In the year 1693, the congregation sustained the loss of a promising, and apparently robust, young man, named _Augustine Gregory_, who had been designed for the ministry, but was carried off by consumption in his seventeenth year. An interesting letter has been preserved, which was addressed to him a short time before his death, by his intimate friend, Mr. Josiah Baker, one of the excellent family at Wattisfield, to whom a reference has been already made. {157} “_Wattisfield_, _Sept._ 7_th_, 1693. “Dying friend, “Your present condition directs me to this epithet, which, though in itself it might seem harsh and grating, yet I hope your daily conversing with death will take off whatever of that nature may be in it absolutely considered. “The great probability that there appears to be that we shall never meet again in this world, is an argument with me to trouble you with a few lines as a testimony of my truest affection, and to bid you farewell till we meet in a better world. . . . . . . “It behoves you to see that the foundation of a good work be laid in deep humiliation for sin, both original and actual, that there be not only a partial, but a thorough change wrought in you; that there be an unreserved resignation of yourself to a whole Christ, and a fixed reliance upon him alone for salvation; and all this joined with a filial submission to a Father’s rod, in your present condition. . . . . . . “The sweet in-comes which I hope you find under this rod, may greatly reconcile you to your present condition; and the forethoughts of the glory to come, and uninterrupted communion above, may beget in you a longing after the future state. God in his infinite wisdom, does generally give more fellowship and communion with himself, under affliction, than at other times, both for the comfort and peace of the afflicted, and to show that He is all, _without_ all, as well as _in_ all ordinances. And this should reconcile us to the sharpest affliction, even to death itself; if we may have His presence, his rod and his staff, to comfort us. The Lord’s end, in affliction, is to take away sin; and if it be his will that we should not come back into a sinful world, but be removed into a sinless state above, we have no reason to be unwilling to put off our rags of mortality, that we may put on robes of immortality, and to go to that place, where all tears of conviction, humiliation, and affliction, shall be wiped off, and all sin and sorrow shall flee away.