who takes up his more special habitation in good men, and is nigh to all who call upon him, to sanctify and assist them!  Hast thou not felt him, oh my soul! like another soul, [Transcriber’s note:  illegible] thy faculties, exalting thy views, purifying thy passions, exalting thy graces, and begetting in thee an abhorrence of sin, and a love of holiness?  Is not all this an argument of His presence, as truly as if thou didst see.”]

On the whole, if habitual love to God, firm faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, a steady dependence on the divine promises, a full persuasion of the wisdom and goodness of all the dispensations of Providence, a high esteem for the blessings of the heavenly world, and a sincere contempt for the vanities of this, can properly be called enthusiasm, then was Colonel Gardiner indeed one of the greatest enthusiasts which our age has produced; and in proportion to the degree in which he was so, I must esteem him one of the wisest and happiest of mankind.  Nor do I fear to tell the world that it is the design of my writing these memoirs, and of every thing else that I undertake in life, to spread this glorious and blessed enthusiasm, which I know to be the anticipation of heaven, as well as the most certain way to it.

But lest any should possibly imagine, that allowing the experiences which have been described above to have been ever so solid and important, yet there may be some appearances of boasting in so free a communication of them, I must add to what I have hinted in reference to this above, that I find in many of the papers before me very genuine expressions of the deepest humility and self-abasement, which indeed such holy converse with God in prayer and praise does, above all things in the world, tend to inspire and promote.  Thus, in one of his letters he says, “I am but as a beast before him.”  In another he calls himself “a miserable hell-deserving sinner.”  And in another he cries out, “Oh, how good a master do I serve! but, alas, how ungrateful am I!  What can be so astonishing as the love of Christ to us, unless it be the coldness of our sinful hearts towards such a Saviour?” There were many other clauses of the like nature, which I shall not set myself more particularly to trace through the variety of letters in which they occur.

It is a further instance of this unfeigned humility, that when (as his lady with her usual propriety of language expresses it in one of her letters to me concerning him,) “these divine joys and consolations were not his daily allowance,” he, with equal freedom, in the confidence of Christian fellowship, acknowledges and laments it.  Thus, in the first letter I had the honour of receiving from him, dated from Leicester, July 9, 1739, after mentioning the blessing with which it had pleased God to attend my last address to him, and the influence it had upon his mind, he adds, “Much do I stand in need of every help to awaken me out of that spiritual deadness which seizes me so often.  Once, indeed, it was quite otherwise with me, and that for many years: