them, by a renewed persecution. And so it was for a while after God put a final end to their persecutions, by the Emperor Constantine's becoming a Christian. With what zeal did the Christians flock to the public churches, consecrated from heathen fanes to temples of the living God, and cover the pavements with their prostrate bodies? but by degrees this fervour decayed; lukewarmness and worldliness crept into the church, and has been ever since striking its roots deep into it, to this very day; the whole Christian Church having never since suffered any general persecution. It has pleased God sometimes to afflict particular churches, and rouse them up; but this has been so little general, that we may well fear that the spirit of religion is almost decayed in the world and as nothing but a great persecution, in human appearance, can awaken it, so in the mean time we know not where to look for it; but have reason to fear, that if we think it enough for us to be as good as our neighbours, we shall come short at last of the kingdom of heaven. Alas! it is the easiest thing that can be, to go to heaven according to the notion of the men of the world now. At their rate who will be damned? but surely there must be two heavens at great distance the one from the other: one for the superficial Christians of this age, and another for the pious and painful, the mortified and religiously strict Christians of old; or else these superficial Christians can go to no heaven at all."

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To both these I shall add a prayer of his upon his birth-day, November 14, 1690; and though only part of it falls in with what went before, yet no doubt the

pious reader will be sufficiently pleased with the whole.

"O most high and glorious Lord God! who hast made me and given me such great capacities, even to be able to love thee: I was nothing when thou wert pleased to give me a being, and am nothing yet, but what thou shalt be pleased to make me. Thou orderest and disposest of me with the tenderness of a father, and with infinite wisdom: sometimes thou hast vouchsafed me leisure, and the quiet enjoyment of thyself; at other times, thou hast filled me with hurry and business, and with cares, if not so much hurrying, yet more distracting than either. Sometimes thou hast granted me health, a cheerful temper, and the sense of thy love; at other times thou hast left me no more than the bare remembrance of these enjoyments, to carry on my soul in the unrelishing discharge of my duties. But as thy wisdom produces strong trees from tender plants, by bringing them through the vicissitudes of day and night, of summer and winter, and leaving them sometimes stript of all their leaves in the very shadow of their death, making these changes the necessary means of their growth and solidness; so thou hast instructed me hereby, not to wonder at thy appointing such changes to my soul but in them all, to bless and adore thee, and to make it my business, in whatever state I am, to endeavour to go on to serve thee. When last I began my yearly collections of this sort, thou hadst shut me up, and thy servants, in this place, in distress and terrors: we are now, by thy mercy, freed from dangers, yet involved in new troubles: delivered from judg

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ments; yet oppressed with old sins. Good God! what will become of us? why should we be stricken any more? we will revolt more and more. Surely thy exterminating sentence will next go out against us, and make us cease to be a people, since we will not cease to be a wicked one.

"But, O most gracious governor and guide of my whole life, shut not up my soul with those who will not be reformed: enable me to reform myself, and then vouchsafe to make use of me for thy glory, in the way thy wisdom has ordained for me: O thou, who hast known me before I was, and made me what I am. Amen."

Resolves again

to quit his employment.

These apprehensions of the decay of piety, stirred up anew in Mr. Bonnell's mind, his former desires of betaking himself entirely to the service of God, and quitting all secular business. In order to this, he entered into a firm resolution of parting with his employment, so soon as he could find one upon whom, with an easy mind, he might devolve so great a trust; and in a little time he actually agreed with a gentleman of sufficient abilities for it. But that gentleman's delays first, and afterwards his resolutions of living constantly in England, kept Mr. Bonnell much longer engaged in his employment, than he could possibly have expected. But at last he was freed from it by a new agreement which he made with the gentleman who now enjoys it, but even so, much time was spent before he could be settled in it.

While this tedious affair was transacting, Mr. Bonnell changed his condition of

His marriage.

life, and entered into a married state, which he did in the latter end of the year 1693. The person he made choice of was Jane Conyngham, a daughter to Sir Albert Conyngham; a gentleman very well known in this kingdom, for his firm adherence to the Royal Family during the civil wars; in whose cause he often exposed his life to the greatest dangers; and for his bravery and conduct in the late war, commanding a regiment of dragoons, and at last dying in the service. Mr. Bonnell had some years before entered into a strict friendship with this gentlewoman. He believed her temper and manner of life very well suited to his own, and that she had those qualities which he chiefly desired in a wife. And as this was an affair of the greatest moment to him of any in this world; so I have those materials in my hands, which shew, that with all imaginable constancy and ardour, he begged God's direction in his resolution and choice, that every thought of his mind, and every step he should make, might be over-ruled by his providence, that providence to whose conduct and disposal he had long before resigned up himself and all his concerns; and whose motions he was fully determined, without the least reluctancy, to follow.

He had at all times different thoughts of the happiness of a married state from the generality of men, who are governed more by violent and disorderly passions, than by reason and religion. The following meditation is a sufficient proof of this, written by him in the 26th year of his age, and which he entitles The Wish, or an Idea of Marriage.

"Marriage is the representative of the most sacred

union between Christ and his church; Christ who left his blessed Father to become married to mankind, and espouse a whole church for a wife. Until this was instituted, man was but half made and imperfect; For this shall a man leave his father and mother,' saith God himself.

For this, first let me serve a sufficient time of courtship, but let it be sweetened with the conversation of the person I love; and if there be opposition of others to struggle with, it will but render the conversation the more savoury, and afford matter for entertainment and discourse, and likewise many times for divertisement; at least it will the more endear under a common suffering. Next, upon marriage, let us immediately remove from the mixt company in which hitherto we have lived, to enjoy each other in a more solitary retirement, where all things about us are our own, and to be our own care and here, let us be sufficient company to each other, as Adam was to Eve in Paradise. Here let me in my family be the priest of the most high God, and let his praises be always in my mouth. And when God gives a child that can begin to talk, let it be both my wife's concern and mine, with equal zeal, and equal naturálness, to make the works of God the constant matter of our discourse, and instruction to our child. As others talk to their child of a grandmother, an aunt, or the vanities of the world; let us talk to ours of its Maker and our Father, God; and of the place whither we hope to go, Heaven, and of the company we shall have there, the blessed angels. Let me, therefore, have a wife of a natural, free, ingenuous, and