M UCH HONOURED SIR,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I have been too long in writing to you. I am confident that ye have learned to prize Christ, and His love and favour, more than ordinary professors who scarce see Christ with half an eye, because their sight is taken up with eyeing and liking the beauty of this over-gilded world, that promiseth fair to all its lovers, but in the push of a trial, when need is, can give nothing but a fair beguile.
I know that ye are not ignorant that men come not to this world, as some do to a market, to see and to be seen; or as some come to behold a May-game, and only to behold, and to go home again. Ye come hither to treat with God, and to tryst with Him in His Christ for salvation to your soul, and to seek reconciliation with an angry, wrathful God, in a covenant of peace made to you in Christ; and this is more than ordinary sport, or the play that the greatest part of the world give their heart unto. And, therefore, worthy Sir, I pray you, by the salvation of your soul, and by the mercy of God, and your compearance before Christ, do this in sad earnest, and let not salvation be your by-work or your holy-day's talk only, or a work by the way. For men think that this may be done on three days' space on a feather bed, when death and they are fallen in hands together, and that with a word or two they shall make their soul-matters right. Alas! this is to sit loose and unsure in the matters of our salvation. Nay, the seeking of this world, and of the glory of it, is but an odd[310] and by-errand that we may slip, so being we make salvation sure. Oh, when will men learn to be that heavenly-wise as to divorce from and free their soul of all idol-lovers, and make Christ the only, only One, and trim and make ready their lamps, while they have time and day! How soon will this house skail, and the inn, where the poor soul lodgeth, fall to the earth! How soon will some few years pass away! and then, when the day is ended, and this life's lease expired, what have men of world's glory but dreams and thoughts? Oh how blessed a thing is it to labour for Christ, and to make Him sure! Know and try in time your holding of Him, and the rights and charters of heaven, and upon what terms ye have Christ and the Gospel, and what Christ is worth in your estimation, and how lightly ye esteem other things, and how dearly Christ! I am sure, that if ye see Him in His beauty and glory, ye shall see Him to be all things, and that incomparable jewel of gold that ye should seek, howbeit ye should sell, wadset, and forfeit your few years' portion of this life's joys. O happy soul for evermore, who can rightly compare this life with that long-lasting life to come, and can balance the weighty glory of the one with the light golden vanity of the other! The day of the Lord is now near-hand, and all men shall come out in their blacks and whites, as they are; there shall be no borrowed lying colours in that day, when Christ shall be called Christ, and no longer nicknamed. Now men borrow Christ and His white colour, and the lustre and farding of Christianity; but how many counterfeit masks will be burned, in the day of God, in the fire that shall burn the earth and the works that are on it? And howbeit Christ have the hardest part of it now, yet in the presence of my Lord, whom I serve in the spirit, I would not niffer or exchange Christ's prison, bonds, and chains, with the gold chains and lordly rents, and smiling and happy-like heavens of the men of this world. I am far from thoughts of repenting because of my losses and bonds for Christ. I wish that all my adversaries were as I am, except my bonds. Worthy, worthy, worthy for evermore is Christ, for whom we should suffer pains like hell's pains; far more the short hell that the saints of God have in this life. Sir, I wish that your soul may be more acquainted with the sweetness of Christ. Grace, grace be with you.
Yours in his only Lord and Master,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[CXCII.—To the Lady Cardoness.]
(GRACE—THE NAME OF CHRIST TO BE EXALTED—EVERYTHING BUT GOD FAILS US.)