fuller trial do make the best appear more weak and faulty than their admirers at a distance think. And I find that few are so bad as either malicious enemies, or censorious separating professors do imagine."

"16. I less admire gifts of utterance and the bare profession of religion than I once did; and have much more charity for many who by the want of gifts do make an obscurer profession." "Experience hath opened to me what odious crimes may consist with high profession; and I have inet with divers obscure persons, not indeed noted for any extraordinary profession or forwardness in religion, but only to live a quiet, blameless life, whom I have after found to have long lived, as far as I could discern, a truly godly and sanctified life; only their prayers and duties were, by accident, kept secret from other men's observation. Yet he that upon this pretence would confound the godly and the ungodly, may as well go about to lay heaven and hell together.

"17. I am not so narrow in my special love as heretofore: being less censorious, and taking more than I did for saints, it must needs follow that I love more as saints than I did formerly."

"18. I am not so narrow in my principles of church communion as once I was." "I am not for narrowing the church more than Christ himself alloweth us; nor for robbing him of any of his flock." "19. Yet I am more apprehensive than ever of the great use and need of ecclesiastical discipline."

"20. I am much more sensible of the evil of schism, and of the separating humor, and of gathering parties and making several sects in the church, than I was heretofore. For the effects have showed us more of the mischiefs.

"21. I am much more sensible how prone many young professors are to spiritual pride, and self-conceitedness, and unruliness, and division, and so to prove the grief of their teachers, and fire-brands in the church; and how much of a minister's work lieth in preventing this, and humbling and confirming such young inexperienced professors, and keeping them in order in their progress in religion.

"22. Yet I am more sensible of the sin and mischief of using men cruelly in matters of religion, and of pretending men's good

and the order of the church, for acts of inhumanity or uncharitableness."

"23. My soul is much more afflicted with the thoughts of this miserable world, and more drawn out in desire of its conversion, than heretofore. I was wont to look but little further than England in my prayers, not considering the state of the rest of the world; or if I prayed for the conversion of the Jews, that was almost all. But now, as I better understand the case of the world, and the method of the Lord's prayer; there is nothing in the world that lieth so heavy upon my heart, as the thought of the miserable nations of the earth. It is the most astonishing part of all God's providence to me, that he so far forsaketh almost all the world, and confineth his special favor to so few; that so small a part of the world hath the profession of Christianity, in comparison of heathens, Mahometans, and other infidels; that among professed Christians there are so few that are saved from gross delusions, and have any competent knowledge; and that among those there are so few that are seriously religious, and who truly set their hearts on heaven. I cannot be affected so much with the calamities of my own relations or the land of my nativity, as with the case of the heathen, Mahometan, and ignorant nations of the earth. No part of my prayers are so deeply serious as that for the conversion of the infidel and ungodly world, that God's name may be sanctified, and his kingdom come, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Nor was I ever before so sensible what a plague the division of languages is, which hindereth our speaking to them for their conversion; nor what a great sin tyranny is, which keepeth out the Gospel from most of the nations of the world. Could we but go among Tartars, Turks, and heathens, and speak their language, I should be but little troubled for the silencing of eighteen hundred ministers at once, in England, nor for all the rest that were cast out here, and in Scotland, and in Ireland; there being no employment in the world so desirable in my eyes as to labor for the winning of such miserable souls; which maketh me greatly honor Mr. John Elliot, the apostle of the Indians in New-England, and whoever else have labored in such work.

"24. Yet am I not so much inclined to pass a peremptory sen

tence of damnation upon all that never heard of Christ; having some more reason than I knew of before, to think that God's dealing with such is unknown to us; and that the ungodly here among us Christians, are in a far worse case than they.

"25. My censures of the Papists do much differ from what they were at first. I then thought that their errors in the doctrine of faith were their most dangerous mistakes." "But the great and irreconcileable differences lie in their church tyranny and usurpations, and in their great corruptions of God's worship, together with their befriending of ignorance and vice."

"26. I am deeplier afflicted for the disagreements of Christians than I was when I was a younger Christian. Except the case of the infidel world, nothing is so bad and grievous to my thoughts as the case of the divided churches."

"27. I have spent much of my studies about the terms of Christian concord, etc."

"28. I am farther than ever I was from expecting great matters of unity, splendor, or prosperity, to the church on earth, or that saints should dream of a kingdom of this world, or flatter themselves with the hope of a golden age, or reigning over the ungodly, till there be a new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. On the contrary, I am more apprehensive that suffering must be the church's most ordinary lot; and indeed Christians must be self-denying cross bearers, even where there are none but formal, nominal Christians to be the cross-makers; and though, ordinarily, God would have vicissitudes of summer and winter, day and night, that the church may grow extensively in the summer of prosperity, and intensively and radically in the winter of adversity; yet, usually their night is longer than their day, and that day itself hath its storms and tempests."

"29. I do not lay so great a stress upon the external modes and forms of worship, as many young professors do." "I cannot be of their opinion, that think God will not accept him that prayeth by the Common Prayer-book; and that such forms are a self-invented worship, which God rejecteth; nor can I be of their mind that say the like of extemporary prayers.

"30. I am much less regardful of the approbation of man, and

set much lighter by contempt or applause, than I did long ago. I am oft suspicious that this is not only from the increase of self-denial and humility, but partly from my being glutted and surfeited with human applause. All worldly things appear most vain and unsatisfactory when we have tried them most. But though I feel that this hath some hand in the effect, yet, as far as I can perceive, the knowledge of man's nothingness, and God's transcendent greatness, with whom it is that I have most to do, and the sense of the brevity of human things, and the nearness of eternity, are the principal causes of this effect; which some have imputed to selfconceitedness and morosity.

"31. I am more and more pleased with a solitary life; and though in a way of self-denial, I could submit to the most public life for the service of God, when he requireth it, and would not be unprofitable, that I might be private; yet I confess it is much more pleasing to myself to be retired from the world, and to have very little to do with men, and to converse with God and conscience and good books.

"32. Though I was never much tempted to the sin of covetousness, yet my fear of dying was wont to tell me that I was not sufficiently loosened from this world: but I find that it is comparatively very easy to me to be loose from this world, but hard to live by faith above. To despise earth, is easy to me; but not so easy to be acquainted and conversant with heaven. I have nothing in this world which I could not easily let go; but to get satisfying apprehensions of the other world is the great and grievous difficulty.

"33. I am much more apprehensive than long ago of the odi_ ousness and danger of the sin of pride. Scarcely any sin appeareth more odious to me." "I think so far as any man is proud, he is kin to the devil, and utterly a stranger to God and to himself. It is a wonder that it should be a possible sin to men that still carry about with them, in soul and body, such humbling matter of remedy as we all do.

"34. I more than ever lament the unhappiness of the nobility, gentry, and great ones of the world, who live in such temptations

to sensuality, curiosity, and wasting of their time about a multitud› of little things."

"35. I am much more sensible than heretofore, of the breadth, and length, and depth, of the radical, universal, odious sin of selfishness, and therefore have written so much against it; and of the excellency and necessity of self-denial, and of a public mind, and of loving our neighbor as ourselves.

"36. I am more and more sensible that most controversies have more need of right stating than of debating; and if my skill be increased in any thing it is in that, in narrowing controversies by explication, and separating the real from the verbal, and proving to many contenders that they differ less than they think they do.

"37. I am more solicitous than I have been about my duty to God, and less solicitous about his dealings with me."

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"38. Though my works were never such as could be any temptation to me to dream of obliging God by proper merit in cominutative justice, yet one of the most ready, cons ant, undoubted evidences of my uprightness and interest in his covenant, is, the consciousness of my living devoted to him. I the more easily believe the pardon of my failings through my Redeemer, while I know that I serve no other master, and that I know no other end, or trade, or business, but that I am employed in his work, and make it the object of my life to live to him in the world, notwithstanding my infirmities. This bent and business of my life, with my longing desires after perfection, in the knowledge and love of God, and in a holy and heavenly mind and life, are the two standing, constant, discernible evidences which most put me out of doubt of my sincerity."

"39. Though my habitual judgment, resolution, and scope of life, be still the same, yet I find a great mutability as to the actual apprehensions and degrees of grace; and consequently find that so mutable a thing as the mind of man, would never keep itself if God were not its keeper. When I have been seriously musing upon the reasons of Christianity, with the concurrent evidences methodically placed in their just advantages before my eyes, I am so clear in my belief of the Christian verities, that Satan hath little room for a temptation; but sometimes when he hath on a sudden set some