everal
of his most intimate friends. I have reserved for this place one genuine
expression of it many years before, which I thought might be mentioned
with some advantage here. In July, 1725, he had been sent to some place
not far from Hamilton to quell a mutiny among some of our troops. I know
not the particular occasion; but I remember to have heard him mention it
as so fierce a one, that he scarcely ever apprehended himself in more
hazardous circumstances. Yet he quelled it by his presence alone, and the
expostulations he used--evidently putting his life into his hand to do
it. The particulars of the story struck me much; but I do not so exactly
remember them as to venture to relate them here. I only observe, that in
a letter dated July 16, that year, which I have now before me, and which
evidently refers to this event, he writes thus: "I have been very busy,
hurried about from place to place; but, blessed be God, all is over
without bloodshed. And pray let me ask what made you show so much concern
for me in your last? Were you afraid I should get to heaven before you?
or can any evil befall those who are followers of that which is good?"[*]

[*Note: I doubt not but this will remind some of my readers of that noble
speech of Zwinglius, when (according to the usage of that country,)
attending his flock to a battle in which their religion and liberties
were all at stake, on his receiving a mortal wound by a bullet, of which
he was expired, while his friends were in all the first astonishment of
grief, he bravely said, as he was dying, "_Ecquid hoc infortunii_? Is
this to be reckoned a misfortune?" How many of our Deists would have
celebrated such a sentence, if it had come from the lips of an ancient
Roman! Strange that the name of Christ should be so odious, that the
brightest virtues of his followers should be despised for his sake! But
so it is, and so our Master told us it would be; and our faith is, in
this connection, confirmed by those who strive most to overthrow it.]

As these were his sentiments in the vigour of his days, so neither did
declining years and the infirmities of a broken constitution on the one
hand, nor any desire of enjoying the honours and profits of so high
a station, or (what was much more to him,) the converse of the most
affectionate of wives and so many amiable children and friends on the
other, in the least enervate his spirits; but as he had in former years
often expressed it, to me and