bout this
time the honour to receive the most illustrious testimonials,) but also
for the great sobriety and regularity of the soldiers. Many of the
officers copied after the excellent pattern which they had daily before
their eyes; and a considerable number of the private men seemed to be
persons not only of strict virtue, but of serious piety. I doubt not but
they found their abundant account in it, not only in the serenity and
happiness of their own minds, which is beyond comparison the most
important consideration; but also, in some degree, in the obliging and
respectful treatment which they generally met with in their quarters.
I mention this, because I am persuaded that if gentlemen of their
profession knew, and would reflect, how much more comfortable they make
their own quarters by a sober, orderly, and obliging conduct, they would
be regular out of mere self love, if they were not influenced, as I
heartily wish they may always be, by a nobler principle.

CHAPTER XI.

EMBARKS FOR FLANDERS.

Towards the latter end of this year he embarked for Flanders, and
spent some considerable time with the regiment at Ghent, where he much
regretted the want of those religious ordinances and opportunities which
had made his other abodes delightful. But as he had made so eminent a
progress in that divine life which they are all intended to promote, he
could not be inactive in the cause of God. I have now before me a letter,
dated from thence October 16, 1742, in which he writes:

"As for me, I am indeed in a dry and barren land, where no water is.
Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because nothing is to be heard in
our Sodom but blaspheming the name of my God, and I not honoured as the
instrument of doing any great service. It is true, I have reformed six or
seven field-officers of swearing. I dine every day with them, and have
entered them into a voluntary contract to pay a shilling to the poor for
every oath, and it is wonderful to observe the effect it has had already.
One of them told me this day at dinner that it had really such an
influence upon him, that being at cards last night when another officer
fell a swearing, he was not able to bear it, but rose up and left the
company. So you see, restraints at first arising from a low principle may
improve into something better."

During his abode here, he had a great deal of business upon his hands,
and had also, in some marches, the care of more regiments than