To Mary Bishop Date: REIGATE, November 30, 1774. MY DEAR SISTER, We so become all things to all, as not to hurt our own souls, when we first secure a single eye, a steady design, to please all for their good to edification, and then take care that our discourse be always good to the use of edifying and such as may minister grace to the hearers. But in order to this we have need of power from on high and of the wisdom that sitteth by the throne. This alone can give us to order our conversation aright, so as to profit both others and our own souls. Before this can effectually be done, you must conquer your natural reserve, and exercise it only to those of whom you know nothing at all or of whom you know nothing good. Perhaps there is one occasion more on which it will be highly expedient, if not necessary namely, when good persons (at least in some measure so) sink beneath their character, trifle away time, or indulge themselves in a conversation which has no tendency to improve either the speaker or the hearer.

I think it will not be best for you to go out less than you ever did. Suppose you have more faith and more love (as I would fain think you have), you certainly ought to go out more. Otherwise your faith will insensibly die away. It is by works only that it can be made perfect. And the more the love of solitude is indulged the more it will increase. This is a temptation common to men. In every age and country Satan has whispered to those who began to taste the powers of the world to come (as well as to Gregory Lopez), 'Au desert!' Au desert! Most of our little flock at Oxford were tried with this, my brother and I in particular. Nay, but I say, 'To the Bible! To the Bible!' And there you will learn, 'as you have time, to do good unto all men': to warn every man, to exhort every man as you have opportunity; although the greatest part of your care and labor should be laid out on those that are of the household of faith. Certainly you may continually do good to others without any ways endangering the salvation of your own soul. What at present you much want is simplicity, in the Archbishop of Cambray's sense of the word: that grace 'whereby the soul casts off all unnecessary reflections upon itself.' I wish I could say of you, as I did of a young person many years ago, when I sent her his little book, In art, in nature, can we find Colors to picture thee Speak, Cambray's pen, for Sally's mind; She is simplicity. I am, my dear Miss Bishop, Yours affectionately. Miss Bishop, Near the Cross Bath, In Bath.