8. Again, hold by the ground-work when the outworks and the superstructure are assailed. Fall back the more nakedly upon your sure foundation. Keep the ground of your standing and acceptance clear, and take your stand on that ground at every time when despair assaults you. For great faults and for small, for formality in spiritual service, for cold-heartedness and for half-heartedness, you have always open to you your old and sure ground, the blood and the righteousness of your Covenant-surety. ‘Seek still the blood of atonement for faults much and little. Know the gate to the fountain, and lie about it. Make much of assurance, for it keepeth the anchor fixed.’
9. The last paragraph of Rutherford’s letter to the parishioners of Kilmacolm is taken up with the consolation that always comes to a Christian man’s heart after every deed of true self-mortification. That is an experience that all Christian men must often have, whether they take note sufficiently of it or no. Let any man suffer for Christ’s sake; let any man be evil-entreated and for Christ’s sake take it patiently; let him be reviled and persecuted in public or in private for the truth; let him deny himself some indulgence—allowed, doubtful, or condemned—and all truly for the sake of Christ and other men; and immediately, and as a consequence of that, a peace, a liberty, a light as of God’s countenance
will infallibly visit his heart. After temptation resisted and overcome angels will always visit us. ‘Temptations,’ says Bunyan in the fine preface to his Grace Abounding, ‘when we meet them first are as the lion that roared upon Samson; but, if we overcome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey within them.’ ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ says our Lord, ‘for they shall be comforted.’ ‘After my greatest mortifications,’ said Edwards, ‘I always find my greatest comforts.’ And even Renan tells us of a Roman lady who had ‘the ineffable joy of renouncing joy.’ ‘A Christ bought with strokes,’ says Rutherford in closing, ‘is the sweetest of all Christs.’