_To my dearly beloved, the inhabitants of |Taunton|, grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ_.
_Most dearly beloved_,
I HAVE been through mercy many years with you, and should be willingly so many years a prisoner for you, so I might further your salvation. I must again and again thank you for your abundant affection to me, which I value as a great mercy, not in order to myself, but in order to your benefit, that I may thereby be a more likely instrument of your good. Surely, so much as I value your love, yet had I rather be forsaken of you all, and buried in oblivion; so that your eyes and hearts may be fixed on Christ, and sincerely engaged to him. Brethren, I have not bespoken your affections for myself: O that I might win your hearts to Christ. O that I might convert you to him though you were diverted from me. *I should much rather chuse to be hated of all, so this might be the means to have Christ set up savingly in the hearts of you all. And indeed there is nothing great but in order to God; nothing is considerable as it is terminated in us: it matters not whether we are in riches or poverty, sickness or health, in honour or disgrace, so Christ may be by us magnified in the condition we are in. Welcome prison and poverty, welcome scorn and envy, welcome pain or contempt, if by these God’s glory may be promoted. What are we for, but for God? What doth the creature signify separated from his God? Why just so much as the cypher separated from his figure. We are nothing worth, but in reference to God and his ends. Better were it that we had never been, than that we should not be to him. Better that we were dead than we should live, and not to him. Better that we had no understandings, than that we should not know him. Better that we were blocks and brutes, than that we should not use our reason for him. What are our interests, unless they may be subservient to his interest? Or our reputation, unless we may hereby glorify him?
Do you love me? I know you do. But who is there, that will leave his sins for me? With whom shall I prevail to give up himself in strictness and self denial to the Lord? Who will be intreated by me to set upon neglected duties, or reform accustomed sins? Oh wherein may you rejoice me? In this, my brethren; in this you shall befriend me, if you obey the voice of God by me, if you be prevailed with to give yourselves up throughly to the Lord. Would you lighten my burden? Would you make glad my heart? Let me hear of your owning the ways and servants of the Lord in adversity, of your patient continuing in the ways of holiness. O that I could but hear that the prayerless souls, the prayerless families among you, were now given to prayer! That the profane sinners were awakened, and induced by the preaching of these bonds, to leave their drunkenness, their loose company, their deceit and wantonness! Will you not be made clean? When shall it once be? How long shall the patience of God wait for you? How long shall the Lord Jesus stretch out his hands toward you? O sinners, cast yourselves into his arms! Why should you die? Why will you forsake your own mercy? Will you perish when mercy woos you? Confess and forsake your sins, and you shall find mercy. Will you sell your souls to perdition for a little ease and delight in your flesh? Or a little of the gain of unrighteousness? Why, these are the things that part between sinners and Christ.