TO _______ _______

My love to Friends at Chalfont, as if I named particulars. I love them faithfully, and watch for their souls, and am in unity with the living body, and in the tender sense and love of Truth. Beseech them to take heed how they judge Friends in general, or the meeting, or the meetings of Friends, who singly wait on the Lord, to be guided by him in what they do. Alas! they may easily apprehend that, in a particular case, Friends should do thus, and thus; but perhaps they may not see or feel how <509> solemnly Friends in that particular, wait on the Lord to be guided by him; and will they who see not how things went in such or such a particular case, venture to judge the result of Friends? This cannot but tend greatly to their hurt, if they be found in such a practise; and they may lose their condition, and the sense of Truth in themselves, and of their own states, and grow up and be strong in a contrary wisdom, before they are aware. O, how have I travailed for them, and how faithfully have I spoken in the name of the Lord. O, that the labour of my love towards them, may not be in vain to any of them. If prejudice get up in any of them, against the meetings, which they ought to think well of, and whose judgment they ought to be subject to in the Lord; that prejudice will become as a canker, and will eat out the good in their own hearts, and they will not be justified in God's sight; when they, whom they condemn, will be justified even in that very particular. If they had been present at meetings, as I have been, and had seen the deep retirement and watch, that hath been on our spirits, and the weighty presence and power of the Lord, which hath been manifested in the midst of us, they would be afraid, to give themselves liberty hastily to speak against any thing that is done there. We cannot answer the will of any, in any thing; but our God must go before us in every thing, or we must stop till he make our way clear.

Written in the 4th Month, 1675