“If you have not so much as you wish to relieve the necessities of the poor, distribute from my stock. I am cloistered up in my chamber, and unacquainted with the distresses of my brethren. Lend me, therefore, your eyes to discover proper objects, and your hand to deal about my little fund for charity. Do not forbid me to send a guinea in my next for this purpose. Do not deny me the pleasure of becoming, through your means, an instrument of some little comfort to my afflicted fellow-creatures. “Herewith comes the ‘Descant’ enlarged. I hope you will be able to read it, and not a little to improve it. Can you engage Dr. ⸺ to run it over? I must write it over again, so fear not to erase and blot. “A letter from my father is enough to cast contempt on created things. It informs me, that, my poor sister is reduced very low, so low that my father cannot hear her speak. He seems to look upon her life to be in very great danger. May the Father of compassion restore her health, that she may live to the honour of her dying Master, and be a comfort to her afflicted parents!” For months after this, Hervey’s health was very feeble, but his soul as large as ever; hence the following:— WESTON-FAVEL, _Aug. 18, 1748_. “MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,—I received your letter, full of tenderness, and full of piety, last night. The very first thing I apply myself to this morning, is to acknowledge your favour, and confess my own negligence. But your affectionate heart will pity rather than blame me, when I inform you, that, a relapse into the disorder, of which I was never thoroughly cured, has brought me very low, insomuch that I am unable either to discharge the duties of life, or to answer the demands of friendship. I have not been capable of preaching for several Sundays. Pyrmont water, ass’s milk, and such kind of restoratives I try, but try in vain. “You are not ignorant of my sentiment with regard to our Dissenting brethren. Are we not all devoted to the same supreme Lord? Do we not all rely on the merits of the same glorious Redeemer? By professing the same faith, the same doctrine which is according to godliness, we are incorporated into the same mystical body. And how strange, how unnatural it would be, if the head should be averse to the breast, or the hands inveterately prejudiced against the feet, only because the one is habited somewhat differently from the other? Though I am steady in my attachment to the Established Church, I would have a right hand of fellowship, and a heart of love, ever ready, ever open for all the upright, evangelical Dissenters.”