Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
place,[2], which drove me continually for that time to a throne of grace. It pleased
God to enable me to wrestle with him, as Jacob did: I prayed that if sudden death
were to happen, and I perished, it might be at Christ’s feet.
In the evening of the same day, as I was reading and meditating on the fourth
chapter of the Acts, twelfth verse, under the solemn apprehensions of eternity, and
reecting on my past actions, I began to think I had lived a moral life, and that I had
a proper ground to believe I had an interest in the divine favour; but still meditating
on the subject, not knowing whether salvation was to be had partly for our own
good deeds, or solely as the sovereign gift of God:—in this deep consternation
the Lord was pleased to break in upon my soul with his bright beams of heavenly
light; and in an instant, as it were, removing the veil, and letting light into a dark
place, Isa. xxv. 7. I saw clearly, with the eye of faith, the crucied Saviour bleeding
on the cross on Mount Calvary: the Scriptures became an unsealed book, I saw
myself as a condemned criminal under the law, which came with its full force to
my conscience, and when ‘the commandment came sin revived, and I died.’ I saw
the Lord Jesus Christ in his humiliation, loaded and bearing my reproach, sin and
shame. I then clearly perceived, that by the deed of the law no esh living could be
justied. I was then convinced, that by the rst Adam sin came, and by the second
Adam (the Lord Jesus Christ) all that are saved must be made alive. It was given
me at that time to know what it was to be born again, John iii. 5. I saw the eighth
chapter to the Romans, and the doctrines of God’s decrees veried, agreeable to
his eternal, everlasting and unchangeable purposes. The word of God was sweet
to my taste, yea sweeter than honey and the honey comb. Christ was revealed
to my soul as the chiefest among ten thousand. These heavenly moments were
really as life to the dead, and what John calls an earnest of the Spirit.[3] This was
indeed unspeakable, and, I rmly believe, undeniable by many. Now every leading
providential circumstance that happened to me, from the day I was taken from
my parents to that hour, was then, in my view, as if it had but just occurred. I was
sensible of the invisible had of God, which guided and protected me when in truth
I knew it not: still the Lord pursued me although I slighted and disregarded it; this
mercy melted me down. When I considered my poor wretched state, I wept, seeing
what a great debtor I was to sovereign free grace. Now the Ethiopian was willing
to be saved by Jesus Christ, the sinner’s only surety, and also to rely on none other
person or thing for salvation. Self was obnoxious, and good works he had none;
for it is God that works in us both to will and to do. Oh! the amazing things of that
hour can never be told—it was joy in the Holy Ghost! I felt an astonishing change;
the burden of sin, the gaping jaws of hell, the fears of death, that weighed me down
before, now lost their horror; indeed I thought death would now be the best earthly
friend I ever had. uch were my grief and joy, as, I believe, are seldom experienced.
I was bathed in tears, and said, What am I, that God should thus look on the vilest
of sinners? I felt a deep concern for my mother and friends, which occasioned me
to pray with fresh ardour; and, in the abyss of thought, I viewed the unconverted
people of the world in a very awful state, being without God and without hope.
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