Church at stoke. weakened, and since ye presence of ye Lord is greatly withdrawn from our solemn assemblies, ye great work of conversion is at a stay, and consequently a threatening to remove ye candlestick out of its place, we cannot but be alarmed at such an awful prospect and concerned for ye departing glory. And having, therefore, separated some time to humble ourselves before y Lord by fasting and prayer, and to plead with Him for ourselves and families, relations, and neighbours, that y Lord would revive His dying cause amongst us, which also we ever somewhat encourage to hope and wait for from ye many precious testimonies to the grace and truth of our God which His dying servants have left behind them, and which we would own even in ye midst of our deep affliction and distress to y praise and glory of our God and Saviour. But as ye Lord is calling, warning, and alarming us by His providence, we have thought it our duty to certify this to you, as desirous of promoting fellowship with you in y Lord, and not doubting your tender sympathy and affectionate concern for ye Lord's poor and afflicted remnant here. We do hereby entreat, if it may be convenient for you to devote some time to spread our case before y Lord, and help us by your prayers, that we may yet receive ye blessing from ye Lord of increase and prosperity. We heartily desire ye prosperity of our dear Lord's kingdom with you yt yr Church, with its offices, may increase with ye increase of God, and we pray yt your hearts may be comforted, being knit together in love unto all riches of ye full assurance of understanding to ye acknowledgment of ye mystery of God and y Father of Christ. "Signed at our Church Meeting in ye name and by ye appointment of the Church, July 16, 1742." The desire expressed in this communication for the advancement of true piety none felt more earnestly than Doddridge. He saw clearly that it was time to halt in any further accommodation to those who were manifestly departing from the truth. "He lamented," Orton tells us, "the sad deviation of many ministers from what he thought important truths of the Gospel, in such a Solicitude of Doddridge for the preservation of the truth. insisting on them much less than they should have done, or manner as if they were making concessions to an adversary rather than opening their hearts to their hearers on a favourite topic. He saw persons reforming upon a plain gospel till it was almost evaporated and lost, and therefore he was the more strenuous in the support of its vital truths. 'I hope,' said he, in a sermon before an assembly of ministers, we shall never practise so dangerous a complaisance to unbelievers of the present age as to waive the Gospel that we may accommodate ourselves to their taste, which, if we do, we may indeed preserve the name of virtue; but I fear we shall destroy the thing itself, lose it in our congregations, and probably in our hearts, for I confess it seems to me much more probable that the doctrines of natural religion should alone be blessed as the means of reforming heathens, who never heard of Christianity, than they should have much effect upon those who, under the profession of it, slight its most glorious peculiarities, as if the religion of Jesus were a mere incumbrance, which, while we own it to be true, we might nevertheless forget, without great danger or much inconvenience. "In a letter to one of his younger brethren, he says: 'Indeed the Gospel is a great thing, or it is nothing. I am more and more convinced of the importance of keeping to the good old evangelical and experimental way of preaching, and look upon most of the newfashioned divinity, of which some persons in different extremes are so fond, as a kind of quackery, which bodes ill to the health of the soul and of the Church in general. You know how cautious I am of troubling the Church of Christ with disputes; but my faith in the doctrines I preach is more and more confirmed by studying the Scriptures, by experience and observation."* "He had a growing sense of his personal need of the blessing of the Gospel. 'I have just been explaining,' he writes to a friend, and I have great need of using the publican's prayer, God be merciful to me a sinner, to me, an unprofitable servant, who have deserved long since to have been cast out of his family. You talk of my strength and usefulness. Alas! I am weak and unstable as water. My frequent deadness and coldness in religion sometimes presseth me down to the dust, and methinks it "The people long and languish," Walrond writes to Doddridge, "after sound doctrine and plain preaching." is best when it doth so. How could I bear to look up to heaven, were it not for the righteousness and blood of a Redeemer ?” Doddridge had frequent and earnest conversations with Colonel Gardiner on this topic. Colonel "I shall never forget," he says, "that happy day, June 13, 1739, when I first met him at Leicester. I preached from Psalm cxix. 158, describing the mixture of indignation and grief (strongly expressed by the original word there) with which the good man looks on the daring transgressors of the divine law; and in' tracing the causes of that grief as arising from a regard to the divine honour and the interest of the Redeemer, and in compassionate concern for the misery such offenders bring upon themselves, and for the mischief they do the world about them. We afterwards sung a hymn "Arise, my tenderest thoughts, arise,' &c., which brought over again some of the leading thoughts in the sermon, and struck him so strongly that, on obtaining a copy of it, he committed it to his memory, and used to repeat it with so forcible an accent as showed how much every line expressed of his very soul. "His zeal was especially apparent in opposition to those doctrines which seem to derogate from the divine honours of the Son and Spirit of God, and from the freedom of divine grace on the reality and necessity of its operations in the conversion and salvation of sinners. "It was his most stedfast persuasion that all those actions which represent our blessed Redeemer and the Holy Spirit as mere creatures, or which set aside the atonement of the former, or the influences of the latter, do sap the very foundations of Christianity, by rejecting the most glorious doctrines peculiar to it. He had attentively observed (what indeed is too obvious) the unhappy influence which the denial of these principles often has had on the character of ministers, and on their success, and was persuaded that an attempt to substitute that mutilated form of Christianity which remains, when these essentials of it are taken away, has proved one of the most successful methods which the great enemy of souls has ever taken in these latter days to lead men by insensible degrees, into Deism, vice, and perdition. "It was indeed his deliberate judgment that the Arian, Socinian, and Pelagian doctrines were highly dishonourable to God, and dangerous to the souls of men, and that it was the duty of private Christians to be greatly on their guard against those ministers by whom they are entertained, lest their minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Yet he sincerely abhorred the thought of persecution for conscience' sake; of the absurdity and iniquity of which, in all its kinds and degrees, he had as deep and rational a conviction as any man I could name." To give a practical embodiment to his strong convictions on the subject of Missions to the Heathen, Doddridge prepared the form of a sacred engagement, which, when subscribed by himself and eight or ten of his students, he submitted to the members of his congregation to be signed by them. 'We, whose names are subscribed, being moved, as we hope and trust, by a real concern for the propagation of the kingdom of Christ in the world, have determined to form Formation of Missionary ourselves into a Society for that end, on the following Society. terms: "1. That we purpose, as God shall enable us, to be daily putting up some earnest petition to the throne of grace, for the advancement of the gospel in our world, and for the success of all the faithful servants of Christ, who are engaged in the work of it, especially among the heathen nations. "2. That we will assemble, at least four times a year, in our places of public worship, at such seasons as shall by mutual consent be appointed, to spend some time in solemn prayer together on this important account; and we hereby engage, that we will, each of us, if we conveniently can, attend at such meetings, unless such circumstances happen as to lead us in our own consciences to conclude, that it must be more acceptable in the sight of God that we should we employed in some other business elsewhere. "3. We do hereby express our desire, that some time may be then spent, if God give an opportunity, in reviewing those promises of Scripture which relate to the establishment of our Redeemer's kingdom in the world, that our faith may be supported and our prayers quickened by the contemplation of them. "4. It is also our desire, that whatever important information, relating to the progress of the gospel, be received from the various parts of this kingdom, or from foreign lands, by any member of the Society, they may be communicated to us at our general quarterly meetings, and the rest of us make it our request to our minister, that he will, where he can with convenience do it, keep up such correspondence, that we may be more capable of judging how far God answers our prayers and those of His other servants in this regard. "5. We further engage, that on these days of general meeting, every one of us will, as God shall be pleased to prosper us, contribute something, be it ever so little, towards the carrying on of this pious design; which shall be lodged in the hands of a treasurer to be chosen at the first meeting, to be disposed of by him and four other trustees, then also to be appointed, in such a manner as they shall judge most convenient, towards supporting the expense of sending missionaries abroad, printing Bibles, or other useful books, etc., in foreign languages, establishing schools for the instruction of the ignorant, and the like. "6. That the pastor for the time being, if one of the Society, be always one of these trustees; and that four more be annually nominated by the Society, at the first meeting afore New Year's Day, with a power of choosing a treasurer out of their own number; and that the accounts of the former year be then laid before the Society, or before a committee appointed to examine them. "7. That members, after the first meeting, be admitted by the consent of the Society present, at some stated meeting, and that if any member think fit to withdraw, he signify that purpose to the Society, or to one of their trustees. "8. That brief minutes be taken at every meeting of the business despatched, the persons admitted, the contributions made at it, etc. "To these rules we subscribe our hands, heartily praying that God may quicken us, and many others by our means, to greater |