The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, Chiefly Extracted from His DiaryBrainerd, David
Religion
The Life of Rev. David Brainerd, Chiefly Extracted from His Diary
Brainerd, David
Indians of North America -- Missions -- Early works to 1800
The preceding history serves to confirm _the doctrines of grace_. For if
it be allowed that there is truth, substance, or value in the main of
BRAINERD’S religion, it will undoubtedly follow, that those doctrines
are divine; since it is evident that the whole of it, from beginning to
end, accords with them. He was brought, by doctrines of this kind, to
his awakening and deep concern about things of a spiritual and eternal
nature; by these doctrines his convictions were maintained and carried
on; and his conversion was evidently altogether agreeable to them. His
conversion was no confirming and perfecting of moral principles and
habits, by use, and practice, and industrious discipline, together with
the concurring suggestions and conspiring aids of God’s Spirit; but
entirely a supernatural work, at once turning him from darkness to
marvellous light, and from the power of sin to the dominion of divine
and holy principles. It was an effect, in no respect produced by _his_
strength or labor, or obtained by _his_ virtue; and not accomplished
till he was first brought to a full conviction, that all his own virtue,
strength, labors and endeavors, could never avail any thing toward
producing or procuring this effect.
If ever BRAINERD was truly turned from sin to God at all, or ever became
truly religious, none can reasonably doubt but that his conversion was
at the time when he supposed it to be. The change which he then met
with, was evidently the greatest moral change that he ever experienced;
and he was then apparently first brought to that kind of religion, that
remarkable new habit and temper of mind, which he held all his life
after. The narration shows it to be different, in _nature_ and _kind_,
from all of which he was ever the subject before. It was evidently
wrought at once without fitting and preparing his mind, by gradually
convincing it more and more of the same truths, and bringing it nearer
and nearer to such a temper: it was soon after his mind had been
remarkably full of blasphemy, and a vehement exercise of sensible enmity
against God, and great opposition to those truths which he was now
brought with his whole soul to embrace, and rest in as divine and
glorious; truths, in the contemplation and improvement of which he
placed his happiness. He himself, who was surely best able to judge,
declares, that the dispositions and affections which were then given
him, and thenceforward maintained in him, were, most sensibly and
certainly, altogether different in their _nature_ from all of which he
was ever the subject before, or of which he ever had any conception.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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