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Untitled Article
ledged by every religious man as amply as by Doddridge ; bat under none but & heart-withering system of theology could such a belief be made the instrument of torture like that he groaned under . What must it have beeft to the mind of such an one as Doddridge to believe that he had incurred the Divine displeasure by praying too earnestly for the life of his child ; and that this child was made the instrument of his punishment , directly by her own rebuke , and indirectly by her sufferings !
" God only knows with what earnestness and importunity I prostrated myself before him to beg * her life , which I would have been wiHing almost to have purchased with my own . When reduced to the lowest degree of Ianguishment by a consumption , I could not forbear looking" in upon her almost
every hour . I saw her with the strongest mixture of anguish and delight ; no chemist ever watched his crucible with greater care when he expected the production of the philosopher ' s stone , than I watched her in all tlie various turns of her distemper , which at last grew utterly hopeless , and then no language can express the agony into which it threw me . One remarkable circumstance I cannot but recollect : in praying most affectionately , perhaps
too earnestly , for her life , these words came into my mind with great power , * Speak no more to me of this matter' I was unwilling to take them , and went into the chamber to see my dear lamb , when instead of receiving me with her usual tenderness , she looked upon me with a stern air , and said with a very remarkable determination of voice , ' / have no more to say to you ? and I think from that time , though she lived at least ten days , she seldom looked upon me with pleasure , or cared to suffer me to come near her .
But that I might feel all the bitterness of the affliction , Providence so ordered it , that I came in when her sharpest agonies were upon her , and those words , ' ¦ O dear , O dear , what shall 1 do ?* rung in my ears for succeeding , hours and days . But God delivered her ; and she without any violent pang in the articje of her dissolution , quietly and sweetly fell asleep , as , I hope , in Jesus , about ten at night , I being then at Maidwell . When I came home , my mind was under a dark cloud relating to her eternal state ; but God was pleased graciously to remove it , and gave me comfortable hope , after having relt the most heart-rending sorrow . "—P . 361 .
This child , whose eternal state was transiently considered doubtful , was seven years old , and so amiable and engaging that she won all hearts . —Was Jesus ever heard to say , ' Of such is the kingdom of hell" ? It is most- painful to read the self-reproaches which abound in almost every page . The causes of many of them appear to us to be wholly visionary ; and where facts are mentioned , such as indolent habits , the indulgence of impetuous emotions , and other sins , it is perfectly evident that such faults and failings . would have been much more readily cured by the stimulus of
energetic hope than by the depressing torments of fear and remorse . Doddridge ' s theology seemed framed for the express purpose of detaining him or dragging him back to the very beginning of a spiritual course ; and when be made progress , it was in spite of iris creed and not in consequence of it : it was through the power which remained to emancipate himself from the bondage of his superstitions , and not because those chains were any thing but a hindrance to him . The very office of religion is to lead us on far out of the reach of fear and abasement ; to invigorate and not to depress ; to bid us rejoice evermore , and never to countenance such despondency as is here expressed :
" On the whole , I apprehend my character baa risen much of late , and stands fairer and brighter than it ever did . But surely if many of those that now hold me in the greatest esteem knew what I was in secret , if they had seen what the eye of God has seen , with what horror , with what contempt would they behold roe ! I have lived a most trifling , foolish life ; have taken
Untitled Article
322 Dr . Ehddridge ' s Correspondence and Diartf .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1831, page 322, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2597/page/34/
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