1769 WILLIAM ROMAINE. Perfect Letter on Walking by Faith & Not by Feelings! Great Awakening.

A wonderful letter, perfectly situated to the author, by William Romaine [1714-1795]. He attended Oxford contemporaneously with Whitefield and the Wesleys and was considered, by his professors to be one of the greatest geniuses of his age. And that was to be turned toward Christ. He became pastor at St. Anne's Blackfriars, was friends with William Grimshaw, John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, etc., though decidedly on the Calvinistic side of the revival. He also, as Doddridge and many others, remained in the Church of England.

His most famous work, almost continuously in print since its first appearance in the 18th century, The Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith, is a devotional classic. And the text of our present letter decidedly fits in that theological framework. 

J. C. Ryle devotes an entire section to Romaine in his "Leaders of the Great Revival."

The present appears unpublished, but is probably written to the "Dear Madam" letter of 1769, published in his works which references the same problem and uses some of the same terminology. It appears both are to Mrs. Berkin of Bristol, also a friend of Charles and Sally Wesley and noted in Charles' correspondence.

"Dear Madam [Mrs. Berkin]

On Monday, as soon as you please, we will wait on you. 

You say, you cannot rejoyce in infirmities, because you do not feel the power of Christ resting upon you. This is the time - the very time, without feeling to trust, in trusting to rejoyce - O for more of that living by the faith of the Son of God in the sight & sense of all guilt & in the absence of all feeling. Dear Jesus be your teacher, as well as Saviour.

Our kind to Mr. Berkin & Misses & prayers for my namesake.

With great esteem
Yrs. W. Romaine"

Remains of sellotape reinforcing. A wonderful letter.