SIR,

DEDICATION.

TO JOSEPH SOUTH, ESQ.

This book treats of the very highest kind of Friendship; and to which you are not a stranger.

I have taken the liberty of inscribing it to you, in grateful acknowledgment of the Friendship which you have shewn to me; and as a memorial of the pastoral relation in which I sometime since stood, to a Church in the City, of which you had for many years been a member and an ornament. I know you will have no objection to your name standing in such a connection as that of Friendship with God, by means of this Friendship, a name becomes excellent upon the earth and is written in heaven.

I thought Friendship with God a lovely representation of religion, and have therefore carried it to an extent, beyond what I at first intended.

Will it be any satisfaction to such as pronounce the religion of Jesus defective, in that it does not more largely inculcate human Friendship, to be told, that the design of it is to restore and establish the divine.

May this Friendship dignify and bless the remaining days of your life; and make all beyond, happy and immortal to you.

PREFACE.

IN offering to the public a little obsolete work first sent forth into the world above seventy years ago, and never probably circulated extensively, something by way of explanation is clearly due. Since it has attracted the attention of the person who is now republishing it, the enquiry has very reasonably been made, who was its author? On which, no light nor information has arisen. And though the interest which these pages have excited in one family, and certain of their friends, would have rendered it highly agreeable to have traced some personal recollections of the good man, I cannot deem the want of this a serious misfortune. If it be, let it impress on the minds of all, but most on those of us who can never hope to entitle ourselves to the notice of posterity even so much as the writer of this work, the brevity of the period at which we shall be utterly forgotten. My relative, being young, almost immediately after conceiving the idea that a benefit would be conferred upon the public by the re-publication of this tract; adopted the most judicious step of consulting thereon an ancient, venerable friend of the family, whose erudition, piety, and excellence of understanding

eminently pointed him out as a person whose judgment must be highly valuable. This gentleman, whose report was decisive of the high merits of the work, placed it in the hands of a much honoured and beloved Prelate, whose opinion of it was also favourable. Highly rejoiced should I be to condsier myself at liberty (which I do not), to designate this distinguished friend of man more clearly; because we have reason to rejoice that no general description of eminent virtues can be considered applicable exclusively to one only amongst those who now grace this high station. His Lordship has been pleased to inscribe in the copy of the work now before me, (which was published in the year 1772), the following apt and emphatic quotation.

"One longs for affection,-for an object to love devotedly, for an interesting friend to associate and commune with,—meanwhile the Deity offers his Friendship and communion, and is refused or forgotten!"-Foster's Life and Correspondence. Vol. 1, P. 181.

That I should fail to set a high and peculiar value on this publication it would be painful to me to imagine. An affectionate, honoured father was used to place it in my hands, at an early age, to read it to him; in the midst of which his judicious remarks aud benignant questions tended delightfully to impress on my young mind the deep and refreshing import of its

contents.

A general idea of this invaluable, parental instruction thus tenderly imparted to me, may be better judged of than I could describe it, by a quotation from an old author which I subjoin.

Happy am I, at an advanced period of life, to find this little treatise so highly valued by immediate