Kingswood - Adam Clarke (1798)



"The work of God goes on nobly at Kingswood. There is a new place taken in, the worst in all the wood; it is called Cock-road. As the inhabitants were all sons of Belial, no person dared to go into the place for fear of being knocked on the head. There are thirty of these miserable sinners now joined in class, and several of them have found peace with God. The devil has sustained a heavy loss in that quarter."

Referring to this neighbourhood afterwards, he says: "The work still goes on gloriously at Cock-road. One man, the vilest of the vile, hearing that several of his companions were converted, and that they prayed publicly, said, ' So Tom prays, and Jack prays; what can they say, I'll go and hear;' and away he went, and got to a prayer-meeting, where every soul seemed engaged with God but himself. At last the power of God seized upon the wretch's heart, and he exclaimed, 'One prays and another prays: I'll pray;' and down he fell and began in his way to cry to God for the salvation of his soul. This human fiend who could scarcely utter a word without an oath, is now transformed into a saint and is walking in all meekness and gentleness and uprightness before God. What could affect this chaise but the Almighty power of the grace of Christ!

From, ‘The life of the Rev Adam Clarke’, by J W Etheridge, 1859, p216 http://www.archive.org/details/abiographicalske00shenuoft