God. His soul, by swif delighted degrees, is rapt above this sublunary sphere, until he can be silent no longer, and bursts out into the glorious enthusiasm of Thomson,
‘These, as the ehange, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God.— The rolling year
Is full of thee;’
and so on, in all the spirit and ardour of that charming hymn.— These are no ideal pleasures; they are real delights; and I ask what of the delights among the sons of men are superior, not to say, equal to them? And they have this preeious, vast addition, that conseious virtue stamps them for her own; and lays hold on them to bring herself into the presenee of a witnessing, judging, and approving God.”
Alluding one day to his expected dissolution, he said, he was well aware that his death would occasion some noise, and that every scrap of his writing would be revived against him to the injury of his future reputation; that letters and verses written with unguarded, and improper freedom, and whieh he earnestly wished to have buried in oblivion, would be handed about by idle vanity or malevolenee, when no dread of his resentment would restrain them, or prevent the censures of shrill-tongued malice, or the insidious sarcasms of envy from pouring forth all their venom to blast his fate.
