CHARACTER OF DAVID BRAINERD

THUS God sanctified, and made meet for his use, that vessel
that He intended to make eminently a vessel of honor in his house,
and which he had made of large capacity, having endowed him with
very uncommon abilities and gifts of nature. He was a singular
instance of a ready invention, natural eloquence, easy flowing
expression, sprightly apprehension, quick discerning, and a very
strong memory; and yet of a very penetrating genius, close and
clear thought, and piercing judgment. He had an exact taste; his
understanding was (if I may so express it) of a quick, strong and
distinguishing scent.

His learning was very considerable; he had a great taste for
learning; and applied himself to his studies in so close a manner
when he was at college, that he much injured his health; and was
obliged on that account for a while to leave the college, throw by
his studies and return home. He was esteemed one that excelled in
learning in that society.

He had an extraordinary knowledge of men, as well as things.
Had a great insight into human nature, and excelled most that ever
I knew in a communicative faculty; he had a peculiar talent at
accommodating himself to the capacities, tempers, and
circumstances, of those that he would instruct or counsel.

He had extraordinary gifts for the pulpit; I never had
opportunity to hear him preach, but have often heard him pray; and
I think his manner of addressing himself to God, and expressing
himself before him, in that duty, almost inimitable; such (so far
as I may judge) as I have very rarely known equalled. He expressed
himself with that exact propriety and pertinency, in such
significant, weighty, pungent expressions; with that decent
appearance of sincerity, reverence, and solemnity, and great
distance from all affectation, as forgetting the presence of men,
and as being in the immediate presence of a great and holy God,
that I have scarcely ever known paralleled. And his manner of
preaching, by what I have often heard of it from good judges, was
no less excellent; being clear and instructive, natural, nervous,
forcible, and moving, and very searching and convincing. He
nauseated an affected noisiness, and violent boisterousness in the
pulpit; and yet much disrelished a flat, cold delivery, when the
subject of discourse, and matter delivered, required affection and
earnestness.

Not only had he excellent talents for the study and the
pulpit, but also for conversation. He was of a sociable
disposition; and was remarkably free, entertaining, and profitable
in his ordinary discourse; and had much of a faculty of disputing,
defending truth and confuting error.

As he excelled in his judgment and knowledge of things in
general, so especially in divinity. He was truly, for one of his
standing, an extraordinary divine. But above all, in matters
relating to experimental religion. In this I know I have the
concurring opinion of some that have had a name for persons of the
best judgment. And according to what ability I have to judge of
things of this nature, and according to my opportunities, which of
late have been very great, I never knew his equal, of his age and
standing, for clear, accurate notions of the nature and essence of
true religion, and its distinctions from its various false
appearances; which I suppose to be owing to these three things
meeting together in him;-the strength of his natural genius, and
the great opportunities he had of observation of others, in various
parts, both white people and Indians, and his own great experience.

His experiences of the holy influences of God’s Spirit were
not only great at his first conversion, but they were so, in a
continued course, from that time forward; as appears by a record,
or private journal, he kept of his daily inward exercises, from the
time of his conversion until he was disabled by the failing of his
strength a few days before his death. The change which he looked
upon as his conversion, was not only a great change of the present
views, affections, and frame of his mind; but was evidently the
beginning of that work of God on his heart which God carried on, in
a very wonderful manner, from that time to his dying day. He
greatly abhorred the way of such as live on their first work, as
though they had now got through their work, and are thenceforward,
by degrees, settled in a cold, lifeless, negligent, worldly frame;
he had an ill opinion of such persons’ religion.

Oh that the things that were seen and heard in this
extraordinary person, his holiness, heavenliness, labor and self-
denial in life, his so remarkably devoting himself and his all, in
heart and practice, to the glory of God, and the wonderful frame of
mind manifested, in so steadfast a manner, under the expectation of
death, and the pains and agonies that brought it on, may excite in
us all, both ministers and people, a due sense of the greatness of
the work we have to do in the world, the excellency and amiableness
of thorough religion in experience and practice, and the
blessedness of the end of such, whose death finishes such a life,
and the infinite value of their eternal reward, when absent from
the body and present with the Lord; and effectually stir us up to
endeavors, that in the way of such a holy life we may at least come
to so blessed an end.

AMEN