by which last expression I suppose he meant to insinuate that he was strengthened and established, rather than overborne, by this opposition.  Yet it was not immediately that he gained such fortitude.  He has often told me how much he felt in those days of the emphasis of those well-chosen words of the apostle, in which he ranks the trial of cruel mockings, with scourgings, and bonds, and imprisonments.  The continual railleries with which he was received, in almost all companies where he had been most familiar before, did often distress him beyond measure; so that he several times declared he would much rather have marched up to a battery of the enemy’s cannon, than have been obliged, so continually as he was, to face such artillery as this.  But, like a brave soldier in the first action wherein he is engaged, he continued resolute, though shuddering at the terror of the assault; and quickly overcame those impressions which it is not perhaps in nature wholly to avoid; and therefore I find him, in the letter above referred to, which was written about half a year after his conversion, “quite ashamed to think of the uneasiness which these things once gave him.”  In a word, he went on, as every resolute Christian by divine grace may do, till he turned ridicule and opposition into respect and veneration.

But this sensible triumph over these difficulties was not till his Christian experience had been abundantly advanced by the blessing of God on the sermons he heard, (particularly in the Swiss chapel,) and on the many hours which he spent in devout retirement, pouring out his whole soul before God in prayer.  He began, within about two months after his first memorable change, to perceive some secret dawnings of more cheerful hope, that vile as he saw himself to be, (and I believe no words can express how vile that was,) he might nevertheless obtain mercy through the Redeemer.  At length (if I remember right, about the end of October, 1719) he found all the burthen of his mind taken off at once by the powerful impression of that memorable scripture on his mind, Romans iii. 25, 26, “Whom God hath set forth for a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness in the remission of sins,—­that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”  He had used to imagine that the justice of God required the damnation of so enormous a sinner as he saw himself to be; but now he was made deeply sensible that the divine justice might be not only vindicated, but glorified, in saving him by the blood of Jesus, even that blood which cleanseth us from all sin.  Then did he see and feel the riches of redeeming love and grace in such a manner as not only engaged him with the utmost pleasure and confidence to venture his soul upon it, but even swallowed up, as it were, his whole heart in the returns of love, which from that blessed time became this genuine and delightful principle of his obedience, and animated him, with an enlarged heart,