[27] "After having undergone innumerable buffetings of Satan, and many months' inexpressible trials by night and day under the spirit of bondage, God was pleased at length to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold on His dear Son by a living faith, and, by giving me the spirit of adoption, to seal me, as I humbly hope, even to the day of everlasting redemption. But oh! with what joy--joy unspeakable--even joy that was full of, and big with glory, was my soul filled, when the weight of sin went off, and an abiding sense of the pardoning love of God, and a full assurance of faith broke in upon my disconsolate soul! Surely it was the day of my espousals,--a day to be had in everlasting remembrance. At first my joys were like a spring tide, and, as it were, overflowed the banks. Go where I would, I could not avoid singing of psalms almost aloud; afterwards it became more settled--and, blessed be God, saving a few casual intervals, has abode and increased in my soul ever since. But to proceed."--Edit. 1756. "Thus were the days of my mourning ended. After a long night of desertion and temptation, the star, which I had seen at a distance before, began to appear again, and the day star arose in my heart. Now did the Spirit of God take possession of my soul, and, as I humbly hope, seal me unto the day of redemption."] Here we must pause. Whitefield evidently considered this to be the time of his conversion. The date was about seven weeks after Easter, in the year 1735. This was three years before the Wesley brothers professed to receive the same blessing. In fact, young Whitefield seems to have been the first of the Oxford Methodists who attained to the experience expressed in Romans viii. 15, 16: "Ye have not received the Spirit of bondage, again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." It cannot be denied that Whitefield's first account of the way in which he obtained this gift of God is tinged with fanaticism. The second and revised account, published sixteen years afterwards, is unobjectionable. Oppressed with a sense of sin, and buffeted by Satan, the young servitor laid hold of Christ "by a living faith," received "the spirit of adoption," was blessed with "a sense of the pardoning love of God," and filled with "joy unspeakable" and "big with glory."