The boy says, one in a black hat left the following letter:
"Being of that part of Christians whom men call Quakers; and being a seeker of the right way, I was persuaded yesterday to hear one of your most noted teachers. The matter he treated was the necessity of well-living, grounded upon a future state. I was attentive; but the man did not appear in earnest. He read his discourse (notwithstanding thy rebukes) so heavily, and with so little air of being convinced himself, that I thought he would have slept, as I observed many of his hearers did. I came home unedified, and troubled in mind. I dipped into the Lamentations, and from thence turning to the 34th chapter of Ezekiel, I found these words: 'Woe be to the shepherds of Israel, that do feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool: ye kill them that are fed; but ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened; neither have ye healed that which was sick; neither have ye bound up that which was broken; neither have ye brought again that which was driven away; neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them,' &c. Now I pray thee, friend, as thou art a man skilled in many things, tell me, who is meant by the diseased, the sick, the broken, the driven away, and the lost? and whether the prophecy in this chapter be accomplished, or yet to come to pass? And thou wilt oblige thy friend, though unknown."
This matter is too sacred for this paper; but I can't see what injury it would do any clergyman, to have it in his eye, and believe, all that are taken from him by his want of industry, are to be demanded of him. I daresay, Favonius[177] has very few of these losses. Favonius, in the midst of a thousand impertinent assailants of the divine truths, is an undisturbed defender of them. He protects all under his care, by the clearness of his understanding, and the example of his life: he visits dying men with the air of a man who hoped for his own dissolution, and enforces in others a contempt of this life, by his own expectation of the next. His voice and behaviour are the lively images of a composed and well-governed zeal. None can leave him for the frivolous jargon uttered by the ordinary teachers among Dissenters, but such who cannot distinguish vociferation from eloquence, and argument from railing. He is so great a judge of mankind, and touches our passions with so superior a command, that he who deserts his congregation must be a stranger to the dictates of nature, as well as to those of grace.