet and orderly lives of the greatest part of the gentry, and compared their decent conversation with the profane talk which is tolerated in my country, I perceived, at once, that my head was full of absurd notions, and prepared myself to root out from it whatever I should find to be wrong. In this state of mind I went one Sunday to Church, out of mere curiosity; for my thoughts were at that time very far from God and his worship. The unmeaning ceremonies of the Roman Catholics had made me sick of Churches and Church-service. But when, in the course of the Prayers, I perceived the beautiful simplicity, and the warm heartiness, if I may say so, of your Prayer-book, my heart, which for ten years had appeared quite dead to all religious feelings, could not but show a disposition to revive, like the leafless trees when breathed upon by the first soft breezes of spring. God had prevented its becoming a dead trunk : it gave indeed no signs of life; but the sap was stirring up from the root. This was easily perceived in the effect which the singing of a hymn had upon me that morning. It begins, When all thy mercies, O my God, The sentiments expressed in this beautiful hymn penetrated my soul like the first rain which falls upon a thirsty land. My long impious disregard of God, the Father and supporter of my life and being, made me blush, and feel ashamed of myself; and a strong sense of the irrational ungratefulness in which I had so long lived, forced a profusion of tears from my eyes. I left the church a very different man from what I was when I entered it; but still very far from being a true believer in Christ. Yet, from that day I began to put up a very short prayer every morning, asking for light and protection from my Creator, and thanking him for his goodness. It happened about that time that some books concerning the truth of religion-a kind of works in which this country excels all othersfell in my way. I thought it fair to examine the matter again, though I imagined that no man could ever answer the arguments against it, which had become quite familiar to my mind. As I grew less and less prejudiced against the truth of Divine Revelation, I prayed more earnestly for assistance in the important examina tion in which I was engaged. I then began a careful perusal of the Scriptures, and it pleased God, at the end of two years, to remove my blindness, so far as to enable me with humble sincerity to receive the Sacrament according to the manner of the Church of England; which appeared to me, in the course of my enquiries, to be, of all human establishments, the most suited, in her discipline, to promote the ends of the Gospel, and in her doctrines, as pure and orthodox as those which were founded by the Apostles themselves. It is to me a matter of great comfort that I have now lived a much longer period in the acknowledgment of the truth of Christianity, than I spent in my former unbelief. R. You have indeed great reason to thank God. But have you never had any doubts about our Church, since you became a member of it? A. Never, my friend, as compared with the Roman Catholic, I am so fully persuaded that the doctrines properly called Popish, and which make the real difference between Protestants and Romanists are false, that they would shake my faith in the Gospel, if any one could prove to me, that they are part of it. That I am sure can never be done; and since I learnt to separate the chaff of Rome, from the true grain of Christ, I have never turned my back on my Master and Redeemer. I will, however, confess to you, that several years after I embraced the Protestant Religion, I was strongly tempted in. my faith; not, however, as I said before, from. any leaning to Popery, but from a doubt whe-: ther the doctrine of the people called Unitarians I mean those who say that Christ was nothing but a man, the son of Joseph and Mary-might not be true. This was a very severe trial to me; for as I had so long renounced the Christian faith, my mind required an uncommon assistance of Divine Grace, to prevent it from relapsing, like a person recovered out of a long illness, into my old habits of unbelief. In this state of doubt, but without any rash positiveness on either side (for, thank God, my past errors had made me well acquainted with my weakness,) I carefully examined the Scriptures, never omitting to pray the Almighty that he would make me acquainted with the truth. Clouds of doubt hovered, a long time, over my soul, and darkness increased now and then in such a degree that I feared my Christian faith had been extinguished. Had I, in consequence of this dis position to unbelief, returned, as is often the case, to a course of immorality, nothing could have saved me from a relapse into infidelity. But the grace of God was secretly at work in me, and whatever doubts I had about the doc trines of the Gospel, I never deemed myself at liberty, openly and wilfully to offend against its commandments. I sincerely wished to find the truth; and though in my distress I felt often in clined to doubt again, the truth of Revelation, my knowledge of the vanity and flimsiness of infidelity made me turn to Christ, and say (I can assure you I often uttered the words aloud and in tears), "To whom shall I go: thou hast the words of eternal life." Partly from these John vi. 68. |