Christian letters full of spiritual instructions tending to the promoting of the power of…

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 eminently and effectually further your salvation. I must again, yea again, and again thank you for your abundant and entire affections to me, which I value as a great mercy not in order to my self, if I know my own heart, but in order to your benefit, and I may thereby be a more likely Instrument to further your good. Surely, so much as I do value your love, which is not a little, yet had I rather (if I am not unacquainted with my self) be forgotten and forsaken of you all, and buried in oblivion, So that your eyes and hearts might be hereby fixed on Christ, and sincerely engaged to him. Brethren, I have not be spoken your affections for my self: O that I might win your hearts universally to Jesus Christ, though I had lost them for ever! O that I might be instrumental to convert you to him though you were diverted from me. I am persuaded that I should much rather ⟨p. 49⟩choose to be hated of all, so this might be the means to have Christ honoured, and set up savingly in the hearts of you all. And indeed there is nothing great but in order to God; nothing is much material or considerable as it is terminated in us: It matters not whether we are in Riches or poverty, in 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 pains or contempt, if by these Gods glory may be most 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 the Figure, or the letter from the Syllable, we are nothing or 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 Bruis than that we should not use our reason for him. What are our Interests unless as they may be subservient to his Interest? or our esteem or reputation, unless we may hereby glorify him? do you love me? I know you do; but who is there that will leave his sins for me? I mean at my requests: with whom shall I prevail to give up himself in strictness and self-denial to the Lord?