He formed a scheme of retiring from the world into some
kind of religious retreat, and spending the rest of his life in
prayers and meditation. Rejecting this as a cowardly desertion of the
post of duty, he had thoughts of setting up a school for children, and
becoming himself a teacher in it. This plan, too, he laid aside, as
savoring of enthusiasm. Meanwhile, this amiable and honest gentleman,
whose every error was fairly attributable to the natural limitations
of his mind or to the diseases that racked his body, was tormented by
remorse, which would have been excessive if he had been a pirate. He
says that, after three years of continual striving, he still dared not
partake of the Communion, feeling himself "unworthy." "I was present,"
he writes, "when Mr. Hoge invited to the table, and I would have given
all I was worth to have been able to approach it." Some inkling of his
condition, it appears, became known to the public, and excited great
good-will towards him on the part of many persons of similar belief.
Some of his letters written during this period contain an almost
ludicrous mixture of truth and extravagance.
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