W ORTHY FRIEND,—I desire to suffer with you, in the loss of a loving and good wife, now gone before (according to the method and order of Him of whose understanding there is no searching out) whither ye are to follow. He that made yesterday to go before this day, and the former generation, in birth and life, to have been before this present generation, and hath made some flowers to grow and die and wither in the month of May, and others in June, cannot be challenged in the order He hath made of things without souls; and some order He must keep also here, that one might bury another. Therefore I hope ye shall be dumb and silent, because the Lord hath done it.
What creatures or under-causes do, in sinful mistakes, is ordered in wisdom by your Father, at whose feet your own soul and your heaven lieth; and so the days of your wife. If the place she hath left were any other than a prison of sin, and the home she is gone to any other than where her Head and Saviour is King of the land, your grief had been more rational. But I trust your faith of the resurrection of the dead in Christ to glory and immortality, will lead you to suspend your longing for her, till the morning and dawning of that day when the archangel shall descend with a shout, to gather all the prisoners out of the grave, up to Himself. To believe this is best for you; and to be silent, because He hath done it, is your wisdom.
It is much to come out of the Lord's school of trial wiser, and more experienced in the ways of God; and it is our happiness, when Christ openeth a vein, that He taketh nothing but ill blood from His sick ones. Christ hath skill to do; and (if our corruption mar not) the art of mercy in correcting. We cannot of ourselves take away the tin, the lead, and the scum that remaineth in us; and if Christ be not Master-of-work, and if the furnace go its lone (He not standing nigh the melting of His own vessel), the labour were lost, and the Founder should melt in vain. God knoweth some of us have lost much fire, sweating, and pains, to our Lord Jesus; and the vessel is almost marred, the furnace and rod of God spilled, "the daylight[455] burnt, and the reprobate metal not taken away," so as some are to answer to the Majesty of God for the abuse of many good crosses, and rich afflictions lost without the quiet fruit of righteousness. It is a sad thing when the rod is cursed, that never fruit shall grow on it. And except Christ's dew fall down, and His summer-sun shine, and His grace follow afflictions to cause them to bring forth fruit to God, they are so fruitless to us, that our evil ground (rank and fat enough for briers) casteth up a crop of noisome weeds. "The rod" (as the prophet saith) "blossometh, pride buddeth forth, violence riseth up into a rod of wickedness" (Ezek. vii. 10, 11). And all this hath been my case under many rods since I saw you.
Grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
London, 1645.
R EVEREND AND BELOVED IN THE LORD,—It may be that I have been too long silent, but I hope that ye will not impute it to forgetfulness of you.
As I have heard of the death of your daughter with heaviness of mind on your behalf, so am I much comforted that she hath evidenced to yourself and other witnesses the hope of the resurrection of the dead. As sown corn is not lost (for there is more hope of that which is sown than of that which is eaten) (1 Cor. xv. 42, 43), so also is it in the resurrection of the dead: the body "is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory." I hope that ye wait for the crop and harvest; "for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him" (1 Thess. iv. 14). Then they are not lost who are gathered into that congregation of the first-born, and the general assembly of the saints. Though we cannot outrun nor overtake them that are gone before, yet we shall quickly follow them; and the difference is, that she hath the advantage of some months or years of the crown before you and her mother. As we do not take it ill if our children outrun us in the life of grace, why then are we sad if they outstrip us in the attainment of the life of glory? It would seem that there is more reason to grieve that children live behind us, than that they are glorified and die before us. All the difference is in some poor hungry accidents of time, less or more, sooner or later. So the godly child, though young, died an hundred years old; and ye could not now have bestowed her better, though the choice was Christ's, not yours.
And I am sure, Sir, ye cannot now say that she is married against the will of her parents. She might more readily, if alive, fall into the hands of a worse husband; but can ye think that she could have fallen into the hands of a better? And if Christ marry with your house, it is your honour, not any cause of grief, that Jesus should portion any of yours, ere she enjoy your portion. Is it not great love? The patrimony is more than any other could give; as good a husband is impossible; to say a better is blasphemy. The King and Prince of ages can keep them better than ye can do. While she was alive, ye could entrust her to Christ, and recommend her to His keeping; now, by an after-faith, ye have resigned her unto Him in whose bosom do sleep all that are dead in the Lord. Ye would have lent her to glorify the Lord upon earth, and He hath borrowed her (with promise to restore her again) (1 Cor. xv. 53; 1 Thess. iv. 15, 16) to be an organ of the immediate glorifying of Himself in heaven. Sinless glorifying of God is better than sinful glorifying of Him. And sure your prayers concerning her are fulfilled. I shall desire, if the Lord shall be pleased the same way to dispose of her mother, that ye have the same mind. Christ cannot multiply injuries upon you. If the fountain be the love of God (as I hope it is), ye are enriched with losses.
Ye knew all I can say better, before I was in Christ, than I can express it. Grace be with you.
Yours, in Christ Jesus,
S. R.
London, Jan. 6, 1646.
M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—If death, which is before you and us all, were any other thing than a friendly dissolution, and a change, not a destruction of life, it would seem a hard voyage to go through such a sad and dark trance,[456] so thorny a valley, as is the wages of sin. But I am confident the way ye know, though your foot never trod in that black shadow. The loss of life is gain to you. If Christ Jesus be the period, the end, and lodging-home, at the end of your journey, there is no fear; ye go to a friend. And since ye have had communion with Him in this life, and He hath a pawn or pledge of yours, even the largest share of your love and heart, ye may look death in the face with joy.
If the heart be in heaven, the remnant of you cannot be kept the prisoner of the second death. But though He be the same Christ in the other life that ye found Him to be here, yet He is so far in His excellency, beauty, sweetness, irradiations, and beams of majesty, above what He appeared here, when He is seen as He is, that ye shall misken Him, and He shall appear a new Christ. And His kisses, breathings, embracements, the perfume, the ointment of His name poured out on you, shall appear to have more of God, and a stronger smell of heaven, of eternity, of a Godhead, of majesty and glory, there than here; as water at the fountain, apples in the orchard and beside the tree, have more of their native sweetness, taste, and beauty, than when transported to us some hundred miles.
I mean not that Christ can lose any of His sweetness in the carrying, or that He, in His Godhead and loveliness of presence, can be changed to the worse, betwixt the little spot of the earth that ye are in, and the right hand of the Father far above all heavens. But the change will be in you, when ye shall have new senses, and the soul shall be a more deep and more capacious vessel, to take in more of Christ; and when means (the chariot, the Gospel, that He is now carried in, and ordinances that convey Him) shall be removed. Sure ye cannot now be said to see Him face to face; or to drink of the wine of the highest fountain, or to take in seas and tides of fresh love immediately, without vessels, midses, or messengers, at the Fountain itself, as ye will do a few days hence, when ye shall be so near as to be with Christ (Luke xxiii. 43; John xvii. 24; Phil. i. 23; 1 Thess. iv. 17).
Ye would, no doubt, bestow a day's journey, yea, many days' journey on earth, to go up to heaven, and fetch down anything of Christ; how much more may ye be willing to make a journey to go in person to heaven (it is not lost time, but gained eternity) to enjoy the full Godhead! And then, in such a manner as He is there! not in His week-day's apparel, as He is here with us, in a drop or the tenth part of a night's dewing of grace and sweetness; but He is there in His marriage-robe of glory, richer, more costly, more precious, in one hem or button of that garment of Fountain majesty than a million of worlds. Oh, the well is deep! Ye shall then think that preachers, and sinful ambassadors on earth, did but spill and mar His praises, when they spoke of Him and preached His beauty.
Alas! we but make Christ black and less lovely, in making such insignificant, and dry, and cold, and low expressions of His highest and transcendent super-excellency to the daughters of Jerusalem. Sure I have often, for my own part, sinned in this thing. No doubt angels do not fulfil their task, according to their obligation, in that Christ keeps their feet from falling with the lost devils; though I know they are not behind in going to the utmost of created power. But there is sin in our praising, and sin in the quantity, besides other sins. But I must leave this; it is too deep for me. Go and see, and we desire to go with you; but we are not masters of our own diet.[457] If, in that last journey, ye tread on a serpent in the way, and thereby wound your heel, as Jesus Christ did before you, the print of the wound shall not be known at the resurrection of the just. Death is but an awesome step, over time and sin, to sweet Jesus Christ, who knew and felt the worst of death, for death's teeth hurt Him. We know death hath no teeth now, no jaws, for they are broken. It is a free prison; citizens pay nothing for the grave. The jailor who had the power of death is destroyed: praise and glory be to the First-begotten of the dead.
The worst possible that may be is, that ye leave behind you children, husband, and the church of God in miseries. But ye cannot get them to heaven with you for the present. Ye shall not miss them, and Christ cannot miscount one of the poorest of His lambs. No lad, no girl, no poor one shall be a-missing, ere[458] ye see them again, in the day that the Son shall render up the kingdom to His Father.
The evening and the shadow of every poor hireling is coming. The sun of Christ's church in this life is declining low. Not a soul of the militant company will be here within a few generations; our Husband will send for them all. It is a rich mercy that we are not married to time longer than the course be finished.
Ye may rejoice that ye go not to heaven till ye know that Jesus is there before you; that when ye come thither, at your first entry ye may feel the smell of His ointments, His myrrh, aloes, and cassia. And this first salutation of His will make you find it is no uncomfortable thing to die. Go and enjoy your gain; live on Christ's love while ye are here, and all the way.
As for the church which ye leave behind you, the government is upon Christ's shoulders, and He will plead for the blood of His saints. The Bush hath been burning above five thousand years, and we never yet saw the ashes of this fire. Yet a little while, and the vision shall not tarry: it will speak, and not lie. I am more afraid of my duty, than of the Head Christ's government. He cannot fail to bring judgment to victory. Oh that we could wait for our hidden life! Oh that Christ would remove the covering, draw aside the curtain of time, and rend the heavens, and come down! Oh that shadows and night were gone, that the day would break, and that He who feedeth among the lilies would cry to His heavenly trumpeters, "Make ready, let us go down and fold together the four corners of the world, and marry the bride!" His grace be with you.
Now, if I have found favour with you, and if ye judge me faithful, my last suit to you is that ye would leave me a legacy; and that is, that my name may be, at the very last, in your prayers: as I desire also, it may be in the prayers of those of your Christian acquaintance with whom ye have been intimate.
Your brother, in his own Lord Jesus,
S. R.
London, Jan. 9, 1646.
M ADAM,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—It is the least of the princely and royal bounty of Jesus Christ to pay a king's debts, and not to have His servants at a loss. His gold is better than yours, and His hundred-fold is the income and rent of heaven, and far above your revenues. Ye are not the first who have casten up your accounts that way. Better have Christ your factor than any other; for He tradeth to the advantage of His poor servants. But if the hundred-fold in this life be so well told (as Christ cannot pay you with miscounting or deferred hope), oh, what must the rent of that land be which rendereth (every day and hour of the years of long eternity) the whole rent of a year, yea, of more than thousand thousands of ages, even the weighty income of a rich kingdom, not every summer once, but every moment!
That sum of glory will take you and all the angels telling.[459] To be a tenant to such a Landlord, where every berry and grape of the large field beareth no worse fruit than glory, fulness of joy, and pleasures that endure for evermore! I leave it to yourself to think what a summer, what a soil, what a garden must be there; and what must be the commodities of that highest land, where the sun and the moon are under the feet of the inhabitants! Surely the land cannot be bought with gold, blood, banishment, loss of father and mother, husband, wife, children. We but dwell here because we can do no better. It is need, not virtue, to be sojourners in a prison; to weep and sigh, and, alas! to sin sixty or seventy years in a land of tears. The fruits that grow here are all seasoned and salted with sin.
Oh how sweet is it that the company of the first-born should be divided into two great bodies of an army, and some in their country, and some in the way to their country! If it were no more than once to see the face of the Prince of this good land, and to be feasted for eternity with the fatness, sweetness, dainties of the rays and beams of matchless glory, and incomparable fountain-love, it were a well-spent journey to creep hands and feet through seven deaths and seven hells, to enjoy Him up at the well-head. Only let us not weary: the miles to that land are fewer and shorter than when we first believed. Strangers are not wise to quarrel with their host, and complain of their lodging. It is a foul way, but a fair home. Oh that I had but such grapes and clusters out of the land as I have sometimes seen and tasted in the place whereof your Ladyship maketh mention! But the hope of it in the end is a heartsome convoy in the way. If I see little more of the gold[460] till the race be ended, I dare not quarrel. It is the Lord! I hope His chariot will go through these three kingdoms, after our sufferings shall be accomplished.
Grace be with you.
Your Ladyship's, in Jesus Christ,
S. R.
London, Jan. 26, 1646.
R EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,—I shall with my soul desire the peace of these kingdoms, and I do believe it will at last come, as a river and as the mighty waves of the sea; but oh that we were ripe and in readiness to receive it! The preserving of two or three, or four or five berries, in the utmost boughs of the olive-tree, after the vintage, is like to be a great matter ere all be done; yet I know that a cluster in both kingdoms shall be saved, for a blessing is in it. But it is not, I fear, so near to the dawning of the day of salvation but the clouds must send down more showers of blood to water the vineyard of the Lord, and to cause it to blossom. Scotland's scum is not yet removed; nor is England's dross and tin taken away; nor the filth of our blood "purged by the spirit of judgment, and the spirit of burning." But I am too much on this sad subject.
As for myself, I do esteem nothing out of heaven, and next to a communion with Jesus Christ, more than to be in the hearts and prayers of the saints. I know that He feedeth there among the lilies, till the day break; but I am at low ebb, as to any sensible communion with Christ; yea, as low as any soul can be, and do scarce know where I am; and do now make it a question, if any can go to Him, who dwelleth in light inaccessible, through nothing but darkness. Sure, all that come to heaven have a stock in Christ; but I know not where mine is. It cannot be enough for me to believe the salvation of others, and to know Christ to be the Honeycomb, the Rose of Sharon, the Paradise and Eden of the saints, and First-born written in heaven, and not to see afar the borders of that good land.
But what shall I say? Either this is the Lord, making grace a new creation, where there is pure nothing and sinful nothing to work upon, or I am gone. I should count my soul engaged to yourself, and others there with you, if ye would but carry to Christ for me a letter of cyphers and nonsense (for I know not how to make language of my condition), only showing that I have need of His love; for I know many fair and washen ones stand now in white before the throne, who were once as black as I am. If Christ pass His word to wash a sinner, it is less to Him than a word to make fair angels of black devils! Only let the art of free grace be engaged. I have not a cautioner to give surety, nor doth a Mediator, such as He is in all perfection, need a mediator. But what I need, He knoweth; only, it is His depth of wisdom to let some pass millions of miles over score in debt, that they may stand between the winning and the losing, in need of more than ordinary free grace.
Christ hath been multiplying grace by mercy above these five thousand years; and the later born heirs have so much greater guiltiness, that Christ hath passed more experiments and multiplied essays of heart-love on others, by misbelieving (after it is past all question, many hundreds of ages), that Christ is the undeniable and now uncontroverted treasurer of multiplied redemptions. So now He is saying, "The more of the disease there is, the more of the physician's art of grace and tenderness there must be." Only, I know that no sinner can put infinite grace to it,[462] so as the Mediator shall have difficulty, or much ado, to save this or that man. Millions of hells of sinners cannot come near to exhaust infinite grace.
I pray you (remembering my love to your wife, and friends there), let me find that I have solicitors there amongst your acquaintance; and forget not Scotland.
Your brother in Jesus Christ,
S. R.
London, Jan. 30, 1646.
M ADAM,—It is too like that the Lord's controversy with these two nations is but yet beginning, and that we are ripened and white for the Lord's sickle.
For the particular condition your Ladyship is in, another might speak (if they would say all) of more sad things. If there was not a fountain of free grace to water dry ground, and an uncreated wind to breathe on withered and dry bones, we were gone. The wheels of Christ's chariot (to pluck us out of the womb of many deaths) are winged like eagles. All I have is, to desire to believe that Christ will show all good-will to save; and as for your Ladyship, I know that our Lord Jesus carrieth on no design against you, but seeketh to save and redeem you. He lieth not in wait for your falls, except it be to take you up. His way of redeeming is ravishing and taking. There are more miracles of glorified sinners in heaven than can be on earth. Nothing of you, Madam, nay, not even your leaf, can wither.
Verily, it is a king's life to follow the Lamb. But when ye see Him in His own country at home, ye will think ye never saw Him before: "He shall be admired of all them that believe" (2 Thess. i. 10). Ye may judge how far all your now sad days, and tossings, changes, losses, wants, conflicts, shall then be below you. Ye look to the cross: now it is above your head, and seemeth to threaten death, as having a dominion; but it shall then be so far below your thoughts, or your thoughts so far above it, that ye shall have no leisure to lend one thought to old-dated crosses, in youth, in age, in this country or in that, from this instrument or from another, except it be to the heightening of your consolation, being now got above and beyond all these.
Old age, and "waxing old as a garment," is written on the fairest face of the creation (Ps. cii. 26). Death, from Adam to the Second Adam's appearance, playeth the king and reigneth over all. The prime Heir died; His children, whom the Lord hath given, follow Him. And we may speak freely of the life which is here; were it heaven, there were not much gain in godliness. But there is a rest for the people of God. Christ-man possesseth it now one thousand six hundred years before many of His members; but it weareth not out.
Grace be with you.
Your Ladyship's, in Christ Jesus,
S. R.
London, Feb. 16, 1646.
[Lady Ardross, whose maiden name was Helen Lindsay, was the daughter of Lady Christian Hamilton, eldest daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Haddington, by her first husband Robert, ninth Lord Lindsay of Byres. She was married to Sir William Scott of Ardross, son of Sir W. Scott of Elie. Her daughter, Euphemia, Countess of Dundonald, some thirty years after this, attended the field conventicles, and entertained the field preachers at her house. (Douglas' "Peerage," vol. i. p. 386.) This letter was written to her on the occasion of the death of her mother, who was then Lady Boyd, having married for her second husband, Robert, sixth Lord Boyd. (See notice of Lady Boyd, Letter LXXVII.)]
M ADAM,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—It hath seemed good, as I hear, to Him that hath appointed the bounds for the number of our months, to gather in a sheaf of ripe corn, in the death of your Christian mother, into His garner. It is the more evident that winter is near, when apples, without the violence of wind, fall of their own accord off the tree. She is now above the winter, with a little change of place, not of a Saviour; only she enjoyeth Him now without messages, and in His own immediate presence, from whom she heard by letters and messengers before.
I grant that death is to her a very new thing; but heaven was prepared of old. And Christ (as enjoyed in His highest throne, and as loaded with glory, and incomparably exalted above men and angels, having such a heavenly circle of glorified harpers and musicians above, compassing the throne with a song) is to her a new thing, but so new as the first summer-rose, or the first fruits of that heavenly field; or as a new paradise to a traveller, broken and worn out of breath with the sad occurrences of a long and dirty way.
Ye may easily judge, Madam, what a large recompense is made to all her service, her walking with God, and her sorrows, with the first cast of the soul's eye upon the shining and admirably beautiful face of the Lamb, that is in the midst of that fair and white army which is there, and with the first draught and taste of the fountain of life, fresh and new at the well-head; to say nothing of the enjoying of that face without date, for more than this term of life which we now enjoy. And it cost her no more to go thither, than to suffer death to do her this piece of service: for by Him who was dead, and is alive, she was delivered from the second death. What, then, is the first death to the second? Not a scratch of the skin of a finger to the endless second death. And now she sitteth for eternity mail-free, in a very considerable land, which hath more than four summers in the year. Oh, what spring-time is there! Even the smelling of the odours of that great and eternally blooming Rose of Sharon for ever and ever! What a singing life is there! There is not a dumb bird in all that large field; but all sing and breathe out heaven, joy, glory, dominion to the high Prince of that new-found land. And, verily, the land is the sweeter that Jesus Christ paid so dear a rent for it. And He is the glory of the land: all which, I hope, doth not so much mitigate and allay your grief for her part (though truly this should seem sufficient), as the unerring expectation of the dawning of that day upon yourself, and the hope you have of the fruition of that same King and kingdom to your own soul. Certainly the hope of it, when things look so dark-like on both kingdoms, must be an exceedingly great quickening to languishing spirits, who are far from home while we are here. What misery, to have both a bad way all the day, and no hope of lodging at night! But He hath taken up your lodging for you.
I can say no more now; but I pray that the very God of peace may establish your heart to the end. I rest, Madam,
Your Ladyship's, at all respective obedience in the Lord,
S. R.
London, Feb. 24, 1646.
[Perhaps, as Letter CXLIX., some one of Provost Osburn's family in Ireland.]
S IR,—I can write nothing for the present concerning these times (whatever others may think), but that which speaketh wrath and judgment to these kingdoms. If ever ye, or any of that land, received the Gospel in truth (as I am confident ye and they did), there is here a great departure from that faith, and our sufferings are not yet at an end. However, I dare testify and die for it, that once Christ was revealed in the power of His excellency and glory to the saints there, and in Scotland, of which I was a witness. I pray God that none deceive you, or take the crown from you. Hell, or the gates of hell, cannot ravel, mar, nor undo what Christ hath once done amongst you. It may be that I am incapable of new light, and cannot receive that spirit whereof some vainly boast; but that "which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled" (1 John i. 1), even "the word of life," hath been declared to you. Thousands of thousands, walking in that light and that good old way, have gone to heaven, and are now before the throne. Truth is but one, and hath no numbers. Christ and Antichrist are both now in the camp, and are come to open blows. Christ's poor ship saileth in the sea of blood; the passengers are so sea-sick of a high fever, that they miscall one another. Christ, I hope, will bring the broken bark to land. I had rather swim for life and death on an old plank, or a broken board, to land with Christ, than enjoy the rotten peace we have hitherto had. It is like that the Lord will take a severe course with us, to cause the children of the family to agree together. I conceive that Christ hath a great design of free grace to these lands; but His wheels must move over mountains and rocks. He never yet wooed a bride on earth, but in blood, in fire, and in the wilderness. A cross of our own choosing, honeyed and sugared with consolations, we cannot have. I think not much of a cross when all the children of the house weep with me and for me; and to suffer when we enjoy the communion of the saints is not much; but it is hard when saints rejoice in the suffering of saints, and redeemed ones hurt (yea, even go nigh to hate) redeemed ones.
I confess I imagined there had no more been such an affliction on earth, or in the world, as that one elect angel should fight against another; but, for contempt of the communion of saints, we have need of new-born crosses, scarce ever heard of before. The saints are not Christ: there is no misjudging in Him; there is much in us; and a doubt it is, if we shall have fully one heart till we shall enjoy one heaven. Our star-light hideth us from ourselves, and hideth us from one another, and Christ from us all. But He will not be hidden from us. I shall wish that all the sons of our Father in that land were of one mind, and that they be not shaken nor moved from the truth once received. Christ was in that Gospel, and Christ is the same now that He was in The Prelates' time. That Gospel cannot sink; it will make you free, and bear you out. Christ, the subject of it, is the chosen of God; and cometh from Bozrah, with garments dyed in blood. Ireland and Scotland both must be His field, in which He shall feed and gather lilies. Suppose (which yet is impossible) that some had an eternity of Christ in Ireland, and a sweet summer of the Gospel, and a feast of fat things for evermore in Ireland, and that one should never come to heaven, it should be a desirable life! The King's spikenard, Christ's perfume, His apples of love, His ointments, even down in this lower house of clay, are a choice heaven. Oh! what then is the King in His own land, where there is such a throne, so many King's palaces, ten thousand thousands of crowns of glory that want heads yet to fill them? Oh, so much leisure as shall be there to sing! Oh, such a tree as groweth there in the midst of that Paradise, where the inhabitants sing eternally under its branches! To look in at a window, and see the branches burdened with the apples of life, to be the last man that shall come in thither, were too much for me.
I pray you to remember me to the Christians there; and remember our private covenant. Grace be with you.
Your friend in the Lord Jesus,
S. R.
London, April 17, 1646.
S IR,—I know that ye have learned long ago, ere I knew anything of Christ, that if we had the cross at our own election, we would either have law-surety for freedom from it, or then we would have it honeyed and sugared with comforts, so as the sweet should overmaster the gall and wormwood. Christ knoweth how to breed the sons of His house, and ye will give Him leave to take His own way of dispensation with you; and, though it be rough, forgive Him. He defieth you to have as much patience to Him as He hath borne to you. I am sure that there cannot be a dram-weight of gall less in your cup; and ye would not desire He should both afflict you and hurt your soul. When His people cannot have a providence of silk and roses, they must be content with such an one as He carveth for them. Ye would not go to heaven but with company; and ye may perceive that the way of those who went before you was through blood, sufferings, and many afflictions. Nay, Christ, the Captain, went in over the door-threshold of Paradise bleeding to death. I do not think but ye have learned to stoop (though ye, as others, be naturally stiff), and that ye have found that the apples and sweet fruits, which grow on that crabbed tree of the cross, are as sweet as it is sour to bear it; especially considering that Christ hath borne the whole complete cross, and that His saints bear but bits and chips; as the Apostle saith, "the remnants," or "leavings," of the cross (Col. i. 24).
I judge you ten thousand times happy, that ever ye were grace's debtor; for certainly Christ hath engaged you over head and ears to free grace. And take the debt with you to eternity, Immanuel's highest land, where ye find before you a houseful of Christ's everlasting debtors; the less shame to you. Yea, and this lower kingdom of grace is but Christ's hospital, and guest-house of sick folks, whom the brave and noble Physician, Christ, hath cured, upon a venture of life and death. And, if ye be near the water-side (as I know ye are), all that I can say is this, Sir, that I feel by the smell of that land which is before you, that it is a goodly country, and it is well paid for to your hand. And He is before you who will heartily welcome you. Oh, to suck those breasts of full consolation above, and to drink Christ's new wine up in His Father's house, is some greater matter than is believed; since it was brewed from eternity for the Head of the house, and so many thousand crowned kings. Rubs in the way, where the lodging is so good, are not much.
He that brought again from the dead the Great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, establish you to the end.
Your friend and servant in Christ Jesus,
S. R.
London, May 15, 1646.
R EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,—I cannot speak to you. The way ye know; the passage is free and not stopped; the print of the footsteps of the Forerunner is clear and manifest; many have gone before you. Ye will not sleep long in the dust, before The Daybreak. It is a far shorter piece of the hinder-end of the night to you than to Abraham and Moses. Beside all the time of their bodies resting under corruption, it is as long yet to their day as to your morning-light of awaking to glory, though their spirits, having the advantage of yours, have had now the fore-start of the shore before you.
I dare say nothing against His dispensation. I hope to follow quickly. The heirs that are not there before you are posting with haste after you, and none shall take your lodging over your head. Be not heavy. The life of faith is now called for; doing was never reckoned in your accounts, though Christ in and by you hath done more than by twenty, yea, an hundred grey-haired and godly pastors. Believing now is your last.[464] Look to that word, "Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. ii. 20). Ye know the I that liveth, and the I that liveth not; it is not single Ye that live. Christ by law liveth in the broken debtor; it is not a life by doing or holy walking, but the living of Christ in you. If ye look to yourself as divided from Christ, ye must be more than heavy. All your wants, dear brother, be upon Him: ye are His debtors; grace must sum and subscribe your accounts as paid. Stand not upon items, and small or little sanctification. Ye know that inherent holiness must stand by, when imputed is all. I fear the clay house is a-taking down and undermining: but it is nigh the dawning. Look to the east, the dawning of the glory is near. Your Guide is good company, and knoweth all the miles, and the ups and downs in the way. The nearer the morning, the darker. Some travellers see the city twenty miles off, and at a distance; and yet within the eighth part of a mile they cannot see it. It is all keeping that ye would now have, till ye need it; and if sense and fruition come both at once, it is not your loss. Let Christ tutor you as He thinketh good; ye cannot be marred, nor miscarry, in His hand. Want is an excellent qualification; and "no money, no price," to you (who, I know, dare not glory in your own righteousness) is fitness warrantable enough to cast yourself upon Him who justifieth the ungodly. Some see the gold[465] once, and never again till the race's end. It is coming all in a sum together, when ye are in a more gracious capacity to tell it than now. "Ye are not come to the mount that burneth with fire, or unto blackness, darkness, and tempest; but ye are come to Mount Zion, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling," etc.
Ye must leave the wife to a more choice Husband, and the children to a better Father.
If ye leave any testimony to the Lord's work and Covenant, against both Malignants and Sectaries (which I suppose may be needful), let it be under your hand, and subscribed before faithful witnesses.[466]
Your loving and afflicted brother,
S. R.
St. Andrews, Sept. 27, 1648.
[Sir James Stewart of Kirkfield and Cultness, to whom this letter is addressed, was a man of high Christian excellence. "Sir James Stewart," said the celebrated George Gillespie, "has more sterling religion in ready cash than any man ever I knew; he is always agreeably composed and recollected, in a permanent devout frame of spirit, and such as I should wish to have in my last moments" ("Coltness Collections," p. 15). He was a zealous Covenanter, and suffered considerably for his principles during the persecution of Charles II. He died March 31, 1681, at his own house at Edinburgh, in the seventy-third year of his age, in the full assurance of faith. Rutherford wrote this letter on occasion of his own election to be Professor of Divinity in the College of Edinburgh.]
Richt honorablee
T HE mater of my transportation is so poor a contraversie, I truely not beeing desyrous to be the subject of any dine[468] in the Generall Assemblie of the Kirk of Scotland whoe have greater bussines to doe, and haveing suffered once the paine of transportation, moist humbly intreat your w. [worships] that favour as to cast yor thoughts vpon some fitter man; for as it is vnbeseemeing me to lie or dissemblee, so I must friely show you it will but mak me the subject of suffereing and passive obedience, and I trust your w. [worships] intend not that hurt to me, and I am persuaded it is not yor mind, it shall be my prayer to God, to send that worthie societie an hable[469] and pious man. Grace be with you.
Yours at all humblee
observance in the Lord
Samuel Rutherfurd
for the richt honorable my varie good lord,
Sr James Steuart proveist of Edinbrugh and
remanent magistrats Counsellers of the Citie.
S Andrews the
Last of Junii
1649