against himself, that he was most justly worthy of eternal damnation; he was astonished that he had not been immediately struck dead in the midst of his wickedness; and, which I think deserves particular remark, though he assuredly believed that he should ere long be in hell, and settled it as a point with himself for several months that the wisdom and justice of God did almost necessarily require that such an enormous sinner should be made an example of everlasting vengeance, and a spectacle as such both to angels and men, so that he hardly durst presume to pray for pardon; yet what he then suffered was not so much from the fear of hell, though he concluded it would soon be his portion, as from a sense of that horrible ingratitude he had shown to the God of his life, and to that blessed Redeemer who had been in so affecting a manner set forth as crucified before him.

To this he refers in a letter, dated from Douglas, April 1, 1725, communicated to me by his lady, but

*

* N.B.-Where I make any extracts as from colonel Gardiner's letters, they are either from originals, which I have in my own hands, or from copies which were transmitted to me from persons of undoubted credit, chiefly by the right honourable the lady Frances Gardiner, through the hand of the Rev. Mr. Webster, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. This I the rather mention, because some letters have been brought to me as colonel Gardiner's, concerning which I have not only been very dubious, but morally certain that they could not have been written by him. I have also heard of many who have been fond of assuring the world that they were well acquainted with him, and were near him when he fell; whose reports have been most inconsistent with each other, as well as contrary to that testimony relating to the circumstances of his death which, on the whole, appeared to me beyond controversy the most natural and authentic: from whence therefore I shall take my account of that affecting scene.

I know not to whom it was addressed.

His words

are these: "One thing relating to my conversion, and a remarkable instance of the goodness of God to me, the chief of sinners, I do not remember that I ever told to any other person. It was this: that after the astonishing sight I had of my blessed Lord, the terrible condition in which I was proceeded not so much from the terrors of the law, as from a sense of having been so ungrateful a monster to Him whom I thought I saw pierced for my transgressions." I the rather insert these words, as they evidently attest the circumstance which may seem most amazing in this affair, and contain so express a declaration of his own apprehension concerning it.

In this view it may naturally be supposed that he passed the remainder of the night waking; and he could get but little rest in several that followed. His mind was continually taken up in reflecting on the Divine purity and goodness; the grace which had been proposed to him in the gospel, and which he had rejected; the singular advantages he had enjoyed and abused; and the many favours of Providence which he had received, particularly in rescuing him from so many imminent dangers of death, which he now saw must have been attended with such dreadful and hopeless destruction. The privileges of his education, which he had so much despised, now lay with an almost insupportable weight on his mind; and the folly of that career of sinful pleasure which he had so many years been running with desperate eagerness and unworthy delight, now filled him with indignation against himself, and against the great deceiver, by whom, to use his own phrase, he had been "so wretchedly and scandalously befooled." This he used often to express in the strongest terms, which I

shall not repeat so particularly as I can recollect some of them. But on the whole, it is certain, that by what passed before he left his chamber the next day, the whole frame and disposition of his soul was new-modelled and changed; so that he became, and continued to the last day of his exemplary and truly Christian life, the very reverse of what he had been before. A variety of particulars, which I am afterwards to mention, will illustrate this in the most convincing manner. But I cannot proceed to them without pausing awhile to adore so illustrious an instance of the power and freedom of Divine grace, and entreating my reader seriously to reflect upon it, that his own heart may be suitably affected: for surely, if the truth of the fact be admitted, in the lowest views in which it can be placed, that is, supposing the first impression to have passed in a dream, it must be allowed to have been little, if anything, less than miraculous. It cannot in the course of nature be imagined how such a dream should arise in a mind full of the most impure ideas and affections, and, as he himself often pleaded, more alienated from the thoughts of 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 vin

dicated 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 meantime, 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, as it stands in page 263 of the first edition, and page 160 of the second, 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 outgrown 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 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

Rev. W. Grimshaw. See his Life, No. 9, Christian Biography, p. 17.

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 slaves; and have appeared from that very hour the votaries, the patrons, the champions of religion; and after a course of the most resolute attachment to it, in spite of all the reasonings or the railleries, the importunities or the reproaches of its enemies, they have continued to this day some of its brightest ornaments: a change which I behold with equal wonder and delight, and which, if a nation should join in deriding it, I would adore as the finger of God."

The mind of major Gardiner continued from this remarkable time till towards the end of October, that is, rather more than three months, but especially the two first of them, in as extraordinary a situation as one can well imagine. He knew nothing of the joys arising from a sense of pardon; but, on the contrary, for the greater part of that time, and with very short intervals of hope towards the end of it, took it for granted that he must, in all probability, quickly perish. Nevertheless, he had such a sense of the evil of sin, of the goodness of the Divine Being, and of the admirable tendency of the Christian revelation, that he resolved to spend the remainder of his life, while God continued him out of hell, in as rational and as useful a manner as he could; and to continue casting himself at the feet of Divine mercy, every day, and often in a day, if peradventure there might be hope of pardon, of which all that he could say was, that he did not absolutely despair. He had at that time