_To my dearly beloved, the inhabitants of |Taunton|, grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ_. _Most dearly beloved_, I HAVE been through mercy many years with you, and should be willingly so many years a prisoner for you, so I might further your salvation. I must again and again thank you for your abundant affection to me, which I value as a great mercy, not in order to myself, but in order to your benefit, that I may thereby be a more likely instrument of your good. Surely, so much as I value your love, yet had I rather be forsaken of you all, and buried in oblivion; so that your eyes and hearts may be fixed on Christ, and sincerely engaged to him. Brethren, I have not bespoken your affections for myself: O that I might win your hearts to Christ. O that I might convert you to him though you were diverted from me. *I should much rather chuse to be hated of all, so this might be the means to have Christ set up savingly in the hearts of you all. And indeed there is nothing great but in order to God; nothing is considerable as it is terminated in us: it matters not whether we are in riches or poverty, sickness or health, in honour or disgrace, so Christ may be by us magnified in the condition we are in. Welcome prison and poverty, welcome scorn and envy, welcome pain or contempt, if by these God’s glory may be promoted. What are we for, but for God? What doth the creature signify separated from his God? Why just so much as the cypher separated from his figure. We are nothing worth, but in reference to God and his ends. Better were it that we had never been, than that we should not be to him. Better that we were dead than we should live, and not to him. Better that we had no understandings, than that we should not know him. Better that we were blocks and brutes, than that we should not use our reason for him. What are our interests, unless they may be subservient to his interest? Or our reputation, unless we may hereby glorify him?