You must think me very unkind, and seemingly negligent in writing to you, but I can assure you I have never forgotten you, from the first day of our acquaintance. I often anticipate the period when, I hope, we shall often yet meet on praying ground—in the church militant, and finally, in the church triumphant. At present the church is in a militant state; the term is military, and implies a warfare, contending powers, within and without. The worst lays within—every evil done in this world, and every sin in devils; we have the root of them in our hearts; this we must feel, groan under, and lament; we derived this nature from our first parent, his sin became our’s, as we stood in him, we sinned in him, and fell with him, we are guilty of his sin, and it is imputed to us. So we also took a most corrupt nature, and this is seen as soon as we can shew it. We go astray from the womb, and should stray into hell, if it was not for the grace of God; and being depraved, how could we do any thing that is good. Alas! if our salvation depended on a good thought, we must have been lost for ever. Almighty mercy has shewn you those things; and when you hear any talk, or see them hoping upon their own goodness, does it not raise disgust in your mind at the sentiment. Bless God for causing you to differ; you might have been left to the blindness of your mind, the perversity of your will, and the hatred of the heart to God! You find these things still working, but they do not reign. They, and every other evil in the heart, are like rebellious prisoners, are often contriving schemes to get out, and to regain the old liberty you used to give them; but although they rebel, and may prevail against you, yet, they never can take the castle of the heart. There may be a bias, a propensity to evil, but you can never be a carnal man again—you may look like one, feel like one, and suffer like one; but though this may grieve you, it shall never be accomplished in the way Satan desires. Hence Solomon says, There is vanity I have seen on the earth; that there be just men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked, and that there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous. I said, This also is vanity. I trust your convictions are genuine, and this is the first work of the Spirit, to prepare the way for the revelation of Christ to the soul. Christ has no room in an unhumbled, hard, careless, unconvinced, unbroken spirit. He has declared he will dwell with none but those who contrite and humbled—These characters are particularly described in his commission, as set forth in Isaiah xli, 1, 2, 3. This was the first text our dear Lord took when he preached in the Synagogue; and although we have no account of the sermon, yet the substance of it was given by our Lord to his disciples, on the Mount, in the 5th of Matthew, where we have an eight-fold description of the