9. But still my corruptions took daily root, and increased in strength by my weak resistance. Yet I had a fair form of religion: I avoided all those sins that plainly thwarted the light of my conscience. I abstained from those evils which even the more serious students gave into; and kept at a distance from the occasions of them. I was more exact in attending both public and private prayer, and not without some concern for my inward frame in them. When I was insnared into any sin or omission of any duty, I was deeply sorrowful. I had a kindness for all that feared God, and a pleasure in their converse, especially on religion. I had frequent tastes of the good word of God, which made me delight in approaching him. I had many returns to prayer; when under a deep sense of my impotence, I betook me to God in any strait, I was so remarkably helped, that I could not but observe it. Hereby God drew me gradually in, to expect every good gift from above, and encouraged the very faintest beginnings of a look toward a return.
10. But tho’ by these means I got a name to live, yet was I really dead. For, 1. My natural darkness still remained, tho’ with some small dawnings of light. 2. The enmity of my mind against the law of God was yet untaken away. I had not a respect unto all his commands, nor a sight of the beauty of holiness: neither did my heart approve of the whole yoke of Christ, as good and desirable; and I complied with it in part, not from a delight therein, but because I saw I was undone without it. 3. I yet _sought righteousness as it were by the works of the law_; I was wholly legal in all I did: not seeing the necessity, the security, the glory of the gospel-method of salvation, by seeking righteousness and strength in the Lord Christ alone. Lastly, my sole aim was to save myself, without any regard to the glory of God, or any enquiry how it could consist with it to save one who had so deeply offended. In a word, all my religion was servile, constrained, and anti-evangelical.
11. From the foregoing passages I cannot but observe, 1. What a depth of deceitfulness there is in the heart of man. How many shifts did mine use to elude the design of all those strivings of the Spirit of the Lord with me? I have told many, but the one half is not told. And all these respect but one point in religion. If a single man were to recount but the more remarkable deceits, with respect to the whole of his behaviour, how many volumes must he write? And if so many be seen, how many secret, undiscernable, or at least undiscerned deceits must still remain! So much truth is there couched in that short scripture, _The heart is deceitful above all things: who can know it?_
*I observe, 2. How far we may go toward religion, and yet come short of it. I had and did many things: I heard the scriptures gladly:――I was _almost persuaded to be a Christian_: I had _escaped the_ outward _pollutions that are in the world_: yea, I seemed _enlightened, and a partaker of the heavenly gift_; having many times _tasted the good word of_ God, _and the powers of the world to come_. I had undergone many changes; but not the great change: I was not born of God: I was not begotten anew, and made a child of God through a living faith in Christ Jesus.
Again, I cannot but look back with wonder at the astonishing patience of God, which suffered my manners so long, and the steadiness he shewed in pursuing his work, notwithstanding all my provocations. All the creation could not have afforded so much forbearance: the disciples of Christ would have called for fire from heaven: yea, _Moses_ would have found more here to irritate him than at _Meribah_. Glory be to God, that we have to do with him, and not with man. His ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts: but as the heavens are high above the earth, so are his ways and thoughts of mercy above ours.
*_Fourthly_, I must bear witness to the reasonableness of God’s way. It did not destroy my faculties, but improve them. He enlightened my eyes to see what he would have me to do, and did not force but gradually persuade me to comply with it. This was not to compel, but gently bend the will, to the things that were really fit for it to incline to: nor did he ever oblige me to part with any sin, till he had let me see it was against my interest as well as duty: and the smallest piece of compliance with his will, wanted not even a present reward.