While in this state of mind, I went one evening to the meeting-house, and as I was returning to the barracks, pondering in my mind my guilt, as a sinner, and the goodness and sparing mercy of God, the powers of my mind having been buoyed up by the fervour of the exhortations and prayers I had heard, a sudden emotion started all at once into my mind, that my sins were pardoned by God, that God had promised pardon to such as me; and that all that was required was, that I should believe that God had pardoned my sins; that God was faithful to his promise, and it would be to me, even according to my faith. This emotion had a powerful influence upon me. It gave peace to my mind, for I took it to be one of those manifestations of the Spirit, spoken of by those who preached, exhorted, and prayed, at the meeting-house. Under the impressions produced by it, I went on very smoothly, abstaining from sins, to which I had formerly been a slave. I now thought myself happy, and promised to myself, that I would now be able to live such a life, as should be pleasing to God, and should procure and retain his favour. But I must here add, that this impression that my sins were actually pardoned, was not accompanied with any increase of light to my understanding of the way in which God forgives sin. I was as blind to the nature of the great doctrines of the justifying righteousness and atoning blood of Christ, as I had been before. The views which at this time I entertained of Christ's death, were, that he had died to procure the pardon of such sins as were committed by sinners, while in a state of ignorance and impenitence. I believed that had Christ not died, there would have been no pardon for sin, but that his death had opened the door of mercy to penitent sinners of all descriptions. I thought all the design of God, was to bring men to a sense of their moral duty, and to put them once more in a fair way of discharging their moral obligations to him, as their Creator and Preserver; and that he had promised those who repented, his assistance in all things that were difficult, and his protection from outward danger; and that Christ's death justified God, in granting pardon to penitent sinners, on account of their penitence. I had some faint recollection of what I had read in Boston's Fourfold State, and the instructions I had received in the Sabbath school, and from others, and could discern that there was a difference between them and the instructions I was now hearing, particularly on the doctrine of election, and remaining corruption in believers; but I had no fixed ideas on these topics, only just as much as prevented me from thinking that the Methodists were right, in denying, that the doctrines of election, and of remaining depravity in all believers, were taught in the Bible. I thought they were, but they were not any part of my own fixed belief. I read Wesley on Christian perfection, and, although I did