(IN THE PROSPECT OF HER HUSBAND BEING COMPELLED TO RECEIVE THE COMMAND OF THE PRELATES—SAINTS ARE YET TO JUDGE.)
W ELL-BELOVED MISTRESS,—I charge you in the name of the Son of God, to rest upon your Rock, that is higher than yourself. Be not afraid of a man, who is a worm, nor of the son of man, who shall die. God be your fear. Encourage your husband. I would counsel you to write to Edinburgh to some advised lawyers, to understand what your husband, as the head magistrate, may do in opposing any intruded minister, and in his carriage toward the new prelate,[141] if he command him to imprison or lay hands upon any, and, in a word, how far he may in his office disobey a prelate, without danger of law. For if the Bishop come to your town, and find not obedience to his heart, it is like he will command the Provost to assist him against God and the truth. Ye will have more courage under the persecution. Fear not; take Christ caution,[142] who said, "There shall not one hair of your head perish" (Luke xxi. 18). Christ will not be in your common to have you giving out anything for Him, and not give you all incomes with advantage. It is His honour His servants should not be herried and undone in His service. You were never honoured till now. And if your husband be the first magistrate who shall suffer for Christ's name in this persecution, he may rejoice that Christ hath put the first garland on his head and upon yours. Truth will yet keep the crown of the causey in Scotland. Christ and truth are strong enough. They judge us now; we shall one day judge them, and sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes. Believe, believe; for they dare not pray; they dare not look Christ in the face. They have been false to Christ, and He will not sit with the wrong. Ye know it is not our cause; for if we would quit our Lord, we might sleep for the present in a sound skin, and keep our place, means, and honour, and be dear to them also; but let us once put all we have over in Christ's hand. Fear not for my papers; I shall despatch them, but ye will be examined for them. The Spirit of Jesus give you inward peace. Desire your husband from me to prove honest to Christ; he shall not be a loser at Christ's hand.
Yours ever in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Anwoth, July 8, 1635.
[LIII.—For Marion M'Naught.]
(ENCOURAGEMENT UNDER TRIAL BY PROSPECT OF BRIGHTER DAYS.)
M ISTRESS,—My love in Christ remembered. Having appointed a meeting with Mr. David Dickson, and knowing that B. will not keep the Presbytery, I cannot see you now. Commend my journey to God. My soul blesseth you for your last letter. Be not discouraged; Christ will not want the Isles-men. "The Isles shall wait for His law." We are His inheritance, and He will sell no part of His inheritance. For the sins of this land, and our breach of the covenant, contempt of the Gospel, and our defection from the truth, He hath set up a burning furnace in our Mount Zion; but I say it, and will bide by it, the grass shall yet grow green on our Mount Zion. There shall be dew all the night upon the lilies, amongst which Christ feedeth, until the day break, and the shadows flee away. And the moth shall eat up the enemies of Christ. Let them make a fire of their own, and walk in the light thereof, it shall not let them see to go to their bed; but they shall lie down in sorrow (Isa. l. 11). Therefore, rejoice and believe. This in haste. Grace, grace be with you and yours.
Yours in Christ,
S. R.
Anwoth.
[LIV.—For Marion M'Naught.]
(PUBLIC WRONGS—WORDS OF COMFORT.)
L OVING AND DEAR SISTER,—I fear that you be moved and cast down, because of the late wrong that your husband received in your Town Council. But I pray you comfort yourself in the Lord; for a just cause bides under the water only as long as wicked men hold their hand above it; their arm will weary, and then the just cause shall swim above, and the light that is sown for the righteous shall spring and grow up. If ye were not strangers here, the dogs of the world would not bark at you. You may see all windings and turnings that are in your way to heaven out of God's Word; for He will not lead you to the kingdom at the nearest, but you must go through "honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing" (2 Cor. vi. 8, 10). The world is one of the enemies that we have to fight with, but a vanquished and overcome enemy, and like a beaten and forlorn soldier; for our Jesus hath taken the armour from it. Let me then speak to you in His words: "Be of good courage," saith the Captain of our salvation, "for I have overcome the world." You shall neither be free of the scourge of the tongue, nor of disgraces (even if it were buffetings and spittings upon the face, as was our Saviour's case), if you follow Jesus Christ. I beseech you in the bowels of our Lord Jesus, keep a good conscience, as I trust you do. You live not upon men's opinion; gold may be gold, and have the king's stamp upon it, when it is trampled upon by men. Happy are you, if, when the world trampleth upon you in your credit and good name, yet you are the Lord's gold, stamped with the King of heaven's image, and sealed by the Spirit unto the day of your redemption. Pray for the spirit of love; for "love beareth all things; it believeth all things, hopeth all things, and endureth all things" (1 Cor. xiii. 7).
And I pray you and your husband, yea, I charge you before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, pray for these your adversaries, and read this to your husband from me, and let both of you put on, as the elect of God, bowels of mercies. And, sister, remember how many thousands of talents of sins your Master hath forgiven you. Forgive ye therefore your fellow-servants one talent. Follow God's command in this, and "seek not after your own heart, and after your own eyes," in this matter, as the Spirit speaks (Numb. xv. 39). Ask never the counsel of your own heart here; the world will blow up your heart now, and cause it swell, except the grace of God cause it fall. Jesus, even Jesus, the Eternal Wisdom of the Father, give you wisdom. I trust God shall be glorified in you. And a door shall be opened unto you, as to the Lord's "prisoners of hope," as Zechariah speaks. It is a benefit to you, that the wicked are God's fan to purge you. And I hope they shall blow away no corn, or spiritual graces, but only your chaff. I pray you, in your pursuit, have so recourse to the law of men, that you wander not from the law of God. Be not cast down: if you saw Him who is standing on the shore, holding out His arms to welcome you on land, you would not only wade through a sea of wrongs, but through hell itself to be at Him. And I trust in God you see Him sometimes. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit, and all yours.
Your brother in the Lord,
S. R.
Anwoth.
LV.—To Marion M'Naught.
(WHEN HE HAD BEEN THREATENED WITH PERSECUTION FOR PREACHING THE GOSPEL—THE SAINTS SHALL YET WIN THE DAY.)
W ORTHY AND WELL-BELOVED MISTRESS,—My love in Christ remembered. I know ye have heard of the purpose of my adversaries, to try what they can do against me at this Synod for the work of God in your town when I was at your Communion. They intend to call me in question at the Synod for treasonable doctrine. Therefore help me with your prayers, and desire your acquaintance to help me also. Your ears heard how Christ was there. If He suffer His servant to get a broken head in His own kingly service, and not either help or revenge the wrong, I never saw the like of it. There is not a night drunkard, time-serving, idle, idol shepherd to be spoken against: I am the only man; and because it is so, and I know God will not help them lest they be proud, I am confident their process shall fall asunder. Only be ye earnest with God for hearing, for an open ear, and reading of the bill, that He may in heaven hear both parties, and judge accordingly. And doubt not, fear not; they shall not, who now ride highest, put Christ out of His kingly possession in Scotland. The pride of man and his rage shall turn to the praise of our Lord. It is an old feud, that the rulers of the earth, the dragon and his angels, have carried to the Lamb and His followers; but the followers of the Lamb shall overcome by the Word of God. And believe this, and wait on a little, till they have got their womb full of clay and gravel, and they shall know (howbeit stolen waters be sweet) Esau's portion is not worth his hunting. Commend me to your husband, and send me word how Grizel is. The Son of God lead her through the water. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Anwoth.
[LVI.—To my Lady Kenmure.]
(REASONS FOR RESIGNATION—SECURITY OF SAINTS—THE END OF TIME.)
M ADAM,—I received your Ladyship's letter from J. G.[143] I thank our Lord ye are as well at least as one may be who is not come home. It is a mercy in this stormy sea to get a second wind; for none of the saints get a first, but they must take the winds as the Lord of the seas causeth them to blow, and the inn as the Lord and Master of the inns hath ordered it. If contentment were here, heaven were not heaven. Whoever seek the world to be their bed, shall at best find it short and ill-made, and a stone under their side to hold them waking, rather than a soft pillow to sleep upon. Ye ought to bless your Lord that it is not worse. We live in a sea where many have suffered shipwreck, and have need that Christ sit at the helm of the ship. It is a mercy to win to heaven, though with much hard toil and heavy labour, and to take it by violence ill and well as it may be. Better go swimming and wet through our waters than drown by the way; especially now when truth suffereth, and great men bid Christ sit lower and contract Himself in less bounds, as if He took too much room.
I expect our new prelate[144] shall try my sitting. I hang by a thread, but it is (if I may speak so) of Christ's spinning. There is no quarrel more honest or honourable than to suffer for truth. But the worst is, that this kirk is like to sink, and all her lovers and friends stand afar off; none mourn with her, and none mourn for her. But the Lord Jesus will not be put out of His conquest so soon in Scotland. It will be seen that the kirk and truth will rise again within three days, and Christ again shall ride upon His white horse; howbeit His horse seem now to stumble, yet he cannot fall. The fulness of Christ's harvest in the end of the earth is not yet come in. I speak not this because I would have it so, but upon better grounds than my naked liking. But enough of this sad subject.
I long to be fully assured of your Ladyship's welfare, and that your soul prospereth, especially now in your solitary life when your comforts outward are few, and when Christ hath you for the very uptaking. I know His love to you is still running over, and His love hath not so bad a memory as to forget you and your dear child, who hath two fathers in heaven, the one the Ancient of Days. I trust in His mercy He hath something laid up for him above, however it may go with him here. I know it is long since your Ladyship saw that this world had turned your stepmother and did forsake you. Madam, you have reason to take in good part a lean dinner and spare diet in this life, seeing your large supper of the Lamb's preparing will recompense all. Let it go, which was never yours but only in sight, not in property. The time of your loan will wear shorter and shorter, and time is measured to you by ounce weights; and then I know your hope shall be a full ear of corn and not blasted with wind. It may be your joy that your anchor is up within the veil, and that the ground it is cast upon is not false but firm. God hath done His part: I hope ye will not deny to fish and fetch home all your love to Himself; and it is but too narrow and short for Him if it were more. If ye were before pouring all your love (if it had been many gallons more) in upon your Lord, if drops fell by in the in-pouring, He forgiveth you. He hath done now all that can be done to win beyond it all, and hath left little to woo your love from Himself, except one only child. What is His purpose herein He knoweth best, who hath taken your soul in tutoring. Your faith may be boldly charitable of Christ, that however matters go, the worst shall be a tired traveller, and a joyful and sweet welcome home. The back of your winter night is broken. Look to the east, the day sky is breaking. Think not that Christ loseth time, or lingereth unsuitably. O fair, fair, and sweet morning! We are but as sea passengers. If we look right, we are upon our country coast: our Redeemer is fast coming, to take this old worm-eaten world, like an old moth-eaten garment, in His two hands, and to roll it up and lay it by Him. These are the last days, and an oath is given, by God Himself, that time shall be no more (Rev. x. 6); and when time itself is old and grey-haired, it were good we were away. Thus, Madam, ye see I am, as my custom is tedious in my lines. Your Ladyship will pardon it. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Your Ladyship's at all obedience in Christ,
S. R.
Anwoth, Jan. 18, 1636.
[LVII.—For Marion M'Naught.]
(IN THE PROSPECT OF REMOVAL TO ABERDEEN.)
H ONOURED AND DEAREST IN THE LORD,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am well, and my soul prospereth. I find Christ with me. I burden no man; I want nothing; no face looketh on me but it laugheth on me. Sweet, sweet is the Lord's cross. I overcome my heaviness. My Bridegroom's love-blinks fatten my weary soul. I soon go to my King's palace at Aberdeen. Tongue, and pen, and wit, cannot express my joy.
Remember my love to Jean Gordon, to my sister, Jean Brown, to Grizel, to your husband. Thus in haste. Grace be with you.
Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Edinburgh, April 5, 1636.
P.S.—My charge is to you to believe, rejoice, sing, and triumph. Christ has said to me, Mercy, mercy, grace and peace for Marion M'Naught.
[LVIII.—To my Lady Kenmure.]
(ON OCCASION OF EFFORTS TO INTRODUCE EPISCOPACY.)
R IGHT HONOURABLE,—I cannot find a time for writing some things I intended on Job, I have been so taken up with the broils that we are encumbered with in our calling. For our prelate will have us either to swallow our light over, and digest it contrary to our stomachs (howbeit we should vomit our conscience and all, in this troublesome conformity), or then he will try if deprivation can convert us to the ceremonial faith.[145]
I write to your Ladyship, Madam, not as distrusting your affection or willingness to help me, as your Ladyship is able by yourself or others, but to advertise you that I hang by a small thread. For our learned prelate, because we cannot see with his eyes so far in a mill-stone as his light doeth, will not follow his Master, meek Jesus, who waited upon the wearied and short-breathed in the way to heaven.[146] Where all see not alike, and some are weaker, He carrieth the lambs in His bosom, and leadeth gently those that are with young. But we must either see all the evil of ceremonies to be but as indifferent straws, or suffer no less than to be casten out of the Lord's inheritance! Madam, if I had time I would write more at length, but your Ladyship will pardon me till a fitter occasion. Grace be with you and your child, and bear you company to your best home.
Your Ladyship's in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Anwoth, June 8, 1636.
[LIX.—To Earlston, Elder.]
[Alexander Gordon of Earlston was descended from the house of Gordon of Lochinvar, and the residence of his family at first was Gordon of Airds (about a mile from the New Galloway Railway Station, on a wooded height, in the parish of Kells). His great-grandfather, Alexander Gordon of Airds, having married Margaret, eldest daughter of John Sinclair of Earlston, the issue of that union came to possess the lands of Earlston. (Nisbet's "Heraldry.") It is a tradition that old Gordon of Airds imbibed Wickliffite views, when he was on a sort of embassy to the English Borderers, and that he propagated the truth by bringing home an English Wickliffite to be tutor to his eldest son. Having obtained a New Testament in the vulgar tongue, he read it at meetings which were held in the woods of Airds, in a secluded spot, at the junction of the Ken and the Dee, where the loch begins.[147] The truth circulated rapidly through the whole province of Galloway.
There are some interesting traditions about old Gordon of Airds. He was compelled, when a youth, to sign the sentence that doomed Patrick Hamilton to death, 1528; and this very circumstance led him to inquire more fully into the truth. He lived to the age of one hundred and one, dying in 1586. A traveller, coming to crave the hospitality of Airds one evening, was courteously received by a youth, who, however, referred him to his father. His father in turn referred him to an older man, the grandfather of the boy; and then this grey-haired grand-sire said, "Sir, you must ask my father,"—the patriarch who sat in the arm-chair and conducted worship that evening. (Agnew's "Sheriffs of Galloway.")
Earlston, or Erliston, or Earleston, is not far from Carsphairn. As you come from Dalry, in Glenkens, you see the roof of the ancient residence appearing from among the trees that grow up the sloping ridge at the foot of which it stands. In front of the grim old tower there is a fine lawn, a remnant of better days, and a linn not far off. There is another Earlston, in the parish of Borgue, a quite modern mansion, built by a descendant of this ancient family, and called after the name of the original property.
The grace of God, which had early chosen this family, continued to favour it for many generations. Alexander Gordon, Rutherford's friend, was worthy of his ancestors. Livingstone, in his "Characteristics," speaks of him as "a man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise. For wisdom, courage, and righteousness, he might have been a magistrate in any part of the earth." He warmly espoused the side of the Presbyterians. In the end of July 1635, he was summoned by the Bishop of Glasgow to appear before the High Commission, for preventing the intrusion of an unpopular nominee of the bishop into a vacant parish. But Lord Lorn, afterwards the martyred Marquis of Argyle, having appeared with him before that court, and affirmed that Earlston had done this by his direction as patron of the parish, the matter was deferred to a future day. This letter of Rutherford probably refers to the vexatious proceedings instituted against him in regard to this matter. He was afterwards summoned by Sydserff, Bishop of Galloway, fined five hundred merks, and banished to Montrose. The Privy Council, however, afterwards dispensed with his banishment upon the payment of his fine. Earlston was a member of the Assembly which met at Glasgow, in 1638, as commissioner from the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright. His name appears among the members of Parliament in 1641, as member for the shire of Galloway. He was married to Elizabeth, daughter of John Gordon of Muirfad, by whom he had several children. His eldest son, William, who succeeded him, is retoured heir of his father on the 23rd of January 1655. In the avenue leading to Earlston, there is a very large old oak, still shown as that in the thick foliage of which this William Gordon hid, and so escaped his pursuers, in the days of the persecution. But in 1679, on his way to join the rising at Bothwell, he was shot by a troop of dragoons, and lies buried in Glassford Churchyard, where is a monument to his memory.]
(NO SUFFERING FOR CHRIST UNREWARDED—LOSS OF CHILDREN—CHRIST IN PROVIDENCE.)
M UCH HONOURED SIR,—I have heard of the mind and malice of your adversaries against you. It is like they will extend the law they have, in length and breadth, answerable to their heat of mind. But it is a great part of your glory that the cause is not yours, but your Lord's whom you serve. And I doubt not but Christ will count it His honour to back His weak servant; and it were a shame for Him (with reverence to His holy name) that He should suffer Himself to be in the common of such a poor man as ye are, and that ye should give out for Him and not get in again. Write up your depursments for your Master Christ, and keep the account of what ye give out, whether name, credit, goods, or life, and suspend your reckoning till nigh the evening; and remember that a poor weak servant of Christ wrote it to you, that ye shall have Christ, a King, caution for your incomes and all your losses. Reckon not from the forenoon. Take the Word of God for your warrant; and for Christ's act of cautionary, howbeit body, life, and goods go for Christ your Lord, and though ye should lose the head for Him, yet "there shall not one hair of your head perish; in patience, therefore, possess your soul."[148] And because ye are the first man in Galloway called out and questioned for the name of Jesus, His eye hath been upon you, as upon one whom He designed to be among His witnesses. Christ hath said, "Alexander Gordon shall lead the ring in witnessing a good confession," and therefore He hath put the garland of suffering for Himself first upon your head. Think yourself so much the more obliged to Him, and fear not; for He layeth His right hand on your head. He who was dead and is alive will plead your cause, and will look attentively upon the process from the beginning to the end, and the Spirit of glory shall rest upon you. "Fear none of these things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life"[149] (Rev. ii. 10). This lovely One, Jesus, who also became the Son of man, that He might take strokes for you, write the cross-sweetening and soul-supporting sense of these words in your heart!
These rumbling wheels of Scotland's ten days' tribulation are under His look who hath seven eyes. Take a house on your head, and slip yourself by faith in under Christ's wings till the storm be over. And remember, when they have drunken us down, Jerusalem will be a cup of trembling and of poison.[150] They shall be fain to vomit out the saints; for Judah "shall be a hearth of fire in a sheaf, and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left." Woe to Zion's enemies! they have the worst of it; for we have writ for the victory. Sir, ye were never honourable till now. This is your glory, that Christ hath put you in the roll with Himself and with the rest of the witnesses who are come out of great tribulation, and have washen their garments and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Be not cast down for what the servants of Antichrist cast in your teeth, that ye are a head to and favourer of the Puritans, and leader to that sect. If your conscience say, "Alas! here is much din and little done" (as the proverb is), because ye have not done so much service to Christ that way as ye might and should, take courage from that same temptation. For your Lord Christ looketh upon that very challenge as an hungering desire in you to have done more than ye did; and that filleth up the blank, and He will accept of what ye have done in that kind. If great men be kind to you, I pray you overlook them; if they smile on you, Christ but borroweth their face to smile through them upon His afflicted servant. Know the well-head; and for all that, learn the way to the well itself. Thank God that Christ came to your house in your absence and took with Him some of your children. He presumed that much on your love, that ye would not offend;[151] and howbeit He should take the rest, He cannot come upon your wrong side. I question not, if they were children of gold, but ye think them well bestowed upon Him.
Expound well these two rods on you, one in your house at home, another on your own person abroad. Love thinketh no evil. If ye were not Christ's wheat, appointed to be bread in His house, He would not grind you. But keep the middle line, neither despise nor faint (Heb. xii. 5). Ye see your Father is homely with you. Strokes of a father evidence kindness and care; take them so. I hope your Lord hath manifested Himself to you, and suggested these, or more choice thoughts about His dealing with you. We are using our weak moyen and credit for you up at our own court, as we dow. We pray the King to hear us, and the Son of Man to go side for side with you, and hand in hand in the fiery oven, and to quicken and encourage your unbelieving heart when ye droop and despond. Sir, to the honour of Christ be it said, my faith goeth with my pen now. I am presently believing Christ shall bring you out. Truth in Scotland shall keep the crown of the causeway yet. The saints shall see religion go naked at noon-day, free from shame and fear of men. We shall divide Shechem, and ride upon the high places of Jacob. Remember my obliged respects and love to Lady Kenmure and her sweet child.
Yours ever in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Anwoth, July 6, 1636.
[LX.—To Marion M'Naught.]
(WHEN HE WAS UNDER TRIAL BY THE HIGH COMMISSION.)
M Y DEAR AND WELL-BELOVED IN CHRIST,—I am yet under trial, and have appeared before Christ's forbidden lords,[152] for a testimony against them. The Chancellor and the rest tempted me with questions, nothing belonging to my summons, which I wholly declined, notwithstanding of his threats. My newly printed book against Arminians[153] was one challenge; not lording the prelates[154] was another. The most part of the bishops, when I came in, looked more astonished than I, and heard me with silence. Some spoke for me; but my Lord ruled it so as I am filled with joy in my sufferings, and I find Christ's cross sweet. What they intend against the next day I know not. Be not secure, but pray. Our Bishop of Galloway said, If the Commission should not give him his will of me (with an oath he said), he would write to the King. The Chancellor summoned me in judgment to appear that day eight days. My Lord has brought me a friend from the Highlands of Argyle, my Lord of Lorn,[155] who hath done as much as was within the compass of his power. God gave me favour in his eyes. Mr. Robert Glendinning is silenced, till he accepts a colleague. We hope to deal yet for him. Christ is worthy to be entrusted. Your husband will get an easy and good way of his business. Ye and I both shall see the salvation of God upon Joseph separate from his brethren. Grace be with you.
S. R.
Edinburgh, 1636.
[LXI.—To the truly Noble and Elect Lady, my Lady Viscountess of Kenmure, on the evening of his banishment to Aberdeen.]
(HIS ONLY REGRETS—THE CROSS UNSPEAKABLY SWEET—RETROSPECT OF HIS MINISTRY.)
N OBLE AND ELECT LADY,—That honour that I have prayed for these sixteen years, with submission to my Lord's will, my kind Lord hath now bestowed upon me, even to suffer for my royal and princely King Jesus, and for His kingly crown, and the freedom of His kingdom that His Father hath given Him. The forbidden lords have sentenced me with deprivation, and confinement within the town of Aberdeen. I am charged in the King's name to enter against the 20th day of August next, and there to remain during the King's pleasure, as they have given it out. Howbeit Christ's green cross, newly laid upon me, be somewhat heavy, while I call to mind the many fair days sweet and comfortable to my soul and to the souls of many others, and how young ones in Christ are plucked from the breast, and the inheritance of God laid waste; yet that sweet smelled and perfumed cross of Christ is accompanied with sweet refreshments, with the kisses of a King, with the joy of the Holy Ghost, with faith that the Lord hears the sighing of a prisoner, with undoubted hope (as sure as my Lord liveth) after this night to see daylight, and Christ's sky to clear up again upon me, and His poor kirk; and that in a strange land, among strange faces, He will give favour in the eyes of men to His poor oppressed servant, who dow not but love that lovely One, that princely One, Jesus, the Comforter of his soul. All would be well, if I were free of old challenges for guiltiness, and for neglect in my calling, and for speaking too little for my Well-beloved's crown, honour, and kingdom. O for a day in the assembly of the saints to advocate for King Jesus! If my Lord also go on now to quarrels I die, I cannot endure it. But I look for peace from Him, because He knoweth I dow bear men's feud, but I dow not bear His feud. This is my only exercise, that I fear I have done little good in my ministry; but I dare not but say, I loved the bairns of the wedding-chamber, and prayed for and desired the thriving of the marriage, and coming of His kingdom.
I apprehend no less than a judgment upon Galloway, and that the Lord shall visit this whole nation for the quarrel of the Covenant. But what can be laid upon me, or any the like of me, is too light for Christ. Christ dow bear more, and would bear death and burning quick, in His quick servants, even for this honourable cause that I now suffer for. Yet for all my complaints (and He knoweth that I dare not now dissemble), He was never sweeter and kinder than He is now. One kiss now is sweeter than ten long since; sweet, sweet is His cross; light, light and easy is His yoke. O what a sweet step were it up to my Father's house through ten deaths, for the truth and cause of that unknown, and so not half well loved, Plant of Renown, the Man called the Branch, the Chief among ten thousands, the fairest among the sons of men! O what unseen joys, how many hidden heart-burnings of love, are in the "remnants of the sufferings of Christ!" (Col. i. 24.) My dear worthy Lady, I give it to your Ladyship, under my own hand, my heart writing as well as my hand,—welcome, welcome, sweet, sweet and glorious cross of Christ; welcome, sweet Jesus, with Thy light cross. Thou hast now gained and gotten all my love from me; keep what Thou hast gotten! Only woe, woe is me, for my bereft flock, for the lambs of Jesus, that I fear shall be fed with dry breasts. But I spare now. Madam, I dare not promise to see your Ladyship, because of the little time I have allotted me; and I purpose to obey the King, who hath power of my body; and rebellion to kings is unbeseeming Christ's ministers. Be pleased to acquaint my Lady Mar[156] with my case. I will look that your Ladyship and that good lady will be mindful to God of the Lord's prisoner, not for my cause, but for the Gospel's sake. Madam, bind me more, if more can be, to your Ladyship, and write thanks to your brother, my Lord of Lorn, for what he hath done for me, a poor unknown stranger to his Lordship. I shall pray for him and his house, while I live. It is his honour to open his mouth in the streets, for his wronged and oppressed Master Christ Jesus. Now, Madam, commending your Ladyship and the sweet child to the tender mercies of mine own Lord Jesus, and His good-will who dwelt in the Bush,
I am yours in his own sweetest Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Edinburgh, July 28, 1636.
[LXII.—To the Lady Culross, on occasion of his banishment to Aberdeen.]
[Elizabeth Melville, wife of James Colvill, the eldest son of Alexander, Commendator of Culross, was the daughter of Sir James Melville of Halhill, in Fife. Her father was ambassador from Queen Mary to Queen Elizabeth, and a privy councillor to King James VI. He was also a man of piety, who (says Livingstone), "professed he had got assurance from the Lord, that himself, wife, and all his children, should meet in heaven." Lady Culross held a high place among the eminent Christians of her day. Livingstone says: "She was famous for her piety, and for her dream concerning her spiritual condition, which she put in verse, which was published by others. Of all that ever I saw, she was most unwearied in religious exercises; and the more she enjoyed access to God therein she hungered the more." She was present at the famous Communion at Shotts in June 1636, when the sermon preached by Livingstone, on the Monday after, was the means, it is believed, of the conversion of not less than five hundred individuals. The night before had been spent in prayer by a great number of Christians in a large room of the inn where she slept; and the minister who should have preached on Monday having fallen sick, it was at her suggestion that the other ministers assisting on that occasion, to whom Livingstone was a stranger, laid upon him the work of addressing the people. There is a poem written by her, entitled "Ane Godlie Dream;" and there is still preserved a sonnet of her composition, which she sent to Mr. John Welsh when he was imprisoned in Blackness, 1605:—
"My dear brother, with courage bear the cross,
Joy shall be joined with all thy sorrow here.
High is thy hope, disdain this earthly dross,
Once shall you see the wished day appear.
"Now it is dark, thy sky cannot be clear;
After the clouds it shall be calm anon;
Wait on His will whose blood hath bought thee dear:
Extol His name, though outward joys be gone.
"Look to the Lord, thou art not left alone,
Since He is thine, what pleasure canst thou take!
He is at hand, and hears thy every groan:
End out thy fight, and suffer for His sake.
"A sight most bright thy soul shall shortly see,
When store of glore thy rich reward shall be."
—Wodrow MSS. Adv. Lib. Edin. vol. xxix.]
(CHALLENGES OF CONSCIENCE—THE CROSS NO BURDEN.)
M ADAM,—Your letter came in due time to me, now a prisoner of Christ, and in bonds for the Gospel. I am sentenced with deprivation and confinement within the town of Aberdeen. But O my guiltiness, the follies of my youth, the neglects in my calling, and especially in not speaking more for the kingdom, crown, and sceptre of my royal and princely King Jesus, do so stare me in the face, that I apprehend anger in that which is a crown of rejoicing to the dear saints of God. This, before my compearance, which was three several days, did trouble me, and burdeneth me more now; howbeit Christ, and in Him God reconciled, met me with open arms, and trysted me precisely at the entry of the door of the Chancellor's hall, and assisted me so to answer, as that the advantage is not theirs but Christ's. Alas! that is no cause of wondering that I am thus borne down with challenges; for the world hath mistaken me, and no man knoweth what guiltiness is in me so well as these two, who keep my eyes now waking and my heart heavy, I mean (1) my heart and conscience, and (2) my Lord, who is greater than my heart.
Shew your brother that I desire him, while he is on the watch-tower, to plead with his mother, and to plead with this land, and spare not to cry for my sweet Lord Jesus His fair crown, that the interdicted and forbidden lords are plucking off His royal head. If I were free of challenges, and a High Commission within my soul, I would not give a straw to go to my Father's house through ten deaths, for the truth and cause of my lovely, lovely One, Jesus. But I walk in heaviness now. If ye love me, and Christ in me, my dear Lady, pray, pray for this only, that bygones betwixt my Lord and me may be bygones, and that He would pass from the summons of His High Commission, and seek nothing from me, but what He will do for me and work in me. If your ladyship knew me as I do myself, ye would say, "Poor soul, no marvel." It is not my apprehension that createth this cross to me; it is too real, and hath sad and certain grounds. But I will not believe that God will take this advantage of me, when my back is at the wall. He who forbiddeth to add affliction to affliction, will He do it Himself? Why should He pursue a dry leaf and stubble? Desire Him to spare me now. Also the memory of the fair feast-days, that Christ and I had in His banqueting-house of wine, and of the scattered flock once committed to me, and now taken off my hand by Himself, because I was not so faithful in the end as I was in the two first years of my entry, when sleep departed from my eyes, because my soul was taken up with a care for Christ's lambs,—even these add sorrow to my sorrow. Now my Lord hath only given me this to say, and I write it under mine own hand (be ye the Lord's servant's witness), welcome, welcome, sweet, sweet cross of Christ; welcome, fair, fair, lovely, royal King with Thine own cross. Let us all three go to heaven together. Neither care I much to go from the south of Scotland to the north, and to be Christ's prisoner amongst unco faces, in a place of this kingdom, which I have little reason to be in love with. I know Christ shall make Aberdeen my garden of delights. I am fully persuaded that Scotland shall eat Ezekiel's book, that is written within and without, "lamentation, and mourning, and woe" (Ezek. ii. 10). But the saints shall get a drink of the well that goeth through the streets of the New Jerusalem, to put it down. Thus hoping that ye will think upon the poor prisoner of Christ, I pray, grace, grace be with you.
Your Ladyship's in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Edinburgh, July 30, 1636.
[LXIII.—To Mr. Robert Cunningham, Minister of the Gospel at Holywood, in Ireland.]
[Mr. Robert Cunningham was for some time employed as chaplain to the Earl of Buccleuch's regiment in Holland. On the return of the troops to Scotland, he removed to the north of Ireland, where he was admitted minister of Holywood in 1615. "He was the one man to my discerning," says Livingstone, "of all that ever I saw, who resembled most the meekness of Jesus Christ in his whole carriage, and was so far reverenced by all, even the most wicked, that he was oft troubled with that Scripture, 'Woe to you when all men speak well of you.'" He continued to labour in his charge, and in the surrounding district, with great success, until the Presbyterian ministers began to be molested for their nonconformity. Owing to the singular gentleness of Cunningham's disposition, he was for some time less subjected to trouble than his brethren; but at length, on the 12th of August 1636, he and four other ministers (among whom was Mr. Hamilton mentioned in the close of this letter) were formally deposed for refusing to subscribe certain canons, one of which was kneeling at the Lord's Supper. Not long after, he, with some of his deposed brethren, came over to Scotland; but he did not long survive his arrival. He died at Irvine, on the 29th of March 1637, scarcely eight months after this letter was written. A little before he expired, his wife sitting on the front of his bed with her hand clasped in his, after committing to God his flock at Holywood, his friends and his children, he added, "And last of all, I recommend to Thee this gentlewoman, who is no more my wife." His affectionate wife bursting into tears, he sought by comfortable words to allay her grief; but in the act of so doing, fell asleep in Jesus.]
(CONSOLATION TO A BROTHER IN TRIBULATION—HIS OWN DEPRIVATION OF MINISTRY—CHRIST WORTH SUFFERING FOR.)
W ELL-BELOVED AND REVEREND BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. Upon acquaintance in Christ, I thought good to take the opportunity of writing to you. Seeing it hath seemed good to the Lord of the harvest to take the hooks out of our hands for a time, and to lay upon us a more honourable service, even to suffer for His name, it were good to comfort one another in writing. I have had a desire to see you in the face; yet now being the prisoner of Christ, it is taken away. I am greatly comforted to hear of your soldier's stately[157] spirit, for your princely and royal Captain Jesus our Lord, and for the grace of God in the rest of our dear brethren with you.
You have heard of my trouble, I suppose. It hath pleased our sweet Lord Jesus to let loose the malice of these interdicted lords in His house to deprive me of my ministry at Anwoth, and to confine me, eight score miles from thence, to Aberdeen; and also (which was not done to any before) to inhibit me to speak at all in Jesus' name, within this kingdom, under the pain of rebellion. The cause that ripened their hatred was my book against the Arminians, whereof they accused me, on those three days I appeared before them. But, let our crowned King in Zion reign! By His grace the loss is theirs, the advantage is Christ's and truth's. Albeit this honest cross gained some ground on me, and my heaviness and my inward challenges of conscience for a time were sharp, yet now, for the encouragement of you all, I dare say it, and write it under my hand, "Welcome, welcome, sweet, sweet cross of Christ." I verily think the chains of my Lord Jesus are all overlaid with pure gold, and that His cross is perfumed, and that it smelleth of Christ, and that the victory shall be by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of His truth, and that Christ, lying on His back, in His weak servants, and oppressed truth, shall ride over His enemies' bellies, and shall "strike through kings in the day of His wrath" (Psa. cx. 4). It is time we laugh when He laugheth; and seeing He is now pleased to sit[158] with wrongs for a time, it becometh us to be silent until the Lord hath let the enemies enjoy their hungry, lean, and feckless paradise. Blessed are they who are content to take strokes with weeping Christ. Faith will trust the Lord, and is not hasty, nor headstrong; neither is faith so timorous as to flatter a temptation, or to bud and bribe the cross. It is little up or little down[159] that the Lamb and His followers can get no law-surety, nor truce with crosses; it must be so, till we be up in our Father's house. My heart is woe indeed for my mother Church, that hath played the harlot with many lovers. Her Husband hath a mind to sell her for her horrible transgressions; and heavy will the hand of the Lord be upon this backsliding nation. The ways of our Zion mourn; her gold has become dim, her white Nazarites are black like a coal. How shall not the children weep, when the Husband and the mother cannot agree! Yet I believe Scotland's sky shall clear again; that Christ shall build again the old waste places of Jacob; that our dead and dry bones shall become one army of living men, and that our Well-beloved may yet feed among the lilies, until the day break and the shadows flee away (Song iv. 5, 6). My dear brother, let us help one another with our prayers. Our King shall mow down His enemies, and shall come from Bozrah with His garments all dyed in blood. And for our consolation shall He appear, and call His wife Hephzibah, and His land Beulah (Isa. lxii. 4); for He will rejoice over us and marry us, and Scotland shall say, "What have I to do any more with idols?" Only let us be faithful to Him that can ride through hell and death upon a windlestrae, and His horse never stumble; and let Him make of me a bridge over a water, so that His high and holy name may be glorified in me. Strokes with the sweet Mediator's hand are very sweet. He was always sweet to my soul; but since I suffered for Him, His breath hath a sweeter smell than before. Oh that every hair of my head, and every member and every bone in my body, were a man to witness a fair confession for Him! I would think all too little for Him. When I look over beyond the line, and beyond death, to the laughing side of the world, I triumph, and ride upon the high places of Jacob; howbeit otherwise I am a faint, dead-hearted, cowardly man, oft borne down, and hungry in waiting for the marriage supper of the Lamb. Nevertheless, I think it the Lord's wise love that feeds us with hunger, and makes us fat with wants and desertions.
I know not, my dear brother, if our worthy brethren be gone to sea or not. They are on my heart and in my prayers. If they be yet with you, salute my dear friend, John Stuart, my well-beloved brethren in the Lord, Mr. Blair, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Livingston, and Mr. M'Clelland,[160] and acquaint them with my troubles, and entreat them to pray for the poor afflicted prisoner of Christ. They are dear to my soul. I seek your prayers and theirs for my flock: their remembrance breaketh my heart. I desire to love that people, and others my dear acquaintance in Christ, with love in God, and as God loveth them. I know that He who sent me to the west and south, sends me also to the north. I will charge my soul to believe and to wait for Him, and will follow His providence, and not go before it, nor stay behind it. Now, my dear brother, taking farewell in paper, I commend you all to the word of His grace, and to the work of His Spirit, to Him who holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, that you may be kept spotless till the day of Jesus our Lord.
I am your brother in affliction in our sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
From Irvine, being on my journey to Christ's
Palace in Aberdeen, August 4, 1636.
[LXIV.—To Alexander Gordon of Earlston.]
(HIS FEELINGS UPON LEAVING ANWOTH.)
M UCH HONOURED SIR,—I find small hopes of Q.'s business.[161] I intend, after the council-day, to go on to Aberdeen. The Lord is with me: I care not what man can do. I burden no man, and I want nothing. No king is better provided than I am. Sweet, sweet, and easy is the cross of my Lord. All men I look in the face (of whatsoever denomination, nobles and poor, acquaintance and strangers) are friendly to me. My Well-beloved is some kinder and more warmly than ordinary, and cometh and visiteth my soul. My chains are overgilded with gold. Only the remembrance of my fair days with Christ in Anwoth, and of my dear flock (whose case is my heart's sorrow), is vinegar to my sugared wine. Yet both sweet and sour feed my soul. No pen, no words, no ingine can express to you the loveliness of my only, only Lord Jesus. Thus, in haste, making for my palace at Aberdeen, I bless you, your wife, your eldest son, and other children. Grace, grace be with you.
Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Edinburgh, Sept. 5, 1636.
[LXV.—To Robert Gordon of Knockbreck, on his way to Aberdeen.]
[Robert Gordon of Knockbrex, in the parish of Borgue, which adjoins Anwoth, is, by Livingstone in his "Characteristics," described as "a single-hearted and painful Christian, much employed at parliaments and public meetings after the year 1638." He was a member of the famous Assembly which met at Glasgow in 1638, as commissioner from the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright. The precise date of his death is uncertain; but we find, in 1657, John Gordon in Garloch, five miles from Dalry, is retoured "heir of Robert Gordon of Knockbreck, his granduncle, in the lands of Knockbreck." (Inq. Retor. Abbrev. Kirkcudbright, No. 274.) This John Gordon, and Robert, his brother, were executed together at Edinburgh on the 7th of December 1666, for having been engaged in the rising at Pentland. (See Letter CCXVII.) They inherited, and suffered for, the principles of Robert Gordon of Knockbreck, their granduncle, to whom this letter was written.
Knockbrex stands near the sea-shore, amid thick woods, looking down on the opening of Wigtown Bay. But a modern mansion has taken the place of Gordon's residence.]
(HOW UPHELD ON THE WAY.)
M Y DEAREST BROTHER,—I see Christ thinketh shame (if I may speak so) to be in such a poor man's common as mine. I burden no man; I want nothing; no face hath gloomed upon me since I left you. God's sun and fair weather conveyeth me to my time-paradise in Aberdeen. Christ hath so handsomely fitted for my shoulders this rough tree of the cross, as that it hurteth me no ways. My treasure is up in Christ's coffers; my comforts are greater than ye can believe; my pen shall lie for penury of words to write of them. God knoweth I am filled with the joy of the Holy Ghost. Only my memory of you, my dearest in the Lord, my flock and others, keepeth me under, and from being exalted above measure. Christ's sweet sauce hath this sour mixed with it; but O such a sweet and pleasant taste! I find small hopes of Q.'s matter. Thus in haste. Remember me to your wife, and to William Gordon. Grace be with you,
Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Edinburgh, Sept. 5, 1636.
[LXVI.—To Robert Gordon of Knockbreck, after arriving at Aberdeen.]
(CHALLENGES OF CONSCIENCE—EASE IN ZION.)
D EAR BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am, by God's mercy, come now to Aberdeen, the place of my confinement, and settled in an honest man's house. I find the town's-men cold, general, and dry in their kindness; yet I find a lodging in the heart of many strangers. My challenges are revived again, and I find old sores bleeding of new; dangerous and painful is an under-cotted conscience; yet I have an eye to the blood that is physic for such sores. But, verily, I see Christianity is conceived to be more easy and lighter than it is; so that I sometimes think I never knew anything but the letters of that name; for our nature contenteth itself with little in godliness. Our "Lord, Lord," seemeth to us ten "Lord-Lords." Little holiness in our balance is much, because it is our own holiness; and we love to lay small burdens upon our soft natures, and to make a fair court-way to heaven. And I know it were necessary to take more pains than we do, and not to make heaven a city more easily taken than God hath made it. I persuade myself that many runners shall come short, and get a disappointment. Oh! how easy is it to deceive ourselves, and to sleep, and wish that heaven may fall down in our laps! Yet for all my Lord's glooms, I find Him sweet, gracious, loving, kind; and I want both pen and words to set forth the fairness, beauty, and sweetness of Christ's love, and the honour of this cross of Christ, which is glorious to me, though the world thinketh shame thereof. I verily think that the cross of Christ would blush and think shame of these thin-skinned worldings, who are so married to their credit that they are ashamed of the sufferings of Christ. O the honour to be scourged and stoned with Christ, and to go through a furious-faced death to life eternal! But men would have law-borrows against Christ's cross.
Now, my dear brother, forget not the prisoner of Christ, for I see very few here who kindly fear God. Grace be with you. Let my love in Christ and hearty affection be remembered to your kind wife, to your brother John, and to all friends. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Sept. 20, 1636.
[LXVII.-For William Fullarton, Provost of Kirkcudbright.]
[William Fullarton, as has been formerly noticed, was the husband of Marion M'Naught. His religious principles were the same with those of his excellent wife, and he was a man of virtue, integrity, and piety. He proved himself the patron of the oppressed in the case of Mr. Robert Glendinning, the aged minister of Kirkcudbright; to which case there is evident allusion in this letter. Mr. Glendinning having refused to conform to Prelacy, and to receive, as his assistant and successor, a man whom Bishop Sydserff intruded upon him and the people of Kirkcudbright, the bishop suspended him from his office, and sentenced him to be imprisoned. Provost Fullarton, and the other magistrates of the burgh (one of whom was Mr. William Glendinning, son of the minister), indignant at such tyrannical proceedings, refused to incarcerate their own pastor, then nearly eighty years of age, and were determined, with the great body of the inhabitants of the town, to attend upon his ministry. Sydserff, too proud and violent to allow his authority to be thus despised, caused Bailie Glendinning to be imprisoned in Kirkcudbright, and the other magistrates to be confined within the town of Wigtown, while he sentenced the aged minister to remain within the bounds of his parish, and forbade him to exercise any part of his ministerial functions. But he found it impossible, by all the means he could employ, to reduce these refractory magistrates to obedience. The firmness which Fullarton manifested on this occasion is warmly commended by Rutherford.]
(ENCOURAGEMENT TO SUFFER FOR CHRIST.)
M UCH HONOURED AND VERY DEAR FRIEND,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I am in good case, blessed be the Lord, remaining here in this unco town a prisoner for Christ and His truth. And I am not ashamed of His cross. My soul is comforted with the consolations of His sweet presence, for whom I suffer.
I earnestly entreat you to give your honour and authority to Christ, and for Christ; and be not dismayed for flesh and blood, while you are for the Lord, and for His truth and cause. And howbeit we see truth put to the worse for the time, yet Christ will be a friend to truth, and will do for those who dare hazard all that they have for Him and for His glory. Sir, our fair day is coming, and the court will change, and wicked men will weep after noon, and sorer than the sons of God, who weep in the morning. Let us believe and hope for God's salvation.
Sir, I hope I need not write to you for your kindness and love to my brother,[162] who is now to be distressed for the truth of God as well as I am. I think myself obliged to pray for you, and your worthy and kind bed-fellow and children, for your love to him and me also. I hope your pains for us in Christ shall not be lost. Thus recommending you to the tender mercy and loving-kindness of God, I rest,
Your very loving and affectionate brother,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Sept. 21, 1636.
[LXVIII.—To John Fleming, Bailiffe (Bailie) of Leith.]
[Of Mr. Fleming nothing can be ascertained, unless it is he who is mentioned by Livingston as being a merchant in Edinburgh, a man of note among the godly.]
(THE SWEETNESS AND FAITHFULNESS OF CHRIST'S LOVE.)
M Y VERY WORTHY FRIEND,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I received your letter. I bless the Lord through Jesus Christ, I find His word good, "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction" (Isa. xlviii. 10). "I will be with him in trouble" (Ps. xci. 15). I never expected other at Christ's hand but much good and comfort; and I am not disappointed. I find my Lord's cross overgilded and oiled with comforts. My Lord hath now shown me the white side of His cross. I would not exchange my weeping in prison with the Fourteen Prelates'[163] laughter, amidst their hungry and lean joys. This world knoweth not the sweetness of Christ's love; it is a mystery to them.
At my first coming here, I found great heaviness, especially because it had pleased the prelates to add this gentle cruelty to my former sufferings (for it is gentle to them), to inhibit the ministers of the town to give me the liberty of a pulpit. I said, What aileth Christ at my service? But I was a fool; He hath chid Himself friends with me. If ye and others of God's children shall praise His great name, who maketh worthless men witnesses for Him, my silence and sufferings shall preach more than my tongue could do. If His glory be seen in me, I am satisfied; for I want for no kindness from Christ. And, sir, I dare not smother His liberality. I write it to you, that ye may praise, and desire your brother and others to join with me in this work.
This land shall be made desolate. Our iniquities are full; the Lord saith, we shall drink, and spue, and fall. Remember my love to your good kind wife. Grace be with you.
Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Nov. 13, 1636.
[LXIX.—To the Noble and Christian Lady the Viscountess of Kenmure.]
(HIS ENJOYMENT OF CHRIST IN ABERDEEN—A SIGHT OF CHRIST EXCEEDS ALL REPORTS—SOME ASHAMED OF HIM AND HIS.)
M Y VERY HONOURABLE AND DEAR LADY,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I cannot forget your Ladyship, and that sweet child. I desire to hear what the Lord is doing to you and him. To write to me were charity. I cannot but write to my friends, that Christ hath trysted me in Aberdeen; and my adversaries have sent me here to be feasted with love banquets with my royal, high, high, and princely King Jesus. Madam, why should I smother Christ's honesty? I dare not conceal His goodness to my soul; He looked fremed and unco-like upon me when I came first here; but I believe Himself better than His looks. I shall not again quarrel Christ for a gloom, now He hath taken the mask off His face, and saith, "Kiss thy fill;" and what can I have more when I get great heaven in my little arms? Oh, how sweet are the sufferings of Christ for Christ! God forgive them that raise an ill report upon the sweet cross of Christ. It is but our weak and dim eyes, and our looking only to the black side that makes us mistake. Those who can take that crabbed tree handsomely upon their back, and fasten it on cannily, shall find it such a burden as wings unto a bird, or sails to a ship. Madam, rue not of your having chosen the better part. Upon my salvation, this is Christ's truth I now suffer for. If I found but cold comfort in my sufferings, I would not beguile others; I would have told you plainly. But the truth is, Christ's crown, His sceptre, and the freedom of His kingdom, is that which is now called in question; because we will not allow that Christ should pay tribute and be a vassal to the shields of the earth, therefore the sons of our mother are angry at us. But it becometh not Christ to hold any man's stirrup. It were a sweet and honourable death to die for the honour of that royal and princely King Jesus. His love is a mystery to the world. I would not have believed that there was so much in Christ as there is. "Come and see" maketh Christ to be known in His excellency and glory. I wish all this nation knew how sweet His breath is. It is little to see Christ in a book, as men do the world in a card. They talk of Christ by the book and the tongue, and no more; but to come nigh Christ, and hause Him, and embrace Him, is another thing. Madam, I write to your honour, for your encouragement in that honourable profession Christ hath honoured you with. Ye have gotten the sunny side of the brae, and the best of Christ's good things. He hath not given you the bastard's portion; and howbeit ye get strokes and sour looks from your Lord, yet believe His love more than your own feeling, for this world can take nothing from you that is truly yours, and death can do you no wrong. Your rock doth not ebb and flow, but your sea. That which Christ hath said, He will bide by it. He will be your tutor. You shall not get you charters of heaven to play you with. It is good that ye have lost your credit with Christ, and that Lord Free-will shall not be your tutor. Christ will lippen the taking you to heaven, neither to yourself, nor any deputy, but only to Himself. Blessed be your tutor. When your Head shall appear, your Bridegroom and Lord, your day shall then dawn, and it shall never have an afternoon, nor an evening shadow. Let your child be Christ's; let him stay beside you as thy Lord's pledge that you shall willingly render again, if God will.
Madam, I find folks here kind to me; but in the night, and under their breath. My Master's cause may not come to the crown of the causeway. Others are kind according to their fashion. Many think me a strange man, and my cause not good; but I care not much for man's thoughts or approbation. I think no shame of the cross. The preachers of the town pretend great love, but the prelates have added to the rest this gentle cruelty (for so they think of it), to discharge me of the pulpits of this town. The people murmur and cry out against it; and to speak truly (howbeit Christ is most indulgent to me otherwise), my silence on the Lord's day keeps me from being exalted above measure, and from startling in the heat of my Lord's love. Some people affect me, for the which cause, I hear the preachers here purpose to have my confinement changed to another place; so cold is northern love; but Christ and I will bear it. I have wrestled long with this sad silence. I said, what aileth Christ at my service? and my soul hath been at a pleading with Christ, and at yea and nay. But I will yield to Him, providing my suffering may preach more than my tongue did; for I give not Christ an inch but for twice as good again. In a word, I am a fool, and He is God. I will hold my peace hereafter.
Let me hear from your Ladyship, and your dear child. Pray for the prisoner of Christ, who is mindful of your Ladyship. Remember my obliged obedience to my good Lady Marr. Grace, grace be with you. I write and pray blessings to your sweet child.
Yours in all dutiful obedience in his only Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Nov. 22, 1636.
[LXX.—To the Right Honourable and Christian Lady, my Lady Viscountess of Kenmure.]
(EXERCISE UNDER RESTRAINT FROM PREACHING—THE DEVIL—CHRIST'S LOVING KINDNESS—PROGRESS.)
M ADAM,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I received your Ladyship's letter. It refreshed me in my heaviness. The blessing and prayer of a prisoner of Christ come upon you. Since my coming hither, Galloway sent me not a line, except what my brother, Earlston, and his son, did write. I cannot get my papers transported; but, Madam, I want not kindness of one who hath the gate of it. Christ (if He had never done more for me since I was born) hath engaged my heart, and gained my blessing in this house of my pilgrimage. It pleaseth my Well-beloved to dine with a poor prisoner, and the King's spikenard casteth a fragrant smell. Nothing grieveth me, but that I eat my feasts my lone, and that I cannot edify His saints. O that this nation knew what is betwixt Him and me; none would scar at the cross of Christ! My silence eats me up, but He hath told me He thanketh me no less, than if I were preaching daily. He sees how gladly I would be at it; and therefore my wages are going to the fore, up in heaven, as if I were still preaching Christ. Captains pay duly bedfast soldiers, howbeit they do[164] nor march, nor carry armour. "Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength" (Isa. xlix. 5). My garland, "the banished minister" (the term of Aberdeen), ashameth me not. I have seen the white side of Christ's cross; how lovely hath He been to His oppressed servant! "The Lord executeth judgment for the oppressed, He giveth food to the hungry: the Lord looseth the prisoner; the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down: the Lord preserveth the stranger" (Ps. cxlvi. 7, 9). If it were come to exchanging of crosses, I would not exchange my cross with any. I am well pleased with Christ, and He with me; I hope none shall hear us.[165] It is true for all this, I get my meat with many strokes, and am seven times a-day up and down, and am often anxious and cast down for the case of my oppressed brother; yet I hope the Lord will be surety for His servant. But now upon some weak, very weak experience, I am come to love a rumbling and raging devil best. Seeing we must have a devil to hold the saints waking, I wish a cumbersome devil, rather than a secure and sleeping one.[166] At my first coming hither, I took the dorts at Christ, and took up a stomach against Him; I said, He had cast me over the dike of the vineyard, like a dry tree. But it was His mercy, I see, that the fire did not burn the dry tree; and now, as if my Lord Jesus had done that fault, and not I (who belied my Lord), He hath made the first mends, and He spake not one word against me, but hath come again and quickened my soul with His presence. Nay, now I think the very annuity and casualties of the cross of Christ Jesus my Lord, and these comforts that accompany it, better than the world's set-rent. O how many rich off-fallings are in my King's house! I am persuaded, and dare pawn my salvation on it, that it is Christ's truth I now suffer for. I know His comforts are no dreams; He would not put His seal on blank paper, nor deceive His afflicted ones that trust in Him.
Your Ladyship wrote to me that ye are yet an ill scholar. Madam, ye must go in at heaven's gates, and your book in your hand, still learning. You have had your own large share of troubles, and a double portion; but it saith your Father counteth you not a bastard; full-begotten bairns are nurtured (Heb. xii. 8). I long to hear of the child. I write the blessings of Christ's prisoner and the mercies of God to him. Let him be Christ's and yours betwixt you, but let Christ be whole play-maker. Let Him be the leader; and you the borrower, not an owner.
Madam, it is not long since I did write to your Ladyship that Christ is keeping mercy for you; and I bide by it still, and now write it under my hand. Love Him dearly. Win in to see Him; there is in Him that which you never saw. He is aye nigh; He is a tree of life, green and blossoming, both summer and winter. There is a nick in Christianity, to the which whosoever cometh, they see and feel more than others can do. I invite you of new to come to Him. "Come and see," will speak better things of Him than I can do. "Come nearer" will say much. God never thought this world a portion worthy of you. He would not even you to a gift of dirt and clay; nay, He will not give you Esau's portion, but reserves the inheritance of Jacob for you. Are ye not well married now? Have you not a good husband now?
My heart cannot express what sad nights I have had for the virgin daughter of my people. Woe is me, for my time is coming. "Behold, the day, behold, the day is come; the morning hath gone forth, the rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded, violence is risen up in a rod of wickedness, the sun is gone down upon our prophets." A dry wind upon Scotland, but neither to fan nor to cleanse; but out of all question, when the Lord hath cut down the forest, the aftergrowth of Lebanon shall flourish; they shall plant vines in our mountains, and a cloud shall yet fill the temple. Now the blessing of our dearest Lord Jesus, and the blessing of him that is "separate from his brethren," come upon you.
Yours, at Aberdeen, the prisoner of Christ,
S. R.
Aberdeen.
[LXXI.—To Mr. Hugh M'Kail.]
[Mr. Hugh M'Kail was at this time minister of Irvine. Previous to his settlement in that parish, Rutherford was very desirous of seeing him settled assistant and successor to Mr. Robert Glendinning, the aged minister of Kirkcudbright; the people too had an eye to him, but were disappointed, having been anticipated by the parish of which he was now pastor. He and Mr. William Cockburn were appointed by the General Assembly of 1644 to visit the north of Ireland for three months, with the view of promoting the interests of the Presbyterian Church in that country. He was ultimately translated to Edinburgh. In the unhappy controversy between the Resolutioners and Protesters, M'Kail took the side of the former; but was among the more moderate of the party. Baillie often refers to him in his letters. He died in the beginning of the year 1660, and was buried in the Greyfriars' churchyard, Edinburgh. (Lamont's "Diary," p. 121.) He was the brother of Mr. Matthew M'Kail of Bothwell, who was the father of the youthful Hugh M'Kail, and young Hugh, who nobly suffered in 1666, was educated in Edinburgh, under the superintendence of this uncle.]
[(CHRIST TO BE TRUSTED AMID TRIAL.)]
R EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,—I thank you for your letter. I cannot but show you, that as I never expected anything from Christ, but much good and kindness, so He hath made me to find it in the house of my pilgrimage. And believe me, brother, I give it to you under mine own hand-writ, that whoso looketh to the white side of Christ's cross, and can take it up handsomely with faith and courage, shall find it such a burden as sails are to a ship, or wings to a bird. I find that my Lord hath overgilded that black tree, and hath perfumed it, and oiled it with joy and consolation. Like a fool, once I would chide and plead with Christ, and slander Him to others, of unkindness.[167] But I trust in God, not to call His glooms unkind again; for He hath taken from me my sackcloth; and I verily cannot tell you what a poor Joseph and prisoner (with whom my mother's children were angry) doth now think of kind Christ. I will chide no more, providing He will quit me all by-gones; for I am poor. I am taught in this ill weather to go on the lee-side of Christ, and to put Him in between me and the storm; and (I thank God) I walk on the sunny side of the brae. I write it that ye may speak in my behalf the praises of my Lord to others, that my bonds may preach. O if all Scotland knew the feasts, and love-blinks, and visits that the prelates have sent unto me! I will verily give my Lord Jesus a free discharge of all that I, like a fool, laid to His charge, and beg Him pardon, to the mends. God grant that in my temptations I come not on His wrong side again, and never again fall a raving against my Physician in my fever.
Brother, plead with your mother while ye have time. A pulpit would be a high feast to me; but I dare not say one word against Him who hath done it. I am not out of the house as yet. My sweet Master saith, I shall have house-room at His own elbow; albeit their synagogue will need force to cast me out. A letter were a work of charity to me. Grace be with you. Pray for me.
Your brother and Christ's prisoner,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Nov. 22, 1636.
[LXXII.—To William Gordon of Roberton.]
[William Gordon of Roberton, in the parish of Borgue in Galloway, close to Knockbrex, was the father of William Gordon of Roberton, who joined with the Covenanters in the rising at Pentland in 1666, and was killed, "to the great loss of the country where he lived," says Wodrow, "and his own family, his aged father having no more sons." Mary, a daughter of this venerable old man, to whom this letter is addressed, suffered much for nonconformity at the hands of Claverhouse and his friends. She was married to John Gordon of Largmore (which is in Kells, near Kenmure Castle), who, in the battle at Pentland, was severely wounded, and, returning to his own house, died in the course of a few days. The old man did not long survive the death of his son and son-in-law; for, on the 8th of September 1668, Mary Gordon is retoured heir of William Gordon of Roberton, her father. In Kells churchyard, near the gate, there is a short epitaph: "Here lyes the corpse of Roger Gordon of Largmore, who dyed March 2, 1662, aged 72 years; and of John Gordon of Largmore his grandchild, who dyed January 6, 1667, of his wounds got at Pentland in defence of the Covenanted Reformation.">[
(HOW TRIALS ARE MISIMPROVED—THE INFINITE VALUE of CHRIST—DESPISED WARNINGS.)
D EAR BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. So often as I think on our case, in our soldier's night-watch, and of our fighting life in the fields, while we are here, I am forced to say, prisoners in a dungeon, condemned by a judge to want the light of the sun, and moon, and candle, till their dying day, are no more, nay, not so much, to be pitied as we are. For they are weary of their life, they hate their prison; but we fall to, in our prison, where we see little, to drink ourselves drunk with the night-pleasures of our weak dreams; and we long for no better life than this. But at the blast of the last trumpet, and the shout of the archangel, when God shall take down the shepherd's tent of this fading world, we shall not have so much as a drink of water, of all the dreams that we now build on. Alas! that the sharp and bitter blasts on face and sides, which meet us in this life, have not learned us mortification, and made us dead to this world! We buy our own sorrow, and we pay dear for it, when we spend out our love, our joy, our desires, our confidence, upon an handful of snow and ice, that time will melt away to nothing, and go thirsty out of the drunken inn when all is done. Alas! that we inquire not for the clear fountain, but are so foolish as to drink foul, muddy, and rotten waters, even till our bed-time. And then in the Resurrection, when we shall be awakened, our yesternight's sour drink and swinish dregs shall rift up upon us; and sick, sick, shall many a soul be then.
I know no wholesome fountain but one. I know not a thing worth the buying but heaven; and my own mind is, if comparison were made betwixt Christ and heaven, I would sell heaven with my blessing, and buy Christ. O if I could raise the market for Christ, and heighten the market a pound for a penny, and cry up Christ in men's estimation ten thousand talents more than men think of Him! But they are cheapening Him,[168] and crying Him down, and valuing Him at their unworthy halfpenny; or else exchanging and bartering Christ with the miserable old fallen house of this vain world. Or then they lend Him out upon interest, and play the usurers with Christ: because they profess Him, and give out before men that Christ is their treasure and stock; and in the mean time, praise of men, and a name, and ease, and the summer sun of the Gospel, is the usury they would be at. So, when the trial cometh, they quit the stock for the interest, and lose all. Happy are they who can keep Christ by Himself alone, and keep Him clean and whole till God come and count with them. I know that in your hard and heavy trials long since, ye thought well and highly of Christ; but, truly, no cross should be old to us. We should not forget them because years are come betwixt us and them, and cast them byhand as we do old clothes. We may make a cross old in time, new in use, and as fruitful as in the beginning of it. God is where and what He was seven years ago, whatever change may be in us. I speak not this as if I thought ye had forgotten what God did, to have your love long since, but that ye may awake yourself in this sleepy age, and remember fruitfully of Christ's first wooing and suiting of your love, both with fire and water, and try if He got His answer, or if ye be yet to give Him it. For I find in myself, that water runneth not faster through a sieve than our warnings slip from us; I have lost and casten byhand many summons the Lord sent to me; and therefore the Lord hath given me double charges, that I trust in God shall not rive me. I bless His great name, who is no niggard in holding-in crosses upon me, but spendeth largely His rods, that He may save me from this perishing world. How plentiful God is in means of this kind is esteemed by many one of God's unkind mercies; but Christ's cross is neither a cruel nor unkind mercy, but the love-token of a father. I am sure, a lover chasing us for our weal, and to have our love, should not be run away from, or fled from. God send me no worse mercy than the sanctified cross of Christ portendeth, and I am sure I should be happy and blessed.
Pray for me, that I may find house-room in the Lord's house to speak in His name. Remember my dearest love in Christ to your wife. Grace, grace be unto you.
Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1636.
[LXXIII.—To Earlston, Elder.]
"And they overcame the dragon by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death."—Rev. xii. 11.
(CHRIST'S LIBERALITY—HIS OWN MISAPPREHENSIONS OF CHRIST.)
M UCH-HONOURED SIR,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to see you in paper, and to be refreshed by you. I cannot but desire you, and charge you to help me to praise Him who feedeth a poor prisoner with the fatness of His house. O how weighty is His love! O but there is much telling in Christ's kindness! The Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, hath paid me my hundred-fold, well told, and one to the hundred. I complained of Him, but He is owing me nothing now. Sir, I charge you to help me to praise His goodness, and to proclaim to others my Bridegroom's kindness, whose love is better than wine. I took up an action against Christ, and brought a plea against His love, and libelled unkindness against Christ my Lord, and I said, "This is my death; He hath forgotten me." But my meek Lord held His peace, and beheld me, and would not contend for the last word of flyting. And now He hath chided Himself friends with me. And now I see He must be God, and I must be flesh. I pass from my summons; I acknowledge He might have given me my fill of it, and never troubled Himself. But now He hath taken away the mask; I have been comforted; He could not smother His love any longer to a prisoner and a stranger. God grant that I may never buy a plea against Christ again, but may keep good quarters with Him. I want here no kindness,[169] no love-tokens; but O wise is His love! for, notwithstanding of this hot summer-blink, I am kept low with the grief of my silence. For His word is in me as a fire in my bowels; and I see the Lord's vineyard laid waste, and the heathen entered into the sanctuary: and my belly is pained, and my soul in heaviness, because the Lord's people are gone into captivity, and because of the fury of the Lord, and that wind (but neither to fan nor purge) which is coming upon apostate Scotland. Also I am kept awake with the late wrong done to my brother; but I trust you will counsel and comfort him. Yet, in this mist, I see and believe the Lord will heal this halting kirk, "and will lay her stones with fair colours, and her foundations with sapphires, and will make her windows of agates, and her gates carbuncles" (Isa. liv. 11, 12). "And for brass He will bring gold." He hath created the smith that formed the sword: no weapon in war shall prosper against us. Let us be glad and rejoice in the Lord, for His salvation is near to come. Remember me to your wife and your son John. And I entreat you to write to me. Grace, grace be with you.
Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Dec. 30, 1636.
[LXXIV.—To the Lady Culross.]
"These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their
robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."—Rev. vii. 14.
(HIS OWN MISCONCEPTION OF CHRIST'S WAYS—CHRIST'S KINDNESS.)
M ADAM,—Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied upon you. I greatly long to be refreshed with your letter. I am now (all honour and glory to the King eternal, immortal, and invisible!) in better terms with Christ than I was. I, like a fool, summoned my Husband and Lord, and libelled unkindness against Him; but now I pass from that foolish pursuit; I give over the plea. He is God, and I am man. I was loosing a fast stone, and digging at the ground-stone, the love of my Lord, to shake and unsettle it. But, God be thanked, it is fast; all is sure. In my prison He hath shown me daylight; He dought not hide His love any longer. Christ was disguised and masked, and I apprehended it was not He; but He hath said, "It is I, be not afraid;" and now His love is better than wine. O that all the virgins had part of the Bridegroom's love whereupon He maketh me to feed. Help me to praise. I charge you, Madam, help me to pay praises; and tell others, the daughters of Jerusalem, how kind Christ is to a poor prisoner. He hath paid me my hundred-fold; it is well told me, and one to the hundred. I am nothing behind with Christ. Let not fools, because of their lazy and soft flesh, raise a slander and an ill report upon the cross of Christ. It is sweeter than fair.
I see grace groweth best in winter. This poor persecuted kirk, this lily amongst the thorns, shall blossom, and laugh upon the gardener; the husbandman's blessing shall light upon it. O if I could be free of jealousies of Christ, after this, and believe, and keep good quarters with my dearest Husband! for He hath been kind to the stranger. And yet in all this fair hot summer weather, I am kept from saying, "It is good to be here,"[170] with my silence, and with grief to see my mother wounded and her veil taken from her, and the fair temple casten down. My belly is pained, my soul is heavy for the captivity of the daughter of my people, and because of the fury of the Lord, and His fierce indignation against apostate Scotland. I pray you, Madam, let me have that which is my prayer here, that my sufferings may preach to the four quarters of this land; and, therefore, tell others how open-handed Christ had been to the prisoner and the oppressed stranger. Why should I conceal it? I know no other way how to glorify Christ, but to make an open proclamation of His love, and of His soft and sweet kisses to me in the furnace, and of His fidelity to such as suffer for Him. Give it me under your hand, that ye will help me to pray and praise; but rather to praise and rejoice in the salvation of God. Grace, grace be with you.
Yours in his dearest and only, only Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Dec. 30, 1636.
AYR.
[LXXV.—To John Kennedy, Bailiffe (i.e. Bailie) of Ayr.]
[John Kennedy was the son of Hugh Kennedy, Provost of Ayr. Hugh was an eminent Christian, and did much to promote the cause of religion in the place where he lived. John Welsh, minister of Ayr, bore this high testimony to him in a letter written to him in France: "Happy is that city, yea, happy is that nation that has a Hugh Kennedy in it. I have myself certainly found the answer of his prayers from the Lord in my behalf." On his death-bed, he was filled "with inexpressible joy in the Holy Ghost, beyond what it was possible to comprehend." (Wodrow, in his life of Boyd of Trochrig.) John, his son, possessed much of the spirit and character of his father. "He was," says Fleming ("Fulfilling of the Scriptures"), "as choice a Christian as was at that time." The same writer records a remarkable escape from imminent peril at sea which Kennedy experienced; which may be the deliverance to which Rutherford refers in a subsequent letter. It happened thus: John Stewart, Provost of Ayr, another of Rutherford's correspondents, who had gone to France, having loaded a ship at Rochelle with various commodities for Scotland, proceeded to England by the nearest way, and thence to Ayr. After waiting a considerable time for the arrival of his vessel, he was told that it was captured by the Turks. This information, however, proved to be incorrect, for it at length arrived in the roads; upon hearing of which, Kennedy, an intimate friend of Stewart, was so overjoyed, that he went out to it in a small boat. But a storm suddenly arising, he was driven past the vessel, and the general belief of the onlookers from the shore was that he and his boat were swallowed up; indeed, the storm increased to such a degree of violence as to threaten even the shipwreck of the vessel. Deeply affected at the apprehended loss of his friend, Stewart shut himself up in entire seclusion for three days; but at the very time he had gone to visit Kennedy's wife under her supposed bereavement, Kennedy, who had been driven to another part of the coast, but had reached the land in safety, made his appearance, to the great joy of all. Kennedy was a member of the Scottish Parliament in the years 1644-5-6, for the burgh of Ayr, and is styled in the roll, "John Kennedy, Provost of Ayr." He was also a member of the General Assemblies of 1642-3-4-6 and 7, and his name appears among the ruling elders in the commission for the public affairs of the kirk in all these years. His brother Hugh (also an elder of the Church) was frequently a member of the General Assembly, and, as we learn from "Baillie's Letters," had an active share in the proceedings of the Covenanters during the reign of Charles I. There are lineal descendants of this family in Ayr at this day; one of them, like his ancestor, was lately Provost of the town.]
(LONGING AFTER CLEARER VIEWS OF CHRIST—HIS LONG-SUFFERING—TRYING CIRCUMSTANCES.)
W ORTHY AND DEAR BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to see you in this northern world on paper; I know it is not forgetfulness that ye write not. I am every way in good ease, both in soul and body; all honour and glory be to my Lord. I want nothing but a further revelation of the beauty of the unknown Son of God. Either I know not what Christianity is, or we have stinted a measure of so many ounce weights, and no more, upon holiness; and there we are at a stand, drawing our breath all our life. A moderation in God's way is now much in request. I profess that I have never taken pains to find out Him whom my soul loveth; there is a gate yet of finding out Christ that I have never lighted upon. Oh, if I could find it out! Alas, how soon are we pleased with our own shadow in a glass! It were good to be beginning in sad earnest to find out God, and to seek the right tread of Christ. Time, custom, and a good opinion of ourselves, our good meaning, and our lazy desires, our fair shows, and the world's glistering lustres, and these broad passments and buskings of religion, that bear bulk in the kirk, is that wherewith most satisfy themselves. But a bed watered with tears, a throat dry with praying, eyes as a fountain of tears for the sins of the land, are rare to be found among us. Oh if we could know the power of godliness!
This is one part of my case; and another is, that I, like a fool, once summoned Christ for unkindness, and complained of His fickleness and inconstancy, because He would have no more of my service nor preaching, and had casten me out of the inheritance of the Lord. And now I confess that this was but a bought plea, and I was a fool. Yet He hath borne with me. I gave Him a fair advantage against me, but love and mercy would not let Him take it; and the truth is, now He hath chided Himself friends with me, and hath taken away the mask, and hath renewed His wonted favour in such a manner that He hath paid me my hundred-fold in this life, and one to the hundred. This prison is my banqueting-house; I am handled as softly and delicately as a dawted child. I am nothing behind (I see) with Christ; He can, in a month, make up a year's losses. And I write this to you, that I may entreat, nay, adjure and charge you, by the love of our Well-beloved, to help me to praise; and to tell all your Christian acquaintance to help me, for I am as deeply drowned in His debt as any dyvour can be. And yet in this fair sun-blink I have something to keep me from startling, or being exalted above measure; His word is as fire shut up in my bowels, and I am weary with forbearing. The ministers in this town are saying that they will have my prison changed into less bounds, because they see God with me. My mother hath borne me a man of contention, one that striveth with the whole earth. The late wrongs and oppressions done to my brother keep my sails low; yet I defy crosses to embark me in such a plea against Christ as I was troubled with of late. I hope to over-hope and over-believe my troubles. I have cause now to trust Christ's promise more than His gloom.
Remember my hearty affection to your wife. My soul is grieved for the success of our brethren's journey to New England; but God hath somewhat to reveal that we see not. Grace be with you. Pray for the prisoner.
Yours, in his only Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Jan. 1, 1637.
[LXXVI.—To Robert Gordon of Knockbrex.]
(BENEFIT OF AFFLICTION.)
M Y DEAR BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied upon you.—I am almost wearying, yea, wondering, that ye write not to me: though I know it is not forgetfulness.
As for myself, I am every way well, all glory to God. I was before at a plea with Christ (but it was bought by me, and unlawful), because His whole providence was not yea and nay to my yea and nay, and because I believed Christ's outward look better than His faithful promise. Yet He hath in patience waited on, whill I be come to myself, and hath not taken advantage of my weak apprehensions of His goodness. Great and holy is His name! He looketh to what I desire to be, and not to what I am. One thing I have learned. If I had been in Christ, by way of adhesion only, as many branches are, I should have been burnt to ashes, and this world would have seen a suffering minister of Christ (of something once in show) turned into unsavoury salt. But my Lord Jesus had a good eye that the tempter should not play foul play, and blow out Christ's candle. He took no thought of my stomach, and fretting and grudging humour, but of His own grace. When He burnt the house, He saved His own goods. And I believe that the devil and the persecuting world shall reap no fruit of me, but burnt ashes: for He will see to His own gold, and save that from being consumed with the fire.
Oh, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus! who hath now let me see how good the wheat of Christ is, that goeth through His mill, and His oven, to be made bread for His own table. Grace tried is better than grace, and it is more than grace; it is glory in its infancy. I now see that godliness is more than the outside, and this world's passments and their buskings. Who knoweth the truth of grace without a trial? Oh, how little getteth Christ of us, but that which He winneth (to speak so) with much toil and pains! And how soon would faith freeze without a cross! How many dumb crosses have been laid upon my back, that had never a tongue to speak the sweetness of Christ, as this hath! When Christ blesseth His own crosses with a tongue, they breathe out Christ's love, wisdom, kindness, and care of us. Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows on my soul? I know that He is no idle Husbandman, He purposeth a crop. O that this white, withered lea-ground were made fertile to bear a crop for Him, by whom it is so painfully dressed; and that this fallow-ground were broken up! Why was I (a fool!) grieved that He put His garland and His rose upon my head—the glory and honour of His faithful witnesses? I desire now to make no more pleas with Christ. Verily He hath not put me to a loss by what I suffer; He oweth me nothing; for in my bonds how sweet and comfortable have the thoughts of Him been to me, wherein I find a sufficient recompense of reward!
How blind are my adversaries, who sent me to a banqueting-house, to a house of wine, to the lovely feasts of my lovely Lord Jesus, and not to a prison, or place of exile! Why should I smother my Husband's honesty, or sin against His love, or be a niggard in giving out to others what I get for nothing? Brother, eat with me, and give thanks. I charge you before God, that ye speak to others, and invite them to help me to praise! Oh, my debt of praise, how weighty it is, and how far run up! O that others would lend me to pay, and learn me to praise! Oh, I am a drowned dyvour! Lord Jesus, take my thoughts for payments. Yet I am in this hot summer-blink with the tear in my eye; for (by reason of my silence) sorrow, sorrow hath filled me; my harp is hanged upon the willow-trees, because I am in a strange land. I am still kept in exercise with envious brethren; my mother hath borne me a man of contention.
Write to me your mind anent Y. C.: I cannot forget him; I know not what God hath to do with him:—and your mind anent my parishioners' behaviour, and how they are served in preaching; or if there be a minister as yet thrust in upon them, which I desire greatly to know, and which I much fear.
Dear brother, ye are in my heart, to live and to die with you. Visit me with a letter. Pray for me. Remember my love to your wife. Grace, grace be with you; and God, who heareth prayer, visit you, and let it be unto you according to the prayers of
Your own brother, and Christ's prisoner,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Jan. 1, 1637.
[LXXVII.—To my Lady Boyd.]
[Lady Boyd, whose maiden name was Christian Hamilton, was the eldest daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Haddington. She was first married to Robert, ninth Lord Lindsay of Byres, who died in 1616. She married for her second husband, Robert, sixth Lord Boyd, who died in August 1628. Lady Boyd was distinguished for piety, and a zealous Presbyterian. Livingstone gives her a place among "some of the professors in the Church of Scotland of his acquaintance, who were eminent for grace and gifts;" eulogizes her as "a rare pattern of Christianity, grave, diligent, and prudent;" and adds, "She used every night to write what had been the case of her soul all the day, and what she had observed of the Lord's dealing." He speaks of residing for some time, during the course of his ministry, in the house of Kilmarnock, with "the worthy Lady Boyd." Some of her letters are given by Wodrow in his life of Boyd of Trochrig (pp. 166, 272.) She used to reside much at Badenheath, in the parish of Chryston, near Glasgow, and there John Livingston visited her.]
(ABERDEEN—EXPERIENCE OF HIMSELF SAD—PRESSING FORWARDS.)
M ADAM,—Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. The Lord hath brought me to Aberdeen, where I see God in few. This town hath been advised upon of purpose for me; it consisteth either of Papists, or men of Gallio's naughty faith. It is counted wisdom, in the most, not to countenance a confined minister; but I find Christ neither strange nor unkind; for I have found many faces smile upon me since I came hither. I am heavy and sad, considering what is betwixt the Lord and my soul, which none seeth but He. I find men have mistaken me; it would be no art (as I now see) to spin small,[171] and make hypocrisy a goodly web, and to go through the market as a saint among men, and yet steal quietly to hell, without observation: so easy is it to deceive men. I have disputed whether or no I ever knew anything of Christianity, save the letters of that name. Men see but as men, and they call ten twenty, and twenty an hundred; but O! to be approved of God in the heart and in sincerity is not an ordinary mercy. My neglects while I had a pulpit, and other things whereof I am ashamed to speak, meet me now, so as God maketh an honest cross my daily sorrow. And, for fear of scandal and stumbling, I must bide this day of the law's pleading: I know not if this court kept within my soul be fenced in Christ's name. If certainty of salvation were to be bought, God knoweth, if I had ten earths, I would not prig with God. Like a fool, I believed, under suffering for Christ, that I myself should keep the key of Christ's treasures, and take out comforts when I listed, and eat and be fat: but I see now a sufferer for Christ will be made to know himself, and will be holden at the door as well as another poor sinner, and will be fain to eat with the bairns, and to take the by-board, and glad to do so. My blessing on the cross of Christ that hath made me see this! Oh! if we could take pains for the kingdom of heaven! But we sit down upon some ordinary marks of God's children, thinking we have as much as will separate us from a reprobate; and thereupon we take the play and cry, "Holiday!" and thus the devil casteth water on our fire, and blunteth our zeal and care. But I see heaven is not at the door; and I see, howbeit my challenges be many, I suffer for Christ, and dare hazard my salvation upon it; for sometimes my Lord cometh with a fair hour, and O! but His love be sweet, delightful, and comfortable. Half a kiss is sweet; but our doting love will not be content with a right to Christ, unless we get possession; like the man who will not be content with rights to bought land, except he get also the ridges and acres laid upon his back to carry home with him! However it be, Christ is wise; and we are fools, to be browden and fond of a pawn in the loof of our hand. Living on trust by faith may well content us. Madam, I know your Ladyship knoweth this, and that made me bold to write of it, that others might reap somewhat by my bonds for the truth; for I should desire, and I aim at this, to have my Lord well spoken of and honoured, howbeit He should make nothing of me but a bridge over a water. Thus, recommending your Ladyship, your son, and children to His grace, who hath honoured you with a name and room among the living in Jerusalem, and wishing grace to be with your Ladyship, I rest,
Your Ladyship's in his sweetest Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen.
[LXXVIII.—To my Lord Boyd.]
[Robert, seventh Lord Boyd, was the only son of Robert, sixth Lord Boyd, by Lady Christian Hamilton, mentioned in the preceding letter. His father (who was cousin of the famous Robert Boyd of Trochrig, two miles from Girvan, and under whom he studied at Saumur) died in August 1628, at the early age of 33. Young Robert was served heir to his father the 9th of May 1629. His earthly course was, however, brief; for he died of a fever on the 17th of November 1640, aged about 24. He was married to Lady Anne Fleming, second daughter of John, second Earl of Wigtown. Lord Boyd warmly espoused the side of the Covenanters; and though not a member of the General Assembly held at Glasgow in 1638, he attended its meetings and took a deep interest in its proceedings.]
(ENCOURAGEMENT TO EXERTION FOR CHRIST'S CAUSE.)
M Y VERY HONOURABLE AND GOOD LORD,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Lordship. Out of the worthy report that I hear of your Lordship's zeal for this borne-down and oppressed Gospel, I am bold to write to your Lordship, beseeching you by the mercies of God, by the honour of our royal and princely King Jesus, by the sorrows, tears, and desolation of your afflicted mother-Church, and by the peace of your conscience, and your joy in the day of Christ, that your Lordship would go on, in the strength of your Lord, and in the power of His might, to bestir yourself, for the vindicating of the fallen honour of your Lord Jesus. Oh, blessed hands for evermore, that shall help to put the crown upon the head of Christ again in Scotland! I dare promise, in the name of our Lord, that this will fasten and fix the pillars and the stakes of your honourable house upon earth, if you lend and lay in pledge in Christ's hand, upon spiritual hazard, life, estate, house, honour, credit, moyen, friends, the favour of men (suppose kings with three crowns), so being that ye may bear witness, and acquit yourself as a man of valour and courage to the Prince of your salvation, for the purging of His temple, and sweeping out the lordly Diotrepheses, time-courting Demases, corrupt Hymenæuses and Philetuses, and other such oxen, that with their dung defile the temple of the Lord. Is not Christ now crying, "Who will help Me? who will come out with Me, to take part with Me, and share in the honour of My victory over these Mine enemies, who have said, We will not have this man to rule over us?"
My very honourable and dear Lord, join, join (as ye do) with Christ. He is more worth to you and your posterity than this world's May-flowers, and withering riches and honour, that shall go away as smoke, and evanish in a night vision, and shall, in one half-hour after the blast of the archangel's trumpet, lie in white ashes. Let me beseech your Lordship to draw by the lap of time's curtain, and to look in through the window to great and endless eternity, and consider if a worldly price (suppose this little round clay globe of this ashy and dirty earth, the dying idol of the fools of this world, were all your own) can be given for one smile of Christ's God-like and soul-ravishing countenance. In that day when so many joints and knees of thousand thousands wailing shall stand before Christ, trembling, shouting, and making their prayers to hills and mountains to fall upon them, and hide them from the face of the Lamb, oh, how many would sell lordships and kingdoms that day, and buy Christ! But, oh, the market shall be closed and ended ere then! Your Lordship hath now a blessed venture of winning court with the Prince of the kings of the earth. He Himself weeping; truth borne down and fallen in the streets, and an oppressed Gospel; Christ's bride with watery eyes and spoiled of her veil, her hair hanging about her eyes, forced to go in ragged apparel; the banished, alienated, and imprisoned prophets of God, who have not the favour of liberty to prophesy in sackcloth, all these, I say, call for your help. Fear not worms of clay; the moth shall eat them as a garment. Let the Lord be your fear; He is with you, and shall fight for you; and ye shall make the heart of this your mother-Church to sing for joy. The Lamb and His armies are with you, and the kingdoms of the earth are the Lord's. I am persuaded that there is not another gospel, nor another saving truth, than that which ye now contend for. I dare hazard my heaven and salvation upon it, that this is the only saving way to glory.
Grace, grace, be with your Lordship.
Your Lordship's at all respectful obedience in Christ,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[LXXIX.—To Margaret Ballantine.]
[This name is not found among the people of the parish of Anwoth. Like John Laurie, Letter CLXXV., she may have been some one at a distance.]
(VALUE OF THE SOUL AND URGENCY OF SALVATION.)
M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you.—It is more than time that I should have written to you; but it is yet good time, if I could help your soul to mend your pace, and to go more swiftly to your heavenly country. For truly ye have need to make all haste, because the inch of your day that remaineth will quickly slip away; for whether we sleep or wake, our glass runneth. The tide bideth no man. Beware of a beguile in the matter of your salvation. Woe, woe for evermore, to them that lose that prize. For what is behind, when the soul is once lost, but that sinners warm their bits of clay houses at a fire of their own kindling, for a day or two (which doth rather suffocate with its smoke than warm them); and at length they lie down in sorrow, and are clothed with everlasting shame! I would seek no further measure of faith to begin withal than to believe really and stedfastly the doctrine of God's justice, His all-devouring wrath, and everlasting burning, where sinners are burnt, soul and body, in a river and great lake of fire and brimstone. Then they would wish no more goods than the thousandth part of a cold fountain-well to cool their tongues. They would then buy death with enduring of pain and torment for as many years as God hath created drops of rain since the creation. But there is no market of buying or selling life or death there. O, alas! the greatest part of this world run to the place of that torment rejoicing and dancing, eating, drinking, and sleeping. My counsel to you is, that ye start in time to be after Christ; for if ye go quickly, Christ is not far before you; ye shall overtake Him. O Lord God, what is so needful as this, "Salvation, salvation!" Fy upon this condemned and foolish world, that would give so little for salvation! Oh, if there were a free market for salvation proclaimed in that day when the trumpet of God shall awake the dead, how many buyers would be then! God send me no more happiness than that salvation which the blind world, to their eternal woe, letteth slip through their fingers. Therefore, look if ye can give out your money (as Isaiah speaketh) (lv. 2) for bread, and lay Christ and His blood in wadset for heaven. It is a dry and hungry bairn's part of goods that Esaus are hunting for here. I see thousands following the chase, and in the pursuit of such things, while in the meantime they lose the blessing; and, when all is done, they have caught nothing to roast for supper, but lie down hungry. And, besides, they go to bed, when they die, without a candle; for God saith to them, "This ye shall have at My hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow" (Isa. l. 11). And truly this is as ill-made a bed to lie upon as one could wish; for he cannot sleep soundly, nor rest sweetly, who hath sorrow for his pillow. Rouse, rouse up, therefore, your soul, and speer[172] how Christ and your soul met together. I am sure that they never got Christ, who were not once sick at the yolk of the heart for Him. Too, too many whole souls think that they have met with Christ, who had never a wearied night for the want of Him: but, alas! what richer are men, that they dreamed the last night they had much gold, and, when they awoke in the morning, they found it was but a dream? What are all the sinners in the world, in that day when heaven and earth shall go up in a flame of fire, but a number of beguiled dreamers? Every one shall say of his hunting and his conquest, "Behold, it was a dream!" Every man in that day will tell his dream. I beseech you, in the Lord Jesus, beware, beware of unsound work in the matter of your salvation: ye may not, ye cannot, ye dow not want Christ. Then after this day, convene all your lovers before your soul, and give them their leave; and strike hands with Christ, that thereafter there may be no happiness to you but Christ, no hunting for anything but Christ, no bed at night, when death cometh, but Christ. Christ, Christ, who but Christ! I know this much of Christ, that He is not ill to be found, nor lordly of His love. Woe had been my part of it for evermore, if Christ had made a dainty of Himself to me. But, God be thanked, I gave nothing for Christ. And now I protest before men and angels that Christ cannot be exchanged, that Christ cannot be sold, that Christ cannot be weighed. Where would angels, or all the world, find a balance to weigh Him in? All lovers blush when ye stand beside Christ! Woe upon all love but the love of Christ! Hunger, hunger for evermore be upon all heaven but Christ! Shame, shame for evermore be upon all glory but Christ's glory. I cry death, death upon all lives but the life of Christ. Oh, what is it that holdeth us asunder? O that once we could have a fair meeting!
Thus recommending Christ to you and you to Him, for evermore, I rest. Grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[LXXX.—For Marion M'Naught.]
(HIS COMFORT UNDER TRIBULATION, AND THE PRISON A PALACE.)
M Y DEARLY BELOVED SISTER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I complain that Galloway is not kind to me in paper. I have received no letters these sixteen weeks but two. I am well. My prison is a palace to me, and Christ's banqueting-house. My Lord Jesus is as kind as they call Him. O that all Scotland knew my case, and had part of my feast! I charge you in the name of God, I charge you to believe. Fear not the sons of men; the worms shall eat them. To pray and believe now, when Christ seems to give you a nay-say, is more than it was before. Die believing; die, and Christ's promise in your hand. I desire, I request, I charge your husband and that town,[173] to stand for the truth of the Gospel. Contend with Christ's enemies; and I pray you show all professors whom you know my case. Help me to praise. The ministers here envy me; they will have my prison changed. My mother hath borne me a man of contention, and one that striveth with the whole earth. Remember my love to your husband. Grace be with you.
Yours in the Lord,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Jan. 3, 1637.
[LXXXI.—To Mr. John Meine (Jun.).]
[Mr. John Meine was the son of John Meine, merchant in Edinburgh, "a solid and stedfast professor of the truth of God." His mother was Barbara Hamilton, a notice of whom see Letter CCCXIII. He was now, it would appear from an allusion in the close of this letter, a student of theology, with a view to the holy ministry. Halyburton on his deathbed spake of this letter as one in which was to be found "More practical religion than in a large volume.">[
(EXPERIENCE—PATIENT WAITING—SANCTIFICATION.)
W ORTHY AND DEAR BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I have been too long in answering your letter, but other business took me up. I am here waiting, if the fair wind will turn upon Christ's sails in Scotland, and if deliverance be breaking out to this over-clouded and benighted kirk. O that we could contend, by prayers and supplications, with our Lord for that effect! I know that He hath not given out His last doom against this land. I have little of Christ, in this prison, but groanings, and longings, and desires. All my stock of Christ is some hunger for Him, and yet I cannot say but I am rich in that. My faith, and hope, and holy practice of new obedience, are scarce worth the speaking of. But blessed be my Lord, who taketh me, light, and clipped, and naughty, and feckless as I am. I see that Christ will not prig with me, nor stand upon stepping-stones; but cometh in at the broadside without ceremonies, or making it nice, to make a poor, ransomed one His own. O that I could feed upon His breathing, and kissing, and embracing, and upon the hopes of my meeting and His! when love-letters shall not go betwixt us, but He will be messenger Himself! But there is required patience on our part, till the summer-fruit in heaven be ripe for us. It is in the bud; but there be many things to do before our harvest come. And we take ill with it, and can hardly endure to set our paper-face to one of Christ's storms and to go to heaven with wet feet, and pain, and sorrow. We love to carry a heaven to heaven with us, and would have two summers in one year, and no less than two heavens. But this will not do for us: one (and such a one!) may suffice us well enough. The man, Christ, got but one only, and shall we have two?
Remember my love in Christ to your father; and help me with your prayers. If ye would be a deep divine, I recommend to you sanctification. Fear Him, and He will reveal His covenant to you. Grace be with you.
Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Jan. 5, 1637.
CARDONESS CASTLE.
[LXXXII.—To John Gordon of Cardoness, Elder.]
[John Gordon of Cardoness, in the parish of Anwoth, was descended from Gordon of Lochinvar; but little is known concerning him. His name appears the first of 188 signatures attached to an unsuccessful petition of the elders and parishioners of Anwoth, presented to the Commission of the General Assembly 1638, for Rutherford being continued minister of that parish, when counter applications were made by the city of Edinburgh and the University of St. Andrews for the transference of his services. From Rutherford's letters to him, we learn that he was at this time far advanced in life. He was naturally a man of strong passions, by which it would appear he had, in the previous part of his life, been led astray.
The old castle of Cardoness stands on a tongue of land, at the mouth of the river Fleet, about a mile from Gatehouse. It is built on a rocky height, overhanging the public road, and looking toward the bay. You see an old square-built tower, or fortalice, raising its grey head from among the tall trees that now surround it. Tradition tells of an old proprietor, that he was in league with Græme, the Border outlaw; and how, in consequence of his daring and God-defying deeds, the chief and his whole family perished in the Black Loch, a small loch in the parish of Anwoth, at Woodend, 26 ft. deep. Though not a descendant, John Gordon seems to have been a man of like strong passions with that old chieftain, till subdued by grace.]
(WIN CHRIST AT ALL HAZARDS—CHRIST'S BEAUTY—A WORD TO CHILDREN.)
M UCH HONOURED SIR,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I have longed to hear from you, and to know the estate of your soul, and the estate of that people with you.
I beseech you, Sir, by the salvation of your precious soul, and the mercies of God, to make good and sure work of your salvation, and try upon what ground-stone ye have builded. Worthy and dear Sir, if ye be upon sinking sand, a storm of death, and a blast, will lose Christ and you, and wash you close off the rock. Oh, for the Lord's sake, look narrowly to the work!
Read over your life, with the light of God's day-light and sun; for salvation is not casten down at every man's door. It is good to look to your compass, and all ye have need of, ere you take shipping; for no wind can blow you back again. Remember, when the race is ended, and the play either won or lost, and ye are in the utmost circle and border of time, and shall put your foot within the march of eternity, and all your good things of this short night-dream shall seem to you like the ashes of a bleeze of thorns or straw, and your poor soul shall be crying, "Lodging, lodging, for God's sake!" then shall your soul be more glad at one of your Lord's lovely and homely smiles, than if ye had the charters of three worlds for all eternity. Let pleasures and gain, will and desires of this world, be put over into God's hands, as arrested and fenced goods that ye cannot intromit with. Now, when ye are drinking the grounds of your cup, and ye are upon the utmost end of the last link of time, and old age, like death's long shadow, is casting a covering upon your days, it is no time to court this vain life, and to set love and heart upon it. It is near after-supper; seek rest and ease for your soul in God through Christ.
Believe me, that I find it to be hard wrestling to play fair with Christ, and to keep good quarters with Him, and to love Him in integrity and life, and to keep a constant course of sound and solid daily communion with Christ. Temptations are daily breaking the thread of that course, and it is not easy to cast a knot again; and many knots make evil work. Oh, how fair have many ships been plying before the wind, that, in an hour's space, have been lying in the sea-bottom! How many professors cast a golden lustre, as if they were pure gold, and yet are, under that skin and cover, but base and reprobate metal! And how many keep breath in their race many miles, and yet come short of the prize and the garland! Dear sir, my soul would mourn in secret for you, if I knew your case with God to be but false work. Love to have you anchored upon Christ maketh me fear your tottering and slips. False under-water, not seen in the ground of an enlightened conscience, is dangerous; so is often falling, and sinning against light. Know this, that those who never had sick nights or days in conscience for sin, cannot have but such a peace with God as will undercoat and break the flesh again, and end in a sad war at death. Oh, how fearfully are thousands beguiled with false hide, grown over old sins, as if the soul were cured and healed!
Dear Sir, I always saw nature mighty, lofty, heady, and strong in you; and that it was more for you to be mortified and dead to the world, than for another common man. Ye will take a low ebb, and a deep cut, and a long lance, to go to the bottom of your wounds in saving humiliation, to make you a won prey for Christ. Be humbled; walk softly. Down, down, for God's sake, my dear and worthy brother, with your topsail. Stoop, stoop! it is a low entry to go in at heaven's gate. There is infinite justice in the party ye have to do with; it is His nature not to acquit the guilty and the sinner. The law of God will not want one farthing of the sinner. God forgetteth not both the cautioner and the sinner; and every man must pay, either in his own person (oh, Lord save you from that payment!), or in his cautioner, Christ. It is violence to corrupt nature for a man to be holy, to lie down under Christ's feet, to quit will, pleasure, worldly love, earthly hope, and an itching of heart after this farded and over-gilded world, and to be content that Christ trample upon all. Come in, come in to Christ, and see what ye want, and find it in Him. He is the short cut (as we used to say), and the nearest way to an outgate of all your burdens. I dare avouch that ye shall be dearly welcome to Him; my soul would be glad to take part of the joy ye should have in Him. I dare say that angels' pens, angels' tongues, nay, as many worlds of angels as there are drops of water in all the seas, and fountains, and rivers of the earth, cannot paint Him out to you. I think His sweetness, since I was a prisoner, hath swelled upon me to the greatness of two heavens. Oh for a soul as wide as the utmost circle of the highest heaven that containeth all, to contain His love! And yet I could hold little of it. O world's wonder! Oh, if my soul might but lie within the smell of His love, suppose I could get no more but the smell of it! Oh, but it is long to that day when I shall have a free world of Christ's love! Oh, what a sight to be up in heaven, in that fair orchard of the new paradise; and to see, and smell, and touch, and kiss that fair field-flower, that ever-green Tree of life! His bare shadow were enough for me; a sight of Him would be the earnest of heaven to me. Fy, fy upon us! that we have love lying rusting beside us, or, which is worse, wasting upon some loathsome objects, and that Christ should lie His lone. Wo, wo is me! that sin hath made so many madmen, seeking the fool's paradise, fire under ice, and some good and desirable things, without and apart from Christ. Christ, Christ, nothing but Christ, can cool our love's burning languor. O thirsty love! wilt thou set Christ, the well of life, to thy head, and drink thy fill? Drink, and spare not; drink love, and be drunken with Christ! Nay, alas! the distance betwixt us and Christ is a death. Oh, if we were clasped in other's arms! We should never twin again, except heaven twinned and sundered us; and that cannot be.
I desire your children to seek this Lord. Desire them from me, to be requested, for Christ's sake, to be blessed and happy, and to come and take Christ, and all things with Him. Let them beware of glassy and slippery youth, of foolish young notions, of worldly lusts, of deceivable gain, of wicked company, of cursing, lying, blaspheming, and foolish talking. Let them be filled with the Spirit; acquaint themselves with daily praying; and with the storehouse of wisdom and comfort, the good word of God. Help the souls of the poor people. O that my Lord would bring me again among them, that I might tell unco and great tales of Christ to them! Receive not a stranger to preach any other doctrine to them.
Pray for me, His prisoner of hope. I pray for you without ceasing. I write my blessing, earnest prayers, the love of God, and the sweet presence of Christ to you, and yours, and them. Grace, grace, grace be with you.
Your lawful and loving pastor,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[LXXXIII.—To the Earl of Lothian.]
[William, third Earl of Lothian, to whom this letter is addressed, was the eldest son of Robert, first Earl of Ancrum; and he acquired the title of Earl of Lothian by his marriage with Anne Ker, Countess of Lothian, by whom he succeeded to the estate and titles of Lothian in 1624. In 1638 he manifested great zeal for the Covenant. He was a member of the General Assembly which met at Glasgow that year, as elder for the Presbytery of Dalkeith. Hostilities having again commenced in 1640, his Lordship was in the Scottish army that invaded England, and defeated the Royalists at Newburn. In 1643 he was sent from Scotland by the Privy Council, with the approbation of Charles I. In 1644 he commanded, with the Marquis of Argyle, the forces sent against the Marquis of Montrose, whom he obliged to retreat, and then delivered up his commission to the Committee of Estates, who passed an act in approbation of his services. He was president of the Committee despatched by the Parliament to the King in December 1646, with their final propositions. He protested against the raising of an army in 1648 to rescue the King from the hands of the English, without receiving from His Majesty assurance that he would secure the religious liberties of his Scottish subjects,—an attempt which was called the "Engagement." But while resisting the arbitrary measures of his prince, he was of sincere and ardent loyalty. No sooner was it known that the Parliament of England intended to proceed against Charles I. before the High Court of Justice, than he and other commissioners were sent, in name of the kingdom of Scotland, to remonstrate against their proceedings in regard to the sacred person of the king. He took a solemn protest against their proceedings, for which he was put under arrest, sent with a guard to Gravesend, and thence to Scotland. On his return he received the thanks of Parliament for his conduct on this occasion; and, along with the Earl of Cassillis, was despatched to Breda in 1650 to invite King Charles to Scotland. His Lordship died in the year 1675. By Anne, Countess of Lothian, he had five sons and nine daughters.]
(ADVICE AS TO PUBLIC CONDUCT—EVERYTHING TO BE ENDURED FOR CHRIST.)
R IGHT HONOURABLE, AND MY VERY WORTHY AND NOBLE LORD,—Out of the honourable and good report that I hear of your Lordship's good-will and kindness, in taking to heart the honourable cause of Christ, and His afflicted Church and wronged truth in this land, I make bold to speak a word on paper, to your Lordship, at this distance, which I trust your Lordship will take in good part. It is to your Lordship's honour and credit, to put to your hand, as ye do (all honour to God!), to the falling and tottering tabernacle of Christ, in this your mother-Church, and to own Christ's wrongs as your own wrongs. O blessed hand, which shall wipe and dry the watery eyes of our weeping Lord Jesus, now going mourning in sackcloth in His members, in His spouse in His truth, and in the prerogative royal of His kingly power! He needeth not service and help from men; but it pleaseth His wisdom to make the wants and losses, the sores and wounds of His spouse, a field and an office-house for the zeal of His servants to exercise themselves in. Therefore, my noble and dear Lord, go on, go on in the strength of the Lord against all opposition, to side with wronged Christ. The defending, and warding of strokes off Christ's bride, the King's daughter, is like a piece of the rest of the way to heaven, knotty, rough, stormy, and full of thorns. Many would follow Christ, but with a reservation that, by open proclamation, Christ would cry down crosses, and cry up fair weather, and a summer sky and sun, till we were all fairly landed at heaven. I know that your Lordship hath not so learned Christ; but that ye intend to fetch heaven, suppose that your father were standing in your way, and to take it with the wind on your face; for so both storm and wind were on the fair face of your lovely Forerunner, Christ, all His way. It is possible that the success answer not your desire in this worthy cause. What then? duties are ours, but events are the Lord's; and I hope, if your Lordship, and others with you, will go on to dive to the lowest ground and bottom of the knavery and perfidious treachery to Christ of the accursed and wretched prelates, the Antichrist's first-born, and the first-fruit of his foul womb, and shall deal with our Sovereign (law going before you) for the reasonable and impartial hearing of Christ's bill of complaints, and set yourselves singly to seek the Lord and His face, that your righteousness shall break through the clouds which prejudice hath drawn over it, and that ye shall, in the strength of the Lord, bring our banished and departing Lord Jesus home again to His sanctuary. Neither must your Lordship advise with flesh and blood in this; but wink, and in the dark, reach your hand to Christ, and follow Him. Let not men's fainting discourage you; neither be afraid of men's canny wisdom, who, in this storm, take the nearest shore, and go to the lee and calm side of the Gospel, and hide Christ (if ever they had Him) in their cabinets, as if they were ashamed of Him, or as if Christ were stolen wares, and would blush before the sun.
My very dear and noble Lord, ye have rejoiced the hearts of many, that ye have made choice of Christ and His Gospel, whereas such great temptations do stand in your way. But I love your profession the better that it endureth winds. If we knew ourselves well, to want temptations is the greatest temptation of all. Neither is father, nor mother, nor court, nor honour, in this over-lustred world with all its paintry and farding, anything else, when they are laid in the balance with Christ, but feathers, shadows, night-dreams, and straws. Oh, if this world knew the excellency, sweetness, and beauty of that high and lofty One, the Fairest among the sons of men, verily they would see, that if their love were bigger than ten heavens, all in circles beyond each other, it were all too little for Christ our Lord! I hope that your choice will not repent you, when life shall come to that twilight betwixt time and eternity, and ye shall see the utmost border of time, and shall draw the curtain, and look into eternity, and shall one day see God take the heavens in His hands, and fold them together, like an old holely garment, and set on fire this clay part of the creation of God, and consume away into smoke and ashes the idol-hope of poor fools, who think that there is not a better country than this low country of dying clay. Children cannot make comparison aright betwixt this life and that which is to come; and, therefore, the babes of this world, who see no better, mould, in their own brain, a heaven of their own coining, because they see no farther than the nearest side of time.
I dare lay in pawn my hope of heaven, that this reproached way is the only way of peace. I find it is the way that the Lord hath sealed with His comforts now, in my bonds for Christ; and I verily esteem and find chains and fetters for that lovely One, Christ, to be watered over with sweet consolations, and the love-smiles of that lovely Bridegroom, for whose coming we wait. And when He cometh, then shall the blacks and whites of all men come before the sun; then shall the Lord put a final decision upon the pleas that Zion hath with her adversaries. And as fast as time passeth away (which neither sitteth, nor standeth, nor sleepeth), as fast is our hand-breadth of this short winter-night flying away, and the sky of our long-lasting day drawing near its breaking.
Except your Lordship be pleased to plead for me against the tyranny of prelates, I shall be forgotten in this prison; for they did shape my doom according to their new, lawless canons, which is, that a deprived minister shall be utterly silenced, and not preach at all; which is a cruelty, contrary to their own former practices.
Now, the only wise God, the very God of peace, confirm, strengthen, and establish your Lordship upon the stone laid in Zion, and be with you for ever.
Your Lordship's at all respectful obedience in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[LXXXIV.—To Jean Brown.]
[Jean Brown was the mother of the well-known Mr. John Brown, minister of Wamphray in Annandale, who, after the restoration of Charles II., was ejected from his charge and banished from the King's dominions for his opposition to Prelacy. She was a woman of intelligence and piety.]
(THE JOYS OF THIS LIFE EMBITTERED BY SIN—HEAVEN AN OBJECT OF DESIRE—TRIAL A BLESSED THING.)
M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. I long to hear how your soul prospereth. I earnestly desire your on-going toward your country. I know that ye see your day melteth away by little and little, and that in a short time ye shall be put beyond time's bounds; for life is a post that standeth not still, and our joys here are born weeping, rather than laughing, and they die weeping. Sin, sin, this body of sin and corruption embittereth and poisoneth all our enjoyments. O that I were where I shall sin no more! O to be freed of these chains and iron fetters, which we carry about with us! Lord, loose the sad prisoners! Who of the children of God have not cause to say, that they have their fill of this vain life? and, like a full and sick stomach, to wish at mid-supper that the supper were ended, and the table drawn, that the sick man might win to bed, and enjoy rest? We have cause to tire at mid-supper of the best messes that this world can dress up for us; and to cry to God, that He would remove the table and put the sin-sick souls to rest with Himself. O for a long play-day with Christ, and our long-lasting vacance of rest! Glad may their souls be that are safe over the frith, Christ having paid the fraught. Happy are they who have passed their hard and wearisome time of apprenticeship, and are now freemen and citizens in that joyful, high city, the New Jerusalem.
Alas! that we should be glad of and rejoice in our fetters, and our prison-house, and this dear inn, a life of sin, where we are absent from our Lord, and so far from our home. O that we could get bonds and law-suretyship of our love, that it fasten not itself on these clay-dreams, these clay-shadows, and worldly vanities! We might be oftener seeing what they are doing in heaven, and our hearts more frequently upon our sweet treasure above. We smell of the smoke of this lower house of the earth, because our hearts and our thoughts are here. If we could haunt up with God, we should smell of heaven and of our country above; and we should look like our country, and like strangers, or people not born or brought up hereaway. Our crosses would not bite[174] upon us if we were heavenly-minded. I know of no obligation which the saints have to this world, seeing we fare but upon the smoke of it; and, if there be any smoke in the house, it bloweth upon our eyes. All our part of the table is scarce worth a drink of water; and when we are stricken, we dare not weep, but steal our grief away betwixt our Lord and us, and content ourselves with stolen sorrow behind backs. God be thanked that we have many things that so stroke us against the hair that we may pray, "God keep our better home, God bless our Father's house; and not this smoke, that bloweth us to seek our best lodging." I am sure that this is the best fruit of the cross, when we, from the hard fare of the dear inn, cry the more that God would send a fair wind, to land us, hungered and oppressed strangers, at the door of our Father's house, which now is made, in Christ, our kindly heritage. Oh! then, let us pull up the stakes and stoups of our tent, and take our tent on our back, and go with our flitting to our best home; for here we have no continuing city.
I am waiting in hope here, to see what my Lord will do with me. Let Him make of me what He pleaseth; providing He make glory to Himself out of me, I care not. I hope, yea, I am now sure, that I am for Christ, and all that I can or may make is for Him. I am His everlasting dyvour, and still shall be; for, alas, I have nothing for Him, and He getteth but little service of me! Pray for me, that our Lord would be pleased to give me houseroom, that I may serve Him in the calling which He hath called me unto. Grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[LXXXV.—To John Kennedy, Bailie of Ayr.]
(THE REASONABLENESS OF BELIEVING UNDER ALL AFFLICTION—OBLIGATIONS TO FREE GRACE.)
W ORTHY AND WELL-BELOVED BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you.—I am yet waiting what our Lord will do for His afflicted Church, and for my re-entry to my Lord's house. O that I could hear the forfeiture of Christ (now casten out of His inheritance) recalled and taken off by open proclamation; and that Christ were restored to be a freeholder and a landed heritor in Scotland; and that the courts fenced in the name of the bastard prelates (their godfather, the Pope's, bailiffs and sheriffs) were cried down! Oh, how sweet a sight were it to see all the tribes of the Lord in this land fetching home again our banished King, Christ, to His own palace, His sanctuary, and His throne! I shall think it mercy to my soul, if my faith will out-watch all this winter-night, and not nod nor slumber till my Lord's summer-day dawn upon me. It is much if faith and hope, in the sad nights of our heavy trial, escape with a whole skin, and without crack or crook. I confess that unbelief hath not reason to be either father or mother to it,[175] for unbelief is always an irrational thing; but how can it be, but that such weak eyes as ours must cast water in a great smoke, or that a weak head should not turn giddy when the water runneth deep and strong? But God be thanked that Christ in His children can endure a stress and a storm, howbeit soft nature would fall down in pieces. O that I had that confidence as to rest on this, though He should grind me into small powder, and bray me into dust, and scatter the dust to the four winds of heaven, that my Lord would gather up the powder, and make me up a new vessel again, to bear Christ's name to the world! I am sure that love, bottomed and seated upon the faith of His love to me, would desire and endure this, and would even claim and threep kindness upon Christ's strokes, and kiss His love-glooms, and both spell and read salvation upon the wounds made by Christ's sweet hands. O that I had but a promise made from the mouth of Christ, of His love to me! and then, howbeit my faith were as tender as paper, I think longing, and dwining, and greening of sick desires would cause it to bide out the siege till the Lord came to fill the soul with His love. And I know also, that in that case faith would bide green and sappy at the root, even at mid-winter, and stand out against all storms. However it be, I know that Christ winneth heaven in despite of hell.
But I owe as many praises and thanks to free grace as would lie betwixt me and the utmost border of the highest heaven, suppose ten thousand heavens were all laid above other. But oh! I have nothing that can hire or bud grace; for if grace would take hire, it were no more grace. But all our stability, and the strength of our salvation, is anchored and fastened upon free grace; and I am sure that Christ hath by His death and blood casten the knot so fast, that the fingers of the devils and hell-fulls of sins cannot loose it. And that bond of Christ (that never yet was, nor ever shall, nor can be registrated) standeth surer than heaven, or the days of heaven, as that sweet pillar of the covenant whereon we all hang. Christ, with all His little ones under His two wings and in the compass or circle of His arms, is so sure, that, cast Him and them into the ground of the sea, He shall come up again and not lose one. An odd one cannot, nor shall, be lost in the telling.
This was always God's aim, since Christ came into the play betwixt Him and us, to make men dependent creatures; and, in the work of our salvation, to put created strength, and arms and legs of clay, quite out of place, and out of office and court. And now God hath substituted in our room, and accepted His Son, the Mediator, for us and all that we can make. If this had not been, I would have skinked over and foregone my part of paradise and salvation, for a breakfast of dead, moth-eaten earth; but now I would not give it, nor let it go for more than I can tell. And truly they are silly fools, and ignorant of Christ's worth, and so full ill-trained and tutored, who tell Christ and heaven over the board for two feathers or two straws of the devil's painted pleasures, only lustred on the outer side. This is our happiness now, that our reckonings at night, when eternity shall come upon us, cannot be told. We shall be so far gainers, and so far from being super-expended (as the poor fools of this world are, who give out their money, and get in but black hunger), that angels cannot lay our counts, nor sum our advantage and incomes. Who knoweth how far it is to the bottom of our Christ's fulness, and to the ground of our heaven? Who ever weighed Christ in a pair of balances? Who hath seen the foldings and plies, and the heights and depths of that glory which is in Him, and kept for us? O for such a heaven as to stand afar off, and see, and love, and long for Him, whill time's thread be cut, and this great work of creation dissolved, at the coming of our Lord!
Now to His grace I recommend you. I beseech you also to pray for a re-entry to me into the Lord's house, if it be His good will.
Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Jan. 6, 1637.
[LXXXVI.—To my Lord Craighall.]
[Sir John Hope, Lord Craighall, was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Hope (Lord Advocate of Scotland in the time of James VI. and Charles I.) His property, Craighall, is in the parish of Inveresk, near Edinburgh. Sir Thomas was the most eminent lawyer of his day, and was first brought into notice by the ability with which he defended the cause of John Forbes, John Welsh, and the other ministers who were tried for high treason at Linlithgow, on account of their holding a General Assembly at Aberdeen in 1605. Craighall is in the parish of Ceres, in Fife,[176] a fine old castellated ruin. John, second baronet, was admitted a Lord of Session 27th July 1632, and became President of the Court, and in 1645 was appointed one of the Privy Council. His name appears on the roll of members of the General Assemblies 1645-1649, and of the commissions which these Assemblies appointed. In Lamont's "Diary" we read (1659), "The Laird of Craighall, in Fyfe, depairted out of this lyfe on Sabbath at nyght, and was interred at Ceres.">[
(EPISCOPALIAN CEREMONIES—HOW TO ABIDE IN THE TRUTH—DESIRE FOR LIBERTY TO PREACH CHRIST.)
M Y LORD,—I received Mr. L.'s[177] letter with your Lordship's and his learned thoughts in the matter of ceremonies. I owe respect to the man's learning, for that I hear him to be opposed to Arminian heresies. But, with reverence of that worthy man, I wonder to hear such popish-like expressions as he hath in his letter, as, "Your Lordship may spare doubtings, when the King and Church have agreed in the settling of such orders; and the Church's direction in things indifferent and circumstantial (as if indifferent and circumstantial were all one!) should be the rule of every private Christian." I only viewed the papers two hours' space, the bearer hastening me to write. I find the worthy man not so seen in this controversy as some turbulent men of our country, whom he calleth "refusers of conformity;" and let me say it, I am more confirmed in nonconformity, when I see such a great wit play the agent so slenderly. But I will lay the blame on the weakness of the cause, not on the meanness of Mr. L.'s learning. I have been, and still am confident, that Britain[178] cannot answer one argument, a scandalo: and I longed much to hear Mr. L. speak to the cause; and I would say, if some ordinary divine had answered as Mr. L. doth, that he understood not the nature of a scandal; but I dare not vilify that worthy man so. I am now upon the heat of some other employment. I shall (but God willing) answer this, to the satisfying of any not prejudiced.
I will not say that every one is acquainted with the reason in my letter, from God's presence and bright shining face in suffering for this cause. Aristotle never knew the medium of the conclusion: and Christ saith few know it (Rev. ii. 17). I am sure that conscience standing in awe of the Almighty, and fearing to make a little hole in the bottom for fear of under-water, is a strong medium to hold off an erroneous conclusion in the least wing, or lith, of sweet, sweet truth, that concerneth the royal prerogative of our kingly and highest Lord Jesus. And my witness is in heaven, that I saw neither pleasure, nor profit, nor honour, to hook me, or catch me, in entering into prison for Christ, but the wind on my face for the present. And if I had loved to sleep in a whole skin, with the ease and present delight that I saw on this side of sun and moon, I should have lived at ease, and in good hopes to fare as well as others. The Lord knoweth that I preferred preaching of Christ, and still do, to anything, next to Christ Himself. And their new canons took my one, my only joy, from me, which was to me as the poor man's one ewe, that had no more! And, alas! there is little lodging in their hearts for pity or mercy, to pluck out a poor man's one eye for a thing indifferent; i.e. for knots of straw, and things (as they mean) off the way to heaven. I desire not that my name take journey, and go a pilgrim to Cambridge, for fear I come into the ears of authority. I am sufficiently burnt already.
In the mean time, be pleased to try if the Bishop of St. Andrews,[179] and Glasgow (Galloway's ordinary),[180] will be pleased to abate from the heat of their wrath, and let me go to my charge. Few know the heart of a prisoner; yet I hope that the Lord will hew His own glory out of as knotty timber as I am. Keep Christ, my dear and worthy Lord. Pretended paper-arguments from[181] angering the mother-Church (that can reel, and nod, and stagger), are not of such weight as peace with the Father, and Husband. Let the wife gloom, I care not, if the Husband laugh.
Remember my service to my Lord your father, and mother, and lady. Grace be with you.
Yours at all obedience in Christ,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Jan. 24, 1637.
[LXXXVII.—To Elizabeth Kennedy.]
[Elizabeth Kennedy was the sister of Hugh Kennedy, Provost of Ayr, and a woman as eminent for piety and prayer as her brother. Wodrow records of her that, being much afflicted with the stone, she was advised to submit to a surgical operation. Several meetings for prayer took place among the godly at Ayr in reference to her case. When the surgeon came to perform the operation, one of these meetings was going on in the house, and they continued so long in prayer as nearly to exhaust his patience; but before they had concluded, the stone dissolved, and without surgical aid she obtained immediate relief. (Wodrow's "Analecta," vol. ii.)]
(DANGER OF FORMALITY—CHRIST WHOLLY TO BE LOVED—OTHER OBJECTS OF LOVE.)
M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I have long had a purpose of writing unto you, but I have been hindered. I heartily desire that ye would mind your country, and consider to what airt your soul setteth its face; for all come not home at night who suppose that they have set their face heavenward. It is a woful thing to die, and miss heaven, and to lose house-room with Christ at night: it is an evil journey where travellers are benighted in the fields. I persuade myself that thousands shall be deceived and ashamed of their hope. Because they cast their anchor in sinking sands, they must lose it. Till now I knew not the pain, labour, nor difficulty that there is to win at home: nor did I understand so well, before this, what that meaneth, "The righteous shall scarcely be saved." Oh, how many a poor professor's candle is blown out, and never lighted again! I see that ordinary profession, and to be ranked amongst the children of God, and to have a name among men, is now thought good enough to carry professors to heaven. But certainly a name is but a name, and will never bide a blast of God's storm. I counsel you not to give your soul or Christ rest, nor your eyes sleep, till ye have gotten something that will bide the fire, and stand out the storm. I am sure, that if my one foot were in heaven, and if then He should say, "Fend thyself, I will hold my grips of thee no longer," I should go no farther, but presently fall down in as many pieces of dead nature.
They are happy for evermore who are over head and ears in the love of Christ, and know no sickness but love-sickness for Christ, and feel no pain but the pain of an absent and hidden Well-beloved. We run our souls out of breath and tire them, in coursing and galloping after our night-dreams (such are the rovings of our miscarrying hearts), to get some created good thing in this life, and on this side of death. We would fain stay and spin out a heaven to ourselves, on this side of the water; but sorrow, want, changes, crosses, and sin, are both woof and warp in that ill-spun web. Oh, how sweet and dear are those thoughts that are still upon the things which are above! and how happy are they who are longing to have little sand in their glass, and to have time's thread cut, and can cry to Christ, "Lord Jesus, have over; come and fetch the dreary[182] passenger!" I wish that our thoughts were more frequently than they are upon our country. Oh, but heaven casteth a sweet smell afar off to those who have spiritual smelling! God hath made many fair flowers; but the fairest of them all is heaven, and the Flower of all flowers is Christ. Oh! why do we not fly up to that lovely One? Alas that there is such a scarcity of love, and of lovers, to Christ amongst us all! Fie, fie, upon us, who love fair things, as fair gold, fair houses, fair lands, fair pleasures, fair honours, and fair persons, and do not pine and melt away with love to Christ! Oh! would to God I had more love for His sake! O for as much as would lie betwixt me and heaven, for His sake! O for as much as would go round about the earth, and over the heaven, yea, the heaven of heavens, and ten thousand worlds, that I might let all out upon fair, fair, only fair Christ! But, alas! I have nothing for Him, yet He hath much for me. It is no gain to Christ that He getteth my little, feckless span-length and hand-breadth of love.
If men would have something to do with their hearts and their thoughts, that are always rolling up and down (like men with oars in a boat), after sinful vanities, they might find great and sweet employment to their thoughts upon Christ. If those frothy, fluctuating, and restless hearts of ours would come all about Christ, and look into His love, to bottomless love, to the depth of mercy, to the unsearchable riches of His grace, to inquire after and search into the beauty of God in Christ, they would be swallowed up in the depth and height, length and breadth of His goodness. Oh, if men would draw the curtains, and look into the inner side of the ark, and behold how the fullness of the Godhead dwelleth in Him bodily! Oh! who would not say, "Let me die, let me die ten times, to see a sight of Him?" Ten thousand deaths were no great price to give for Him. I am sure that sick, fainting love would heighten the market, and raise the price to the double for Him. But, alas! if men and angels were rouped, and sold at the dearest price, they would not all buy a night's love, or a four-and-twenty-hours' sight of Christ! Oh, how happy are they who get Christ for nothing! God send me no more, for my part of paradise, but Christ: and surely I were rich enough, and as well heavened as the best of them, if Christ were my heaven.
I can write no better thing to you, than to desire you, if ever ye laid Christ in a count, to take Him up and count over again: and weigh Him again and again: and after this have no other to court your love, and to woo your soul's delight, but Christ. He will be found worthy of all your love, howbeit it should swell upon you from the earth to the uppermost circle of the heaven of heavens. To our Lord Jesus and His love I commend you.
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[LXXXVIII.—To Janet Kennedy.]
[This seems to be the wife of Mr. John Fergushill; see Letter CXII.]
(CHRIST TO BE KEPT AT EVERY SACRIFICE—HIS INCOMPARABLE LOVELINESS.)
M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. Ye are not a little obliged to His rich grace, who hath separated you for Himself, and for the promised inheritance with the saints in light, from this condemned and guilty world. Hold fast Christ, contend for Him; it is a lawful plea to go to holding and drawing for Christ; and it is not possible to keep Christ peaceably, having once gotten Him, except the devil were dead. It must be your resolution to set your face against Satan's northern tempests and storms, for salvation. Nature would have heaven to come to us while sleeping in our beds. We would all buy Christ, so being we might make price ourselves. But Christ is worth more blood and lives than either ye or I have to give Him. When we shall come home, and enter to the possession of our Brother's fair kingdom, and when our heads shall find the weight of the eternal crown of glory, and when we shall look back to pains and sufferings, then shall we see life and sorrow to be less than one step or stride from a prison to glory; and that our little inch of time-suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome-home to heaven. Oh, what then shall be the weight of every one of Christ's kisses! Oh, how weighty, and of what worth shall every one of Christ's love-smiles be! Oh, when once He shall thrust a wearied traveller's head betwixt His blessed breasts, the poor soul will think one kiss of Christ hath fully paid home forty or fifty years' wet feet, and all its sore hearts, and light (2 Cor. iv. 17) sufferings it had in following after Christ! Oh, thrice-blinded souls, whose hearts are charmed and bewitched with dreams, shadows, feckless things, night-vanities, and night-fancies of a miserable life of sin! Shame on us who sit still, fettered with the love and liking of the loan of a piece of dead clay! Oh, poor fools, who are beguiled with painted things, and this world's fair weather, and smooth promises, and rotten, worm-eaten hopes! May not the devil laugh to see us give out our souls, and get in but corrupt and counterfeit pleasures of sin? O for a sight of eternity's glory, and a little tasting of the Lamb's marriage-supper! Half a draught, or a drop of the wine of consolation, that is up at our banqueting-house, out of Christ's own hand, would make our stomachs loathe the brown bread and the sour drink of a miserable life. Oh, how far are we bereaved of wit, to chafe, and hunt, and run, till our souls be out of breath, after a condemned happiness of our own making! And do we not sit far in our own light to make it a matter of bairn's play, to skink and drink over[183] paradise, and the heaven that Christ did sweat for, even for a blast of smoke, and for Esau's morning breakfast? O that we were out of ourselves, and dead to this world, and this world dead and crucified to us! And, when we should be close out of love and conceit of any masked and farded lover whatsoever, then Christ would win and conquer to Himself a lodging in the inmost yolk of our heart. Then Christ should be our night-song and morning-song; then the very noise and din of our Well-beloved's feet, when He cometh, and His first knock or rap at the door, should be as news of two heavens to us. O that our eyes and our soul's smelling should go after a blasted and sun-burnt flower, even this plastered, fair-outsided world: and then we have neither eye nor smell for the Flower of Jesse, for that Plant of renown, for Christ, the choicest, the fairest, the sweetest rose that ever God planted! Oh, let some of us die to smell the fragrance of Him; and let my part of this rotten world be forfeited and sold for evermore, providing I may anchor my tottering soul upon Christ! I know that it is sometimes at this, "Lord, what wilt Thou have for Christ?" But, O Lord, canst Thou be budded, and propined with any gift for Christ? O Lord, can Christ be sold? or rather, may not a poor needy sinner have Him for nothing? If I can get no more, oh, let me be pained to all eternity, with longing for Him! The joy of hungering for Christ should be my heaven for evermore. Alas, that I cannot draw souls and Christ together! But I desire the coming of His kingdom, and that Christ, as I assuredly hope He will, would come upon withered Scotland, as rain upon the new-mown grass. Oh, let the King come! Oh, let His kingdom come! Oh, let their eyes rot in their eyeholes (Zech. xiv. 12), who will not receive Him home again to reign and rule in Scotland. Grace, grace be with you.
Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[LXXXIX.—To my Well-beloved and Reverend Brother, Mr. Robert Blair.]
[Mr. Robert Blair was born at Irvine in 1593. After completing his education at the College of Glasgow, he there held for several years the office of regent, during which time he was licensed as a probationer for the holy ministry. Having a strong desire to go to France, he was encouraged to this by M. Basnage, a French Protestant minister who visited Scotland in 1622. But Providence ordered his lot otherwise. He was induced to accept of the charge of Bangor, in Ireland, and was admitted in the year 1623. Here he laboured with great diligence and success; and there being in the same part of the country several other devout ministers, by mutual co-operation, they were instrumental in producing in the north of Ireland a change upon an ignorant and irreligious people, much resembling the effects of the preaching of the Gospel in the apostolic age. But this good work was not allowed to go on unopposed. In the autumn of 1631 he was suspended from his ministry by the Bishop of Down; in May 1632 he was deposed; and in November 1634 solemnly excommunicated; and all this simply for nonconformity. In these circumstances, he and some other ministers similarly situated, together with a considerable number of people, formed the purpose of going to New England, and actually embarked in 1636; but the tempestuous state of the weather forced them to return. He then came over to Scotland, and in 1638 became minister of Ayr, from which by a sentence of the General Assembly he was soon translated to St. Andrews, where he and Rutherford lived in the warmest friendship until the rise of the controversy between the Resolutioners and Protesters, which in some degree disturbed their mutual good understanding. Rutherford was a strong Protester: Blair regretted the extremes, as he conceived, to which both parties went; and, with Mr. James Durham of Glasgow, endeavoured to restore harmony between them, but without success. In 1661 he was summoned before the Privy Council for a sermon he had preached, in which he bore testimony to the covenanted Reformation, as well as against the defections of the times. He was sentenced to be confined to his own house, but afterwards permitted to retire to Musselburgh. He next removed to Kirkcaldy, and from thence to Meikle Couston, in the parish of Aberdour, where he died on the 27th of April 1666. (See Life of Robert Blair, issued by the Wodrow Society, 1848.)]
(GOD'S ARRANGEMENTS SOMETIMES MYSTERIOUS.)
R EVEREND AND DEARLY BELOVED BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, be unto you.
It is no great wonder, my dear brother, that ye be in heaviness for a season, and that God's will (in crossing your design and desires to dwell amongst a people whose God is the Lord) should move you. I deny not but ye have cause to inquire what His providence speaketh in this to you; but God's directing and commanding Will can by no good logic be concluded from events of providence. The Lord sent Paul on many errands for the spreading of His Gospel, where he found lions in his way. A promise was made to His people of the Holy Land, and yet many nations were in the way, fighting against, and ready to kill them that had the promise, or to keep them from possessing that good land which the Lord their God had given them. I know that ye have most to do with submission of spirit; but I persuade myself that ye have learned, in every condition wherein ye are cast, therein to be content, and to say, "Good is the will of the Lord, let it be done." I believe that the Lord tacketh His ship often to fetch the wind, and that He purposeth to bring mercy out of your sufferings and silence, which (I know from mine own experience) is grievous to you. Seeing that He knoweth our willing mind to serve Him, our wages and stipend is running to the fore with our God, even as some sick soldiers get pay, when they are bedfast and not able to go to the field with others. "Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength" (Isa. xlix. 5). And we are to believe it shall be thus ere all the play be played. "The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon" (and the great whore's lovers), "shall the inhabitants of Zion say; and my blood be upon Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say."[184] And, "Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling to all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: they that burden themselves with it shall be broken in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it."[185] When they have eaten and swallowed us up, they shall be sick and vomit us out living men again; the devil's stomach cannot digest the Church of God. Suffering is the other half of our ministry, howbeit the hardest; for we would be content that our King Jesus should make an open proclamation, and cry down crosses, and cry up joy, gladness, ease, honour, and peace. But it must not be so; through many afflictions we must enter into the kingdom of God. Not only by them, but through them, must we go; and wiles will not take us past the cross. It is folly to think to steal to heaven with a whole skin.
For myself, I am here a prisoner confined in Aberdeen, threatened to be removed to Caithness, because I desire to edify in this town; and am openly preached against in the pulpits in my hearing, and tempted with disputations by the doctors, especially by D. B.[186] Yet I am not ashamed of the Lord Jesus, His garland, and His crown. I would not exchange my weeping with the painted laughter of the fourteen prelates. At my first coming here I took the dorts at Christ, and would, forsooth, summon Him for unkindness. I sought a plea of my Lord, and was tossed with challenges whether He loved me or not; and disputed over again all that He had done to me, because His word was a fire shut up in my bowels, and I was weary with forbearing, because I said I was cast out of the Lord's inheritance. But now I see that I was a fool. My Lord miskent all, and did bear with my foolish jealousies; and miskent that ever I wronged His love. And now He has come again with mercy under His wings. I pass from my (oh witless!) summons: He is God, I see, and I am man. Now it hath pleased Him to renew His love to my soul, and to dawt His poor prisoner. Therefore, dear brother, help me to praise and show the Lord's people with you what He hath done to my soul, that they may pray and praise. And I charge you in the name of Christ, not to omit it. For this cause I write to you, that my sufferings may glorify my royal King, and edify His Church in Ireland. He knoweth how one of Christ's love coals hath burnt my soul with a desire to have my bonds to preach His glory, whose cross I now bear. God forgive you if you do it not; but I hope the Lord will move your heart, to proclaim in my behalf the sweetness, excellency, and glory of my royal King. It is but our soft flesh that hath raised a slander on the Cross of Christ: I see now the white side of it; my Lord's chains are all over-gilded. Oh, if Scotland and Ireland had part of my feast! And yet I get not my meat but with many strokes. There are none here to whom I can speak; I dwell in Kedar's tents. Refresh me with a letter from you. Few know what is betwixt Christ and me.
Dear brother, upon my salvation, this is His truth that we suffer for. Christ would not seal a blank charter to souls. Courage, courage! joy, joy for evermore! Oh, joy unspeakable and glorious! O for help to set my crowned King on high! O for love to Him who is altogether lovely,—that love which many waters cannot quench, neither can the floods drown!
I remember you, and bear your name on my breast to Christ. I beseech you, forget not His afflicted prisoner. Grace, mercy, and peace be with you. Salute in the Lord, from me, Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Livingstone, Mr. Ridge,[187] Mr. Colwart,[188] &c.
Your brother, and fellow-prisoner,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Feb. 7, 1637.
[XC.—To his Reverend and Dear Brother, Mr. John Livingstone.]
[John Livingstone (the son of Alexander Livingstone, minister first at Monyabroch or Kilsyth, and afterwards at Lanark) was born at Monyabroch on the 21st of January 1603. At the College of Glasgow, he enjoyed the advantage of having as his regent for two years the famous Robert Blair, for whom he continued ever after to retain the highest veneration. He was first settled minister at Killinchie, in Ireland, towards the close of the year 1630, but had not laboured above twelve months in that charge when he was suspended by the Bishop of Down, for nonconformity. To enjoy religious liberty, he set out with Mr. Blair and others in their intended emigration to America; but, with the rest, was forced by the adverse state of the weather to return. Shortly after, he received calls from two parishes, Stranraer and Stewarton, but preferred the call from the former, and his induction took place on the 5th of July 1638. Here he continued in the assiduous discharge of his pastoral functions until 1648, when, by the sentence of the General Assembly, he was translated to the parish of Ancrum, in the Presbytery of Jedburgh. Upon the death of Charles I., he was sent to the Hague, and afterwards to Breda, as one of the commissioners from the Church of Scotland to treat with his son Charles II., whose character he had the penetration to discover. In the controversy between the Resolutioners and Protesters, Livingstone took the side of the latter, but was dissatisfied with the violence manifested by his party. After the restoration of Charles II., being summoned to appear before the Privy Council in 1662, he appeared; but, declining to engage to observe the anniversary of the death of Charles I., and to take the oath of allegiance in the precise way in which it was dictated to him, he was sentenced to quit his native land within two months. Having repaired to Rotterdam, he preached occasionally to the Scottish congregation there, and devoted the remainder of his life to the cultivation of Biblical literature. He died in that city on the 9th of August 1672, in the seventieth year of his age.
It was this same Livingstone that was so blessed in awakenings. By a sermon which he preached in 1630 at the Kirk-of-Shotts, on the Monday after the dispensation of the Lord's Supper, five hundred souls, it is believed, were converted. On a similar occasion, at Holywood, in the north of Ireland, in one day, he was the instrument of awakening double that number to inquiry after salvation. (See Brief Historical Relation of the Life of John Livingston in "Select Biographies," vol. i., Wodrow Society, 1845.)]
(RESIGNATION—ENJOYMENT—STATE OF THE CHURCH.)
M Y REVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to hear from you, and to be refreshed with the comforts of The Bride of our Lord Jesus in Ireland. I suffer with you in grief, for the dash that your desires to be at New England have received of late; but if our Lord, who hath skill to bring up His children, had not seen it your best, it would not have befallen you. Hold your peace, and stay yourselves upon the Holy One of Israel. Hearken to what He hath said in crossing of your desires; He will speak peace to His people.
I am here removed from my flock, and silenced, and confined in Aberdeen, for the testimony of Jesus. And I have been confined in spirit also with desertions and challenges. I gave in a bill of quarrels, and complaints of unkindness against Christ, who seemed to have cast me over the dyke of the vineyard as a dry tree, and separated me from the Lord's inheritance; but high, high and loud praises be to our royal crowned King in Zion, that He hath not burnt the dry branch. I shall yet live, and see His glory.
Your mother-Church, for her whoredom, is like to be cast off. The bairns may break their hearts to see such chiding betwixt the husband and the wife. Our clergy is upon a reconciliation with the Lutherans; and the Doctors are writing books, and drawing up a common confession, at the Council's command. Our Service Book is proclaimed with sound of trumpet. The night is fallen down upon the prophets! Scotland's day of visitation is come. It is time for the bride to weep, while Christ is a-saying that He will choose another wife. But our sky will clear again; the dry branch of cut-down Lebanon will bud again and be glorious, and they shall yet plant vines upon our mountains.
Now, my dear brother, I write to you for this end, that ye may help me to praise; and seek help of others with you, that God may be glorified in my bonds. My Lord Jesus hath taken the withered, dry stranger, and His prisoner broken in heart, into His house of wine. Oh, oh, if ye, and all Scotland, and all our brethren with you, knew how I am feasted! Christ's honey-combs drop comforts. He dineth with His prisoner, and the King's spikenard casteth a smell. The devil cannot get it denied that we suffer for the apple of Christ's eye, His royal prerogatives, as King and Lawgiver. Let us not fear or faint. He will have His Gospel once again rouped in Scotland, and have the matter going to voices, to see who will say, "Let Christ be crowned King in Scotland." It is true that Antichrist stirreth his tail; but I love a rumbling and raging devil in the kirk (since the Church militant cannot or may not want a devil to trouble her), rather than a subtle or sleeping devil. Christ never yet got a bride without stroke of sword. It is now nigh the Bridegroom's entering into His chamber; let us awake and go in with Him.
I bear your name to Christ's door; I pray you, dear brother, forget me not. Let me hear from you by a letter; and I charge you, smother not Christ's bounty towards me. I write what I have found of Him in the house of my pilgrimage. Remember my love to all our brethren and sisters there.
The Keeper of the vineyard watch for His besieged city, and for you.
Your brother, and fellow-sufferer,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Feb. 7, 1637.
[XCI.—To Mr. Ephraim Melvin.]
[Ephraim Melvin, or Melville, was first ordained minister of Queensferry, and afterwards translated to Linlithgow, where he died. His ministry was signally blessed of God for bringing many to the saving knowledge of the truth, among whom were some who afterwards became eminent ministers of the Gospel in their day. One of these was the famous Mr. James Durham of Glasgow. Happening, with his pious wife, a daughter of the laird of Duntervie, to pay a visit to her mother, also a religious woman, in Queensferry, when the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was to be observed in that place, his mother-in-law, upon the Saturday, desired him to go with her to hear sermon. Being then a stranger to true religion, he was disinclined to go, and said, with a tone of indifference, "that he had not come there to hear sermon;" but upon being pressed, to gratify his pious relative, he went. The discourse which he heard, though plain and ordinary, was delivered with an affection and earnestness that arrested the attention of Durham, and so impressed him, that on coming home he said to his mother-in-law, "Your minister preached very seriously, and I shall not need to be pressed to go to hear to-morrow." Accordingly he went, and Mr. Melvin, choosing for his text these words, "To you which believe, He is precious," 1 Peter ii. 7, opened up the preciousness of Christ with such unction and seriousness, that it proved, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the means of his conversion. In that sermon he closed with Christ, and then took his seat at the Lord's Table, though to that day he had been an absolute stranger to believing. He was accustomed afterwards to call Mr. Melvin his father, when he spoke of him or to him. On another occasion, Mr. Melvin, by a sermon which he preached at Stewarton, when a probationer and chaplain to the excellent Lady Boyd, was the instrument of converting Mr. John Stirling in the fourteenth or sixteenth year of his age—one who proved a useful minister in his day, "Some say also," remarks Wodrow, "that he was a spiritual father to Mr. John Dury of Dalmeny, a man much esteemed of in his time, as having a taking and soaring gift of preaching, much like Mr. William Guthrie's gift." When Rutherford heard of Melvin's death, he is represented to have said, "And is Ephraim dead? He was an interpreter among a thousand." (Wodrow's "Anal.," vol. iii.)]
(THE IDOLATRY OF KNEELING AT THE COMMUNION.)
R EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,—I received your letter, and am contented, with all my heart, that our acquaintance in our Lord continue.
I am wrestling as I dow, up the mount with Christ's cross: my Second is kind and able to help.
As for your questions, because of my manifold distractions, and letters to multitudes, I have not time to answer them. What shall be said in common for that shall be imparted to you; for I am upon these questions. Therefore spare me a little, for the Service Book would take a great time. But I think; "Sicut deosculatio religiosa imaginis, aut etiam elementorum, est in se idololatria externa, etsi intentio deosculandi, tota, quanta in actu est, feratur in Deum πρωτοτυπὸν; ita, geniculatio coram pane, quando, nempe, ex instituto, totus homo externus et internus versari debeat circa elementaria signa, est adoratio relativa, et adoratio ipsius panis. Ratio: Intentio adorandi objectum materiale, non est de essentiâ externæ adorationis, ut patet in deosculatione religiosâ. Sic geniculatio coram imagine Babylonicâ est externa adoratio imaginis, etsi tres pueri mente intendissent adorare Jehovam. Sic, qui ex metu solo, aut spe pretii, aut inanis gloriæ, geniculatur coram aureo vitulo Jeroboami (quod ab ipso rege, qui nullâ religione inductus, sed libidine dominandi tantum, vitulum erexit, factitatum esse, textus satis luculenter clamat), adorat vitulum externâ adoratione. Esto quod putaret vitulum esse meram creaturam, et honore nullo dignum: quia geniculatio, sive nos nolumus, sive volumus, ex instituto Dei et naturæ, in actu religioso, est symbolum religiosæ adorationis. Ergo, sicut panis significat corpus Christi, etsi absit actus omnis nostræ intentionis; sic religiosa geniculatio, sublatâ omni intentione humanâ, est externa adoratio panis, coram quo adoramus, ut coram signo vicario et repræsentativo Dei." [As the religious homage done to an image, or even to elements, is in itself an external act of idolatry, in so far as the act is concerned, although the intention of such homage may be directed to God the Great First Cause,—so the act of kneeling to a piece of bread, seeing that, according to the ordinance, the whole man, internal and external, ought to be engaged in the elementary signs, is a relative act of worship and an adoration of the bread itself. The reason is: an intention to worship a material object is not of the essence of external adoration, as appears in a religious act of homage. Thus, the bending of the knee before the Babylonish image is an external act of worship, even though the three youths had no intention to worship any but the true God; and in like manner, those who, from fear or the hope of reward or vain-glory, bend the knee to Jeroboam's golden calf (which the text clearly enough proclaims to have been done by the king himself, from no religious motive but the mere desire to rule), do pay adoration to the calf by the external act, although, no doubt, they may suppose the calf a mere created object and unworthy of honour,—because the act of homage, whether we mean it or not, is, from the ordinance of God and nature, a symbol of worship. Therefore, as the bread denotes the body of Christ (even though that idea be not present to the mind), so in like manner, kneeling, when used as a religious service, is the external adoration of that bread, in presence of which we bow as before the delegated representative of God, be our intention what it may.][189]
Thus recommending you to God's tender mercy, I desire that you would remember me to God. Sanctification will settle you most in the truth.
Grace be with you, Brother in Christ Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[XCII.—To Robert Gordon of Knockbrex.]
(VISITS OF CHRIST—THE THINGS WHICH AFFLICTION TEACHES.)
M Y VERY WORTHY AND DEAR FRIEND,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. Though all Galloway should have forgotten me, I would have expected a letter from you ere now; but I will not expound it to be forgetfulness of me.
Now, my dear brother, I cannot show you how matters go betwixt Christ and me. I find my Lord going and coming seven times a day. His visits are short; but they are both frequent and sweet. I dare not for my life think of a challenge of my Lord. I hear ill tales, and hard reports of Christ, from The Tempter and my flesh; but love believeth no evil. I may swear that they are liars, and that apprehensions make lies of Christ's honest and unalterable love to me. I dare not say that I am a dry tree, or that I have no room at all in the vineyard; but yet I often think that the sparrows are blessed, who may resort to the house of God in Anwoth, from which I am banished.
Temptations, that I supposed to be stricken dead and laid upon their back, rise again and revive upon me; yea, I see that while I live, temptations will not die. The devil seemeth to brag and boast as much as if he had more court with Christ than I have; and as if he had charmed and blasted my ministry, that I shall do no more good in public. But his wind shaketh no corn.[190] I will not believe that Christ would have made such a mint to have me to Himself, and have taken so much pains upon me as He hath done, and then slip so easily from possession, and lose the glory of what He hath done. Nay, since I came to Aberdeen, I have been taken up to see the new land, the fair palace of the Lamb; and will Christ let me see heaven, to break my heart, and never give it to me? I shall not think my Lord Jesus giveth a dumb earnest, or putteth His seals to blank paper, or intendeth to put me off with fair and false promises. I see that now which I never saw well before. (1.) I see faith's necessity in a fair day is never known aright; but now I miss nothing so much as faith. Hunger in me runneth to fair and sweet promises; but when I come, I am like a hungry man that wanteth teeth, or a weak stomach having a sharp appetite that is filled with the very sight of meat, or like one stupefied with cold under the water, that would fain come to land, but cannot grip anything casten to him. I can let Christ grip me, but I cannot grip Him. I love to be kissed, and to sit on Christ's knee; but I cannot set my feet to the ground, for afflictions bring the cramp upon my faith. All that I dow do is to hold out a lame faith to Christ, like a beggar holding out a stump, instead of an arm or leg, and cry, "Lord Jesus, work a miracle!" Oh, what would I give to have hands and arms to grip strongly, and fold heartsomely about Christ's neck, and to have my claim made good with real possession! I think that my love to Christ hath feet in abundance, and runneth swiftly to be at Him, but it wanteth hands and fingers to apprehend Him. I think that I would give Christ every morning my blessing, to have as much faith as I have love and hunger; at least, I miss faith more than love or hunger.
(2.) I see that mortification, and to be crucified to the world, is not so highly accounted of by us as it should be. Oh, how heavenly a thing it is to be dead, and dumb, and deaf to this world's sweet music! I confess it hath pleased His Majesty to make me laugh at the children, who are wooing this world for their match. I see men lying about the world, as nobles about a king's court; and I wonder what they are all doing there. As I am at this present, I would scorn to court such a feckless and petty princess, or buy this world's kindness with a bow of my knee. I scarce now either hear or see what it is that this world offereth me; I know that it is little which it can take from me, and as little that it can give me. I recommend mortification to you above anything; for, alas! we but chase feathers flying in the air, and tire our own spirits for the froth and over-gilded clay of a dying life. One sight of what my Lord hath let me see within this short time is worth a world of worlds.
(3.) I thought courage, in the time of trouble for Christ's sake, a thing that I might take up at my foot. I thought that the very remembrance of the honesty of the cause would be enough. But I was a fool in so thinking. I have much ado now to win to one smile. But I see that joy groweth up in heaven, and it is above our short arm. Christ will be steward and dispenser Himself, and none else but He; therefore, now, I count much of one dramweight of spiritual joy. One smile of Christ's face is now to me as a kingdom; and yet He is no niggard to me of comforts. Truly I have no cause to say that I am pinched with penury, or that the consolations of Christ are dried up: for He hath poured down rivers upon a dry wilderness the like of me,[191] to my admiration; and in my very swoonings, He holdeth up my head, and stayeth me with flagons of wine, and comforteth me with apples. My house and bed are strewed with kisses of love. Praise, praise with me. Oh, if ye and I betwixt us could lift up Christ upon His throne, howbeit all Scotland should cast Him down to the ground!
My brother's case toucheth me near. I hope that ye will be kind to him, and give him your best counsel.
Remember my love to your brother, to your wife, and G. M.[192] Desire him to be faithful, and to repent of his hypocrisy; and say that I wrote it to you. I wish him salvation. Write to me your mind anent C. E. and C. Y., and their wives, and I. G., or any others in my parish. I fear that I am forgotten amongst them; but I cannot forget them.
The prisoner's prayers and blessings come upon you. Grace, grace be with you.
Your brother, in the Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Feb. 9, 1637.
[XCIII.—To the Honourable and truly Noble Lady, the Viscountess of Kenmure.]
(GOD'S DEALINGS WITH SCOTLAND—THE EYE TO BE DIRECTED HEAVENWARD.)
M ADAM,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Ladyship.—I long to hear from you.
I am here waiting, if a good wind, long looked for, will at length blow into Christ's sails, in this land. But I wonder if Jesus be not content to suffer more yet in His members and cause, and in the beauty of His house, rather than He should not be avenged upon this land. I hear that many worthy men, who see more in the Lord's dealings than I can take up with my dim sight, are of a contrary mind, and do believe that the Lord is coming home again to His house in Scotland. I hope He is on His journey that way; yet I look not but that He will feed this land with their own blood, before He establish His throne amongst us.
I know that your honour is not looking after things here-away. Ye have no great cause to think that your stock and principal is under the roof of these visible heavens; and I hope that ye would think yourself a beguiled and cozened soul if it were so. I should be sorry to counsel your Ladyship to make a covenant with time, and this life; but rather desire you to hold in fair generals, and afar off from this ill-founded heaven that is on this side of the water. It speaketh somewhat when our Lord bloweth the bloom off our daft hopes in this life, and loppeth the branches off our worldly joys, well nigh the root, on purpose that they should not thrive. Lord, spill my fool's heaven in this life, that I may be saved for ever. A forfeiture of the saint's part of the yolk and marrow of short-laughing worldly happiness, is not such a real evil as our blinded eyes conceive.
I am thinking long now for some deliverance more than before. But I know I am in an error. It is possible I am not come to that measure of trial which the Lord is seeking in His work. If my friends in Galloway would effectually do for my deliverance, I should exceedingly rejoice; but I know not but the Lord hath a way whereof He will be the only reaper of praises.
Let me know with the bearer how the child is. The Lord be his father and tutor, and your only comforter. There is nothing here, where I am, but profanity and atheism. Grace, grace, be with your Ladyship.
Your Ladyship's, at all obliged obedience, in Christ,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Feb. 13, 1637.
[XCIV.—To the Noble and Christian Lady, the Viscountess of Kenmure.]
(THE TIMES—CHRIST'S SWEETNESS IN TROUBLE—LONGING AFTER HIM.)
M ADAM,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I would not omit the occasion to write to your Ladyship with the bearer. I am glad that the child is well. God's favour, even in the eyes of men, be seen upon him!
I hope that your Ladyship is thinking upon these sad and woful days wherein we now live, when our Lord, in His righteous judgment, is sending the kirk the gate she is going to Rome's brothel-house to seek a lover of her own, seeing that she hath given up with Christ her Husband. Oh, what sweet comfort, what rich salvation, is laid up for those who had rather wash and roll their garments in their own blood, than break out[193] from Christ by apostacy! Keep yourself in the love of Christ, and stand far aback from the pollutions of the world. Side not with these times; and hold off from coming nigh the signs of a conspiracy with those that are now come out against Christ, that ye may be one kept for Christ only. I know that your Ladyship thinketh upon this, and how you may be humbled for yourself and this backsliding land; for I avouch, that wrath from the Lord is gone out against Scotland. I think aye the longer the better of my royal and worthy Master. He is become a new Well-beloved to me now, in renewed consolations, by the presence of the Spirit of grace and glory. Christ's garments smell of the powder of the merchant, when He cometh out of His ivory chambers. Oh, His perfumed face, His fair face, His lovely and kindly kisses, have made me, a poor prisoner, see that there is more to be had of Christ in this life than I believed! We think all is but a little earnest, a four-hours, a small tasting, that we have, or that is to be had, in this life (which is true compared with the inheritance); but yet I know it is more: it is the kingdom of God within us. Wo, wo is me, that I have not ten loves for that one Lord Jesus; and that love faileth, and drieth up in loving Him; and that I find no way to spend my love desires, and the yolk of my heart upon that fairest and dearest One. I am far behind with my narrow heart. Oh, how ebb a soul have I to take in Christ's love! for let worlds be multiplied, according to angels' understanding, in millions, whill they weary themselves, these worlds would not contain the thousandth part of His love. Oh, if I could yoke in amongst the thick of angels, and seraphims, and now glorified saints, and could raise a new love-song of Christ, before all the world! I am pained with wondering at new-opened treasures in Christ. If every finger, member, bone, and joint, were a torch burning in the hottest fire in hell, I would that they could all send out love praises, high songs of praise for evermore, to that Plant of Renown, to that royal and high Prince, Jesus my Lord. But alas! His love swelleth in me, and findeth no vent. Alas! what can a dumb prisoner do or say for Him! O for an ingine to write a book of Christ and His love! Nay, I am left of Him bound and chained with His love. I cannot find a loosed soul to lift up His praises, and give them out to others. But oh! my day-light hath thick clouds; I cannot shine in His praises. I am often like a ship plying about to seek the wind; I sail at great leisure, and cannot be blown upon that loveliest Lord. Oh, if I could turn my sails to Christ's right airth, and that I had my heart's wishes of His love! But I but mar His praises: nay, I know no comparison of what Christ is, and what His worth is. All the angels, and all the glorified, praise Him not so much as in halves. Who can advance Him, or utter all His praises? I want nothing; unknown faces favour me; enemies must speak good of the truth; my Master's cause purchaseth commendations.
The hopes of my enlargement, from appearances, are cold. My faith hath no bed to sleep upon but omnipotency. The good-will of the Lord, and His sweetest presence, be with you and that child. Grace and peace be yours.
Your Ladyship's, in all duty in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[XCV.—To the Right Honourable and Christian Lady, the Viscountess of Kenmure.]
(CHRIST'S CROSS SWEET—HIS COMING TO BE DESIRED—JEALOUS OF ANY RIVAL.)
M ADAM,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Ladyship. I would not omit to write a line with this Christian bearer; one in your Ladyship's own case, driven near to Christ, in and by her affliction. I wish that my friends in Galloway forget me not. However it be, Christ is so good, I will have no other tutor, suppose I could have wale and choice of ten thousand beside. I think now five hundred heavy hearts for Him too little. I wish that Christ, now weeping, suffering, and contemned of men, were more dear and desirable to many souls than He is. I am sure that if the saints wanted Christ's cross, so profitable, and so sweet, they might, for the gain and glory of it, wish it were lawful either to buy or borrow His cross. But it is a mercy that the saints have it laid to their hand for nothing; for I know no sweeter way to heaven than through free grace and hard trials together; and one of these cannot well want another.
O that time would post faster, and hasten our looked-for communion with that fairest, fairest among the sons of men! O that the day would favour us and come, and put Christ and us into each other's arms! I am sure that a few years will do our turn, and the soldier's hour-glass will soon run out. Madam, look to your lamp, and look for your Lord's Coming, and let your heart dwell aloof from that sweet child. Christ's jealousy will not admit of two equal loves in your Ladyship's heart. He must have one, and that the greatest; a little one to a creature may and must suffice a soul married to Him. "Thy Maker is thine Husband" (Isa. liv. 5). I would wish you well, and my obligations these many years byegone speak no less to me; but more I can neither wish, nor pray, nor desire for your Ladyship, than Christ singled and waled out from all created good things, or Christ howbeit wet in His own blood, and wearing a crown of thorns. I am sure that the saints, at their best, are but strangers to the weight and worth of the incomparable sweetness of Christ. He is so new, so fresh in excellency every day of new, to those that search more and more in Him, as if heaven could furnish us as many new Christs (if I may so speak) as there are days betwixt Him and us; and yet He one and the same. Oh, we love an unknown lover when we love Christ!
Let me hear how the child is every way. The prayers of a prisoner of Christ be upon him. Grace for evermore, even whill glory perfect it, be with your Ladyship.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.