But these strains were too devout to continue long in a heart as yet quite unsanctified; for how readily soever he could repeat such acknowledgments of the Divine power, presence, and goodness, and own his own follies and faults, he was stopped short by the remonstrances of conscience as to the flagrant absurdity of confessing sins he did not desire to forsake, and of pretending to praise God for his mercies, when he did not endeavour to live to his service, and to behave in such a manner as gratitude, if sincere, would plainly dictate.  A model of devotion where such sentiments made no part, his good sense could not digest; and the use of such language before a heart-searching God, merely as an hypocritical form, while the sentiments of his soul were contrary to it, justly appeared to him such daring profaneness, that, irregular as the state of his mind was, the thought of it struck him with horror.  He therefore determined to make no more attempts of this sort, and was perhaps one of the first who deliberately laid aside prayer from some sense of God’s omniscience, and some natural principle of honour and conscience.

These secret debates with himself and ineffectual efforts would sometimes return; but they were overborne again and again by the force of temptation, and it is no wonder that in consequence of them his heart grew yet harder.  Nor was it softened or awakened by some very memorable deliverances which at this time he received.  He was in extreme danger by a fall from his horse, as he was riding post I think in the streets of Calais.  When going down a hill, the horse threw him over his head, and pitched over him; so that when he rose, the beast lay beyond him, and almost dead.  Yet, though he received not the least harm, it made no serious impression on his mind.  On his return from England in the packet-boat, if I remember right, but a few weeks after the former accident, a violent storm, that drove them up to Harwich, tossed them from thence for several hours in a dark night on the coast of Holland, and brought them into such extremity, that the captain of the vessel urged him to go to prayers immediately, if he ever intended to do it at all; for he concluded they would in a few minutes be at the bottom of the sea.  In this circumstance he did pray, and that very fervently too; and it was very remarkable, that while he was crying to God for deliverance, the wind fell, and quickly after they arrived at Calais.  But the major was so little affected with what had befallen him, that when some of his gay friends, on hearing the story, rallied him upon the efficacy of his prayers, he excused himself from the scandal of being thought much in earnest, by saying “that it was at midnight, an hour when his good mother and aunt were asleep, or else he should have left that part of the business to them;”—­a speech which I should not have mentioned, but as it shows in so lively a view the wretched situation of his mind at that time, though his great deliverance from the power of darkness was then nearly approaching.  He recounted these things to me with the greatest humility, as showing how utterly unworthy he was of that miracle of divine grace by which he was quickly after brought to so true and so permanent a sense of religion.