ABSTRACT
When I was a youth of about 15 or 16 I was deeply convicted of my sins & {illeg.} & cried to God for forgiveness. When my hands was at work, my cries was to God and I hardly knew what I was doing: but I was blessed in the labour of my hands and according to my measure I found peace with God. I searched the Scriptures dayly until I could repeat a considerable part of it by heart. When I was 16 or 17 I was baptised and taken into a baptist church; and remained in feloship for 4 or 5 years until they broke to pieses and scattered. I still believed in the doctrines of that Church and was called by the world of mankind a morril honest man. In the spring of the year 1780 my Father visited Mother Ann Lee and received faith in her Doctrin returned home and a number of his Family believed also, but I was in opposition, and in the fall of the same year was married, and moved into one room of my father’s house and took charge of his farm. In May 1781 my father visited Mother Ann and some of the Elder made my father and family a visit as they was on their Journey to Harvard, and stayed a week or 10 days but I being well-versed in the Scriptures mightily opposed them, but did not feel the spirit of malice and injury. A considerable number of people gathered there some to hear others threatened abuse. I continued in a state of opposition until the fall of the same year watching the walk and behavior of the believers, and Elders that came to visit and strengthen them: and to do them & myself justice I must say that they walked in newness of life; which was truly convicting to me. and in the fall of 82 <81> confessed <my sins>, and soon after I received a powerful gift of speaking in divers kinds of toungs. Afterwards I visited Mother Ann once at Elijah Slosson’s
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{in} West Stockbridge {Massachusetts} and twice at Watervliet {New York}, and when we was about to return home, Mother and the Elders would speak to us with those impressive words return and put your hands to work in your hearts to God be stable, be obedient love the gifts and power of God – and I can testify before God and man that in all my interviews with Mother and the Elders that I never saw the least sines of intoxication indecent lude or unbecoming behavor – and further can testify that it is my faith in the foundation of my hope and evidenced to me by the gifts and power of God rawt in my soul that Mother Ann was the 115anointed of God to bring forth or in other words for Christ to make his second appearance in hur.
