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600 NOTES TO VOLUME I.
meagre; but attended with a fresh and lively sense of vital and ex
perimental religion. Retiring with him from some company who
were present, he expressed himself, in much tenderness of spirit, to
the following effect: ’O my dear friend! I have lately passed through
many fiery trials and deep baptisms, such as I had never before
fully experienced : all the secret and concealed sins of my former life,
even many which had passed unnoticed, have been brought to light
and set in order before me. I have been laid more low than ever,
before the throne; and so humbled in a sense of my own nothing
ness, that I could stoop even to the meanest of my fellow -creatures.
But I hope these severe dispensations have been for my further
purification, and meetness for that rest and glory, which will be the
fruition of sanctified spirits to all eternity.’ In the year 1776, I was
introduced to a personal acquaintance with him, by a worthy minister
in our own Society, and esteem the same, one of the blessings of
my advanced years, for which I am accountable to the author of
every good gift. He lived some years in the neighbourhood of Hert
ford, and left a sweet savour behind him , both among rich and poor.
It was my lot to differ much from him in my natural disposition,
and also in some points to which he was much attached; but he
sought not so much to promote the sentimental part of religion, as
the life of righteousness, and the experimental knowledge of the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ; which crucifies the corrupt propensities
of fallen nature, and produces the fruits of the spirit, which are love,
peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost!"
“ Eighth Month, 25, 1783.—I received a letter from our dear and
worthy friend, Thomas Hartley; who, although aged and infirm ,
appears to retain a fresh and lively sense of that true and experi
mental religion, which consists not in the letter, but the spirit, and
that circumcision which is inward .”
“ Twelfth Month, 20, 1784. — This day I was informed of the decease
of my dear and worthy friend Thomas Hartley, who departed this
life the 10th instant. I had been personally acquainted with him
for more than nine years: we were very dissimilar in our natural
dispositions, and in our sentiments respecting various points; in
others we were firmly united ; our union being more in the spirit,
than the letter; the inward than the outward. He was a man of
unaffected piety, great sincerity, and exquisite sensibility ; deeply
suffering under a sense of his own defects in particular, and of the
depravity of fallen nature in general; following a crucified Saviour in
the regeneration, according to his measure: there is abundant cause
for a comfortable hope, that he now rests from his labours, ’where
the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.”
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