I thank you ten thousand times over for all your repeated marks of love and generofity to me and mine the burden is too great to bear; I must caft it upon Him, who can blefs you ten thousand times over, and turn all your feeming loffes into the greatest bleffings. May the God of all confolation help you to reap the earlieft and ripeft fruit of the affliction, whereby he gives you a new token of your adoption. Remember my kind love and prefent my beft thanks to Mrs. Ireland. Yours, &c. 1. F.

Miss Perronet.

Newington, April 21st, 1777.

My dear Friend,

A THOUSAND thanks to you for your kind, comfortable lines. The profpect of going to fee Jefus and his glorified members, and among them your dear departed brother, my now everlafting friend; this fweet profpect is enough to make me quietly and joyfully fubmit, to leave all my Shoreham friends, and all the excellent ones of the earth. But why do I talk of going to leave any of Chrift's members, by going to be more intimately united to the head?

"We all are one, who him receive,
And each with each agree ;

In him the One, the Truth we live,
Bleft point of unity!"

A point this, which fills heaven and earth which runs through time and eternity. What an immenfe point! In it fickness is loft in health, and death in life. There let us ever meet. There to live is Chrift,

and to die gain.

I cannot tell you how much I am obliged to your dear brother, for all his kind, brotherly attendance as a phylician. He has given me his time, his long walks, his remedies; he has brought me Dr. Turner several times, and will not fo much as allow me to re

imburfe his expences. Help me to thank him for all his profufion of love, for I cannot fufficiently do it myfelf, My duty to your father: I throw myself in fpirit at his feet, and ask his bleffing, and an interest in his prayers. Tell him, that the Lord is gracious to me; does not fuffer the enemy to disturb my peace ; and gives me, in profpect, the victory over death. Thanks be to God, who giveth us this great victory, through our Lord Jefus Chrift! Abfolute refignation to the divine will baffles a thousand temptations, and confidence in our Saviour carries us fweetly through a thousand trials. God fill us abundantly with both!

Thank dear Mrs. Biffaker for all her love to my dear departed friend; and may our kindred spirits drink deeper into God, till they are filled with all the fuluefs, which our enlarged fouls can admit. Nor let your niece, to whom I fend my thanks, keep aloof, Let us all tend to our original centre; and experience that life and death are ours, because the Prince of life, who is our refurrection and life, has overcome fin, death, and the grave for you, and for your obliged, unworthy brother, I. F.

Brislington, May 28th, 1777.

Mr. and Mrs. Greenwood.

MY very dear friends, and benefactors, Charles and Mary Greenwood.-My prayers fhall always be, that the merciful may find mercy, and that the great kindness I have found under your quiet roof, may be thewed you every where under the canopy of heaven. I think with grateful joy, on the days of calm retreat, I have been bleffed with at Newington, and lament my not having improved better the opportunity of fitting, like Mary, at the feet of my great Phyfician. May he requite your kind care to a dying worm, by abundantly caring for you and yours, and making all your bed in your ficknefs! May you enjoy full health! May you hunger and thirft after righteousness, both

you

that of Chrift, and that of the Holy Ghoft, and be abundantly filled therewith! May his rod and ftaff comfort under all the troubles of life, the decays of the body, the affaults of the enemy, and the pangs of death! May the reviving cordials of the word of truth be ever within the reach of your faith, and may your eager faith make a ready and conftant ufe of them; efpecially, when faintings come upon you, and your hands begin to hang down! May you ftand in the clefts of the rock of ages, and there be fafely fheltered, when all the ftorms of juftice fhall fall around! May you have always fuch temporal and fpiritual helps, friends, and comforts, as I have found in your pleafing retreat!

You have received a poor Lazarus, though his fores were not visible. You have had compaffion, like the good Samaritan: you have admitted me to the enjoyment of your beft things; and he, that did not deferve to have the dogs to lick his fores, has always found the members of Jefus ready to prevent, to remove, or to bear his burdens. And now, what thall I fay? What but, Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift! and thanks be to my dear friends for all their faYours! They will, I truft, be found faithfully recorded in my breast, when the great Rewarder of those, who diligently seek him, will render to every man according to his works. Then fhall a raised Lazarus appear in the gate, to tefiify of the love of Charles and Mary Greenwood, and of their godly fister.

I thought myself a little better laft Sunday; but I have fince fpit more blood than I had done for weeks before. Glory be to God, for every providence! His will be done in me, by health or ficknefs, by life or death! All from him is, and, I truft, will always be welcome to your obliged penfioner, I. F.

Mr. and Mrs. Greenwood.

1777.

TEN thousand bleffings light upon the heads and hearts of my dear benefactors, Charles and Mary Greenwood! May their quiet retreat at Newington become a Bethel to them! May their offspring be born again there! And may the choiceft confolations of the Spirit vifit their minds, whenever they retire thither from the bufy city! Their poor penfioner travels on, though flowly, towards the grave. His journey to the fea feems to him to have haftened, ra. ther than retarded, his progrefs to his old mother, Earth. May every providential blaft blow him nearer to the heavenly haven of his Saviour's breaft; where, he hopes, one day, to meet all his benefactors, and among them, thofe whom he now addreffes. O my dear friends, what fhall I render? What to Jefus ? What to you? May he, who invites the heavy laden, take upon him all the burdens of kindnef's you have heaped on your Lazarus! And may angels, when you die, find me in Abraham's bofom, and bring you into mine, that, by all the kindness, which may be fhewn in heaven, I may try to requite that you have fhewn to your obliged brother, I. F.

Mrs. Thornton.

Brislington,

My very dear Friend,

1777.

I SHALL not attempt to exprefs my gratitude to you, for all your charitable care of a poor fickly worm. As we fay, that filence fpeaks often beft the praises of our great Benefactor, fo I must fay here. I hope thefe lines will find you leaving the things that are behind, and preffing forward toward the mark—the prize of our high calling on earth. In heaven we are called to be filled with all we can hold of the glorious fulness of God, and what that is, we know not, but we fhall know, if we follow on to know the Lord.

But here alfo, we are called to be filled with all the fulness of God. God is love you know; to be filled with all his fulness is, then, to be filled with love. O may that love be fhed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghoft given to us, and abiding in us! I still look for that ineffable fulness; and I beg, if you have not yet attained it, you would let nothing damp your hope, and flack your purfüit.

I fpend more time in giving my friends an account of my health, than the matter is worth. You will fee by the enclofed, which I beg you would fend to the poft, when you have thewed it to Mr. John and Charles Wefley, if they think it worth their while to run it over, to fee how their poor fervant does.

I am going to do by my poor fifter, what you have done by me I mean, try to fmooth the road of ficknefs to the chamber of death. Gratitude and blood. call me to it you have done it without fuch calls; your brotherly kindness is freer than mine; but not fo free as the love of Jefus, who took upon him our nature, that he might bear our infirmities, die our death, and make over to us his refurrection and his life, after all we had done to render life hateful and death horrible to him. O! for this matchless love, let rocks and hills, let hearts and tongues break an ungrateful filence ; and let your Chriftian mufe find new anthems, and your poetic heart new flights of eloquence and thankfulness. You partly owe me, by promife, a piece of poetry on joy in redeeming and fanctifying love. May the fpirit of praise affift you mightily in the noble work! Maintain the frame of poetic, Chriftian joy, by using all your talents of grace and nature, to embrace and fhew forth his good

nefs.

I fhall be glad to hear from you in Switzerland, and fhall doubly rejoice, if you can fend me word, that fhe, who is joined to the Lord according to the glory of the new covenant, is one fpirit with him, and enjoys all the glorious liberty of the children of God!