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who is our temple and fanctuary, conveying life to various parts of the fea of this troubled world and healing them; and the effects of this healing is, that a multitude of fish appear wherever thefe waters come: and the appearance of these is intended to fet the fishermen to work, and fo it follows- And it Shall come to pass, that the fifhers fhall stand upon it, from En-gedi even unto En-eglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fifh fhall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great fea, exceeding many. Ver. 10. Upon this river of life the fishermen are to fland, and upon every place where life and motion appear, or among those that seem to live and move, are the nets to be caft forth and fpread out; but the miry places and the marshes fhall not be healed, they fhall be given to falt (ver. 11), as Lot's wife was, for her unbelief; not falted with grace, but falted with fire.

The Speckles, that appeared on the fish in thy dream want no explanation; thou wilt, in fome - future period, find enough of them to make thy heart ache. Whether the fish were fent from London or not, I cannot tell; but the little life, truth, and power, that is among them, did at first principally found out from our little despised hill in this great metropolis. Thine ignorance in this bufinefs of fishing, and not knowing how to handle them, is not to be wondered at; the power that catches them and holds them faft is from above, it is not of

Peter and his companions were taught this, by

toiling

toiling all night and taking nothing; but when the God of the fea and of the dry land gave the word, great was the draught of fishes.

Thy beginning, my fon, is wonderful; you handled a mystery at your first fetting off, which thoufands who have been called gofpel minifters never faw, even when they finished their courfe. To describe the rife of legal bondage, the entrance of it into the heart, the dreadful workings of it there; the rebellion, enmity, pride, and ftubbornness, that it produces; the blindness, hardness of heart, and ignorance, that attend it; the dry, dead, and barren ftate of those that are influenced by it; and the hatred and malice that fuch fouls harbour and cherish against all those that enjoy the love of God; together with the fecret and fometimes almoft imperceptible fermentations of this leaven of the Pharifees-is a work that well becomes an evangelift. A minifter of the letter never faw it, therefore he cannot defcribe it; he that has ever felt the fpirit of liberty knows its oppofite, and will cry and pray for it; restore unto me the joys of thy falvation, and uphold me with thy free Spirit; then will I teach tranfgreffors thy way, and finners fhall be converted unto thee. Thefe are the men who are proper teachers; all others fhould be swift to hear and flow to speak, and fuch men should be flow to wrath when wife men bid them hold their peace.

I have to tell you, with joy, that there are five places in the country where the word and power of

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God hath founded out from our little defpicable hil of Zion, and is going fweetly on; love, life, and light, fpread their flames, ftreams, and rays, fecretly abroad in a wonderful manner; the bleffed work of travailing and bringing forth goes fweetly on, and thofe that come forth appear to be proper children, yea wife children, for they know their own father, as God declares that all his children fhall know him. In three of these places there hath been what is called the gospel preached for upwards of twenty years, and not one real child of God ever brought forth, that I have found yet; nothing but a fpurious race of monftrous creatures, between a wolf and a fheep. A fight of this has fired my zeal not a little, and has made me wifh that I was an itinerant; and the goodnefs of God to his poor defpifed fervant has humbled me in the duft before him, and excited my love and gratitude to him not a little ; and my affections, which met with fuch an extinguishing damp in the cruel treatment that I met with for confcience fake in London, have been more abundantly drawn out to thefe poor fouls in the country, infomuch that in every fecret prayer of mine they are prefented before me, faying, Tell my beloved that I am fick of love; or elfe, Fray come over to Macedonia and help us. My honeft and faithful fellow-labourer, Mr. Jenkins, labours with great fuccefs: God has fet him to root up, to grub up, and to throw down, and he begins alfo to build and to plant, although he labours among a people who have been for years deceived, feared, hardened,

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hardened, and braced up in nothing but an empty profeffion, by those daubers commonly called my L's men; and rightly named, for the greater part of them differ widely from what the scriptures call, a man of God; and this numbers in Lewes, and other places, now feel, lament, and confefs, with grief and forrow of heart. My fpirit has long been at Gand I now hope for a profperous journey to you by the will of God, and that I shall be fomewhat filled with your company. The more I fee my labours owned and bleffed, the more my fingers itch to be at it; and fhould my God fill the hopes and expectations which I have long indulged of thy usefulness, I think I fhall have joy upon joy. The old ferpent lofes ground; he has, for fome years paft, filled almost universally the pulpits of this country with a parcel of tools of his own trumping up, which he employs in his own intereft, and uses them two ways: fome he fets to conterfeit the Spirit's work, and the grace that he produces in the fouls of his people; and others are employed in ridiculing and crying down all the life and power of religion, and making it to ftand in human wisdom, and in bodily exercise. But fome few begin to have their eyes open, and to see the uselessness of these poor drones, and how they have been kept in bondage, ftarving in their fouls, and wrecked with perpetual fufpenfe by them. Pray tender my kind refpects to your spouse, and to all that love him at G

and believe me to be yours, in the strongest and best of ties, W. H. S. S.

LETTER XXXVII.

To the Rev. Mr. HUNTINGTON,

MY DEAR AND BELOVED FRIEND,

I HAVE been long expecting the favour of a few lines from you, and fometimes wondering what can be the caufe of the delay. Satan cannot perfuade me that you either neglect me or forget me, but that it is a multiplicity of concerns that occupy your time, head, and hands, and I doubt not but that they are all full enough; yet none upon earth would be more glad to hear of your welfare, fuccefs, and profperity, than myself. It is true I have loft your burden for fome tine now, and perhaps before you loft it, or at least about the fame time. I bore a part of it for a while, and I had ftrength for the time to do it, and to plead the righteous caufe of his fervant with God; but this was given me for your fake, and a debtor I am to you, and that of more than I ever fhall be able to pay. When I was with you laft, I faw clear enough that God was on your fide, and that none of them that had rifen up against you would prevail; that he had given you the necks of all your enemies; and that you would pinch

them

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