able breaches have been made either upon me, or our society; but that of a late instance, in which my God has humbled me, by the sad and shameful miscarriage both of some of my pupils, and what is yet more grievous, by that of some of my flock, especially James ******, whose name I must record as a thorn in my heart. O God, prevent the spread of iniquity, and direct us how we may put it away!

June 26, 1739.

interrupted his ease and his usefulness; but were prevented from confining him entirely to the house till the month of June, 1783. He had often complained of failure of memory; but yet, in particular instances, very constantly gave proofs of his possessing it with unusual accuracy and extent. At length, however, the defect which he perceived appeared to others, now and then in expressing an improper word, and in making a pause before he pronounced the intended one. He complained of pain and a growing confusion in the head. About a week before his death, that confusion became apparent and complete. He knew every person, but could not express what he intended. In three or four days more he became lethargic, and died apoplectic the 19th of July, 1783, in the sixtysixth year of his age.

Thus lived, and thus died this servant of God ;—this good man ;-dear to and revered by all: this counsellor and friend, whose loss we must ever deplore. But, my friend, let us no longer view our loss. How singular was our advantage! He was our counsellor and comforter while alive his memory ever dear to us, and present with us, will still sustain and protect us. If at any time malediction shall persecute us living or dead-it will be replied, " No-this cannot be true, the most honest and worthy of men was their friend." In books of piety, and in the lives of pious men, we see the effect which Religion ought to have; those who knew Mr. Orton saw the influence it had, they saw its spirit and precepts exemplified in his temper, and in his conduct."

Mr. Stedman remarks, "Were it necessary to add to the above, it would be easy to produce the testimonies of a Kennicott, an Adams, a Tucker, with several others giving by eminent men both of the Establishment and among the Dissenters: for, to use the language of the apostle, he had a good report of all men, and of the truth itself."

Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos reget artus,

Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt.-VIRGIL.

MEMORANDUMS OF A CONVERSATION WITH COLONEL GARDINER, AND HIS EXTRAORDINARY STORY.⚫

I HAVE this evening (August 14, 1739) been conversing with the ingenious, polite, judicious, and eminently pious Colonel Gardiner; and have again been receiving from his own mouth the extraordinary story of his conversion; and therefore think it proper while it continues fresh in my memory to write it down for further reflection, with all the exactness of which I am capable.

This worthy gentleman, and brave soldier, was the son of a very religious mother, and educated with great care; but soon outgrew all the influence of a religious education, and lived from his childhood to the thirty first year of his age, which I think was about the year 1719, without reading the word of God, without prayer, abandoned to all the most profligate vices, and to every kind of debauchery and wickedness consistent with a goodnatured temper, which he always had; and some grateful sense of human friends, when most insensible of divine favours.

He had, before his conversion, been distinguished by two most remarkable deliverances. The one was at the battle of Ramilies, when, as he was planting his colours and swearing violently at his men, he received a shot into his mouth, which came out at his neck, and laid him apparently among the dead; where he lay two nights, and part

* The reader will observe, that whether the impressions here related arose from that irregular action of the imagination which constitutes a waking dream, or were actually a vision; their influence in a providential point of view on the mind, and consequently on the conduct of the Colonel, was the same. To the force of his understanding, and to the general healthy state of his reasoning faculties, the following evidence is borne by Dr. Doddridge: "No man was farther from pretending to predict future events, except it were from the moral prognostications of causes naturally tending to produce them; in tracing which he had, indeed, an admirable sagacity, as I have seen in some very remarkable instances. Neither was

of three days. From the time he received this wound he thought there was something miraculous in his surviving it; and while he lay among the dead he was persuaded that God would complete his deliverance, yet even then, he had no sense of duty, gratitude, or penitence.

About the year mentioned above, going over in the packet back to France, when Lord Stair was Ambassador there, a violent storm arose, which tossed the vessel from sea to sea, and from coast to coast, till the captain came and told him, that they must inevitably be lost if the wind did not immediately fall. Upon this he prayed; and on his doing it, even while he was so employed, the wind fell, and turned into a favourable gale, which carried them into Calais; but instead of having any sense of the hand of God in that deliverance, he only made a jest of it, and said he prayed, because it was twelve at night, and so he knew that his good mother was asleep.

From Calais he went to Paris, where he continued sometime in the Earl of Stair's family, and had an acquaintance with all the gayest and most illustrious men in the court of France; and here, as well as elsewhere, he passed, on account of the extraordinary vivacity of his temper, for one of the happiest of mortals, while at the same time he sometimes felt those inward agonies of conscience, which made him once say within himself, on the sight of a dog, "Oh, that I were that brute !" yet still he went on without any thought of a return to God; and when pleased with a fine poem on gratitude, he attempted to praise God once or twice, he was

he at all inclinable to govern himself by secret impulses upon his mind, leading him to things for which he could assign no reason but the impulse itself. Had he ventured in a presumption on such secret agitations of mind, to teach, or to do, any thing not warranted by the dictates of sound sense, and the word of God, I should readily have acknowledged him to have been an enthusiast, unless he could have produced some other evidence than his own persuasion to have supported the authority of them." See "Remarkable Passages in the Life of Colonel Gardiner," page 48.

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so conscious that he did not desire to serve him, that from a mere innate abhorrence of hypocrisy he left off prayer. Among many other very irregular dispositions, the love of women was his ruling passion, of which he has sometimes said, that he thought the divine being himself could not root it out of his constitution. He had one night an appointment with another gentleman's wife, and was to go to her chamber at twelve o'clock;-breaking up from some company at eleven, he retired into his chamber, and looking among his books for something to amuse him, till what he wretchedly called the happy moment came, he took down what a pious aunt had, without his knowledge, put into his chest, Watson's "Heaven Taken by Storm;" he took up this book merely to make a jest of it; but while he had it in his hand, he found himself struck on a sudden, as by an unusual lustre, and lifting up his eyes, he solemnly declared to me, that he being then broad awake, if ever in his life, he apprehended that he saw clearly and distinctly Jesus Christ himself on the cross, with a strong impression on his mind of these words, "O sinner, did I suffer this for thee, and are these thy returns?" The consequence was, that he was struck into such confusion, that he sunk down in his chair, and on his recovering himself a little, had such views of the holiness, justice, and glory of God, as threw him into the utmost confusion and abasement; and from that moment, the whole tenour of his heart was changed, and divine grace took such a possession of his soul, as he assures me, has never been lost, and rendered him the very contrary to what he was naturally before. He did indeed look upon himself as so great a sinner, that he had no hope; and apprehended, that the honour of divine justice would require that he should be consigned over to eternal destruction; yet even then, he resolutely broke off from all his sins, and set himself to defend the Gospel, by which he apprehended himself to be condemned. Several instances

of his encountering and confounding infidels, and especially Mrs. Hammond, widow to one of that name, who was speaker to the House of Commons, he added, but I have not time to mention them at length. He received comfort from those words, " He is just, and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus." The result of which was, that he was enabled by faith to venture his soul upon Christ, and he then received such extraordinary communications of divine love and joy, as kept him in a kind of continued rapture for seven years, excepting the time necessarily devoted to the business of life, and the recruits of animal nature. The consequence was, that he found all that strong propensity to women, which had been the reigning passion, and had made fornication and adultery the grand business of his life, utterly mortified; so that though he had struggles with many other corruptions of nature, he had none with this, but hated those lusts more than he had ever loved and indulged them; which seems the most affecting comment on the apostle's phrase of being sanctified in the whole body, that I ever remember to have met with: and having put his hand to the plough, he never looked back, but broke through the trials of cruel mockings, as well as many others; and he appears now to have attained to a most confirmed state of piety, and seems on the whole, one of the most loving and affectionate Christians that, in my life, I have ever known: and when I consider all the marvellous things he has told me, I must reckon my acquaintance with him, and my share in his friendship, among the most eminent and distinguished blessings of my life.

N. B. I have written this account with all the exactness I am capable of, and could safely take an oath as to the truth of it, to the best of my memory, in every circumstance. I must add to all this, that he spoke of himself to me with the deepest self-abhorrence, that he was no more affected with the goodness of God to him, and he seemed