Early piety, exemplified in the life and death of Mr. Nathanael Mather, who ...…

To my Lusts. I have had Communion with you all th•• while, but I dare not have so any longer Wherefore I renounce all Communion with y•• any more; I will cleave to the God that made m•

But a Year or two after this, it was wit• him, as I have observed it is too commonly ⟨p. 21⟩with such as are Converted betimes unto God. An unhappy gradual Apostasy carried him aside from those degrees of seriousness and intenseness in divine things, which he had been used unto: 'Tis possible an entanglement in a Familiarity with some that were no better than they should be, did abate of the good savour which had been upon him, and decoy him by insensible steps to some vanities (tho' not to any scandalous immoralities) that were disadvantageous to him. For divers Months he seemed somewhat, yet not totally, much less finally, forsaken of that Wisdom and Virtue which he had before been an example of; but the good Spirit of God will not let go his Interest in a Soul of which he hath taken a saving hold. This Young Man soon entertained just resentments of his own declensions, and it was impossible for the most Badger-toothed malice in the World to aggravate any of his Errors half so much as he did himself in his own Repentance for them. In the Year 1685. God visited him with sore Terrors and Horrors in his wounded Soul, the anguish whereof he thought intolerable; yet he made not his condition known to any Body all the while. He could say, My ⟨p. 22⟩complaint is not to man, but he made it unto the Lord; This poor man cried and the Lord heard, and delivered him out of his distresses. He arrived in time unto some settlement and renewal of his Peace with God: He confessed and bewailed his own sins before the Lord, and declared his detestation of them, and applied himself unto the Lord Jesus Christ for Salvation from them all. Good terms being thus established between the Almighty Lord and this Immortal Soul, he maintained, I think, a constant and an even Walk with God, until he dyed. I find now that Language in his MSS: Let me be as active a Servant of Christ, as I was of Satan heretofore. For more than the three last years of his Life, he lived at a strange rate for Holiness and Gravity and retired Devotions. He read Mr. Scudders Christians daily walk, and Dr. Owen of Spiritual Mindedness, and had a restless raging Agony in his Mind unti the Methods of Religion advised by those worthy Men, were Exemplified in his own Behaviour. 'Tis a note in one o his Diaries,