C CLVII.—To the LADY CRAIGHALL. [ Letter LXXXVI. ]
CCLVII.—To the LADY CRAIGHALL. [Letter LXXXVI.]
(THE COMFORTS OF CHRIST S CROSS—DESIRES FOR CHRIST.)
HONOURABLE AND CHRISTIAN LADY,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I cannot but write to your Ladyship of the sweet and glorious terms I am in with the most joyful King that ever was, under this well-thriving and prosperous cross. It is my Lord s salvation, wrought by His own right hand, that the water doth not suffocate the breath of hope, and joyful courage, in the Lord Jesus; for His own person is still in the camp with His poor soldier. I see that the cross is tied, with Christ s hand, to the end of an honest profession. We are but fools to endeavour to loose Christ s knot. When I consider the comforts of God, I durst not consent to sell or wadset my short liferent of the cross of the Lord Jesus. I know that Christ bought with His own blood a right to sanctified and blessed crosses, in so far as they blow me over the water to my long-desired home: and it were not good that Christ should be the buyer and I the seller. I know that time and death shall take sufferings fairly off my hand. I hope we shall have an honest parting at night, when this cold and frosty afternoon-tide of my evil and rough day shall be over. Well is my soul of either sweet or sour, that Christ hath any part or portion in: if He be at the one end of it, it shall be well with me. I shall die ere I libel faults against Christ s cross. It shall have my testimonial under my hand, as an honest and saving mean of Christ for mortification and faith s growth. I have a stronger assurance, since I came over the Forth,1 of the excellency of Jesus, than I had before. I am rather about Him than in Him, while I am absent from Him in this house of clay. But I would be in heaven, for no other cause than to essay and try what boundless joy it must be to be over head and ears in my well-beloved Christ's love. Oh that fair One hath my heart for evermore! But alas, it is over-little for Him! Oh, if it were better and more worthy for His sake! Oh, if I might meet with Him, face to face, on this side of eternity, and might have leave to plead with Him, that I am so hungered and famished here with the niggardly portion of His love that He giveth me! Oh that I might be carver and steward myself, at mine own will, of Christ's love (if I may lawfully wish this!); then would I enlarge my vessel (alas! a narrow and ebb soul), and take in a sea of His love. My hunger for it is hungry and lean, in believing that ever I shall be satisfied with that love: so fain would I have what I know I cannot hold. O Lord Jesus, delightest Thou, delightest Thou, to pine and torment poor souls with the want of Thy incomparable love? Oh, if I durst call Thy dispensation cruel! I know that Thou Thyself art mercy, without either brim or bottom; I know that Thou art a God bank-full of mercy and love; but, oh, alas! little of it cometh my way. I die to look afar off to that love, because I can get but little of it. But hope saith, "This Providence shall ere long look more favourably upon poor bodies," and on me also. Grace be with your Ladyship's spirit.
Your Ladyship s, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
ABERDEEN, SEPT. 10, 1637. S. R.
CCLVIII.—To the Right Honourable my LORD LOUDON. (THE WISDOM OF ADHERING TO CHRIST'S CAUSE.)
RIGHT HONOURABLE,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Lordship.— I rejoice exceedingly to hear that your Lordship hath a good mind to Christ, and His now borne-down truth. My very dear Lord, go on, in the strength of the Lord, to carry your honours and worldly glory to the New Jerusalem. For this cause your Lordship received these of the Lord. This is a sure way for the establishment of your house, if ye be of those who are willing, in your place, to build Zion s old waste places in Scotland. Your Lordship wanteth not God s and man s law both, now to come to the streets for Christ: and suppose the bastard laws of man were against you, it is an honest and zealous1 error, if here you slip against a point or punctilio of standing policy. When your foot slippeth in such known ground, as is the royal prerogative of our high and most truly dread Sovereign (who hath many crowns on His head), and the liberties of His house, He will hold you up. Blessed shall they be who take Babel's little ones, and dash their heads against the stones. I wish your Lordship may have a share of that blessing, with other worthy nobles in our land.
It is true that it is now accounted wisdom for men to be partners in pulling up the stakes, and loosing the cords, of the tent of Christ. But I am persuaded, that that wisdom is cried down in heaven, and shall never pass for true wisdom with the Lord, whose word crieth shame upon wit against Christ and truth; and, accordingly, it shall prove shame and confusion of face in the end. Our Lord hath given your Lordship light of a better stamp, and learning also, wherein ye are not behind the disputer and the scribe. Oh what a blessed thing is it to see nobility, learning, and sanctification, all concur in one! For these ye owe yourself to Christ and His kingdom. God hath bewildered and bemisted the wit and the learning of the scribes and disputers of this time; they look asquint to the Bible. This blinding and bemisting world blindfoldeth men's light, that they are afraid to see straight out before them; nay, their very light playeth the knave, or worse, to truth. Your Lordship knoweth that, within a little while, policy against truth shall blush, and the works of men shall be burned up, even their spider's-web who spin out many hundred ells and webs of indifference in the Lord's worship; more than ever Moses, who would have2 a hoof material (Exod. x. 26), and Daniel, who would have a look out at a window a matter of life and death, than ever, I say, these men of God dreamed of. Alas! that men dare to shape, carve, cut, and clip our King's princely testament in length and breadth, and in all dimensions, answerable to the conception of such policy, as a head-of-wit thinketh a safe and trim way of serving God! How have men forgotten the Lord, that they dare to go against even that truth which once they preached themselves, howbeit their sermons now be as thin sown as strawberries in a wood or wilderness! Certainly the sweetest and safest course is, for this short time of the afternoon of this old and declining world, to stand for Jesus. He hath said it, and it is our part to believe it, that ere it be long, Time shall be no more, and the heaven shall wax old, as a garment." Do we not see it already an old holie and threadbare garment. Doth not cripple and lame nature tell us, that the Lord will fold up the old garment, and lay it aside; and that the heavens shall be folded together as a scroll, and this pest-house shall be burnt with fire, and that both plenishing and walls shall melt with fervent heat? For at the Lord's coming, He will do with this earth, as men do with a leper-house; He will burn the walls with fire, and the plenishing of the house also (2 Pet. iii. 10, 12). My very dear Lord, how will ye rejoice in that day, to have Christ, angels, heaven, and your own conscience to smile upon you? I am persuaded that one sick night, through the terrors of the Almighty, would make men, whose conscience hath such a wide throat that an image like a cathedral church, would go down it, have other thoughts of Christ and His worship, than now they please themselves with. The scarcity of faith in the earth saith, We are hard upon the last nick of time:" blessed are those who keep their garments clean against the Bridegroom's coming.
There shall be spotted clothes, and many defiled garments, at His last Coming; and, therefore, few found worthy to walk with Him in white.
I am persuaded, my Lord, that this poor travailing Woman, our pained church, is with child of victory, and shall bring forth a Man-child all lovely and glorious, that shall be caught up to God and to His throne, howbeit the dragon, in his followers, be attending the childbirth pain, as an Egyptian midwife, to receive the birth and strangle it. But they shall be disappointed who thirst for the destruction of Zion. "They shall be as when a hungry man dreameth that he eateth, but, behold, he awaketh, and his soul is empty; or when a thirsty man dreameth that he drinketh, but, behold, he awaketh, and is faint, and his soul is not satisfied: so shall it be," I say, "with the multitude of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion" (Isa. xxix. 8). Therefore, the weak and feeble, those that are "as signs and wonders in Israel," have chosen the best side, even the side that victory is upon. And I think this is no evil policy.
Verily, for myself, I am so well pleased with Christ, and His noble and honest-borne cross, this cross that is come of Christ s house and is of kin to Himself, that I should weep if it should come to niffering and bartering of lots and condition with those that are "at ease in Zion." I hold still my choice, and bless myself in it. I see and I believe that there is salvation in this way, which is everywhere spoken against. I hope to go to eternity, and to venture on the last evil to the saints (even upon death), fully persuaded that this only, even this, is the saving way for racked consciences, and for weary and laden sinners to find ease and peace for evermore in. And, indeed, it is not for any worldly respect that I speak so of it. The weather is not so hot that I have great cause to startle in my prison, or to boast of that entertainment that my good friends, the prelates, intend for me (which is, banishment), if they shall obtain their desire, and effectuate what they design. But let it come; I rue not that I made Christ my wale and my choice; I think Him aye the longer the better.
My Lord, it shall be good service to God, to hold your noble friend and chief3 upon a good course for the truth of Christ. Now the very God of peace establish your Lordship in Christ Jesus unto the end. Your Lordship's, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
ABERDEEN, SEPT. 10, 1637. S. R.