His religion seems to have been against the very grain of his soul, and all the tendencies of his mind to have arisen from his understanding only, and never to have been truly in his heart. Company, and engagements, and indolence keep him from church from January to March; he scarcely ever got to it in time for the service, and he aimed in resolutions only at taking the Sacrament thrice in the year; he does not name a book (the Scriptures excepted) that was likely to give a right turn to his devotion. To study religion and to read the Scriptures was a matter for resolution, like rising early, but he does not seem to have been carried to the employment by the comfort, hope, joy, and consolation to be derived from them, they were never his pleasure. ’Tis well his mind was morbid, for he seems to me (from this work) never to have been really converted. Fasting, penance, and a gloomy superstition banished from his soul the felicities of piety founded in faith. But I must look it over again with more care. Yesterday morning I went to Flempton and called on Carter; with him I had some very proper conversation. He is far from the truly evangelical state, and his mind fully occupied with being satisfied with the opinions and conduct of the regular clergy in general; he has no affection, no regard for truly evangelical ones, a readiness to sneer at them, and with all a laxity in doctrines, a comprehensive _candour_, which gives me but an ill opinion of his doctrines. He is a very worthy respectable man in all worldly points. My neighbour Gooch called yesterday. He has taken the curacy of Wattisfield of Plampin, who has evaded the curate’s law. Gooch gave me twenty cases at least of rectors who decidedly cheat and impose on their curates by most unworthy evasions; but if a farmer cheats them of a turnip in tithe, they pronounce them all the rogues to be imagined. Most lamentable is this for those who should be the ministers of Christ’s gospel. But in no country that I have heard of is there such a set of clergy as in this neighbourhood. Dreadful! I have been sketching out an essay on the defence of the kingdom in case of invasion, and yesterday added to it. The regularity with which I have made entries in my journal since I determined to write one line in it, shows the infinite importance of method and regularity in every pursuit and business of life. What is regularly undertaken will be regularly executed, but desultory endeavours at fits and starts perform nothing. _22nd._—Yesterday I went up into my dear Bobbin’s room, in which I had not been for a year or more. I wiped the mould off her books, &c., with a heavy heart, and prayed to God that I might join her spirit in heaven. It made me very melancholy! She has been dead nine years, would therefore have been two-and-twenty had it pleased God to spare her. But what a world is this for a girl of that age!