e of our perfectionists enough
to make a better man than myself either run into madness or despair
about the grace you mention, yet I cannot enter into the meaning of the
word, nor into the modus of its operation. Let me not then be checked,
when I mention your example for my visible reliance; and instead of
using such words, till I can better understand them, suppose all the
rest included in the profession of that reliance.

I told him, that, although I was somewhat concerned at his expression,
and surprised at so much darkness, as (for want of another word) I would
call it, in a man of his talents and learning, yet I was pleased with
his ingenuousness. I wished him to encourage this way of thinking. I
told him, that his observation, that no durable good was to be expected
from any new course, were there was not a delight taken in it, was just;
but that the delight would follow by use.

And twenty things of this sort I even preached to him; taking care,
however, not to be tedious, nor to let my expanded heart give him a
contracted or impatient blow. And, indeed, he took visible pleasure in
what I said, and even hung upon the subject, when I, to try him, once
or twice, seemed ready to drop it: and proceeded to give me a most
agreeable instance, that he could at times think both deeply and
seriously.--Thus it was.

He was once, he said, dangerously wounded in a duel, in the left arm,
baring it, to shew me the scar: that this (notwithstanding a great
effusion of blood, it being upon an artery) was followed by a violent
fever, which at last fixed upon his spirits; and that so obstinately,
that neither did he desire life, nor his friends expect it: that, for a
month together, his heart, as he thought, was so totally changed, that
he despised his former courses, and particularly that rashness which had
brought him to the state he was in, and his antagonist (who, however,
was the aggressor) into a much worse: that in this space he had thought
which at times still gave him pleasure to reflect upon: and although
these promising prospects changed, as he recovered health and spirits,
yet he parted with them with so much reluctance, that he could not help
shewing it in a copy of verses, truly blank ones, he said; some of which
he repeated, and (advantaged by the grace which he gives to every thing
he repeats) I thought them very tolerable ones; the sentiments, however,
much graver than I expected from him.

He has promised me