umbly say, we know in whom we have believed; who can
and will perfect what remaineth, and us also in doing what is
well-pleasing in His eye-sight.

"I find some trouble in your spirit, occasioned first not only
by your sad and heavy burden, as you call it, but also by the
dissatisfaction you take at the ways of some good men whom you
love with your heart, who through the principle, that it is
lawful for a lesser part, if in the right, to force a numerical
majority, &c. &c.

"To the first: call not your burden sad or heavy. If your
Father laid it on you, He intended neither. He is the Father of
light, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; who of His
own will begot us.... Dear Robin, our fleshly reasonings
ensnare us. These make us say 'heavy,' 'sad,' 'pleasant,'
'easy.' Was there not a little of this when Robert Hammond,
through dissatisfaction too, desired retirement from the army,
and thought of quiet in the Isle of Wight? Did not God find him
out there? I believe he will never forget this. And now I
perceive he is to seek again; partly through his sad and heavy
burden, and partly through his dissatisfaction with friends'
actings.

"Dear Robin, thou and I were never worthy to be door-keepers in
this service. If thou wilt seek, seek to know the mind of God
in all that chain of providence, whereby God brought thee
thither, and that person (_the king_) to thee; how, before and
since, God hath ordered him, and affairs concerning him; and
then tell me, whether there be not some glorious and high
meaning in all this, above what thou hast yet attained? And,
laying aside thy fleshly reason, seek of the Lord to teach thee
what that is; and He will do it. I dare be positive to say, It
is not that the wicked should be exalted that God should so
appear as indeed He hath done. For there is no peace to _them_.
No; it is set upon the hearts of such as fear the Lord, and we
have witness upon witness, that it shall go ill with them and
their partakers.

"As to thy dissatisfaction with friends' actings upon that
supposed principle--I wonder not at that. If a man take not his
own burden well, he shall hardly others'; especially if
involved by so near a relation of love and Christian
brotherhood as thou art, I shall not take upon me t