Andrew Fuller, Kettering, to Daniel Sutcliff, Pickhaven Gate near Hebden Bridge, Halifax, 27 October 1814.

My dear Friend,

          I have received y.rs. I was detained from drawing out the Sermon, and writing The Memoirs[2] partly by my long Journey into the North, partly by another Journey I was obliged to take immediately on my return, to London, where I was kept three weeks, and partly by a severe illness which has laid me by several weeks. It is done however now, and in the press.

         As to the sentence which you correct, I hope you will excuse the liberties I have taken with your account; as I have altered the sentences in that and several other instances, and some paragraphs are omitted. I suppose the Sermon and Memoir must be sold for 2 Shillings: but in sending your parcel I wish to charge you only what they cost me.

         The sketch which you have sent, has some good bones, but it is a mere skeleton; and I doubt whether our dear friend would have approved, could he have been consulted, of its appearing in public. If however it does appear in the B[aptist]. M[agazine]. I think it should be after his Memoir, a considerable part, if not the whole of which will probably be copied with the Magazine.

         I was lately told of a sermon which your brother preached from Isai. 40. 30, 31. which was peculiarly interesting. If I could get a sketch of it, I should like to insert that after his memoir is out, and perhaps this also: but I am rather doubtful. Posthumous publications are delicate things, and seldom do justice, to say nothing of honour, to the deceased. When I die I think of leaving a prohibition, that nothing found among my papers shall be published after my decease.

         In your account you say “mostly enjoyed a settled peace, which sometimes rose to joy,” yet you represent him almost immediately after as saying, “as to strong consolation or triumph, I know nothing of it.” Now it appears to me that joy and strong consolation are so nearly the same thing that to affirm the one, and disown the other has the appearance of a contradiction. I have therefore left out what you said of joy. I have also omitted giving the name to his disorder, save that it was a dropsy, lest there should be some mistake on a subject, beside the promise of persons unacquainted with the science of medicine.

         Make my kind respects to dear Mr Fawcett Sen.r & Jun.r when you see them

                                             I am y.rs Sincerely

                                                               A. Fuller

Kettering 27.th of Oct. 1814.

Text: Eng. MS. 376, fol. 716b, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Fuller preached Sutcliff’s funeral sermon in June 1814; it was published, along with the memoir, in October as The Principles and Prospects of a Servant of Christ:  A Sermon Delivered at the Funeral of the Late Rev. J. Sutcliff, A.M. of Olney, on June the 28th, 1814; With a Brief Memoir of the Deceased(Kettering, 1814). Sutcliff’s obituary, as this letter suggests, was probably written by Daniel Sutcliff; it appeared in the Baptist Magazine 6 (1814), 332.