Prayers and Meditations.
��The decease of him from whose friendship I had obtained many opportunities of amusement, and to whom I turned my thoughts as to a refuge from misfortunes, has left me heavy. But my business is with myself.
Sept. 1 8. My first knowledge of Thrale was in 1765. I enjoyed his favour for almost a fourth part of my life x .
141.
EASTER EVE, Apr. 14, 1781.
On Good Friday I took in the Afternoon some coffee and buttered cake, and to-day I had a little bread at breakfast, and potatoes and apples in the afternoon, the tea with a little toast, but I find myself feeble and unsustained, and suspect that I cannot bear to fast so long as formerly 2 .
This day I read some of Clark's Sermons. I hope that since my last Communion I have advanced, by pious reflections in my submission to God, and my benevolence to Man, but I have corrected no external habits, nor have kept any of the reso lutions made in the beginning of the year, yet I hope still to be reformed, and not to lose my whole life in idle purposes. Many years are already gone, irrevocably past, in useless Misery, that what remains may be spent better grant O God.
By this awful Festival is particularly recommended Newness of Life ; and a new Life I will now endeavour to begin by more diligent application to useful employment, and more frequent attendance on public Worship.
I again with hope of help from the God of mercy, resolve
To avoid Idleness.
To read the Bible.
To study religion.
Almighty God, merciful Father, by whose Protection I have been preserved, and by whose clemency I have been spared,
��1 See Life, i. 520 ; iv. 85 ; and Let ters, i. 142, 388; ii. 47, 100, 209, 211, 214.
2 On Saturday in Passion Week in 1766 he recorded : ' I had lived more abstemiously than is usual the whole week, and taken physick twice,
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��which together made the fast more uneasy.' Ante, p. 39. The present week, however, he had dined twice with Bishops, and therefore presum ably dined well. He should have better borne to fast. See Life, iv. 88.
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