have been in my life. The scriptures seem to open to me with more ease than usual, not only those you hinted at, but others besides; and my spirit is more sweet, less wrath and bitterness in delivering my discourses; I cannot fetch that on my soul again if I try at it, nor can I bring it into my discourses if I was to attempt it. But this is only growing in knowledge; I am afraid of it at times, it does not please nor satisfy me; I contend with the Lord about the way, and am still for having my own, and sometimes choose strangling rather than life, because I cannot get it. This is the way I go on. If there is a little enlargement, and an appearance of coming out, then I fear I have not been long enough nor deep enough in; and when the dark day comes again, then I conclude that I have now been so long in, that I never shall come out to see light. What would I give if I could continue in the same frame as I delivered a few discourses in soon after I saw you last; the savour of them seems to abide still, but have not been able since to enter so largely into the field. No, no, my barrenness has again returned, and I cannot see that I am yet successful; the inhabitants of the world have not yet fallen, nor have I wrought any deliverance on the earth. I do not know that I am good for any thing, except it is to murder, and that I do not like at all; I wish to communicate life to dead sinners, this I would like. There is now a person at T. on the borders of Kent, who, I am told,

used to rave most desperately against God's sovereignty, and having heard much about me, came to hear me, whom God struck with an arrow. He went home and got to bed, but has never been out of it to this day; he is in black despair, and his flesh wasted from his bones; he cannot endure to be alone one moment, and talks of nothing but the sermon he heard, and of strange things going on at Lewes. There is a talk of more forces being raised to root out all the errors from this place; but I know what the sword of all those can do. What I want is to see the dead raised, and made to stand on their feet.

God Almighty bless you.

LETTER IV.

To the Rev. J. JENKINS.

J. J.

I

REV. SIR,

AM now in my old hut, but not in a peaceable dwelling, nor in a quiet resting-place; for it begins to hail, coming down on the forest, and the city (at present) is low, in a low place; and blessed are they that sow beside all waters, that send forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass.

A kind and pressing invitation hath caused

me to stray from my Father's house, in order to scatter a little of the good seed of the kingdom in a soil where I had not been before; and in my absence the enemy hath sowed tares among the wheat, and is gone his way. I listened to the good report and popular applause that was given to me, by my kind solicitors, of a preacher whom I had never known; and being much put to it for a supply in my absence, I readily exchanged with an incarnate devil, in the counterfeited rays of an angel of light, and so left my charge with one of the lewd hirelings, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock. He is one of the children of base men, he is viler than the earth; I have brayed after him as after a thief, for he hath attempted to exclude them all from Christ, that they might affect him. To some he hath been a very lovely song, to others a builder up without a foundation, and the itching ears of others have been scratched; another, (who, like Doeg, hath been long detained as a prisoner before the Lord; or, like Peter, his soul has been in chains between two soldiers, I mean the flesh and the devil,) was set at liberty by a wonderful definition of the two stone figures at the front of Bethlehem Hospital; which definition was applied to Jonah and Hezekiah, the former, the preacher said, was raving mad; and the latter, melancholy mad. But this is no wonder, the scribes called the Master of the house Beelzebub, and this gentleman says the same of his household; but the

preacher must go this strange way through Jericho, in order to bring the aforesaid gentleman into what he calls liberty, though to this day he is bound, and among the tombs, and seeking the living among the dead. Those that have longed for prophecies upon smooth things and upon deceits, have been greatly blessed; the painted sepulchres have all been touched over twice; the whited walls have had the brush upon them, and the tower of Babel hath been raised two stories; the chambers of imagery have been cleaned and fresh painted, but none of the high places have been taken away, the people still sacrifice upon them. Some who were never so low as the pots, have been like the wings of a dove covered with silver, and their feathers with yellow gold. Others are in the highest seats, who, so far from being delivered, like the Hebrew women, were never so much as upon the stools. However, I

am determined to make no leagues with these Gibeonites; nor will I treat with such ambassadors; their clouted shoes, mouldy bread, and old leather bottles, are none of the things which bring glory to God in the highest, nor peace upon earth, much less good will toward men. Such wretches pretend to come to us because of the name of the Lord our God, but they bring none of those things with them that accompany salvation. I have shewed my determination to make no leagues with these hewers of wood and drawers of water; and in this matter I am brought into the sad pre

dicament of Nehemiah. Some praise the good deeds of this Sanballat, and repeat them to me, who are in alliance with him; but I am for no confederacy, nor do I dare to walk in the way of them that are confederate. This I have resolved in my mind, and I have no doubt but the God of Israel will be with me in this determination; for I know that by this man the devil is come down among us, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time; and I know that Satan hates me with perfect hatred, for my dear Master's sake. The old serpent seems to be very fiery, and some of his crooked generation begin to hiss not a little; but I have not broke through the hedge, therefore I do not think that he or they can bite me. The sun at noon day doth not appear more conspicuous to me, than the spirit of the devil communicated by this man; and as God hath discovered this to me, and brought me to be a man of strife and contention, I shall be emboldened as I go on.

I shall be a hind let loose. Many who have long fawned in feigned humility, begin to grin like dogs, and go round about the city; and some who have, in the general, been dumb, begin to open now. I know God hath set me as a tower and a fortress, to try and know their ways, and I am sure that they will have neither dew nor rain but according to my word, for the Lord Jesus Christ hath spoken by me.

But at this time I

had need be an iron pillar and a brazen wall; for