To Lady Rawdon Editor's Introductory Notes: 1760 5 LIVERPOOL., March 18, 1760. MY LADY, It was impossible to see the distress into which your Ladyship was thrown by the late unhappy affair without bearing a part of it, without sympathizing with you. But may we not see God therein May we not both hear and understand His voice We must allow it is generally 'small and still'; yet He speaks sometimes in the whirlwind. Permit me to speak to your Ladyship with all freedom; not as to a person of quality, but as to a creature whom the Almighty made for Himself, and one that is in a few days to appear before Him. You were not only a nominal but a real Christian. You tasted of the powers of the world to come. You knew God the Father had accepted you through His eternal Son, and God the Spirit bore witness with your spirit that you were a child of God. But you fell among thieves, and such as were peculiarly qualified to rob you of your God. Two of these in particular were sensible, learned, well-bred, well-natured, moral men. These did not assault you in a rough, abrupt, offensive manner. No; you would then have armed yourself against them, and have repelled all their attacks. But by soft, delicate, unobserved touches, by pleasing strokes of raillery, by insinuations rather than surly arguments, they by little and little sapped the foundation of your faith perhaps not only of your living faith, your 'evidence of things not seen,' but even of your notional. It is well if they left you so much as an assent to the Bible or a belief that Christ is God over all I And what was the consequence of this Did not your love of God grow cold Did not you Measure back your steps to earth again Did not your love of the world revive even of those poor, low trifles, which in your very childhood you utterly despised

Where are you now full of faith looking into the holiest, and seeing Him that is invisible Does your heart now glow with love to Him who is daily pouring His benefits upon you Do you now even desire it Do you now say (as you did almost twenty years ago), Keep me dead to all below, Only Christ resolved to know; Firm, and disengaged, and free, Seeking all my bliss in Thee Is your taste now for heavenly things Are not you a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God And oh what pleasure! What is the pleasure of visiting of modern conversation Is there any more reason than religion in it I wonder what rational appetite does it gratify Setting religion quite out of the question, I cannot conceive how a woman of sense can relish, should I say no, but suffer so insipid an entertainment. Oh that the time past may suffice! Is it now not high time that you should awake out of sleep Now God calls aloud! My dear Lady, now hear the voice of the Son of God, and live! The trouble in which your tender parent is now involved may restore all that reverence for her which could not but be a little impaired while you supposed she was 'righteous over-much.' Oh how admirably does God lay hold of and 'strengthen the things that remain' in you! your gratitude, your humane temper, your generosity, your filial tenderness! And why is this but to improve every right temper; to free you from all that is irrational or unholy; to make you all that you were yea, all that you should be; to restore you to the whole image of God I am, my Lady, Yours, c.