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

Beloved, I despair of ever bringing you to Salvation, without Sanctification: Or possessing You with Happiness, without persuading you to Holiness. God knows I have not the least hope ever to see one of your Faces in Heaven, except You be Converted and Sanctified, and exercise your selves unto Godliness. This is that I drive at. I beseech you study to further Personal Godliness, and Family Godliness.

Beloved, I despair of ever bringing you to Salvation, without Sanctification: Or possessing You with Happiness, without perswading you to Holiness. God knows I have not the least hope ever to see one of your Faces in Heaven, except You be Converted and Sanctified, and exercise your selves unto Godliness. This is that I drive at. I beseech you study to further Personal Godliness, and Family Godliness.

1. Personal Godliness. Let it be your first care to set up Christ in your Hearts. See that you make all your worldly Interests to stoop to him, that You be entirely and unreservedly devoted unto him. If You wilfully, and deliberately, and ordinarily harbour any sin, You are undone. See that You unfeignedly take the Laws of Christ, as the rule of your words, thoughts, and actions; and subject •our whole man, members and mind faithfully to him. If You ha•e ⟨p. 103⟩a true respect to all Gods Commandments, you are sound at heart. Oh study to get the Image and impress of Christ upon you within. Begin with your hearts, else you build without a foundation. Labour to get a saving change within, or else all external performances will be to no purpose. And then study to show forth the power of Godliness in the life. Let Piety be your first and great business. 'Tis the highest point of Justice, to give God his due. Beware that none of you be a Prayerless person: for that is a most certain discovery of a Christless, and a graceless person, of one that is a very stranger to the fear of God. Suffer not your Bibles to gather dust. See that you converse daily with the Word. That man can never lay claim to Blessedness, whose delight is not in the Law of the Lord. Let meditation and self-examination be your daily exercise, else the Papists, yea the Pagans, will condemn us. That the short questions, which I have given you as a help to self-examination, may be daily perused by you, is the matter of my passionate request unto you. If ever you come to any growth in Holiness, without the constant use of his practice, I am grossly deceived. And therefore I would beseech, yea, even charge you, by the Lord, that you would daily examine your selves by these questions, till you have found a better help to this duty.