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ASSISTANT TO THE REV. JOHN WESLEY, A. M.

AND NOW A MEMBER OF

THE METHODIST CONFERENCE.

WITH A BRIEF MEMOIR

OF

HIS LIFE AND CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE,

FROM HIS BIRTH TO THE FIRST CONFERENCE HELD
AFTER THE DEATH OF MR. WESLEY.

Divinity is nothing but a grammar of the language of the Holy Ghost.
LUTHER.

We should rather make easy channels for the water of life, than desire to
raise a land-flood from our broken cisterns.

BENGELIUS.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR

AND SOLD BY JOHN MASON, 14, CITY-ROAD, AND
66, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1830.

[Entered at Stationers' Hall.]

LONDON:

PRINTED BY JAMES NICHOLS,

2, WARWICK-SQUARE, NEWGATE-STREET.

PREFACE.

SOON after the commencement of my religious course, my mind became so entirely occupied with a consciousness of my guilty state before God, that no intention of recording any of the particulars, or of the mercy which I sought, had any place in my thoughts. But when it pleased the God of all grace to reveal his Son in me, and to turn my heaviness into joy, I seemed to consider it as my duty to make known to my perishing fellowsinners, that height and depth of love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,

Whose blood can make the foulest clean;
Whose blood avail'd for me!

This sense of duty increased as I read, from. time to time, the records of those

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who have thus given glory to God, and which accounts have generally been very profitable to me, encouraging me to persevere, to forget the things behind, to reach forth to those things that are before, and to press to the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. But hitherto I never had freedom of mind to act upon this conviction, or to comply with the request of those whom I greatly respected. I even feared lest those gracious communications should be the savour of death rather than of life, to some, perhaps to many, through that evil heart of unbelief which I had felt. to be so powerful in my own case. The words of the excellent Gambold had also some weight with me:

Beware too rashly how you speak the whole,
The vileness, or the treasures of your soul:

If spurn'd by some, where weak on earth you lie,
If judg'd a cheat or dreamer where you fly,—

certainly Christian love may admit of

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