1808 JOHN FOSTER. Fine 1p. Letter by Baptist Divine and Author to a Suffering Friend.

Very fine, unpublished* pastoral letter to a friend, just emancipated from "slavery," likely of some form of cruel employment rather than chattel slavery. The addressees, Mr. and Mrs. Collins, are encouraged in their faith and join together in hoping for success, likely related to some missionary or Baptist endeavor.

John Foster [1770-1843] graduated from the Baptist College [Bristol], was a Baptist minister, but was forced to resign because of an ongoing throat condition. He turned to pen and was one of the two most significant Baptist authors in the public domain of the 19th century. The other being Robert Hall. He published nearly 200 articles in The Eclectic Review, and became an important advocate for social reforms in Education, alongside work and prison reforms promoted by Wilberforce, Hannah More, Elizabeth Fry, and others. 

He was also a noted abolitionist and advocate for Africa. He helped run a training school for African young men in England, which was both Evangelistic / Missionary in focus and also designed to help empower Africans against enslavement. During the missionary controversies with William Carey, Joshua Marshman, and William Ward, he took to print in support of the missionaries.

Bourton Oct 13 [1808]

Dear Sir,

The Miss Bunns* have been here a little while, and I intended before they went to have written you as much as might fairly been called a letter, but one thing and another has prevented till the hour of their setting off towards Frome. I have just time to express to you and Mrs. Collins my kind remembrance and best wishes. I hope you are both as well in health as when I saw you, and that the most important concerns are prosperous.

If these are prosperous with all of us, it will be of comparatively small consequence whether we have been more or less favoured by the other kinds of success and prosperity which are made the sole pursuit by so many mortals around us. Yet I have a very firm persuasion that even in this respect you are now to see better times than during the former periods of your life, and to have some consolation for the long course of miserable toils which you have sustained for people in whose service happily you are not to waste one hour henceforward. How glad I am that you are no longer their slave, nor will ever again be subject to their injustice. As to their base ingratitude, you will not now care any more about it. I wish you both most cordially all the blessings of the upper and the nether springs, and shall be extremely glad whenever it shall be in the course of the divine providence to see you once more. 

Will you remember me to Miss Davis, and Mr. & Mrs. Stiles. Tell my very excellent friend Mrs. Collins to keep up her spirits, to exercise her faith, and not oppress herself with too much labour. Let her, if she can, steal Hannah into her service again. 

My wife joins me in the kindest wishes for your welfare in ever respect.

Yours Cordially.
J. Foster. 

Probably originally a bifolium, but the address panel not present. Otherwise good, clean, complete, and legible. 

*Various letters to "Miss Bunn" are preserved in the Life and Correspondence of John Foster [1860].