_December 6th, 1729._ MY DEAR FRIENDS,--After a serious and impartial consideration of your case, and repeated addresses to the Great Father of Light for his guidance and direction, I can at length assure you that I am determined by his permission to accept of your kind invitation, and undertake the pastoral care of you, with the most ardent feelings of sincere gratitude and affection. You will easily apprehend that I could not form this resolution without a great deal of anguish, both with regard to those friends whom I am called upon to resign, and in reference to that great and difficult work that lies before me, in the care of your large congregation and my academy. But I hope that I have sincerely devoted my soul to God and my Redeemer; and therefore I would humbly yield myself up to what, in present circumstances, I apprehend to be his will. I take this important step with fear and trembling, yet with a humble confidence in him, and with the hope that in the midst of these great difficulties he will not leave me entirely destitute of that _presence_ which I desire to prefer to everything which life can bestow. As for you, my brethren, let me entreat of you, that "if there be any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels of mercy, fulfil ye my joy." Let me beseech you to remember, that by accepting your call I have entrusted the happiness of my life into your hands. Prepare yourselves, therefore, to cover my many infirmities with the mantle of your love, and continue to treat me with the same kindness and gentleness as those dear and excellent friends have done whom I am now about to leave in compassion to your souls; for God knows that no temporal advantage you could have offered would have engaged me to relinquish them. May my heavenly Father comfort my heart in what is now determined, by giving an abundant success to my ministrations among you, so that a multitude of souls may have reason to praise him on that account! and let me beg that you will bear me daily on your hearts before his throne in prayer, and seek for me that extraordinary assistance without which I must infallibly sink under the great work I have thus undertaken. I shall continue to recommend you, my dearly beloved, to the grace of Almighty God, the great Shepherd of his sheep, with that affection which now so peculiarly becomes your most devoted friend and servant, in the bonds of our common Lord, PHILIP DODDRIDGE. The account of the ordination we present, as inserted by Doddridge in the records of the Church:--