John Fawcett, Wainsgate, near Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, to John Sutcliff, care of Hugh Evans, Bristol Academy, 29 May 1773.

My dear dear Brother,

         You desire in yours to Brother Tommas to know when our association is to be, & express a desire to be at it. Please then to observe that it is fixed for the 16 & 17 of June.  If possible I could wish to have your company at that time, & to hear you preach.  What I am going to relate will doubtless give you a good deal of concern.

         Your friend & mine above named is sick, & unable to answer your letter. His disorder is—what he has much dreaded—the small pox. I have just been with him. He is very full, but they are not of the worst sort. He is often very serene & well composed in his mind.   His hope is steadfast in Christ. He has just been saying— “Since the small pox came into the neighbourhood, I have endeavourd to live in a habitual preparedness for death.” I could be glad—exceeding glad to see him safely recover. O the dear ties of exalted friendship by which he has been bound to my heart!  I would gladly hope he will get thro’, but he has appeared for some time like a person ripening for glory.—We shall be able to inform you in a post or two how his disorder is likely to turn.

         Pray order to be with us at the association if possible.

                  Grace be with thy spirit. Amen

                                                                                 J. Fawcett

Wainsgate   May 29  1773.

My best respects to Messrs Evans’s &c

In haste—    

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 12-13 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 369, fol. 46a, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. References here are to the Lancashire and Yorkshire Baptist Association (founded in 1720), Hugh and Caleb Evans of Broadmead at Bristol, and possibly John Tommas, minister at the Baptist meeting in the Pithay in Bristol, but more likely a relation of his in Yorkshire, where Tommas was from originally and where Fawcett was ministering at Hebden Bridge.