Small offers towards the service of the tabernacle in the wilderness. Four discourses, accommodated…

To my Ever-honoured Father-in-Law, JOHN PHILIPS Esq

Sir

You cannot but Remember, and I should not have this Occasion of Telling you so, if you did not well Remember, That many months are not passed since. You encountered a Dangerous Eev••; by which the Vital Ty between what must Return to God that gave it, and what must Return into the Earth as it has been there, was very near burned asunder, in you; But God had then mercy on You, and not on You only, but on me also, lest I should have had sorrow upon sorrow. It was a darker Time in your House, than (through' Grace) with your Soul, when we beheld You lying under what looked like an Arrest laid on you by the cold Hand of Death, and saying, I shall go the gates of the Grave, I am deprived of the […] of my years. But the Blessing which if you study to be a Blessing you can never want, was then your privilege; even, To be much prayed for; and behold, the Effect of those our Applications to the God of your Life! On that very day when your faithful and worthy ⟨image ?⟩Pastor the Reverend Charles Morton, with your pious Neighbours were together praying for You, we had our Answer, and You are yet alive. The living, the living, they shall praise God; and You have a blessed Opportunity, I hope not without some Inclination to be doing so. Twas from such an Inclination, that your Vows did accompany our Prayers, and your Sickness expired in Resolutions. To endeavour the doing of something for the Service of the Churches here, and this particularly, By the Publication of some little Book, accommodated unto the Designs of Practical Godliness in the Persons and Houses of this professing people. Tis pity indeed that ever any special Trouble, or any special Mercy should befall us, without producing some special service to the Name of our God, upon whose Orders and Errands every such Dispensation comes. Accordingly, you have commanded me to give you certain Discourses, which You thought agreeable to your serious purposes; and These are They. Unto You first I ought to make the Dedication of them; because it is by your Desire and Expense that they are to pass under any further Dedication; they are now therefore no longer Mine but Yours, and to be Entitled, The Writing of a Well-willer to Religion, after he had been sick, and was Recovered of his Sickness. These Composures are singled out from other Effects of my Daily Studies, not because of any singular Excellency adorning of them;