me

I am obliged to you for the particular account you have sent

He to whom I have surrendered myself, and all my concerns, has otherwise appointed, and let his will be done. He gives me much, which he witholds from others, and if he was pleased to withold all that makes an outward difference between me and the poor mendicant in the street, it would still become me to say, His Will be done.

It pleased God to cut short my Brother's connections and expectations here, yet not without giving him lively and glorious views of a better happiness than any he could propose to himself in such a world as this. Notwithstanding his great learning (for he was one of the chief men in the University in that respect) he was candid and sincere in his inquiries after truth. Tho' he could not come into my sentiments when I first acquainted him with them, nor in the many conversations which I afterward had with him upon the subject, could he be brought to acquiesce in them as scriptural and true, yet I had no sooner left St. Albans than he began to study with the deepest attention those points in which we differed, and to furnish himself with the best writers upon them. His mind was kept open to conviction for five years, during all which time he laboured in this pursuit with unwearied diligence, as leisure and opportunity were afforded. Amongst his dying words were these, Brother, I thought you wrong, yet wanted to believe as you did.

"I found myself not able to believe, yet always thought I should one day be brought to do so." From the study of books, he was brought upon his death-bed, to the study of himself, and there learnt to renounce his righteousness, and his own most amiable character, and to submit himself to the righteousness which is of God by faith. With these views he was desirous of death. Satisfied of his interest in the blessing purchased by the blood of Christ, he prayed for death with earnestness, felt the approaches of it with joy, and died in peace.

Yours my dear Friend,

W: COWPER:

The exquisite sensibility of Cowper could not fail to suffer deeply on the loss of such a Brother; but it is the peculiar blessing of a religious turn of mind, that it serves as an antidote against the corrosive influence of sorrow. Devotion, if it had no other beneficial effect on the human character, would be still inestimable to man, as a medicine for the anguish he feels, in losing the objects of his affection. How far it proved so in the present case, the Reader will be enabled to judge by a Letter, in which Cowper describes his sensations on this aweful event to one of his favorite correspondents.

M

LETTER XXI.

LETTER XXI.

To Mrs. COWPER, Holles-Street Cavendish-Square.

DEAR COUSIN,

Olney, June 7, 1770.

I am obliged to you for sometimes thinking of an unseen Friend, and bestowing a Letter upon me. It gives me pleasure to hear from you, especially to find that our gracious Lord enables you to weather out the storms you meet with, and to cast anchor within the veil.

You judge rightly of the manner, in which I have been affected by the Lord's late dispensation towards my Brother. I found in it cause of sorrow, that I lost so near a relation, and one so deservedly dear to me, and that he left me just when our sentiments upon the most interesting subject became the same: But much more cause of joy, that it pleased God to give me clear and evident proof, that he had changed his heart, and adopted him into the number of his children. For this I hold myself peculiarly bound to thank him, because he might have done all, that he was pleased to do for him, and yet have afforded him neither strength nor opportunity to declare it. I doubt not that he enlightens the understandings, and works a gracious change in the hearts of many in their last moments, whose surrounding friends are not made acquainted with it.

He told me that from the time he was first ordained, he began to be dissatisfied with his religious opinions, and to suspect that

there

1

From the time when I first Alban's, he began to read

there were greater things concealed in the Bible, than were generally believed, or allowed to be there. visited him after my release from St. upon the subject. It was at that time I informed him of the views of divine truth, which I had received in that school of affliction. He laid what I said to heart, and begun to furnish himself with the best writers upon the controverted points, whose works he read with great diligence and attention, comparing them all the while with the Scripture. None ever truly and ingenuously sought the truth, but they found it. A spirit of earnest inquiry is the gift of God, who never says to any, seek ye my face in vain. Accordingly about ten days before his death, it pleased the Lord to dispell all his doubts, to reveal in his heart the knowledge of the Saviour, and to give him firm and unshaken peace in the belief of his ability and willingness to save. As to the affair of the Fortune-teller he never mentioned it to me, nor was there any such paper found as you mention. I looked over all his papers before I left the place, and had there been such a one, must have discovered it. I have heard the report from other quarters, but no other particulars than that the woman foretold him when he should die. I suppose there may be some truth in the matter, but whatever he might think of it before his knowledge of the truth, and however extraordinary her predictions might really be, I am satisfied that he had then received far other views of the wisdom and majesty of God, than to suppose that he would entrust his secret counsels to a vagrant, who did not

mean I suppose, to be understood to have received her intelligence from the Fountain of Light, but thought herself sufficiently honored by any, who would give her credit for a secret intercourse of this kind with the Prince of Darkness.

Mrs. Unwin is much obliged to you for your kind enquiry after her. She is well, I thank God, as usual, and sends her reHer Son is in the Ministry, and has the Living of

spects to you.

Stock, in Essex.

We were last week alarmed with an account of

his being dangerously ill; Mrs. Unwin went to see him, and in a few days left him out of danger.

The Letters of the afflicted Poet to this amiable and sympathetic Relation have already afforded to my Reader an insight into the pure recesses of Cowper's wonderful mind at some remarkable periods of his life, and if my Reader's opinion of these Letters is consonant to my own, he will feel concerned, as I do, to find a chasm of ten years in this valuable correspondence; the more so, as it was chiefly occasioned by a new, a long, and severe visitation of that mental malady, which periodically involved in calamitous oppression, the superior faculties of this interesting Sufferer. His extreme depression seems not to have recurred immediately on the shock of his Brother's death. In the autumn of the In the autumn of the year in which he wrote the following serious, but

he sustained that affecting loss, animated Letter to Mr. Hill.

LETTER XXII.