M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I exhort you in the Lord, to go on in your journey to heaven; and to be content with such fare by the way as Christ and His followers have had before you; for they had always the wind on their faces, and our Lord hath not changed the way to us for our ease, but will have us following our sweet Guide. Alas, how doth sin clog us in our journey, and retard us! What fools are we, to have a by-good, or any other love, or match, to our souls, beside Christ! It were best for us, like ill bairns, who are best heard at home, to seek our own home, and to sell our hopes of this little clay inn and idol of the earth, where we are neither well summered nor well wintered. Oh that our souls would so fall at odds with the love of this world, as to think of it as a traveller doth of a drink of water, which is not any part of his treasure, but goeth away with the using! for ten miles' journey maketh that drink to him as nothing. Oh that we had as soon done with this world, and could as quickly despatch the love of it! But as a child cannot hold two apples in his little hand, but the one putteth the other out of its room, so neither can we be masters and lords of two loves. Blessed were we, if we could make ourselves master of that invaluable treasure, the love of Christ; or rather suffer ourselves to be mastered and subdued to Christ's love, so as Christ were our "all things," and all other things our nothings, and the refuse of our delights. Oh let us be ready for shipping, against the time our Lord's wind and tide call for us! Death is the last thief, that will come without din or noise of feet, and take our souls away, and we shall take our leave of time, and face eternity; and our Lord will lay together the two sides of this earthly tabernacle, and fold us, and lay us by, as a man layeth by clothes at night, and put the one half of us in a house of clay, the dark grave, and the other half of us in heaven or hell. Seek to be found of your Lord in peace, and gather in your flitting, and put your soul in order; for Christ will not give a nail-breadth of time to our little sand-glass.
Pray for Zion, and for me, His prisoner, that He would be pleased to bring me amongst you again, full of Christ, and fraughted and loaden with the blessing of His Gospel.
Grace, grace be with you.
Yours, in his only Lord and Master,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.
[CXCVI.—To Earlston, the Younger.]
(SUFFERINGS—HOPE OF FINAL DELIVERANCE—THE BELIEVER IN SAFE KEEPING—THE RECOMPENSE MARRED BY TEMPTATIONS.)
