Page:The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, M.A., late of Pembroke-College, Oxford, and Chaplain to the Rt. Hon. the Countess of Huntingdon (1771 Volume 2).djvu/322

This page needs to be proofread.
  • ing your Ladyship with some more particulars. Every day we

have new hearers, and I find some or another are almost continually brought under convictions, or are edified at the tabernacle. I have offered Mr. W—— to assist occasionally at his chapel, and I don't know but it may be accepted. Your Ladyship will hear soon. O that I may learn from all I see, to desire to be nothing! and to think it my highest privilege to be an assistant to all, but the head of none. I find a love of power sometimes intoxicates even God's own dear children, and makes them to mistake passion for zeal, and an over-bearing spirit for an authority given them from above. For my own part, I find it much easier to obey than govern, and that it is much safer to be trodden under foot, than to have it in one's power to serve others so. This makes me fly from that, which at our first setting out we are too apt to court. Thanks be to the Lord of all Lord's for taking any pains with ill and hell deserving me! I cannot well buy humility at too dear a rate. This is a grace after which your Ladyship pants, and with which our Lord will delight to fill you more and more. Your Ladyship's letter convinces me, that those who know and do most, think they know and do least. If it were not so, grace itself would prove our bane, and goodness and zeal, through the pride and corruption of our hearts, be our destroyers. Honoured Madam, my hands and heart are continually lifted up for you, that you may abound evermore in every good word and work, and be cloathed with that humility which your Ladyship delights to wear every day; I mean that humble mind which was in Christ Jesus. I rejoice exceedingly in the comfort which your Ladyship has in Mr. B——. I shall take care to cultivate our acquaintance, and earnestly pray that it may be blessed to our mutual improvement I trust he will be a good soldier of Jesus Christ, and doubt not ere long I shall hear of his receiving some wounds and scars of honour in the field of battle. After I left Mr. Z——, by appointment I went to Mrs. K——, to whom with the Countess, Lady G——, Mr. C——, and one Mrs. B——, I gave the blessed sacrament, and afterwards a word of exhortation. Our Lord was there, and your Ladyship &c. were remembered before him. On Tuesday next the blessed feast is to be repeated at