great day, for their warm and zealous attachment to him and his interest here below.

But it is time for me to conclude: which I cannot, without saying one word of my dear wife, who is much out of order, and very low spirited, and concludes within herself she shall not survive this time. You may easily think how this impresses us both. Pray for her, dear madam, especially that her faith may not fail, and that God may be better than her fears. I wish for her sake, as well as my own, you and the dear family were returned. Such company has the greatest tendency to revive the spirits. We both join in the most respectful and most cordial services to you and dear Mr. Welman and his lady, with remembrances to the dear little ones, whom may God long preserve. You have all my warmest prayers, and oh, remember in yours, dear madam, your most unworthy, most affectionate, and most obliged humble servant,

Risdon Darracott.

P. S. Mr. Fawcett is now here in order to preach for me to-morrow. He presents his tender of services to the good family. There are some great revolutions in Taunton with respect to him, which he intends to give you a letter of next week; he has had an invitation to Kidderminster,

Mrs. Anne Dutton to Mr. Darracott.

Great Gransden, near Caxton, Huntingdonshire, September 6, 1744.

Reverend and dear sir,

The most acceptable favour of your last kind letter I received with joy, and return humble thanks. The account you gave me of the Lord's loving kindness towards you rejoices my heart, excites my praises, and animates my prayers. Such grace as you are favoured with the displays of, is every way worthy of an infinite God! You justly wonder at its distinguishing nature: that while others of the Lord's servants mournfully say, "Who hath believed our report?" you have the joy to see sinners the chief converted by your ministry! Indeed, sir, this is a

wide stretch of the exceeding riches of boundless grace! Of that grace, which hath saved your soul, which hath chosen you to ministerial service, and which delights to honour you with eminent usefulness; to your exceeding joy, and to the eternal praise of its immense glory! Think it not strange that I style it a display of that same grace which saveth you. For though your soul might have been saved eternally, if you had been one of the least and last of the members of Christ's body, and if you had not been called to the work of the ministry; yet, as God, from the beginning, had chosen you to

salvation, through faith in his Son, he held a council in himself, before the world was, how he might display towards you the exceeding riches of his salvation-grace; and infinite wisdom pitched upon this way; and infinite grace made a resolve concerning it. As if the Lord should say, " I will commend my free, sovereign love, the exceeding riches of my boundless grace, towards that dear object of my heart; not only in saving his soul from the misery of sin, death, and hell, unto the joy and liberty of faith and holiness, and unto heaven's glory at last: but I will save him unto eminent service to win many souls unto my Son Jesus, who shall be his exceeding joy, and as jewels to enrich his crown of glory, and make it massy to a blest eternity. He shall be a minister, a successful minister of the gospel of the blessed God. I will shew him such wonders of special grace that shall overcome his heart with my infinite kindness, and shine in his salvation with a distinguished brightness, to his ineffable bliss and my eternal praise. He shall see how freely and greatly an infinite God can love; what miracles of grace and mercy Jehovah, Jehovah, El, the strong God, as merciful and gracious, can work, while I do for him therein exceeding abundantly more than he can ask or think." This, this, sir, was the language of God's heart concerning you

And

before time began, which hath opened, and opens, with glorious evidence in your call to the work of the ministry, and in your past and present usefulness. For you know well that the Lord God of your salvation worketh all things in special, gracious Providence, according to the counsel of his own will. Dr. Goodwin says, "It is mercy enough to be a minister: God had but one Son, and he made him a minister!" not only a minister, sir, for that you might have been, and have been a sweet savour of Christ unto God in your ministerial work, if your preaching the gospel of grace had been only a savour of death unto death in them that perish. But, O! that you should be a minister owned of God for the salvation of men; that your gospel 'ministry should prove the savour of life unto life to so many! Favourite of heaven! Indulged favourite! Angels wonder at it! Well may we! "We bless you out of Zion!" Congratulate your happiness, and seek your increasing bliss! Truly you are heavy with glory! And what that exceeding, that more exceeding, that far more exceeding weight of glory will be which is reserved for you to a boundless eternity: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard!" Blessed man! Love and bless the Lord as you can; and tell him, that by and for his grace you will give him glory, incessantly and perfectly, through the cir

cling ages of your blest eternity! And when all is done that can be done, that ever will be done, God's free grace, his great grace, towards you in Christ will for ever be exalted, in its own immense display, far above all your blessing and praise! Yea, exalted for ever will this free, great grace be above all that blessing and praise which, on your account, shall be given unto God in Christ, by the innumerable hosts of saved men and glorious angels unto endless ages! Grace, in its immensity, none can know fully, nor praise adequately; that have not in them a wisdom, a strength of infinity! Put the work of praise then into your great Mediator's hands. He knows his Father's heart, and his marvellous works, right well! And will praise him as the head of the church for all his grace displayed and conferred on all its members. Who, in their several places, and for their various services, were made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth; while the Father's eyes beheld Christ's substance, the substance of his body mystical, and in his book all his members were written for place and service, which, in continuance, were fashioned for both by grace to its eternal praise! Countless, to Christ as man, were the numerous thoughts, the infinite thoughts, of his Father's grace unto him and his! But Christ, as God, knows them