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they proceed in one dull train, unvaried, unless sometimes by darker shades than usual. Thus it has happened to me since I saw you. During two days I rejected entirely all your notices, and if I have since experienced some little degree of belief in them, it has not been on account of the smallest encouragement, for I have received none; but perhaps because the temptation to cast them away is abated.

I have nothing farther to add respecting my state of mind which hardly ever affords me a new subject or any thing worth communicating. It seems strange however that the prayers and promises of some years should remain still so entirely unanswered and unaccomplished.

We are much as usual in our health, and with our united thanks for your spiritual services,

I remain, dear Sir, yrs sincerely,

WM. COWPer.

May 16, 1793.

DEAR SIR,

There is no text in scripture less calculated to comfort me, than that which promises comfort to the broken heart. Were there a text in the Bible which promised it to the nether millstone, from such a text as that I might gather hope.

Your experience and mine make a series of exact contradictions. You receive assurances almost as often as you pray, of spiritual good things intended for me, and I feel in the mean time every thing that denotes a man an outcast and a reprobate. I dream in the night that God has rejected me finally, and that all promises and all answers to prayer made for me, are mere delusions. I wake under a strong and clear conviction that these communications are from God, and in the course of the day nothing occurs to invalidate that persuasion. As I have said before, there is a mystery in this matter that I am not able to explain. I believe myself the only instance of

APPENDIX.

a man to whom God will promise every thing and perform

nothing.

Company is come in and I must conclude.

Yrs, sincerely,

WM. COWPER.

July 2, 1793.

DEAR SIR,

I have already told you that I heard a word in the year 86, which has been a stone of stumbling to me ever since. It was this,

I will promise you anything.

This word taken in connexion with my experience such as it has been ever since, seems so exactly accomplished, that it leaves me no power at all to believe the promises made to you. You will tell me that it was not from God. By what token am I to prove that? My experience verifies it. In the day I am occupied with my studies, which, whatever they are, are certainly not of a spiritual kind. In the night I generally sleep well, but wake always under a terrible impression of the wrath of God and for the most part, with words that fill me with alarm and with the dread of woes to come.

What is

Alas! He

there in all this that in the least impeaches the truth of the threatening I have mentioned? I will promise you anything-that is to say, much as I hate you and miserable as I design to make you, I will yet bid you be of good cheer and expect the best, at the same time that I will shew you no favour. This you will say—is unworthy of God. is the fittest to judge what is worthy of him, and what is otherwise. I can say but this, that his conduct and dealings are totally changed toward me. Once he promised me much, and was so kind to me at the same time, that I most confidently expected the performance. Now he promises me

"

as much, but holds me always at an immense distance, and so far as I know, never deigns to speak to me. What conclusions can I draw from these premises, but that he who once loved now hates me, and is constantly employed in verifying the notice of 86, that is to say, in working distinctly contrary to his promises?

This is the laborynth in which I am always bewildered, and from which I have hardly any hope of deliverance.

I remain,

Yours sincerely,

WM. COWPER.

• Sic orig.

DEAR SIR,

You will expect a line from me, and it is fit that you should receive one, though to say the truth it is hardly possible for me to find time to send you one. I have no uncommon grievances to complain of. Since I wrote last, my nights have been as quiet as they ever are at the best, and my spirits in the day-time not worse. I will not therefore devote this paper to a recital of melancholy thoughts and experiences. Two nocturnal ones I have had which I will subjoin and then conclude. In the first place, I dreamed about four nights ago, that walking I know not where, I suddenly found my thoughts drawn towards God, when I looked upward and exclaimed

"I love thee even now more than many who see thee daily."

Whether the dream was from a good source or not I cannot tell, for it was accompanied with little or no sensation of a spiritual kind.

This morning I had partly in Latin and partly in Greek,

"Qui adversus oc@ev stant, nihili erunt,"

APPENDIX.

I conclude myself in haste, with many thanks for your prayers and kind remembrances, in which we both unite.*

Aug. 10, 1793.

DEAR SIR,

Yours sincerely,

WM. COWPER.

Sept. 13, 1793.

The time is come about when I feel myself called upon to say something in acknowledgment of the many prayers you make for us and the many notices you send me. When I have thanked you for them, I have said all on the subject that is worth saying. For neither the prayers are in any degree answered, nor the notices fulfilled. Of course I continue as I was; distressed and full of despair. The day hardly ever comes in which I do not utter a wish that I had never been, born. And the night is become so habitually a season of dread to me, that I never lie down on my bed with comfort, and am in this respect a greater sufferer than Job, who, concerning his hours of rest, could hope at least, though he was disappointed. I cannot ever hope on that subject, after twenty years' experience that in my case to go to sleep is to throw myself into the mouth of my enemy.

Some time since I took laudanum, and found a little relief from that. Now I take James's powder, and from that find a little relief also. But what is the relief from such remedies worth? I cannot always take them. After a time, they lose their effect, and the effect is trivial while it lasts.

My pen runs, and I say little to the purpose. Complaints are idle, and only imbitter my spirit the more. I will cease,

therefore, and add no more than that I remain,

10th, 1793.

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The following memorandum appears in Mr. Teedon's diary:-" August Received a letter from the Esquire, of happier import than any I ever received on the whole. The Lord grant it may be his harbinger

of deliverance.'

DEAR SIR,

Having company at the house I am amused, and having been obliged to take laudanum again to quiet my nerves and spirits, somewhat discomposed by their arrival, I have slept more composedly of late, and accordingly have for some days past suffered less from melancholy than I usually do.

I have thus given you a short account of my present state of mind, and the reasons and causes that have occasioned it. The time I have for writing is short, and will not allow me to add much. I have however to observe, what I have observed so often, that for these intervals in which my experience is less painful, I am always indebted to incident and not to any manifestation of mercy. They are therefore the less valuable, but such as they are I am glad of them, and desire to make the most of them.

I have had the letters you sent this week, and am obliged to you for them, as well as for your constant intercessions. Surely they will not always be ineffectual.

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I thank you sincerely for your earnest prayers, and for your letters, which I have received duly. Could I feed on the bread which seems to be intended for me, it is so plentifully imparted to you that I should feel no want. But I am in the state of Tantalus, surrounded with plenty and yet famished. If God designed that I should eat, would he not enable me to do so? This is mysterious and I cannot solve it.

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