f a crucified Saviour, than from any other object that can be
conceived; nor can we surely suppose it should, without a mighty energy
of the divine power, be effectual to produce not only some transient
flow of passion, but so entire and permanent a change in character and
conduct.

On the whole, therefore, I must beg leave to express my own sentiments of
the matter, by repeating on this occasion what I wrote several years ago,
in my eighth sermon on regeneration, in a passage dictated chiefly by the
circumstantial knowledge which I had of this amazing story, and methinks
sufficiently vindicated by it, if it stood entirely alone, which yet, I
must take the liberty to say, it does not; for I hope the world will be
particularly informed, that there is at least a second that very nearly
approaches it, whenever the established church of England shall lose one
of its brightest living ornaments, and one of the most useful members
which that, or perhaps any other Christian communion, can boast. In the
mean time, may his exemplary life be long continued, and his zealous
ministry abundantly prospered! I beg my reader's pardon for this
digression. The passage I referred to above is remarkably, though not
equally, applicable to both the cases, under that head where I am showing
that God sometimes accomplishes the great work of which we speak,
by secret and immediate impressions on the mind. After preceding
illustrations, there are the following words, on which the colonel's
conversion will throw the justest light. "Yea, I have known those of
distinguished genius, polite manners, and great experience in human
affairs, who, after having out-grown all the impressions of a religious
education--after having been hardened, rather than subdued by the most
singular mercies, even various, repeated, and astonishing deliverances,
which have appeared to themselves as no less than miraculous--after
having lived for years without God in the world, notoriously corrupt
themselves, and labouring to the utmost to corrupt others, have been
stopped on a sudden in the full career of their sin, and have felt such
rays of the divine presence, and of redeeming love, darting in upon
their minds, almost like lightning from heaven, as have at once roused,
overpowered, and transformed them; so that they have come out of their
secret chambers with an irreconcilable enmity to those vices to which,
when they entered them, they were the tamest and most abandoned