delightful and edifying ordinance. Oh that it may not prove only a transient blaze of spirits; but that the happy consequences of it may go along with me into all the devotions and all the services that lie before me this month, and that I may be prepared for all the will of God.

February 2, 1735.

THE FIFTY-SEVENTH SACRAMENT.

THIS like yesterday has been a day of unmerited, unbounded goodness. I can hardly express the sweet communion with God, which I had in his house and at his table. I had been discoursing on communion with him, and through grace I have felt it. A sermon composed under great deadness, which when I composed it I thought very meanly of, was delivered with great seriousness, spirit, and pleasure. It was the language not merely of my tongue, but of my heart. I had communion with God as my compassionate, wise, almighty, bountiful Friend; with Christ as my atonement, righteousness, intercessor, head, and forerunner; and adored the divine grace for such manifestations to so guilty and wretched a creature. I opened the ordinance of the Lord's supper with some meditations upon the women weeping as they followed Christ. They did not know all the ends of his death. They mourned a kind and generous friend; we mourn a Redeemer; for the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all; he laid on him mine iniquity; perhaps mine alone might have sunk him as deep; at least mine were added to the weight. He died for me; if I by my folly had occasioned the death of a dear and valuable friend, how would it have wounded my soul; and if I had seen his picture, how would it have revived my sorrows; and if when dying he had sent me some kind token of his forgiveness and his love, how would my heart have bled when I had seen that token. Behold, it is here! this is the token that our dying Saviour sends to us, to tell us that he heartily

forgives our folly and wickedness, and died that it might be forgiven. What return shall I make? Lord, I will love thee. But it is a poor return; but if I had more to give thee, I would do it cheerfully. If I were the highest angel in heaven thou shouldst have all my heart. In the meantime, blessed be thy name, that I can say I love thee; thou that knowest all things; as Peter when he could not appeal to his actions, as he could have wished, appealed to his heart, and to him that knew it." "Lord, I wish I could say, thou mayest see by my conduct that I have loved thee: that I have adhered to thee when all have forsaken thee: and though I have been brought into danger of dying with thee, yet that I have not denied thee." But in the failure of this he appeals to Christ. Lord, though I cannot clear it up as I could wish to men, I hope I can clear it up to thee."

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In breaking the bread, I said, Is it nothing to us? Why, it is something to all around us. How much more to us. Lord, I grieve I can grieve no more. I appeal to thee, I would love thee; and if my love might grow as affliction grows, I would bear as much as ever I could.

This I wrote as soon as I came home; but, interrupting the memorandums here, forgot what followed in pouring out the wine, and only remember that it was on the whole a blessed day. March 2, 1735.

THE FIFTY-EIGHTH SACRAMENT.

I HAD been preaching on the humility with which Mephibosheth bowed down to David on receiving his favours; and introduced this sacrament with a discourse on these words of the virgin, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word." I observed that our obligations were in some instances greater than hers; as they that hear the word of God and do it are, in some sense, more blessed than she who bore Christ merely considered

as his mother. We should therefore say this, as words of ardent desire; cheerful expectation; humble obedience; ardent desire; "may it be unto me according to thy word;" set me at thy table; give me this heavenly inheritance ; Lord, I give up other things; what are they between thee and us? give me a child's portion, however I may be treated in other respects. Cheerful expectation; thou wilt do it, though it seemed an incredible thing, this pious virgin believed it, when Zecharias doubted; perhaps, she might draw an argument even from the strangeness of the event; as it was fit that where the most extraordinary person was to be introduced, it should be in the most extraordinary way. So we, regarding gospel blessings as the purchase of Christ's blood, may expect them to be very great; were any little temporal blessings given me as all that was to be bestowed in this view it would shock my faith yet more. With humble obedience, as the servants of the Lord, such we would approve ourselves. Lord, it would lie heavy upon our hearts to receive all this from thee, and to do nothing for thee. For ever blessed be thy name, that we have opportunities; that we have hearts for it. Continue it, O gracious Lord, at all times upon the imagination of the thoughts of our hearts.

In breaking the bread, I spoke of the compassion of Christ; he knew what a tendency it would have to impress us; and have we not found it so. God has smitten the rock, and waters have flown forth; he that fed hungry multitude has fed us. Oh may we never lift up our heel against him. When pouring out the wine, I said, Lord, hadst thou only shed one tear for me, it had been more than I could ever have repayed by all my tears, by all my blood. And didst thou not only weep, but die for me; not only die, but in so dreadful a manner for me and for all thine.

Seeing my dear friend, Mr. Wilkinson, in whose preaching I had this morning unutterable pleasure, sitting at the

table, I could not forbear saying, Lord, hadst thou not died for me, but only for some one dear friend, whom I cordially love, to deliver him from death and eternal ruin, and raised him as a useful instrument for thy glory, how dearly should I have loved thee; how highly should I have thought myself obliged to thee; much more when thou didst die for all the most valuable of my friends, for thousands as yet unknown, and also for me. Oh, how cheerfully would I give myself to thee; how thankfully receive the pledges of thy dying love. April 6, 1735.

MEMORABLE PASSAGES IN PROVIDENTIAL OCCURRENCES RELATING TO THE WILLS OF PISFORD, AS I COLLECTED THEM FROM THEIR CONVERSATION AND UNITED TESTIMONY.*

THIS day I visited this pious, though poor and afflicted family, and I heard the following narrations, which I thought so remarkable that I could not forbear setting them down as circumstantially as I could recollect them.

Mary Wills was converted in an extraordinary manner. Having determined to hear no more at the meeting, and even stopped her ears against the word, an occasion happened which obliged her to put her hand into her pocket, and at that moment a word came which reached her heart, and was the blessed means of bringing her home to God.

* I regret that it is not in my power to lay before the reader any cir cumstantial account of the Wills family. From the allusions to Mary, which occur in the letters of Colonel Gardiner, Lord Leven, Dr. Watts, and Lady Huntingdon, it may be inferred that she was the most eminent in a family which were universally considered as singularly pious. Of the extravagant accounts in the text the reader will judge for himself; I would, however, observe that, so far as delusion might exist, these poor people were doubtless deceived by their own imaginations, and that the attention of Dr. Doddridge, in this instance, was excited by his previous knowledge of some really extraordinary facts connected with these persons, and of which the reader will be enabled to judge, as they are related in another part of the Diary.

Some time after, a person, jealous of the regard which a young person in the neighbourhood had for her, attempted to poison her, by putting poison into some beer which she was going to drink. In a moment she found the use of her arm taken away, when she would have lifted the beer to her head; and having attempted in vain to give it to the hogs, she threw it down into the sink. Some time afterwards Mrs. Spencer told her that the party whom she suspected had confessed to her the design of poisoning her, and that the attempt was made as above.

Some time afterwards she lived in the house of a profligate fellow, who having locked her in, attempted her chastity by violence. She prayed earnestly, and had those words given in her mind, " only believe, and thou shalt see the glory of God!" and immediately the ravisher fell down with an oath in his mouth, and lay as dead, all night. She had extraordinary communion with God all that night and the next day; but the wretch thus struck down in the very act of his sin continued hardened, and waxed worse and

worse.

Being once under some doubt as to her spiritual state, she begged that God would afflict her with some sudden judgment as a token of his love. Immediately she was seized with a violent pain, and lost the use of one arm, in which she greatly rejoiced. In the night she lost the use of one side, and being brought home on horseback the next day, lay many weeks so helpless that she could scarcely turn herself in her bed, and they expected that every day would be her last. On a sudden, while her sister was standing by her, and apprehended her to be almost dying, she confessed the rashness of her former prayer, entreated the Divine favour, and begged an immediate cure in great confidence of faith. Immediately all her bones cracked as if they had been put in place again, and she rose up cheerfully, and in two or three sabbaths more was able to walk