THE CONVERT BAPTIZED. 496

Atkins, her husband, has indeed brought her in a wonderful
manner to be willing to embrace a religious life, and has given
her just ideas of the being of a God, of his power, justice, mercy,
yet I desire to know of him if he has said anything to her of
Jesus Christ, and of the salvation of sinners, of the nature of faith
in him, and redemption by him, of the Holy Spirit, the resurrec-
tion, the last judgment, and a future state.”

I called Will Atkins again, and asked him; but the poor fellow
fell immediately into tears, and told us he had said something to
her of all those things, but that he was himself so wicked a
creature, and his own conscience so reproached him with ‘his horrid
ungodly life, that he trembled at the apprehensions that her know-
ledge of him should lessen the attention she should give to those
things, and make her rather contemn religion than receive it.
But he was assured, he said, that her mind was so disposed to
receive due impressions of all those things, that if I would but dis-
course with her she would make it appear to my satisfaction that
my labour would not be lost upon her.

Accordingly I called her in, and placing myself as interpreter
between my religious priest and the woman, I entreated him to
begin with her. But sure such a sermon was never preached by
a Popish priest in these latter ages of the world; and, as I told
him, I thought he had all the zeal, all the knowledge, all the
sincerity of a Christian, without the error of a Roman Catholic ;
and that I took him to be such a clergyman as the Roman bishops
were before the Church of Rome assumed spiritual sovereignty
over the consciences of men.

In a word, he brought the poor woman to embrace the know-
ledge of Christ, and of redemption by him, not with wonder and
astonishment only, as she did the first notions of a God, but with
joy and faith, with an affection and a surprising degree of under-
standing scarce to be imagined, much less to be expressed ; and at
her own request she was baptized.

When he was preparing to baptize her, I entreated him that he
would perform that office with some caution, that the man might
not perceive he was of the Roman Church, if possible, because of
other ill consequences which might attend a difference among us

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