Sir, show the people this; for when I write to you, I think I write to you all, old and young. Fulfil my joy, and seek the Lord. Sure I am, that once I discovered my lovely, royal, princely Lord Jesus to you all. Woe, woe, woe shall be your part of it for evermore, if the Gospel be not the savour of life to you. As many sermons as I preached, as many sentences as I uttered, as many points of dittay shall there be, when the Lord shall plead with the world, for the evil of their doings. Believe me, I find heaven a city hard to be won. "The righteous shall scarcely be saved." Oh, what violence of thronging will heaven take! Alas! I see many deceiving themselves; for we will[291] all to heaven now! Every foul dog, with his foul feet, will in at the nearest, to the new and clean Jerusalem. All say they have faith; and the greatest part in the world know not, and will not consider, that a slip in the matter of their salvation is the most pitiable slip that can be; and that no loss is comparable to this loss. Oh, then, see that there be not a loose pin in the work of your salvation; for ye will not believe how quickly the Judge will come. And for yourself, I know that death is waiting, and hovering, and lingering at God's command. That ye may be prepared, then, ye had need to stir your time, and to take eternity and death to your riper advisement. A wrong step, or a wrong stot, in going out of this life, in one property is like the sin against the Holy Ghost, and can never be forgiven, because ye cannot come back again through the last water to mourn for it. I know your accounts are many, and will take telling and laying, and reckoning betwixt you and your Lord. Fit your accounts, and order them. Lose not the last play, whatever ye do, for in that play with death your precious soul is the prize: for the Lord's sake spill not the play, and lose not such a treasure. Ye know that, out of love which I had to your soul, and out of desire which I had to make an honest account of you, I testified my displeasure and disliking of your ways very often, both in private and public. I am not now a witness of your doings, but your Judge is always your witness. I beseech you by the mercies of God, by the salvation of your soul, by your comfort when your eye-strings shall break, and the face wax pale, and the soul shall tremble to be out of the lodging of clay, and by your compearance before your awful Judge, after the sight of this letter to take a new course with your ways, and now, in the end of your day, make sure of heaven. Examine yourself if ye be in good earnest in Christ; for some are partakers of the Holy Ghost, and taste of the good word of God, and of the powers of the life to come, and yet have no part in Christ at all. Many think they believe, but never tremble: the devils are farther on than these (James ii. 19). Make sure to yourself that ye are above ordinary professors. The sixth part of your span-length and hand-breadth of days is scarcely before you. Haste, haste, for the tide will not bide. Put Christ upon all your accounts and your secrets. Better it is that you give Him your accounts in this life, out of your own hand, than that, after this life, He take them from you. I never knew so well what sin was as since I came to Aberdeen, howbeit I was preaching of it to you. To feel the smoke of hell's fire in the throat for half an hour; to stand beside a river of fire and brimstone broader than the earth; and to think to be bound hand and foot, and casten into the midst of it quick, and then to have God locking the prison door, never to be opened for all eternity! Oh how it will shake a conscience that hath any life in it! I find the fruits of my pains to have Christ and that people once fairly met, now meet my soul in my sad hours. And I rejoice that I gave fair warning of all the corruptions now entering into Christ's house; and now many a sweet, sweet, soft kiss, many perfumed, well-smelled kisses, and embracements have I received of my royal Master. He and I have had much love together. I have for the present a sick dwining life, with much pain, and much love-sickness for Christ. Oh, what would I give to have a bed made to my wearied soul in His bosom! I would frist heaven for many years, to have my fill of Jesus in this life, and to have occasion to offer Christ to my people, and to woo many people to Christ. I cannot tell you what sweet pain and delightsome torments are in Christ's love; I often challenge time, that holdeth us sundry. I profess to you, I have no rest, I have no ease, whill I be over head and ears in love's ocean. If Christ's love (that fountain of delight) were laid as open to me as I would wish, oh, how I would drink, and drink abundantly! oh, how drunken would this my soul be! I half call His absence cruel; and the mask and vail on Christ's face a cruel covering, that hideth such a fair, fair face from a sick soul. I dare not challenge Himself, but His absence is a mountain of iron upon my heavy heart. Oh, when shall we meet? Oh, how long it is to the dawning of the marriage-day! O sweet Lord Jesus, take wide steps! O my Lord, come over mountains at one stride! O my Beloved, be like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of Separation (Song ii. 17). Oh, if He would fold the heavens together like an old cloak, and shovel time and days out of the way, and make ready in haste the Lamb's wife for her Husband! Since He looked upon me, my heart is not mine own; He hath run away to heaven with it. I know that it was not for nothing that I spake so meikle good of Christ to you in public. Oh, if the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, were paper, and the sea ink, and the multitude of mountains pens of brass, and I able to write that paper, within and without, full of the praises of my fairest, my dearest, my loveliest, my sweetest, my matchless, and my most marrowless and marvellous Well-beloved! Woe is me, I cannot set Him out to men and angels! Oh, there are few tongues to sing love-songs of His incomparable excellence! What can I, poor prisoner, do to exalt Him? or what course can I take to extol my lofty and lovely Lord Jesus? I am put to my wits' end, how to get His name made great. Blessed they who would help me in this! How sweet are Christ's back parts? Oh, what then is His face? Those that see His face, how dow they get their eye plucked off Him again! Look up to Him and love Him. Oh, love and live! It were life to me if you would read this letter to that people, and if they did profit by it. Oh, if I could cause them to die of love for Jesus! Charge them, by the salvation of their souls, to hang about Christ's neck, and take their fill of His love, and follow Him as I taught them. Part by no means with Christ. Hold fast what ye have received. Keep the truth once delivered. If ye or that people quit it in an hair, or in a hoof, ye break your conscience in twain; and who then can mend it, and cast a knot on it? My dearest in the Lord, stand fast in Christ; keep the faith; contend for Christ. Wrestle for Him, and take men's feud for God's favour; there is no comparison betwixt these. Oh that the Lord would fulfil my joy, and keep the young bride that is at Anwoth to Christ!
And now, whoever they be that have returned to the old vomit since my departure, I bind upon their back, in my Master's name and authority, the long-lasting, weighty vengeance and curse of God. In my Lord's name I give them a doom of black, unmixed, pure wrath, which my Master will ratify and make good, when we stand together before Him, except they timeously repent and turn to the Lord. And I write to thee, poor mourning and broken-hearted believer, be thou who thou wilt, of the free salvation, Christ's sweet balm for thy wounds, O poor, humble believer! Christ's kisses for thy watery cheeks! Christ's blood of atonement for thy guilty soul! Christ's heaven for thy poor soul, though once banished out of paradise! And my Master will make good my word ere long. Oh that people were wise! Oh that people were wise! Oh that people would speer out Christ, and never rest whill they find Him. Oh, how my soul will mourn in secret, if my nine years' pained head, and sore breast, and pained back, and grieved heart, and private and public prayers to God, will all be for nothing among that people! Did my Lord Jesus send me but to summon you before your Judge, and to leave your summons at your houses? Was I sent as a witness only to gather your dittays? Oh, may God forbid! Often did I tell you of a fan of God's word[292] to come among you, for the contempt of it. I told you often of wrath, wrath from the Lord, to come upon Scotland; and yet I bide by my Master's word. It is quickly coming! desolation for Scotland, because of the quarrel of a broken covenant.
Now, worthy Sir, now my dear people, my joy, and my crown in the Lord, let Him be your fear. Seek the Lord, and His face: save your souls. Doves! flee to Christ's windows. Pray for me, and praise for me. The blessing of my God, the prayers and blessing of a poor prisoner, and your lawful pastor, be upon you.
Your lawful and loving pastor,
S. R.
Aberdeen, June 16, 1637.
[CLXXXI.—To Earlston, the Younger.]
(DANGERS OF YOUTH—CHRIST THE BEST PHYSICIAN—FOUR REMEDIES AGAINST DOUBTING—BREATHINGS AFTER CHRIST'S HONOUR.)
