Thomas Dunscombe, Yeovil, to John Rippon, London, 8 December 1798.

Dear R

         I scribble a hasty line to say that yours wth the Register came duly to hand, and that I never can bring my mind to dictate to the pen when impressed with the consciousness that its emendations are to be sent to the press. What a  contrast beween you and me! Your mind is in its element when furnishing employ for the press so that I question if you would not be askid (as the Folks say in Berkeshire) if the freedom of ^the^ press were in the fullest sense taken from you. Well go on & prosper. I rejoice in all your prosperities and sympathise in all your distresses. You always mortify me with your brevity rapidity & deficiency of particulars whenever you write to me: I heard about two months ago what gladdened my heart, that you was actually in the West. “Then I am sure” said I to Mrs D, “that he will not return to town without “coming thro Yeovil,” but alas! it was a false report. Well! If you imprison yourself in London I do not mean to incarcerate myself here. Mrs D and I mean to go, for a week or two, to Broughton, on Monday next and I have more than half a mind to lengthen my excursion and, in order to support a consistency of Character, just have a peep at the Metropolis and a few of its most [fol. 426v.] favourite Inhabitants, and away again: should this thought be realised, conscience would smite me without mercy, & self-denyal would be practised without measure were I not to extend my peregrination to the Grange: let no one be surprised therefore should I pop in upon you some day, even [?] a week from next Tuesday se’ennight. Whether I shall ^be^ with you one hour only or two or five, and whether it will be at the hour of breakfast dinner or supper must depend upon circumstances which you have ^lived^ long enough in the world to know do not depend altogether on our volitions.

         It is so long since I saw you that I really long to have an hour or twos chat, with all the fraternity and felicity of days of yore: next week for certain (if dependent Creatures can be certain of anything future) we shall remain at Broughton so that if you have anything to say that must be said immediately, say it thither.

         While I think of it – An Independent Brother, of the Name of Vicary called on me this week to solicit my preaching for him the second L’s Day in January that he might be released on that day to serve a distant destitute Church and thereby procure some little help toward supporting his family: he lives at Sherborne but supplies a Congregation half way between Sherborne & Yeovil. He comes from Mr Hay’s Church at Bristol, & was ordained last Summer by Mr H and others. I have already given him several Sabbath’s labour, but most of them because he was ill. He is a worthy man has a large young family with a very small income. I shewed him your last Number; he particularly noticed [fol. 427r.] your hymn books advertisement, and the charitable destination of the profits to village preaching &c; he then asked me if I could name him to you as an object of attention. I promised him that I would; he is certainly a very proper object both from straitness of circumstances and from indefatigable exertions and excursions in village preaching. In a country Conventicle I never heard such good singing as Mr Vicary’s little Society at half way house gave us: indeed I am no judge of singing as you well know, but Mrs D I think is, and she was charmed with the singing there (she accompanied me the two or three Sabbaths) and said it was more like the [?] of a public Theatre ^at an Oratorio^ than the [?] of a meeting house. Poor Sprague I find has had his share of tribulation, at least of uneasiness, since he quitted his first [?]. I hope however he is now recovering his [?] as he is reinstated in it. I will now think of the finis to this Epistle, & yet it would be a little marvellous were it to be closed without one word of Politics. But what can I say? Perhaps you have no time to notice or to think of the goings on in the world at large. The times & their signs you leave wholly to Friend Bicheno. My feelings are not untinctured with awe from the apprehension that war has not yet nearly exhausted its ravages; I am sadly afraid that the contentious atmosphere will grow much more dark and terrible, and the distractions and destructions of Nations will be multiplied [fol. 427v.] and magnified before “wars will cease to the ends of the Earth, swords be beaten into plough shears &c”: often does my heart think of the peacefull predictions and promises and promises of Scripture, and with an ardent desire not to be described exclaim, “thy Kingdom come!”

         Adieu, with our united respects to yrself Mrs R & family

                                 I remain, as ever, yrs

                                             T Dunscombe

Yeovil Decr 8th 1798

Address: Rev: Dr Rippon |Grange Road |Southwark | London

Postmark: 10 Dec 98

Text: John Rippon Letters, British Library, Add. Ms. 25386, fols. 426-27.