A SERIES OF

LETTERS

ON

RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS,

by John Satchel

A scrupulosity of temper in the use of any lawful means to promote the spi,
ritual or temporal welfare of mankind, receives no countenance either from rea-
son or Revelation, or from the conduct of the best and wisest men. And when
to this we add the zeal and diligence with which bad men (and eminently at the
present period) practise every device to spread universal mischief, who shall de-
ny that it is allowable for every good man, nay, still more, that it is his duty, by
every fair and practicable method, to diffuse good; and when it is rejected in one
form, to try whether it may not find entertainment in another?

NEW-YORK:

PUBLISHED BY WILLIAMS & WHITING,

AT THEIR THEOLOGICAL AND CLASSICAL ROOK-STORE,
No. 118, Pearl-street.

J. SEYMOUR, PRINTER.

1809.

PREFACE.

THE author of the following work was the late Mr. JOHN SATCHEL, of Kettering. It is with pleasure I express not only my approbation of its leading sentiments, but the regard I feel for the memory of my friend.

I was not intimately acquainted with him till within a few years of his death: but during that period I saw in him much to esteem. To serious cheerfulness, frankness, kindness, and generosity, were added a lively imagination, a fertile invention, and a certain spring of soul, which would not suffer him to live inactive. Whatever his hands found him to do, he did it with his might.

Having observed that much evil was conveyed to the rising generation by the enchanting works of fiction, it was his wish to convey truth and godliness through that medium. His turn of mind was adapted to this manner of writing. His characters, though fictitious, were to him real. He would sorrow in their sorrows, rejoice in their joys, and frequently bedew his papers with tears. Being a close observer of human nature, he has exhibited a faithful representation of human life.

In his youth he was much attached to Mr. Hervey, and sometimes went to Weston-Favel to hear him. After this an intimate friendship subsisted about twenty years between him and Mr. Abraham Maddock, an evangelical