Ccxxvi.—To The Lady Kilconojjhar.
of one that cometh into the sheep-fold not by Christ the door, but climbeth up another way. If the man build his hay and stubble upon the golden foundation, Christ Jesus (already laid among you), and ye follow him, I assure you, the man's work shall burn and never bide God's fire: and ye and he both shall be in danger of everlasting burning except ye repent. Oh, if any pain, any sorrow, any loss that I can suffer for Christ, and for you, were laid in pledge to buy Christ's love to you! and that I could lay my dearest joys, next to Christ my Lord, in the gap betwixt you and eternal destruction! O if I had paper as broad as heaven and earth, and ink as the sea and all the rivers and fountains of the earth, and were able to write the love, the worth, the excellency, the sweetness, and due praises of our dearest and fairest Well-beloved! and then if ye could read and understand it! What could I want, if my ministry among you should make a marriage between the little bride in those bounds and the Bridegroom? Oh, how rich a prisoner were I, if I could obtain of my Lord (before whom I stand for you) the salvation of you all! Oh, what a prey had I gotten, to have you catched in Christ's net! Oh, then I had cast out my Lord's lines and His net with a rich gain! Oh then, well-wared pained breast, and sore back, and crazed body, in speaking early and late to you! My witness is above; your heaven would be two heavens to me, and the salvation of you all as two salvations to me. I would subscribe a suspension, and a fristing of my heaven for many hundred years (according to God's good pleasure), if ye were sure in the upper lodging, in our Father's house, before me. I take to witness heaven and earth against you, I take instruments in the hands of that sun and daylight that beheld us, and in the hands of the timber and walls of that kirk, if I drew not up a fair contract of marriage betwixt you and Christ, if I went not with offers betwixt the Bridegroom and you, and your conscience did bear you witness, your mouths confessed, that there were many fair trysts and meetings drawn on betwixt Christ and you at communion feasts, and other occasions? There were bracelets, jewels, rings, and love-letters, sent to you by the Bridegroom. It was told you what a fair dowry ye should have, and what a house your Husband and ye should dwell in, and what was the Bridegroom's excellency, sweetness, might, power, the eternity and glory of His kingdom, the exceeding deepness of His love, who sought His black wife through pain, fires, shame, death, and the grave, and swimmed the salt sea for her, undergoing the curse of the law, and then1 was made a curse for you; and ye then consented, and said, "Even so I take Him." I counsel you to beware of the new and strange leaven of men's inventions, beside and against the word of God, contrary to the oath of this kirk, now coming among you. I instructed you of the supersti-
tion and idolatry in kneeling in the instant of receiving the Lord's Supper, and of crossing in baptism, and of the observing of men's days, without any warrant of Christ our perfect Lawgiver. Countenance not the surplice, the attire of the mass-priest, the garment of Baal's priests. The abominable bowing to altars of tree (wood) is coming upon you. Hate, and keep yourselves from idols. Forbear in any case to hear the reading of the new fatherless Service-Book,2 full of gross heresies, popish and superstitious errors, without any warrant of Christ, tending to the overthrow of preaching. You owe no obedience to the bastard canons; they are unlawful, blasphemous, and superstitious. All the ceremonies that lie in Antichrist s foul womb, the wares of that great mother of fornications, the kirk of Rome, are to be refused. Ye see whither they lead you. Continue still in the doctrine which ye have received. Ye heard of me the whole counsel of God. Sew no clouts upon Christ's robe. Take Christ, in His rags and losses, and as persecuted by men, and be content to sigh and pant up the mountain, with Christ s cross on your back. Let me be reputed a false prophet (and your conscience once said the contrary), if your Lord Jesus will not stand by you and maintain you, and maintain your cause against your enemies.
I have heard, and my soul is grieved for it, that since my departure from you, many among you are turned back from the good old way, to the dog s vomit again. Let me speak to these men. It was not without God s special direction, that the first sentence that ever my mouth uttered to you was that, "And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind" (John ix. 39). Is it possible that my first meeting and yours may be when we shall both stand before the dreadful Judge of the world; and in the name and authority of the Son of God, my great King and Master, I write, by these presents, summonses to those men. I arrest their souls and bodies to the day of our compearance. Their eternal damnation standeth subscribed, and sealed in heaven, by the hand-writing of the great Judge of quick and dead; and I am ready to stand up, as a preaching witness against such to their face, on that day, and to say "Amen" to their condemnation, except they repent. The vengeance of the Gospel is heavier than the vengeance of the Law; the Mediator's malediction and vengeance is twice vengeance; and that vengeance is the due portion of such men. And there I leave them as bond men, aye and whill they repent and amend.
Ye were witnesses how the Lord s day was spent while I was among you. O sacrilegious robber of God's day, what wilt thou answer the Almighty when He seeketh so many Sabbaths back again from thee? What will the curser,
swearer, and blasphemer do, when his tongue shall be roasted in that broad and burning lake of fire and brimstone? And what will the drunkard do, when tongue, lungs, and liver, bones, and all, shall boil and shall fry in a torturing fire? He shall be far from his barrels of strong drink then; and there is not a cold well of water for him in hell. What shall be the case of the wretch, the covetous man, the oppressor, the deceiver, the earth-worm, who can never get his wombful of clay (Ps. xvii. 14), when, in the day of Christ, gold and silver must lie burnt in ashes, and he must compear and answer his Judge, and quit his clayey and noughty heaven? Wo, wo, for evermore, be to the time-turning atheist, who hath one god and one religion for summer, and another god and another religion for winter, and the day of fanning, when Christ fanneth all that is in His barn-floor: who hath a conscience for every fair and market, and the soul of him runneth upon these oiled wheels, time, custom, the world, and command of men. Oh, if the careless atheist, and sleeping man, who edgeth by all with, "God forgive our pastors if they lead us wrong, we must do as they command," and layeth down his head upon time's bosom, and giveth his conscience to a deputy, and sleepeth so, whill the smoke of hell-fire fly up in his throat, and cause him to start out of his doleful bed! Oh, if such a man would awake! Many woes are for the over-gilded and gold-plastered hypocrite. A heavy doom is for the liar and white-tongued flatterer; and the flying book of God's fearful vengeance, twenty cubits long, and ten cubits broad, that goeth out from the face of God, shall enter into the house, and in upon the soul of him that stealeth, and sweareth falsely by God's name (Zech. v. 2, 3). I denounce eternal burning, hotter than Sodom's flames, upon the men that boil in filthy lusts of fornication, adultery, incest, and the like wickedness. No room, no, not a foot-breadth, for such vile dogs within the clean Jerusalem. Many of you put off all with this, "God forgive us, we know no better." I renew my old answer: the Judge is coming in flaming fire, with all His mighty angels, to render vengeance to all those that know not God, and believe not (2 Thess. i. 8). I have often told you that security will slay you. All men say they have faith: as many men and women now, as many saints in heaven. And all believe (say ye); so that every foul dog is clean enough, and good enough, for the clean and new Jerusalem above. Every man hath conversion and the new birth; but it is not leal come. They had never a sick night for sin; conversion came to them in a night-dream. In a word, hell will be empty at the day of judgment, and heaven pang full! Alas! it is neither easy nor ordinary to believe and to be saved. Many must stand, in the end, at heaven's gates (Luke xiii. 25). When they go to take out their faith, they take out a fair nothing, or (as ye use to speak) a blaflum. Oh, lamentable disappointment! I pray you, I charge you in the name of Christ, make fast work of Christ and salvation.
I know there are some believers among you, and I write to you, O poor broken-hearted believers: all the comforts of Christ in the Old and New Testaments are yours. Oh, what a Father and Husband ye have! Oh, if I had pen and ink, anand ingine to write of Him! Let heaven and earth be consolidated into massy and pure gogold, it will not weigh the thousandth part of Christ's love to a soul, even to me apa poor prisoner. Oh, that is a massy and marvellous love! Men and angels! unite your force and strength in one, ye shall not heave nor poise it off the ground. Ten thousand worlds, as many worlds as angels can number, and then as a new world of angels can multiply, would not all be the balk of a balance to weigh Christ's excellency, sweetness, and love. Put ten earths into one, and let a rose grow greater than ten whole earths, or whole worlds, oh, what beauty would be in it, and what a smell would it cast! But a blast of the breath of that fairest Rose in all God's paradise, even of Christ Jesus our Lord, one look of that fairest face, would be infinitely in beauty, and smell, above all imaginable and created glory. I wonder that men dow bide off Christ. I would esteem myself blessed, if I could make an open proclamation, and gather all the world, that are living upon the earth, Jew and Gentile, and all that shall be born till the blowing of the last trumpet, to flock round about Christ, and to stand looking, wondering, admiring, and adoring His beauty and sweetness. For His fire is hotter than any other fire, His love sweeter than common love, His beauty surpasseth all other beauty. When I am heavy and sad, one of His love-looks would do me meikle worlds' good. Oh, if ye would fall in love with Him, how blessed were I! how glad would my soul be to help you to love Him! But amongst us all, we could not love Him enough. He is the Son of the Father's love, and God's delight; the Father's love lieth all upon Him. Oh, if all mankind would fetch all their love and lay it upon Him! Invite Him, and take Him home to your houses, in the exercise of prayer morning and evening, as I often desired you; especially now, let Him not want lodging in your houses, nor lie in the fields, when He is shut out of pulpits and kirks. If ye will be content to take heaven by violence and the wind on your face for Christ and His cross, I am here one who hath some trial of Christ's cross, and I can say, that Christ was ever kind to me, but He over-cometh Himself (if I may speak so) in kindness while I suffer for Him. I give you my word for it, Christ's cross is not so evil as they call it; it is sweet, light, and comfortable. I would not want the visitations of love, and the very breathings of Christ's mouth when He kisseth, and my Lord's delightsome smiles and love-embracements under my sufferings for Him, for a mountain of gold, or for all the honours, court, and grandeur of velvet kirkmen.3 Christ hath the yoke and heart of my love. "I am my Beloved's, and my Well-beloved is mine."
Oh that ye were all hand-fasted to Christ! O my dearly-beloved in the Lord, I would I could change my voice, and had a tongue tuned by the hands of my Lord, and had the art of speaking of Christ, that I might point out to you the worth, and highness, and greatness, and excellency of that fairest and renowned Bridegroom! I beseech you by the mercies of the Lord, by the sighs, tears, and heart s-blood of our Lord Jesus, by the salvation of your poor and precious souls, set up the mountain, that ye and I may meet before the Lamb s throne amongst the congregation of the first-born. Lord grant that that may be the trysting-place! that ye and I may put up our hands together, and pluck and eat the apples off the tree of life, and that we may feast together, and drink together of that pure river of the water of life, that cometh out from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Oh, how little is your hand-breadth and span-length of days here! Your inch of time is less than when ye and I parted. Eternity, eternity is coming, posting on with wings; then shall every man s blacks and whites be brought to light. Oh, how low will your thoughts be of this fair-skinned but heart-rotten apple, the vain, vain, feckless world, when the worms shall make them houses in your eye-holes, and shall eat off the flesh from the balls of your cheeks, and shall make that body a number of dry bones! Think not that the common gate of serving God, as neighbours and others do, will bring you to heaven. Few, few are saved. The devil s court is thick and many; he hath the greatest number of mankind for his vassals. I know this world is a forest of thorns in your way to heaven; but you must go through it. Acquaint yourselves with the Lord: hold fast Christ; hear His voice only. Bless His name; sanctify and keep holy His day; keep the new commandment, "Love one another;" let the Holy Spirit dwell in your bodies; and be clean and holy. Love not the world: lie not, love and follow truth: learn to know God. Keep in mind what I taught you; for God will seek an account of it, when I am far from you. Abstain from all evil, and all appearance of evil: follow good carefully, and seek peace and follow after it: honour your king, and pray for him. Remember me to God in your prayers; I dow not forget you. I told you often while I was with you, and now I write it again, heavy, sad, and sore is that stroke of the Lord's wrath that is coming upon Scotland. Wo, wo, wo to this harlot-land! for they shall take the cup of God s wrath from His hands, and drink, and spue, and fall, and not rise again. In, in, in with speed to your stronghold, ye prisoners of hope, and hide you there whill the anger of the Lord pass! Follow not the pastors of this land, for the sun is gone down upon them. As the Lord liveth, they lead you from Christ, and from the good old way. Yet the Lord will keep the holy city, and make this withered kirk to bud again like a rose, and a field blessed of the Lord.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. The prayers and blessings of a prisoner of Christ, in bonds for Him, and for you, be with you all. Amen.
Your lawful and loving pastor,
ABERDEEN, JULY 13, 1637. S. R.
CCXXVI.—To the LADY KILCONOJJHAR.
[LADY KILCONOUHAR, whose maiden name was Helen Murray, being the third daugter of Sir Archibald Murray of Blackbarony, was the wife of Sir John Carstairs of Kilconquhar, in the county of Fife. Her mother, Margaret Maule, was of the family of Panmure. Their youngest daughter, Bethia, in 1656, married Thomas Rigg of Athernie. The house of Kilconquhar (called Kinneucher by the people) is near the loch and the village, with Elie not far off on one side, and Balcarras on the other. The loch with its swans, the woods, and the sea so near, make it a pleasant spot.]
(THE INTERESTS OF THE SOUL MOST URGENT—FOLLY OF THE WORLD—CHRIST ALTOGETHER LOVELY—HIS PEN FAILS
TO SET FORTH CHRIST'S UNSPEAKABLE BEAUTY.)
MISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I am glad to hear that ye have your face homewards towards your Father's house, now when so many are for a home nearer hand. But your Lord calleth you to another life and glory than is to be found hereaway; and, therefore, I would counsel you to make sure the charters and rights which ye have to salvation. You came to this life about a necessary and weighty business, to tryste with Christ anent your precious soul, and the eternal salvation of it. This is the most necessary business ye have in this life; and your other adoes beside this are but toys, and feathers, and dreams, and fancies. This is in the greatest haste, and should be done first. Means are used in the Gospel to draw on a meeting betwixt Christ and you. If ye neglect your part of it, it is as if ye would tear the contract before Christ's eyes, and give up the match, that there may be no more communing about that business. I know that other lovers beside Christ are in suit of you, and your soul hath many wooers; but I pray you to make a chaste virgin of your soul, and let it love but one. Most worthy is Christ alone of all your soul's love, howbeit your love were higher than the heaven, and deeper than the lowest of this earth, and broader than this world. Many, alas! too many, make a common strumpet of their soul for every lover that cometh to the house. Marriage with Christ would put your love and your heart by the gate, out of the way, and out of the eye of all other unlawful suitors; and then you have a ready answer for all others, "I am already promised away to Christ; the match is concluded, my soul hath a husband already, and it cannot have two husbands." Oh, if the world did but know what a smell the ointments of Christ cast, and how ravishing His beauty (even the beauty of the fairest of the sons of men) is, and how sweet and powerful His voice is, the voice of that one Well-beloved! Certainly, where Christ cometh, He runneth away with the soul s love, so that it cannot be commanded. I would far rather look but through the hole of Christ's door, to see but the one half of His fairest and most comely face (for He looketh like heaven!), suppose I should never win in to see His excellency and glory to the full, than enjoy the flower, the bloom, and the chiefest excellency of the glory and riches of ten worlds. Lord, send me, for my part, but the meanest share of Christ that can be given to any of the indwellers of the New Jerusalem. But I know my Lord is no niggard: He can, and it becometh Him well to give more than my narrow soul can receive. If there were ten thousand thousand millions of worlds, and as many heavens full of men and angels, Christ would not be pinched to supply all our wants, and to fill us all. Christ is a well of life; but who knoweth how deep it is to the bottom? This soul of ours hath love, and cannot but love some fair one. And oh, what a fair One, what an only One, what an excellent, lovely, ravishing One, is Jesus! Put the beauty of ten thousand thousand worlds of paradises, like the garden of Eden in one; put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colours, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness, in one: oh, what a fair and excellent thing would that be! And yet it would be less to that fair and dearest Well-beloved, Christ, than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths. Oh, but Christ is heaven s wonder, and earth s wonder! What marvel that His bride saith (Cant. v. 16), "He is altogether lovely!" Oh that black souls will not come and fetch all their love to this fair One! Oh, if I could invite and persuade thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand of Adam's sons, to flock about my Lord Jesus, and to come and take their fill of love! Oh, pity for evermore, that there should be such a one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, and so incomparable in infinite excellency and sweetness, and so few to take Him! Oh, oh, ye poor, dry, and dead souls, why will ye not come hither with your toom vessels, and your empty souls, to this huge, and fair, and deep, and sweet well of life, and fill all your toom vessels? Oh that Christ should be so large in sweetness and worth, and we so narrow, so pinched, so ebb, and so void of all happiness. And yet men will not take Him! They lose their love miserably, who will not bestow it upon this lovely One. Alas! these five thousand years, Adam's fools, his waster (Prov. xviii. 9) heirs, have been wasting and lavishing out their love and their affections upon black lovers, and black harlots, upon bits of dead creatures, and broken idols, upon this and that feckless creature; and have not brought their love and their heart to Jesus. Oh, pity, that Fairness hath so few lovers! Oh, wo, wo to the fools of this world, who run by Christ to other lovers! Oh, misery, misery, misery, that comeliness can scarce get three or four hearts in a town or country! Oh that there is so much spoken, and so much written, and so much thought of creature vanity; and so little spoken, so little written, and so little thought of my great, and incomprehensible, and never enough wondered at Lord Jesus! Why should I not curse this forlorn and wretched world, that suffereth my Lord Jesus to lie His lone? O damned souls! O miskenning world! O blind, O beggarly and poor souls! O bewitched fools! what aileth you at Christ, that you run so from Him? I dare not challenge providence, that there are so few buyers, and so little sale for such an excellent one as Christ. (O the depth, and, O the height of my Lord's ways, that pass finding out!) But oh, if men would once be wise, and not fall so in love with their own hell as to pass by Christ, and misken Him! But let us come near, and fill ourselves with Christ, and let His friends drink, and be drunken, and satisfy our hollow and deep desires with Jesus. Oh, come all and drink at this living well; come, drink and live for evermore; come, drink and welcome! "Welcome," saith our fairest Bridegroom. No man getteth Christ with ill will; no man cometh and is not welcome. No man cometh and rueth his voyage; all men speak well of Christ who have been at Him: men and angels who know Him will say more than I dow do, and think more of Him than they can say. Oh, if I were misted and bewildered in my Lord's love! Oh, if I were fettered and chained to it! Oh, sweet pain, to be pained for a sight of Him! Oh, living death, oh, good death, oh, lovely death, to die for love of Jesus! Oh that I should have a sore heart, and a pained soul, for the want of this and that idol! Wo, wo to the mistakings of my miscarrying heart, that gapeth and crieth for creatures, and is not pained, and cut, and tortured, and in sorrow, for the want of a soul's-fill of the love of Christ! Oh that Thou wouldst come near, my Beloved! O my fairest One why standeth Thou afar! Come hither, that I may be satiated with Thy excellent love. Oh for a union! oh for a fellowship with Jesus! Oh that I could buy with a price that lovely
One, even suppose that hell s torments for a while were the price! I cannot believe but Christ will rue upon His pained lovers, and come and ease sick hearts, who sigh and swoon for want of Christ. Who dow bide Christ s love to be nice? What heaven can be there liker to hell, than to lust, and green, and dwine, and fall a swoon for Christ's love, and to want it? Is not this hell and heaven woven through-other? Is not this pain and joy, sweetness and sadness, to be in one web, the one the weft, the other the warp? Therefore, I would that Christ would let us meet and join together, the soul and Christ in each other s arms. Oh what meeting is like this, to see blackness and beauty, con-temptibleness and glory, highness and baseness, even a soul and Christ, kiss each other! Nay, but when all is done, I may be wearied in speaking and writing; but, oh, how far am I from the right expression of Christ or His love? I can neither speak nor write feeling, nor tasting, nor smelling: come feel, and smell, and taste Christ and His love, and ye shall call it more than can be spoken. To write how sweet the honeycomb is, is not so lovely as to eat and suck the honeycomb. One night's rest in a bed of love with Christ will say more than heart can think, or tongue can utter. Neither need we fear crosses, nor sigh nor be sad for anything that is on this side of heaven, if we have Christ. Our crosses will never draw blood of the joy of the Holy Ghost, and peace of conscience. Our joy is laid up in such a high place, as temptations cannot climb up to take it down. This world may bost Christ, but they dare not strike; or, if they strike, they break their arm in fetching a stroke upon a rock. Oh that we could put our treasures in Christ s hand, and give him our gold to keep, and our crown. Strive, Mistress, to thring through the thorns of this life, to be at Christ. Tine not sight of Him in this cloudy and dark day. Sleep with Him in your heart in the night. Learn not at the world to serve Christ, but speer at Himself the way; the world is a false copy, and a lying guide to follow.
Remember my love to your husband. I wish all to him that I have written here. The sweet presence, the long-lasting goodwill of our God, the warmly and lovely comforts of our Lord Jesus, be with you. Help me His prisoner in your prayers; for I remember you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
ABERDEEN, AUGUST 8, 1637. S. R.