��97.
April 26.
I was some way hinderd from continuing this contemplation in the usual manner, and therefore try at the distance of a week to review the last Sunday.
I went to Church early having first, I think, used my prayer. When I was there I had very little perturbation of mind. During the usual time of Meditation, I considered the Christian Duties under the three principles of Soberness ; Righteousness ; and Godliness ; and purposed to forward Godliness by the annual perusal of the Bible ; Righteousness by settling something for Charity^ and Soberness by early hours. I commended as usual with preface of permission, and, I think, mentioned Bathurst x . I came home, and found Paoli and Boswel waiting for me 2 . What devotions I used after my return home I do not distinctly remember. I went to prayers in the evening; and, I think, entred late.
I have this week endeavoured every day but one to rise early, and have tried to be diligent, but have not performed what I required from myself.
On Good Fryday, I paid Peyton 3 without requiring work.
Since Easter 71 I have added a collect to my Evening devotion.
I have been less indulgent to corporal inactivity. But I have done little with my mind.
It is a comfort to me, that at last, in my sixty-third year, I have attained to know, even thus hastily, confusedly, and imperfectly, what my Bible contains.
May the good God encrease and sanctify my knowledge.
I have never yet read the apocrypha. When I was a boy I have read or heard Bel and the dragon, Susannah, some of Tobit, perhaps all. Some at least of Judith, and some of Ecclesiasticus ; and I suppose, the Benedicite. I have some
1 Ante, p. 29. 2 Life, ii. 190. edition. Life, ii. 155. 'Peyton and 3 Peyton, who had been one of his Macbean are both starving,' he wrote amanuenses when he was writing the in 1775, 'and I cannot keep them.' Dictionary, was now assisting him Letters, i. 319. For Peyton's melan in the preparation of the fourth choly end, see ib. i. 385.
time
�� �
