“To those who love or fear the Lord Jesus at Madeley, grace, peace, and love be multiplied unto you, from our God and Saviour Jesus Christ! “Providence, my dear brethren, called me so suddenly from among you, that I had no time to take my leave of you, and recommend myself to your prayers. But I hope the good Spirit of our God, who is the Spirit of love and supplication, has brought me to your remembrance, as the poorest and weakest of Christ’s ministers, whose hands stand most in need of being strengthened and lifted up by your prayers. Pray on then, for yourselves, for one another, and for him whose glory it is to minister to you in spiritual things, and whose sorrow it is not to do it in a manner more suitable to the majesty of the Gospel, and more profitable to your souls. My heart is with you, nevertheless I bear patiently this bodily separation for three reasons. “1. The variety of more faithful and able ministers, which you have during my absence, is more likely to be serviceable to you than my presence among you, and I would always prefer your profit to my own satisfaction. “2. I hope Providence will give me those opportunities of conversing and praying with a greater variety of experienced Christians, which will tend to my own improvement, and, I trust, in the end, to yours. “3. I flatter myself that, after some weeks’ absence, my ministry will be recommended by the advantage of novelty, which (the more the pity) goes farther with some than the Word itself. In the meantime, I shall give you some advice, which, it may be, will prove both suitable and serviceable to you. “Endeavour to improve daily under the ministry that Providence blesses you with. Be careful to attend it with diligence, faith, and prayer. Would it not be a great shame if, when ministers come thirty or forty miles to offer you peace and pardon, strength and comfort, in the name of God, any of you should slight the glorious message, or hear it as if it was nothing to you, and as if you heard it not? See then that you never come from a sermon without being more deeply convinced of sin and righteousness. In order to this,— “Use much prayer before you go to church. Consider that your next appearance there may be in a coffin, and entreat the Lord to give you now so to hunger and thirst after righteousness that you may be filled therewith. Hungry people never go fasting from a feast. Call to mind the text I preached from the last Sunday but one before I left you,—‘Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as new born babes desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby’ (1 Peter ii. 1, 2).