["During this and all other seasons of temptation my soul was inwardly supported with great courage and resolution from above. Every day God made me willing to renew the combat, and though my soul, when quite empty of God, was very prone to seek satisfaction in the creature, and sometimes I fell into sensuality, yet I was generally enabled to wait in silence for the salvation of God, or to persist in prayer till some beams of spiritual light and comfort were vouchsafed me from on high. Thomas à Kempis, since translated and published by Mr. John Wesley; Castaniza's Combat; and the Greek Testament, every reading of which I endeavoured to turn into a prayer, were of great help and furtherance to me. On receiving the holy sacrament, especially before trials, I have found grace in a very affecting manner, and in abundant measure, sometimes imparted to my soul,--an irrefragable proof to me of the miserable delusion of the author of that work called, 'The Plain Account of the Sacrament,' which sinks that holy ordinance into a bare memorial, who, if he obstinately refuse the instruction of the Most High, will doubtless, without repentance, bear his punishment, whosoever he be.] "To proceed--I had now taken up my externals again;[25] [and though Satan for some weeks had been biting my heel, God was pleased to show me that I should soon bruise his head.] A few days after, as I was walking along, I met with a poor woman whose husband was then in [Bocardo, or] Oxford Town-Gaol, [which I constantly visited.] Seeing her much discomposed, I enquired the cause. She told me, not being able to bear the crying of her children, ready to perish for hunger, and having nothing to relieve them, she had been to drown herself, but was mercifully prevented, and said she was coming to my room to inform me of it. I gave her some immediate relief, and desired her to meet me at the prison with her husband in the afternoon. She came, and there God visited them both by His free grace. She was powerfully quickened from above; and when I had done reading, he also came to me like the trembling gaoler, and, grasping my hand, cried out, 'I am upon the brink of hell!'. From this time forward, both of them grew in grace. God, by His providence, soon delivered him from his confinement. Though notorious offenders against God and one another before, yet now they became helpmeets for each other in the great work of their salvation. They are both now living, and, I trust, will be my joy and crown of rejoicing in the great day of our Lord Jesus. [25] "And began to visit the poor."--Edit. 1756.