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and favour that my foul has felt under thy converfation is an additional proof of it--for the excellency and the power of religion is all of God. I wish my brother would relate a little of the dealings of God with him; I fhould be all attention-my heart is fweetly becalmed-my feat is pure eafy; I do not believe that I fhould be tired if I was to fit here all night; nor do I believe that I fhould feel the want of food;-my very body has loft its appetite fince my foul has been at this banquet.

Cufbi. I can hardly help laughing at thee, my brother, for thou fayest I could fit all night, when we have done that already; it was twelve o'clock yesterday when we met under this tree, and now it wants half an hour of the fame-we have fat juft twenty-three hours and a half;furely, if fome people were to hear thee, they would fay as the giddy multitude did of Peter and John, that they were full of new wine. As for thy body having loft its appetite is no wonder; the body and foul are clofely united, and both interefted in the covenant of grace. If the foul is burdened, the countenance of the body will proclaim it; the knees will tremble under its burden, and the whole animal frame will feel the effects of it. But, on the other hand, if the foul be enrapt in the vifion of faith, as Paul was, it is fo forgotten that the foul cannot relate whether the body was in the company or not; and

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when the foul is indulged with the fmiles of God, the body will forget both its wants and its infirmities, as Elijah did when his body fafted forty days, after the angels had entertained him under the juniper tree; or like Abraham, who, at almost an hundred years old, ran to the tent and ordered an entertainment for the best gueft that ever visited the world.

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David certainly had fome meaning when he faid, My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God, Pfalm lxxxiv. 2; and, on the other hand, the terrors of God on his foul made the beauty of his body to confume away like a moth. Pfalm xxxix. 11. But I fhall proceed to give my dear brother fome account of the dealings of God with me, and I fhall do it with pleasure; for I never find my fpirit more in its element than when, like David, I am telling others who fear God, what he bath done for my foul, Pfalm lxvi. 16. And indeed I think this is doing the work of an evangelift, much more than relating what we have done for God.

In my younger days I was one of a melancholy turn of mind, and was kept in perpetual bondage through the fear of death; and at certain seasons I was rather devotional, after the manner of the Jews, but very ignorant of the nature and being of Jehovah. Nor did I ever rightly confider his omnipresence, his univerfal providence, his care for, nor his government of the world, until

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the great ftir was made in Ifrael about David, the son of Jeffe, killing the Goliah of Gath. The report of that wonderful act forcibly ftruck me; the thoughts of his formidable and panoplyed antagonist, and the unarmed stripling (I mean David) going against him with no other armour than faith in God, whom he fo often styles the fhield of his help; furely, he was clad with zeal for the Lord God of Ifrael, as with a cloak. His bold declaration to his formidable adverfary, and the wonderful event that justified his confident prediction, wrought wonderfully upon me, and effectually brought me to believe, verily that there is a God that judgeth in the earth.

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From that time I was led to watch narrowly the hand of God with that eminent man; and in my heart faid, as Ruth did to Naomi, Thy people Shall be my people, and thy God my God. I faw him in fo bleffed a state, and fo visibly defended and upheld by the Almighty, that at times I was provoked to jealoufy, and fecretly envied him his happiness, yet would have given all the world for a part or lot in David's God, whom he fo often styles the portion of his foul.

Abimaaz. You bring many things to my mind; but to break in upon your warm converfation would extinguish the glowing fervour of your fpirit; go on, my brother, I am all

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Cufbi. I foon heard of Saul's hatred to David,

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of his cruel jealoufy, and of his attempting to kill him; and fome, who were very much attached to Saul, reprefented David in a bad light, and took the part of Saul as one appointed, anointed, and set up by God himself to be king over Ifrael. These things at times ftaggered me; and David's killing the Philiftines, and fcalping three hundred of them, in order to obtain Saul's daughter for his wife, was very puzzling to me. But I still observed that the protecting and delivering hand of God was evidently with him.

Jonathan, who I believe was a good man, his tender regard for David, his efpoufing his caufe, and expofing himself to all the rage and malice of his father, and loving him as his own foul, often brought me to believe that there was a divine union between them; and indeed before ever I obtained boldness to speak to the fweet Pfalmift of Ifrael, I felt fomething of the fame bleffed unction on my own foul. One thing greatly confounded me, and that was David's going down to the cave of Adullam, and appearing at the head of such a set of vagrants;-for all that were in diftrefs, and all that were in debt, and all that were difcontented, they gathered themselves unto him, and be became a captain over them. 1 Sam. xxii. 2. This I could not easily get over, that such a set of men fhould join themselves to him; and that a favourite of heaven should put himself as commander in chief at the head of fuch a ragged regiment.

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But when Saul's awful apoftafy from God was made known, of his feeking to the witch of Endor for relief and counsel, of the hand of God that went out against him, of the miferable end that he made, together with the wonderful deliverances that God wrought for David, of Samuel's attachment to him, of the best of faints loving him, and of the almighty power of God that levelled all his enemies, and exalted him on the throne of Ifrael, in fpite of all oppofition, I was fo confirmed in the faithfulness and truth of David's God, that an invifible power led me to one greater than David; and a fudden thought ftruck me that David was an eminent type of the much defired and long looked for Meffiah, who is the only fovereign of Ifrael, David's fon, and David's Lord.

This divine dictator led my mind forth to traverse David's life and conduct, as reprefenting the life of one greater; and from that time I traced all up to David's antetype, and there my misconstructions were rectified, and all my doubts refolved.

I confidered, first, his descent from a low family, his mean calling as a fhepherd, his ruddy countenance, 1 Sam. xvi. 12; his being but a tripling, xvii. 56; and his flender legs, Pfalm cxlvii. 10; all typical of him that was fo long foretold, who was to be fairer than the children of men, Pfalm xlv. 2, and called the woman's feed. David's effeminate appearance,

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