Series 6 > McCulloch examinations of the Cambuslang revival (1742) > Volume 6

EXAMINATIONS OF PERSONS UNDER SPIRITUAL CONCERN II 31
I made many vows & promises that if God would spare me & recover me
to health, I would live another sort of life & be another sort of man than
I had been. But I was no sooner recovered, than I forgot & broke all these
Promises, & turnd drunken & looser than ever I had been, and fell into []3
uncleanness with a woman who at length bore a child to me, whereby this
sin I had secretly livd in coming to light, I was much grievd for what I had
done, & subjected my self to Church Disciphne for the Scandal. But coming
to be much harrassd by that Woman, for money, I resolvd to have gone away
out of the Country, but was hindred by a Relation from that design: then
I listed my self to be a Soldier, but was bought oft again. A little after that I
married, & set up Family Worship, and continued to keep it up daylie for a
considerable time, but in the meantime neglected Secret Prayer: Afterward,
I got into a course of Secret Prayer also: & continued for some time in the
practice of both: at length I was wearied of both & laid them both aside, &
neglected my Trade, & turnd more loose than ever. But after I had taken full
Swing in my Dole [?8/-] and loose way of living thus for a good while, my
wife telling me that I would ruin my self & her both by this way of doing,
& chiding me often for it, I again altered this course of Life, []4 & return’d
to my Work, & to Family worship and Secret Prayer; and was admitted to
partake of the Sacrament: And now I thought all was well with me; and I
did not see wherein I came short of any of my Neighbours, & thought I was
as fair in the way to Heaven as any of them.
And thus it continued with me till I came to Cambuslang about the
beginning of March 1742, and was much delighted to hear to hear some
very young persons pray there in Companys by themselves: and somewhat
affected to see so many persons in time of Sermon in the Church-yeard
crying out & falling down, but was not moved by any thing I heard that
day in the Sermon, or afterwards when I came out there: till one Sabbath
hearing a minister () on that Text, If ye continue in my word then shall
ye be my disciples indeed,5 where he shewed how far persons might go,
& yet after all be but hypocrites, and he instanced, among other things in
the Young man in the Gospel whom Jesus is said to have loved, & in these
hypocrites Isai. 58.2. that sought God daylie delighted to know his ways
as [79/—] a nation that did righteousness & forsook not the Ordinance
of their God, they askd of him the Ordinances of justice & took delight
in approaching to God. I was not moved with these things while I heard
them, but after I came home taking my Bible & reading these Passages,
I was then convinc’d that I was not only a hypocrite, but that I had not
come the length that some hypocrites had done: & therefore that I was
Insertion [‘a course of’]: McCulloch.
Insertion [‘turnd sober,’]: McCulloch.
>8:31.