The afflicted Father, in Answer to the preceding.

Dear Brother,

You are very kind in your Intention, yet very affecting in your just Reproofs of my misplaced Fondness for a Creature so unworthy. Resignation to the Divine Will, a noble, a needful Lesson! is the Doctrine you raise from it. God give it me, as I ought to have it. Time and His Grace, I hope, will effect it. But at present——Oh! Brother! you know not how I set my Heart on this Wretch. That was my Crime, you’ll say: And ‘tis but just it should be my Punishment. Do you, as you please, in what you propose. I desire not the ingrateful Creature should want, yet let her too be pinch’d: Nothing else will make her sensible of her great Offence——But don't let her be precipitated on any worse Fate, if a worse can be possible, as it may with regard to another Life. Yet let not her Seducer be the better for the Assistance. He shall never riot in my Substance. Let me know what you have done three Months hence; that I may retrench, or add to what you shall advance, as I shall see her Behaviour. I say in three Months, for another Reason: because I may by that time, I hope, get more Strength of Mind and Patience, than at present possesses the Heart of

Your ever-affectionate Brother.