previous next

[82] Through the cloud which had so long rested over him, the clear light of truth shone in upon his spirit; the weltering chaos of a disordered intellect settled into the calm peace of a reconciliation with God and man. His first act on leaving prison was to visit Bristol, the scene of his melancholy fall. There he publicly confessed his errors, in the eloquent earnestness of a contrite spirit, humbled in view of the past, yet full of thanksgiving and praise for — the great boon of forgiveness. A writer who was present says, the ‘assembly was tendered, and broken into tears; there were few dry eyes, and many were bowed in their minds.’

In a paper which he published soon after, he acknowledges his lamentable delusion. ‘Condemned forever,’ he says, ‘be all those false worships with which any have idolized my person in that Night of my Temptation, when the Power of Darkness was above me; all that did in any way tend to dishonor the Lord, or draw the minds of any from the measure of Christ Jesus in themselves, to look at flesh, which is as grass, or to ascribe that to the visible which belongs to Him.’ ‘Darkness came over me through want of watchfulness and obedience to the pure Eye of God. I was taken captive from the true light; I was walking in the Night, as a wandering bird fit for a prey. And if the Lord of all my mercies had not rescued me, I had perished; for I was as one appointed to death and destruction, and there was none to deliver me.’ ‘It is in my heart to confess to God, and before men, my folly and offence in that day; yet there were many things formed ’

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Bristol (United Kingdom) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Christ Jesus (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: