About noon the next day (i.e. Sat 14 Jan 1738) it ceased. But first I had resolved, God being my helper, not only to preach it to all, but to apply the Word of God to every single soul in the ship; and if but one, yea, if not one of them will hear, I know ‘my labour is not in vain’.
I no sooner executed this resolution than my spirit revived, so that from this day I had no more of that fearfulness and heaviness which before almost continually weighed me down. I am sensible one who thinks the being in orco, as they phrase it, an indispensable preparative for being a Christian, would say I had better have continued in that state, and that this unseasonable relief was a curse, not a blessing. Nay, but who art thou, O man, who in favour of a wretched hypothesis thus blasphemest the good gift of God? Hath he not himself said, ‘This also is the gift of God, if a man have power to rejoice in his labour’? Yea, God setteth his own seal to his weak endeavours, while he thus ‘answereth him in the joy of his heart’.
