The Conversion of Thomas Halyburton (1674-1712) - Christian Audio Book (2/3) This section contains the details of the conviction of Halyburton just before his conversion. It may be unequalled in its detail of the discovery of the innate depravity and evil inclinations of the natural man to form a profession without experiencing the new birth. In the book it is Part 3, Chapter 1. SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/stack45ny http://www.puritanaudiobooks.net/ Puritan Reformed Audiobooks playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzOwqed_gET1LMZlDNOqxx58LREHCiLsD Thomas Halyburton (1674-1712) was born into a family of Scottish Covenanters. His Father, Rev. George Halyburton, was a minister in the Reformed Church of Scotland until his ejection in 1662. Twenty years later George was denounced by the Privy Council of Scotland for holding “conventicles” (church services in the open air, unauthorised by the established church and outlawed by the government in those days). After his father’s death, young Thomas’s family (mother and sister) fled to Rotterdam in order to avoid the fierce persecution which was carried on against the Covenanters, where Thomas had his early education in the school of Erasmus. Following the Revolution, he returned to Scotland and continued his education. After a period of inner struggle with the philosophy of Deism, God sovereignly and graciously enlighened Thomas’s soul, and gave him saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He became committed to the same Reformed Christian religion as his father, and followed in his footsteps as a minister of the gospel. On completing theological training, Thomas was licenced to preach in the Church of Scotland by Queen Anne, and ordained to the ministry of the church in Ceres, Fife. The church was part of the presbytery of Kirkcaldy. After faithfully pastoring the church in Ceres for ten years, Rev. Dr. Halyburton became Professor of Theology at St. Leonard’s College in St. Andrews. He died two years later at the age of 38, following an illness. At his request, his body was buried in St. Andrews next to his favourite Christian minister, Rev. Dr. Samuel Rutherford. Thomas Halyburton’s theological and apologetic writings are marked by a distinctive thoroughness. The surviving scripts of his sermons show him to have been richly theological, deeply experimental (i.e. dealing with the experiences of the soul) and very practical — a master of the classic Puritan style of preaching. This is the account of the first 3 chapters from the memoirs of Thomas Halyburton. I am making it available again because it is so in depth with the details of his awakening and very helpful for others going through these deep waters. “By the extremity of this anguish I was for some time, about the close of 1697 and beginning of 1698, dreadfully cast down. I was weary of my life. Often did I use Job’s words: “I loathe it, I would not live alway.” (Job vii. 16.) And yet I was afraid to die. I had no rest; “my sore ran in the night;” and it ceased not in the day. (Ps. lxxvii. 2.) At night I wished for day; and in the day I wished for night. (Deut. xxviii. 66, 67.) I said, “My couch shall comfort me;” but then darkness was as the “shadow of death.” (Job vii. 13, x. 21.) When I was in this case, I was often brought to the brink of despair: “He filled me with bitterness; he made me drunk with wormwood. He broke all my teeth with gravel-stones; he covered me with ashes.” (Lam. iii. 15.) He removed my soul far from peace: I forgot prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord; remembering mine affliction, and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul had them still in remembrance, and was bowed in me. (Lam. iii. 16-20.) Now I was made to think it a wonder that I was not consumed; and though I dreaded destruction from the Almighty, yet I could not but justify him, if he had destroyed me.