The Letter.

The Letter.

My Dear Wife.

This is the sixth time that I write to you, since the Lord has changed my condition of a Galley Slave into that of a Prisoner, without having received any of your Answers. I am ready to believe that 'tis not your fault, and that you have written as many to me, as I have done to you, without having received mine. The Distance and Difficulties are so great, that we can have no mutual Communications by Writing: and the Devil and men are so animated against me, that they employ all their power and industry to hinder me from receiving any External Consolations; and to speak the truth, experience shows me that herein they succeed; and if they could oblige God to deprive me of Internal Consolation they would do it with pleasure; but God is Righteous in all his ways, and full of Goodness in all his works: as he sees me deprived of all humane relief, he gives in unto me of Divine; if his Goodness and Justice will not permit him to leave the young Ravens without their food, will his Love and Mercy abandon a Soul, which he had so often hindered from falling into Hell? especially after he has made him taste the First Fruits and fore-tastes of Sovereign Blessedness? ⟨p. 14⟩no, God forsakes not the works of his hands; he is faithful and just to accomplish his Promises. Therefore I will say, that in vain they strive to destroy the work of the Holy Ghost. The Almighty Power of God is too much interested therein, to suffer them to attain the end which they propose, they labour more and more to surmount my patience, and conquer my perseverance, to the end they might triumph over my Faith; but alas! I look upon my enemies with grief of heart, and my Faith which is sustained by the hope of Love, despises generously the assaults which they make upon it. Nay, My Dear Wife, they at present attack me more ardently than ever; the Eternal God exercises me as an Old Soldier, although I am but a little while since Listed into his Company. I intend to continue to you the Journal of my Persecutions since the last March, I mean the abridgement thereof; for to tell you the whole, I neither can, nor may do, for many reasons. I lived pretty quiet in my Prison at the Citadel, during twenty three, months, wherein I have been alone in a little Chamber. There was under me a poor Believer in a Dungeon, with two chains, because he Sang Psalms too loud. It was not perceived that I spake to him;