Your most obliged friend and servant,
G. W.
LETTER LXXV.
Philadelphia, Nov. 10, 1739.
Dear Mrs. ——,
WHEN last abroad, I could not write to you for want of knowing your name. Blessed be God we have since been better acquainted, and I now know your name and place of abode. May the God, whom I desire to serve, richly reward you for receiving me into your house. You were one of my most constant hearers; may you be my joy and crown of rejoicing in the day of the Lord Jesus. I trust ere now, you have felt, that the kingdom of God does not consist in word, but in power. I know that Mrs. —— would have me deal plainly with her soul; therefore I shall not scruple to tell her, how I have sometimes thought she was not yet clearly enough convinced of sin, and of the perfect righteousness wrought out for, and to be imputed to her, by the Lord Jesus Christ, through faith in his blood.—Since I have been on shipboard, blessed be God, his name has made my soul to smart, and caused me to see more of my own wretchedness. Oh, Mrs. ——, you know not, neither do I myself know as yet, what a mystery of iniquity is hid even in a heart timely renewed. I saw a little of it the other day; and had I not known my Redeemer liveth, and that he ever liveth to make intercession for me, I must have sunk into despair:
But there’s a voice of sovereign grace
Sounds from the sacred word;
Here ye despairing sinners come,