His ministerial functions were discharged with the greatest assiduity, fidelity, and fervour. No avocation or infirmity prevented him from appearing in the pulpit. Preaching was an employment in which he delighted, and for which he was qualified, by an extensive acquaintance with the scriptures, and by the happy art of applying them, in the most striking manner, to the existing circumstances of the church and of his hearers. His powers of alarming the conscience, and arousing the passions, have been frequently celebrated; but he excelled also in unfolding the consolations of the gospel, and in calming the breasts of those who were agitated by a sense of guilt, or suffering under the ordinary afflictions of life. When he discoursed of the griefs and joys, the conflicts and triumphs, of genuine christians, he described {253} what he had himself known and experienced. The letters which he wrote to his familiar acquaintances breathe the most ardent piety. The religious meditations in which he spent his last sickness, were not confined to that period of his life; they had been his habitual employment from the time that he was brought to the knowledge of the truth, and his solace amidst all the hardships and perils through which he had passed. With his brethren in the ministry he lived in the utmost cordiality. We never read of the slightest variance between him and any of his colleagues. While he was dreaded and hated by the licentious and profane, whose vices he never spared, the religious and sober part of his countrymen felt a veneration for him, which was founded on his unblemished reputation, as well as his popular talents as a preacher. In private life, he was beloved and revered by his friends and domestics. He was subject to the illapses of melancholy and depression of spirits, arising partly from natural constitution, and partly from the maladies which had long preyed upon his health; which made him (to use his own expression) churlish, and less capable of pleasing and gratifying his friends than he was otherwise disposed to be. This he confessed, and requested them to excuse;[319] but his friendship was sincere, affectionate, and steady. When free from this morose affection, he relished the pleasures {254} of society, and, among his acquaintances, was accustomed to unbend his mind, by indulging in innocent recreation, and in the sallies of wit and humour, to which he had a strong propensity, notwithstanding the graveness of his general deportment. In the course of his public life, the severer virtues of his character were more frequently called into action; but we have met with repeated instances of his acute sensibility; and the unaffected tenderness which occasionally breaks forth in his private letters, shows that he was no stranger to any of the charities of human life, and that he could “rejoice with them that rejoiced, and weep with them that wept.”