et no bounds to his
own mercy; in that glorious plan of redemption, by which he
substitutes his own Son in the stead of sinners, he has made provision
for the chief of sinners, and can now be just and consistent while he
justifies the ungodly who believe in Jesus. Short was the time between
the thief's petition and the promise of salvation; nay, the petition
was the earnest of it. The same was the case with the jailer; I think,
too, the publican had the earnest in his petition. Now, instead of
laboring to bring my mind to acquiesce in the condemnation of my
child, on the supposition of its being for God's glory, I try to be
still, as he has commanded: not to follow my child to the yet
invisible world; but turning my eyes to that character which God has
revealed of himself--to the plan of redemption--to the sovereignty of
God in the execution of that plan--to his names of grace, 'The Lord,
the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in
goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin,'
while he adds, 'and that will by no means clear the guilty;' I meet it
with his own declaration, 'He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew
no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.' I read
also that 'mercy rejoiceth against judgment,' and many other like
scriptures, which, although I dare not ground a belief of his
salvation on them, afford one ray of hope after another, that God may
have made him a monument of mercy to the glory of his grace.

"Thus God himself consoles his own praying people, while man
ought to be very cautious, if not silent, where the Scriptures are
silent, as it respects the final state of another, whose heart we
cannot know, nor what God may have wrought in it. God hath set bounds
to our faith, which can nowhere find solid ground to fix upon but in
his own written promise. Yet, as I said above, he has set no bounds to
his own mercy, and he has made provision for its boundless flow, as
far as he shall please to extend it, through the atonement and merits
of his own Son, 'who is able to save to the uttermost all who come
unto God by him,' Now, my dear friend, you have my ideas of our
situation; if they be correct, I pray that our compassionate Father
may comfort you by them; if otherwise, may he pardon what is amiss,
and lead you, my dear friend C----, and myself, to such consolation as
he himself will own as the work of his Spirit, and save us from th