Thirdly, _Lest you keep up a barren and fruitless profession_. See to it, that you be not only professors, but proficients. Many think all is well because they go on in the exercises of religion; but alas! You may keep on praying and hearing all the week long, and yet be not one jot the farther. Many there are that keep going, but it is like the horse in the mill, that is going all day, but yet is no farther than when he first began. Nay, it often happens in the trade of religion, as in trading in the world, many keep on trading still, ’till for want of care, and examining their accounts, they trade themselves out of all. Oh, look to it my brethren, that none of you rest in the doing of duties, but examine what comes of them. Otherwise, as you may trade yourselves into poverty, so you may hear and pray yourselves into hardness of heart and desperate security and formality. This was the very case of wretched _Laodicea_, who kept in the track of religious duties, and verily thought that all was well, because the trade went on, and that she was increased in spiritual goods. But when her accounts were cast up, all comes to nothing, and ends in wretchedness, poverty, and nakedness. I commend you to the living God, remaining _Your fervent well-wisher and Embassador in Christ_. JOS. ALLEINE. Devizes, _June 22, 1666_. LETTER XXII. [An admiration of the love of God.] _To the most loving and best beloved, the servants of God in |Taunton|, salvation._ _My most dear friends_, I LOVE you, and long for you in the Lord, and I am weary with forbearing that good and blessed work that the Lord hath committed to me, for the furtherance of your salvation. How long, Lord, how long shall I dwell in silence? How long shall my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth? When will God open my lips, that I may stand up and praise him? But it is my Father’s good pleasure yet to keep me in a total disability of publishing his name among you; unto him my soul shall patiently subscribe. I cannot complain that he is hard to me: I am full of the mercies of the Lord, and shall I complain? Far be it from me. *But though I may not murmur, methinks I may mourn a little, and sit down and wish, O if I may not have a tongue to speak, would I had but hands to write, that I might from my pen drop some heavenly counsels to my beloved people. But it cannot be; alas, my right hand seems to have forgot her cunning, and hath much ado with trembling to lift the bread into my mouth. Do you think you should have had so little to shew under my hand, to bear witness of my care for you, and love to you, if God had not shook my pen as it were out of my hand? But all that he doth is done well, and wisely, and therefore I submit. I have purposed to borrow hands wherewith to write unto my beloved, rather than be silent any longer.