TO THE
INHABITANTS
OF THE
BOROUGH AND FOREIGN OF KIDDERMINSTER.
BOTH MAGISTRATES AND PEOPLE.

My dear Friends,

There are obvious reasons for prefixing your names to this Book. It contains the substance of what was first preached in your parish-church, and was first published from the press with a dedication to your worthy ancestors. Your trade and manufactures can never render your town so famous, as the name and writings of Mr. Baxter have already made it, both in this island, and in many remote parts of the Protestant world. His intimate and important relation to Kidderminster, and the years he abode in it, afforded him the most delightful reflection as long as he lived.

Long experience has enabled me to testify for you, that, notwithstanding your share in those common distinctions, which so unhappily divide fellow-protestants, you possess a most unusual degree of candor and friendship for each other. Thus you shew, that Kidderminster has not totally lost the amiable spirit which it imbibed more than a century ago.

There are no excellencies personal or relative, no species of domestic or public happiness, no beauties of civil or religious life, but what will be naturally promoted by a care to secure to ourselves an interest in the rest which remaineth to the people of God. They are the people for whom alone that rest is designed, both by the promises of God, and by the purchase of the Son of God. A care to secure that rest to ourselves, is the one thing needful. But neither this people, nor this care, you well know, are the peculiarities of any age, or of any party. If the inhabitants of Kidderminster formerly excelled in this care, you must allow, that it was their greatest glory. And this, more than any improvements of trade, or increasing elegancies of life, will be the greatest glory of their successors.

To excite this care, is the noblest design of all religious instruction. This, and nothing else, animates the following pages. Here, God and Christ, heaven and holiness, invite your most attentive and affectionate regards. Here, you may peruse, what multitudes in the same town have heard and read before you to their everlasting joy, till your blessings prevail above the blessings of your progenitors. Here, by the help of Divine grace, you may learn the heavenly art of walking with God below, of living in a constant view and foretaste of the glories of the New Jerusalem, and of making all you say or do, suffer or enjoy, subservient to the brightening your immortal crown. Nothing has the compiler of this abridgment to wish like such consequences as these; even, to see the same holy and heavenly conversation in himself, and in those around him, now, as Mr. Baxter saw in his day. This would be the greatest joy, and shall be the constant and fervent prayer, of