DEARLY BELOVED IN THE LORD,--You well know that for a great while I have laboured under the afflicting hand of God, during a considerable part of which time I could not tell but I might be again permitted to speak to you in his name; but when at length all reasonable hopes of this kind were cut off, I began to think of writing a few lines to leave with you. My weakness increasing put me off those thoughts, until the importunity of a friend animated my former resolution and set me upon it. Providence favoured me with a station of service among you for upwards of fourteen years, during which season I was led through a great variety of trying afflictions; under which, as God was pleased to direct and support me in a very surprising way, and at last delivered me, so I must in justice say that you behaved to me in the most affectionate and Christian manner. You were sharers with me in my afflictions; your mouths, upon every emergency, were readily opened unto God for me; you rejoiced with me in the removal of my affliction and every favourable turn given to my affairs; and you bore the many interruptions of my service with unparalleled patience and cheerfulness. This could not fail of begetting in me the greatest endearedness and tenderest affection for you; so that my soul was knit to you. My great concern was to serve you; I never thought myself so happy as when I was labouring among you; and often begged that, if it were consistent with the will of God, I might live and die amongst you. And I can now look back with pleasure, to think that I was enabled to refuse all the solicitations I had to leave you. God has been seen amongst us; there has been a glory upon our assemblies; and the great ends of a Gospel ministry, such as the conversion of some, and the training up of others for a better world, I hope have been in some measure attained amongst us. But now I speak no more, nor you hear me any more. And yet, though I am gone from you, I persuade myself, from the cheerful attention you paid to my services while among you, that you will at least lend an ear to what in this manner I say to you. In this respect you may truly apply that passage--"Being dead, he yet speaketh." In a further paragraph he states--