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EASTER DAY, April 22, 1764, at 3 m.
Almighty and most merciful Father, who hast created and preserved me, have pity on my weakness and corruption. Deliver me from habitual wickedness and idleness, enable me to purify my thoughts, to use the faculties which Thou hast given me with honest diligence, and to regulate my life by thy holy word.
Grant me, O Lord, good purposes and steady resolution, that I may repent my sins, and amend my life. Deliver me from the distresses of vain terrour, and enable me by thy Grace to will and to do what may please thee, that when I shall be called away from this present state I may obtain everlasting happiness through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
51.
Sept. 1 8, 1764, about 6 evening.
THIS is my fifty-sixth birth-day, the day on which I have concluded fifty five years.
I have outlived many friends. I have felt many sorrows. I have made few improvements. Since my resolution formed last Easter I have made no advancement in knowledge or in goodness ; nor do I recollect that I have endeavoured it. I am dejected but not hopeless.
God for Jesus Christ's Christ's sake have mercy upon me.
52.
7 in the evening.
1 went to church prayed to be loosed from the chain of my sins x .
I have now spent fifty five years in resolving, having from the earliest time almost that I can remember been forming schemes of a better life 2 . I have done nothing, the need of doing there-
1 ' Though we be tied and bound Prescott, the historian, made reso- with the chain of our sins, yet let the lutions from one end of his life to pitifulness of thy great mercy loose the other. One of his friends writes us.' Book of Common Prayer. of him : ' The practice, I apprehend,
2 Johnson was but fifty-five years must have reached its acme about old, so that he began resolving, it the time when he informed me one seems, from his birth. day that he had just made a new
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