I salute you all heartily in the Lord, as being they with whom I am present in my best affections and most earnest longings, though I am constrained for a time to be bodily absent from you. I say constrained, God knowing how willingly, and much rather than otherwise, I would have borne my part with you in this first brunt, were I not by strong necessity held back for the present. Think of me in the meanwhile as of a man divided in himself with great pain, and (physical limitations set aside) as having his better part with you. Though I doubt not that in your godly wisdom, you foresee what is applicable to your present condition, I have thought it but my duty to add some further spur, even to those who run already,—not because you need it, but because I owe it in love and duty. First, as we ought daily to renew our repentance with our God, especially for our sins known, and generally for our unknown trespasses, so doth the Lord call us in a singular manner, upon such an occasion of difficulty and danger as lies before you, both to more narrow search and careful reformation of our ways in His sight lest He, calling to remembrance of our sins forgotten by us or unrepented of, take advantage of us, and, as a judgment upon us, leave us to be swallowed up in one danger or another. Whereas, on the contrary, sin being taken away by earnest repentance, and the pardon thereof from the Lord sealed up into a man’s conscience by His spirit, great shall be his security and peace in all dangers, sweet his comfort in all distresses, with happy deliverance from all evil, whether in life or in death.