When his liberty was regained by an exchange of prisoners, and his health established, he was far from rendering to the Lord according to the mercy he had experienced. Very little is known of the particulars of those wild and thoughtless years which lay between the nineteenth and thirtieth of his life; except that he experienced the divine goodness in preserving him in several hot military actions; and yet these years were spent in an entire alienation from God, and an eager pursuit of sensual pleasure as his supreme good. Amidst all these wanderings from religion, virtue, and happiness, he approved himself so well in his military character, that he was made a lieutenant in 1708; and, after several intermediate promotions, appointed major of a regiment commanded by the Earl of Stair. In January, 1729–30, he was advanced to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the same regiment: and here continued till April, 1743; when he received a colonel’s commission over a regiment of dragoons; and at the head of which he valiantly fell about two years and a half after he received it. We now return to that period of his life which passed at Paris, where he resided in the family of the Earl of Stair, with some interruptions, till about the year 1720. The Earl’s favour and generosity made him easy in his affairs, though he was part of the time out of commission, the regiment to which he belonged being disbanded. This was, in all probability, the gayest part of his life, and the most criminal. Whatever good examples he might find in the family where he lived, it is certain that the French court was one of the most dissolute under heaven. What, by a wretched abuse of language, have been called intrigues of love and gallantry, constituted, if not the whole business, at least the whole pleasure of his life: his fine constitution, than which, perhaps, there was hardly ever a better, gave him great opportunities of indulging himself in those excesses; and his good spirits enabled him to pursue his pleasures in such a manner, that multitudes envied him, and called him, by a dreadful kind of compliment, “The happy rake.” Yet the checks of conscience, and some remaining principles of so good an education, would break in upon his most licentious hours; and when some of his dissolute companions were once congratulating him upon his felicity, a dog happening at that time to come into the room, he could not forbear groaning inwardly, and saying to himself, “O that I were that dog!” Such was then his happiness, and such perhaps is that of hundreds more, who bear themselves highest in the contempt of religion, and glory in that infamous servitude, which they affect to call liberty.