53. Bishop Hough to Lord Digby.

April 1743. MY LORD, I think myself obliged to your nephew for his kind visit, whereby I have a more authentic account of your lordship's health than is usually brought to me by report, and an opportunity of informing myself in many particulars relating to your noble house, and the good family at Woodcote; which I hear with the uncommon pleasure of one who has been no stranger to them. Mr. Coates is remarkably blessed in his children, all whose sons are not only deserving but prosperous; and I am glad to see one of them devoted to the service of God. He may not, perhaps, have chosen the most likely employment to thrive by; but he depends upon a Master who never fails to recompense those who trust in him above their hopes. The young gentleman will account to you for Hartlebury; but I fancy you will expect me to say somewhat of myself, and therefore I presume to tell you that my hearing has long failed; I am weak and forgetful, having as little inclination to business as ability to perform it. In other respects I have ease, to a degree beyond what I durst have thought on, when years began to multiply upon me. I wait contented for a deliverance out of this life into a better, in humble confidence that, by the mercy of God, through the merits of his Son, I shall stand at the resurrection at his right hand; and when you, my good lord, have ended those days that are to come, which I pray may be many and comfortable, as innocently and exemplarily as those that are past, I doubt not of our meeting in that state where joys are unspeakable, and will always endure. I am, my lord, your lordship's most obedient and ever affectionate servant,

J. WORCESTER.

54. Rev. W. Mompesson to Sir George Saville.

Eyam, Sept. 1, 1666.

HONOURED AND DEAR SIR,-This letter brings you the saddest tidings that ever my pen could write. The "destroying angel" has been in my habitation : my dearest wife was stricken, and is gone to her everlasting rest, invested, as I trust, with a crown of glory, having made a pious and happy end. Indeed, had she loved herself as well as she loved me, she had fled, at my entreaty, with her sweet babes, from the pit of destruction; but she was resolved to die a martyr to my interest. My drooping spirits are much refreshed with her joys, which, I assure myself, are unutterable.

This paper, sir, is to bid you an hearty farewell for ever, and to bring you my thanks for all your noble favours; and I hope you will believe a dying man, that I have as much love as honour for you; that I bend my feeble knees to the God of heaven, that you, my dear lady, her children, and their children, may be blessed with happiness external, internal, and eternal; and that the same blessings may fall upon my Lady Sunderland and her family.

Dear sir, let your dying chaplain recommend this truth to you and yours,-that no happiness or solid comfort can be secured in this vale of tears, but from living a pious life. I pray you, dear sir, to retain this rule: never to do that thing upon which you dare not first ask the blessing of God upon the success thereof. Sir, I have made bold with your name in my will for an executor; and I hope you will not take it ill. Others are joined with you, that will take from you all the trouble. Your favourable aspect will, I know, be a great comfort to my distressed orphans. I am not desirous that they should be great,

but good; and it is my earnest request, that they may be brought up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Sir, I thank God that I am willing to shake hands, in peace, with all the world; and I have comfortable assurances that he will accept me for the sake of his Son; and I find God more good than ever I imagined, and wish that his goodness were not so much abused and contemned. I desire you will be pleased to make choice of an humble, pious man to succeed me in this parsonage. Could I see your face before I depart hence, I would inform you which way I think he may live comfortably among these people, which would be a satisfaction to me before I die. Dear sir, I beg your prayers, and those of your family, that I may not be daunted or appalled by the powers of hell; that I may have dying graces, and be found in a dying posture; and with tears I entreat, that when you are praying for fatherless and motherless infants, you would then remember my two pretty babes. Sir, pardon the rude style of this paper; and if my head be discomposed, you cannot wonder at me: however, be pleased to believe that I am,

Dear Sir,

Your most obliged, most affectionate,
and grateful servant,

WILLIAM MOMPESSON.

55. Rev. W. Jones to a Friend, a few days before his death.

MY DEAR FRIEND, I hold a pen (and hardly) to thank you for your late kind visit on the true Christian principle-expecting no return. I recollect only one circumstance to make me uneasy. When I

shewed you, in the second lesson for last Thursday evening, what I took for an ominous passage ["The time of my departure is at hand," 2 Tim. iv. 6], you asked me if I applied the subsequent verses also? ["I have fought a good fight; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness."] I answered, without thought, Yes; and have suffered for it ever since; for no mind can be more averse than my own to the very appearance of assuming any thing, when I am rather renouncing every thing. All I dare say, or would permit any other to say for me, is only to repeat those words of our Saviour used towards the woman with the box of ointment, "He hath done what he could!" And as she made an offering at the head of Christ, I would offer all I have at his feet. How much have I to say, and how little can be said! I must have another night's sleep before I can write another letter.

July 30, 1799,

God bless you,

W. JONES.

My birth-day." Multos et felices," "Many and happy," says the world: "Few and evil," says the patriarch.

56. Charles Leslie to Roger Kenyon.

SIR, I make this effort, probably the last, of using my pen, to thank you for the many proofs I have had of your friendship, especially for the pains you have lately taken to procure the publishing again of, in two volumes, my Theological Tracts; and your kindness to me will, I hope, be of service to religion, which will be always assaulted and always maintained; for "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

R

And if the arguments urged in these treatises were formerly good (as surely I believed them to be), they will be good for ever; if they had then success, they may still be successful against the several enemies of the Christian religion, and of the Church of England. Revealed religion is there defended in the argument against the Deists; and Christian revelation in that against the Jews; the holy Trinity in another against the Socinians; almost all the articles of the Christian faith in the Discourses against the Quakers. In the Conference, the Church of England reformed is vindicated against popery; and in the Regale, the spiritual power and commission of Christ, which He left to the apostles and their successors, to be executed by them to the end of the world, are explained and justified against all the modern innovators, who, pretending to interpret, have laboured utterly to destroy them. If in these writings I have not prevented all the objections that have been, or may be, produced against any subject or argument in them, this, I hope, will be no diminution to the usefulness of them; for, besides that it is more or less an exception against all writings, the objections made have been mostly cavils unworthy of reply; and those which deserved it, are easily cleared by the light of truth, which, if fully proved in those books, can never be refuted; and you know well that age, infirmity of health, and weariness of flesh, have admonished me, that "of writing many books" there must be "an end." If in writing so much, and on so many subjects, mistakes have crept in, I hope they are not of importance; and such as they are, could I examine and discover, I should readily retract them, and disown nothing but artifice and malice, from which my own conscience acquits me: God, I hope, who is greater, will not condemn me. I have always thought it my duty to follow truth as closely as I