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LETTER XI.

by John Newton

April 23, 1779.

My dear Friend,

May I not style myself a friend, when I remember you after the interval of several weeks since I saw you, and through a distance of three-score miles? But the truth is, you have been neither absent nor distant from my heart a day. Your idea has travelled with me; you are a kind of familiar, very often before the eye of my mind. This, I hope, may be admitted as a proof of friendship.

I know the Lord loves you, and you know it likewise: every affliction affords you a fresh proof of it. How wise his management in our trials! How wisely adjusted in season, weight, continuance, to answer his gracious purposes in sending them! How unspeakably better to be at his disposal than at your own! So you say; so you think; so you find. You trust in him, and shall not be disappointed. Help me with your prayers, that I may trust him too, and be at length enabled to say without reserve, "What thou wilt, when thou wilt, how thou wilt." I had rather speak these three sentences from my heart, in my mother-tongue, than be master of all the languages in Europe.

I am yours, &c.

Index to the Letters of John Newton

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