“And as all vice was reformed upon their feeling the power of these truths upon their hearts, so the external duties of Christianity were complied with, and conscientiously performed from the same internal influence; family prayer set up, and constantly maintained, unless among a few who had more lately come, and had felt little of this divine influence. This duty was constantly performed, even in some families where there were none but females, and scarce a prayerless person was to be found among near an hundred of them. The Sabbath was seriously and religiously observed, and care taken by parents to keep their children orderly upon that sacred day; and this, not because I had driven them to the performance of these duties by frequently inculcating them, but because they had felt the power of God’s word upon their hearts,—were made sensible of their sin and misery, and thence could not but pray, and comply with every thing which they knew to be their duty, from what they felt within themselves. When their hearts were touched with a sense of their eternal concerns, they could pray with great freedom, as well as fervency, without being at the trouble first to learn set forms for that purpose. Some of them, who were suddenly awakened at their first coming among us, were brought to pray and cry for mercy with the utmost importunity, without ever being instructed in the duty of prayer, or so much as once directed to a performance of it. “The happy effects of these peculiar doctrines of grace upon this people, show, even to demonstration, that, instead of their opening a door to licentiousness, as many vainly imagine, and slanderously insinuate, they have a directly contrary tendency; so that a close application, a _sense_ and _feeling_ of them, will have the most powerful influence toward the renovation, and _effectual_ reformation both of heart and life. “Happy experience, as well as the word of God and the example of Christ and his apostles, has taught me, that the very method of preaching which is best suited to awaken in mankind a sense and lively apprehension of their depravity and misery in a fallen state,—to excite them so earnestly to seek after a change of heart, as to fly for refuge to free and sovereign grace in Christ as the only hope set before them,—is likely to be most successful in the reformation of their external conduct. I have found that close addresses, and solemn applications of divine truth to the conscience, strike at the root of all vice; while smooth and plausible harangues upon moral virtues and external duties, at best are like to do no more than lop off the branches of corruption, while the root of all vice remains still untouched.