some of the most excellent and judicious persons I any where know, to
whom I have read them, have assured me that they felt their hearts in an
unusual manner impressed, quickened, and edified by them.




CHAPTER VI.

LETTERS.


I will therefore draw back the veil, and show my much honoured friend in
his most secret recesses, that the world may see what those springs were,
from whence issued that clear, permanent and living stream of wisdom,
piety, and virtue, which so evidently ran through all that part of his
life which was open to public observation. It is not to be imagined that
letters written in the intimacy of Christian friendship, some of them
with the most evident marks of haste, and amidst a variety of important
public cares, should be adorned with any studied elegance of expression,
about which the greatness of his soul would not allow him to be at any
time very solicitous, for he generally (as far as I could observe) wrote
as fast as his pen could move, which, happily both for him and his many
friends, was very freely. Yet here the grandeur of his subject has
sometimes clothed his ideas with a language more elevated than is
ordinarily to be expected in an epistolary correspondence. The proud
scorners who may deride sentiments and enjoyments like those which this
truly great man so experimentally and pathetically describes, I pity from
my heart, and grieve to think how unfit they must be for the hallelujahs
of heaven, who pour contempt upon the nearest approaches to them; nor