holy Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation, and to furnish us thoroughly for every good work. I believe that love to God, and to man for God's sake, is the essence of religion, and the fulfilling of the law; that without holiness no man shall see the Lord; that those who, by a patient course in well-doing, seek glory, honour, and immortality, shall receive eternal life: and I believe that this reward is not of debt, but of grace, even to the praise and glory of that grace whereby He has made us accepted in the Beloved. Amen.

I pretend not to accuracy in this hasty draught; they are only outlines, which, if you please to retouch, and fill up at your leisure, I hope you will favour me with a sight of it. I fear I have tired you. Shall only add my prayers, that the Lord may be with you, and crown your labours of love with success, that you may hereafter shine among those who have been instrumental in turning many to righteousness.

I am, &c.

SEVEN LETTERS

то THE

REV. MR. P****.

Dear Sir,

LETTER I.

THE account which I received by Mr. C****, and by the letter which he brought from you, of your welfare, and the welfare of your people, was very pleasing, though indeed no more than I expected. I believed, from the first of your going to S****, that you would like the people, and I believed the Lord had given you that frame of spirit which he has promised to bless. What reason have we to praise him, for the knowledge of his Gospel, and for the honour of being called to preach it to others! and likewise, that he has been pleased to cast your lot and mine amongst a people who value it, and to crown our poor labours with some measures of acceptance and usefulness! How little did we think, in the unawakened part of our life, to what it was his good pleasure to reserve us!

The Lord is pleased, in a measure, to shew me the suitableness and necessity of an humble, dependent frame of heart. A ceasing from self, and a reliance upon him in the due use of appointed means, I am far from having attained, but I hope I am pressing, at least seeking after it. I wish to speak the word simply and experimentally, and

to be so engaged with the importance of the subject, the worth of souls, and the thought that I am speaking in the name and presence of the Most High God, as that I might, if possible, forget every thing else. This would be an attainment indeed! More good might be expected from a broken discourse, delivered in such a frame, than from the most advantageous display of knowledge and gifts without it. Not that I would undervalue propriety and pertinence of expression; it is our duty to study to find out acceptable words, and to endeavour to appear as workmen that need not be ashamed; but those who have most ability in this way, have need of a double guard of grace and wisdom, lest they be tempted to trust in it, or to value themselves upon it. They that trust in the Lord shall never be moved; and them that abase themselves before him, he will exalt. Lam well persuaded that your conduct and views have been agreeable to these sentiments; and therefore the Lord has supported, encouraged, and owned you; and I trust he will still bless you, and make you a blessing to many. He that walketh humbly walketh surely.

Believe me to be, &c.

LETTER II.

My Dear Sir, August 14, 1770. YOUR letter did me good when I received it, at least gave me much pleasure; and I think it has given me a lift while I have been just now reading it. I know not that I ever had those awful views of sin which you speak of; and though I believe I should be better for them, I dare not seriously

wish for them. There is a petition which I have heard in public prayer,-Lord, shew us the evil of our hearts. To this petition I cannot venture to set my Amen; at least not without a qualification: Shew me enough of thyself to balance the view, and then shew me what thou pleasest. I think I have a very clear and strong conviction in my judgment, that I am vile and worthless; that my heart is full of evil, only evil, and that continually. I know something of it too experimentally; and therefore, judging of the whole by the sample, though I am not suitably affected with what I do see, I tremble at the thought of seeing more. A man may look with some pleasure upon the sea in a storm, provided he stands safe upon the land himself; but to be upon the sea in a storm, is quite another thing. And yet, surely, the coldness, worldliness, pride, and twenty other evils under which I groan, owe much of their strength to the want of that feeling sense of my own abominations with which you have been favoured. I say favoured; for I doubt not but the Lord gave it you in mercy, and that it has proved, and will prove, a mercy to you, to make you more humble, spi-ritual, and dependent, as well as to increase your ability for preaching the Gospel of his grace. Upon these accounts, I can assure you, that, upon a first reading, and till I stopped a moment to count the cost, I was ready to envy you all that you had felt. I often seem to know what the Scripture teaches both of sin and grace, as if I knew them not; so faint and languid are my perceptions, I often seem to think and talk of sin without any sorrow, and of grace without any joy.

I have had some people awakened by dreams, as you had by streamers; but, for aught I know,

we are no less instrumental to the good of these, than to any other person, upon whom, when we look, our hearts are ready to exult and say, See what the Lord has done by me. I do not think, that, strictly speaking, all the streamers of the North are able to awaken a dead soul. I suppose people may be terrified by them, and made thoughtful, but awakened only by the word. The streamers either sent them to hear the Gospel, or roused them to attend to it; but it was the knowledge of the truth brought home to the heart, that did the business. Perhaps the streamers reminded them of what they had heard from you before. Two persons here, who lived like heathens, and never came to church, were alarmed by some terrifying dreams, and came out to hearing forthwith. There the Lord was pleased to meet with them. One of them died triumphing; the other, I hope, will do so when her time comes. Whatever means, instruments, or occasions he is pleased to employ, the work is all his own; and I trust you and I are made willing to give him all the glory, and to sink into the dust at the thought that he should ever permit us to take his holy name upon our polluted lips. I am, &c.

My dear Sir,

LETTER III.

June 13, 1772.

You say that your experience agrees with mine. It must be so, because our hearts are alike. The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, destitute of good, and prone to evil. This is the character of mankind universally, and those who are made partakers of grace are renewed but in part; the evil nature still cleaves to them, and the root