Brainerd 5

Such an instance we have in the excellent person [David Brainerd] whose Life is published in the following pages. 

His example is attended with a great variety of circumstances, tending to engage the attention of religious people, especially in these parts of the world: 

He was one of distinguished natural abilities; 

as all are sensible that had acquaintance with him: 

He was a minister of the Gospel, and one who was called to unusual services in that work, whose ministry was attended with very remarkable and unusual events, an account of which has already been given to the public; 

one whose course of religion began before the late times of extraordinary religious commotion, but yet one that lived in those times, and went through them, and was very much in the way of the various extraordinary effects and unusual appearances of that day, and was not an idle spectator, but had a near concern in many things that passed at that time; 

one that had a very extensive acquaintance with those that have been the subjects of the late religious operations, in many of these British colonies, in places far distant one from another, in people of many different nations, of different educations, manners and customs; 

one who had peculiar opportunity of acquaintance with the false appearances and counterfeits of religion: 

one who himself was the instrument of a most remarkable awakening, and an exceeding wonderful and abiding alteration and moral transformation of such subjects as do peculiarly render the change rare and astonishing.