Mrs.Pringle to Mrs.Glibbans--LONDON.
My Dear Mrs.Glibbans--The breking up of the old Parlament has been the cause why I did not right you before, it having taken it out of my poor to get a frank for my letter till yesterday; and I do ashure you, that I was most extraordinar uneasy at the great delay, wishing much to let you know the decayt state of the Gospel in thir perts, which is the pleasure of your life to study by day, and meditate on in the watches of the night.
There is no want of going to church, and, if that was a sign of grease and peese in the kingdom of Christ, the toun of London might hold a high head in the tabernacles of the faithful and true witnesses.But saving Dr.
Nichol of Swallo-Street, and Dr.Manuel of London-Wall, there is nothing sound in the way of preaching here; and when I tell you that Mr.John Gant, your friend, and some other flea-lugged fallows, have set up a Heelon congregation, and got a young man to preach Erse to the English, ye maun think in what a state sinful souls are left in London.But what I have been the most consarned about is the state of the dead.I am no meaning those who are dead in trespasses and sins, but the true dead.Ye will hardly think, that they are buried in a popish-like manner, with prayers, and white gowns, and ministers, and spadefuls of yerd cast upon them, and laid in vauts, like kists of orangers in a grocery seller--and I am told that, after a time, they are taken out when the vaut is shurfeeted, and their bones brunt, if they are no made into lamp-black by a secret wark-- which is a clean proof to me that a right doctrine cannot be established in this land--there being so little respec shone to the dead.
The worst point, howsomever, of all is, what is done with the prayers-- and I have heard you say, that although there was nothing more to objec to the wonderful Doctor Chammers of Glasgou, that his reading of his sermons was testimony against him in the great controversy of sound doctrine; but what will you say to reading of prayers, and no only reading of prayers, but printed prayers, as if the contreet heart of the sinner had no more to say to the Lord in the hour of fasting and humiliation, than what a bishop can indite, and a book-seller make profit o'."Verily," as I may say, in a word of scripter, I doobt if the glad tidings of salvation have yet been preeched in this land of London; but the ministers have good stipends, and where the ground is well manured, it may in time bring forth fruit meet for repentance.
