g of the Word. Indeed, many came to
me of themselves, in their distress, for private instruction
and counsel; and I found, so far as I can remember, that with
by far the greater part their apparent concern in public was
not just a transient qualm of conscience or merely a floating
commotion of the affections, but a rational, fixed conviction
of their dangerous, perishing estate....

"In some time many of the convinced and distressed afforded
very hopeful, satisfying evidence that the Lord had brought
them to true closure with Jesus Christ, and that their
distresses and fears had been in a great measure removed in a
right gospel way, by believing in the Son of God. Several of
them had very remarkable and sweet deliverances this way. It
was very agreeable to hear their accounts how that when they
were in the deepest perplexity and darkness, distress and
difficulty, seeking God as poor, condemned, hell-deserving
sinners, the scene of recovering grace through a Redeemer has
been opened to their understandings with a surprising beauty
and glory, so that they were enabled to believe in Christ with
joy unspeakable and full of glory."[162:1]

The experience of Gilbert Tennent at New Brunswick had no connection
with the first awakening at Northampton, but had important relations
with later events. He was the eldest of the four sons whom William
Tennent, the Episcopalian minister from Ireland, had brought with him to
America and educated at his Log College. In 1727 he became pastor of a
church at New Brunswick, where he was much impressed with what he saw of
the results of the work of the Rev. Theodore Frelinghuysen, who for
seven years had been pastor of a neighboring Dutch church. The example
and fraternal counsel of this good man made him sensible of the
fruitlessness of his own work, and moved him to more earnest prayers and
labors. Having been brought low with sickness, he prayed to God to grant
him one half-year more in which to "endeavor to promote his kingdom with
all my might at all adventures." Being raised up from sickness, he
devoted himself to earnest personal labors with individuals and to
renewed faithfulness in the pulpit, "which method was sealed by the Holy
Spirit in the conviction and conversion of a considerable number of
persons, at various times and in different places, in that part of the
country, as appeared by