"Being re-settled at school, I spared no pains to go forward in my book.] God was pleased to give me His blessing, and I learned much faster than I did before. But all this while I continued in [secret] sin; and, at length, got acquainted with such a set of debauched, abandoned, atheistical youths, that if God, by His free, unmerited, and especial grace, had not delivered me out of their hands, I should long since have sat in the scorner's chair [and made a mock at sin]. By keeping company with them, my thoughts of religion grew more and more like theirs. I went to public service only to make sport and walk about. I took pleasure in their lewd conversation. I began to reason as they did [and to ask why God had given me passions, and not permitted me to gratify them? Not considering that God did not originally give us these _corrupt_ passions, and that He had promised help to withstand them, if we would ask it of Him. In short, I soon made a great proficiency in the school of the devil. I affected to look rakish], and was in a fair way of being as infamous as the worst of them. "But, oh stupendous love! God even here stopped me, when running on in a full career to hell. For, just as I was upon the brink of ruin, He gave me such a distaste of their principles and practices, that I discovered them to my master, who soon put a stop to their proceedings. "Being thus delivered out of the snare of the devil, I began to be more and more serious, and felt God, at different times, working powerfully and convincingly upon my soul. One day in particular, as I was coming downstairs, and overheard my friends speaking well of me, God so deeply convinced me of hypocrisy, that, though I had formed frequent but ineffectual resolutions before, yet I had then power given me over my secret and darling sin. Notwithstanding, some time after being overtaken in liquor, as I have been twice or thrice in my lifetime, Satan gained his usual advantage over me again,--an experimental proof to my poor soul, how that wicked one makes use of men as machines, working them up to just what he pleases [when by intemperance they have chased away the Spirit of God from them].