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ye shall receive ; ' the next , ' If ye ahide in me , and rny words abide in you , ye shall ask what ye will , and it shall be done to you : ' then followed , ' Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in nay name , he will give it you : ' ' Ask and receive , that your joy may be full : * ' Whatsoever ye shall ask in noy name , that I will do , that the Father may be glorified in the Son : ' 'If ye ask any thing in my name , I will do it ; ' and at last , ' The prayer of faith shall save
the sick , and the Lord shall raise him up / These scriptures falling thus undesignedly and unexpectedly in my way at that moment , and thus directly following each other , in the order in which I have transcribed them , struck me and the whole family very sensibly ; and I felt great encouragement earnestly to plead them in prayer , with a very firm persuasion that , one way or other , God would make this a very teaching circumstance to me and the family . Then Mr . Bunyan came , and pleaded strongly against blistering her ; but I told him it was a matter of conscience to me to follow the
prescriptions of the doctor , though I left the issue entirely to God , and felt a dependence in him alone * I then wrote you the hasty lines which I hope you received by the last post , and renewed my applications to God in secret , reviewing the promises which had so much astonished and revived me in the family , when those words , ' The prayer of faith shall save the sick , ' came on my heart , as if it had been from the very mouth of God himself , 60 that I could not forbear replying , before I was well aware , * then it ahall ? ' and I was then enabled to pray with that penetrating sense of God's almighty
power , and with that confidence in his love , which I think I never had before in an equal degree ; and I thought I then felt myself much more desirous that the child should be spared , if it were but a little while , and from this illness , as ia answer to prayer , than on account of her recovery simply , and in itself , or of my own enjoyment of her . I lay open all my heart before you , my dear , because it seems to me something of a singular experience . While I was thus employed , with an ardour of soul which , had it long continued , would have weakened and exhausted my spirits extremely , I was told that a gentleman wanted me . This grieved me exceedingly , till I found it was Mr . Hutton , now of the Moravian church , whose Christian exhortations and con *
solations were very reviving to me . He said , among other things , ' God ' s will concerning you is , that you should be happy at all times , ana in all circumstances , and particularly now in this circumstance ; happy in your child ' s life , happy in its health , happy in its sickness , happy in its death , happy in its resurrection ! ' He promised to go and pray for it , and said he had known great effects attending such a method . So it was , that from that hour the child began to mend , as I wrote word to you by him that evening , and by Mr . Offley yesterday morning . I cannot pretend to say that I am assured she will recover ; but I am fully persuaded that if she does not , God will make her death a blessing to us ; and I think she will be spared . "—P . 498 .
It is scarcely necessary to say , that Dr . Doddridge was ready to refer such circumstances as are related above to natural agency , in the great majority of cases of peculiar interest , though in instances like that of Col . Gardiner ' s conversion , he believed in miraculous interposition „ Ascribing all influences to God , he believed that the encouragements to prayer which came when they were most needed were afforded by divine mercy ; but would no doubt have joined with us in referring them to the natural laws of suggestion . There is no superstition in being thankful for such encouragements , or for their being well timed .
We have here letters from Col . Gardiner and his lady , from Farmer , Clark , Mills , Neal , and Warburton . Concluding that the curiosity of our readers will be as powerful as our own to know what kind of intercourse subsisted between men so totally opposite in disposition and intellectual character as Warburton and Doddridge , we close our extracts with a portion of a letter from the former to the latter .
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Correspondence of Dr . Doddridge . 387
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1830, page 387, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2585/page/27/
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