it may be some satisfaction to
you to correspond with one with whom you may use a friendly freedom
in all such matters, and on whose fidelity you may depend. You may,
therefore, command me in any of these respects, and I shall take a
pleasure in serving you. One piece of advice I shall venture to give you,
though your own good sense will make my enlarging upon it less needful--I
mean, that you would, from your first setting out, carefully distinguish
between the essentials of real religion, and those things which are
commonly reckoned by its professors to belong to it. The want of this
distinction has had very unhappy consequences from one age to another,
and perhaps in none more than the present. But your daily converse with
your Bible, which you mention, may herein give you great assistance. I
move also, that since infidelity so much abounds, you would not only, by
close and serious consideration, endeavour to settle yourself well in the
fundamental principles of religion; but also that, as opportunity offers,
you would converse with those books which treat most judiciously on the
divine original of Christianity, such as Grotins, Abbadie, Baxter, Bates,
Du Plessis, &c., which may establish you against the cavils that occur
in almost all conversations, and furnish you with arguments which, when
properly offered, may be of use to make some impression on others. But
being too much straitened to enlarge at present, I can only add, that if
your hearty falling in with serious religion should prove any hinderance
to your advancement in the world, (which I pray God it may not, unless
such advancement would be a real snare to you,) I hope you will trust
our Saviour's word, that it shall be no disadvantage to you in the final
issue: he has given you his word for it, Matt. xix. 29, upon which you
may safely depend; and I am satisfied none that ever did so at last
repented of it. May you go on and prosper, and the God of all grace and
peace be with you!"

I think it very evident from the contents of this letter, that the major
had not imparted to his mother the most singular circumstances attending
his conversion; and indeed there was something so peculiar in them,
that I do not wonder he was always cautious in speaking of them, and
especially that he was at first much on the reserve. We may also
naturally reflect that there seems to have been something very
providential in this letter, considering the debate in which our
illust