[This maybe the same correspondent as he to whom Letter LXXII. is addressed. He may have been on a visit to Kenmure.]
(TESTIMONY TO CHRIST'S WORTH—MARKS OF GRACE IN CONVICTION OF SIN AND SPIRITUAL CONFLICT.)
D EAR BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I have been long in answering your letter, which came in good time to me. It is my aim and hearty desire, that my furnace, which is of the Lord's kindling, may sparkle fire upon standers-by, to the warming of their hearts with God's love. The very dust that falleth from Christ's feet, His old ragged clothes, His knotty and black cross, are sweeter to me than kings' golden crowns, and their time-eaten pleasures. I should be a liar and false witness, if I would not give my Lord Jesus a fair testimonial with my whole soul. My word, I know, will not heighten Him: He needeth not such props under His feet to raise His glory high. But, oh that I could raise Him the height of heaven, and the breadth and length of ten heavens, in the estimation of all His young lovers! for we have all shapen Christ but too narrow and too short, and formed conceptions of His love, in our conceit, very unworthy of it. Oh that men were taken and catched with His beauty and fairness! they would give over playing with idols, in which there is not half room for the love of one soul to expatiate itself. And man's love is but heart-hungered in gnawing upon bare bones, and sucking at dry breasts. It is well wared[316] they want who will not come to Him who hath a world of love, and goodness, and bounty for all. We seek to thaw our frozen hearts at the cold smoke of the short-timed creature, and our souls gather neither heat, nor life, nor light; for these cannot give to us what they have not in themselves. Oh that we could thrust in through these thorns, and this throng of bastard lovers, and be ravished and sick of love for Christ! We should find some footing, and some room, and sweet ease for our tottering and witless souls in our Lord. I wish it were in my power, after this day, to cry down all love but the love of Christ, and to cry down all gods but Christ, all saviours but Christ, all well-beloveds but Christ, and all soul-suitors and love-beggars but Christ.
Ye complain that ye want a mark of the sound work of grace and love in your soul. For answer, consider for your satisfaction (till God send more) 1 John iii. 14. And as for your complaint of deadness and doubtings, Christ will, I hope, take your deadness and you together. They are bodies full of holes, running boils, and broken bones which need mending, that Christ the Physician taketh up: whole vessels are not for the Mediator Christ's art. Publicans, sinners, whores, harlots, are ready market-wares for Christ. The only thing that will bring sinners within a cast of Christ's drawing arm is that which ye write of, some feeling of death and sin. That bringeth forth complaints; and, therefore, out of sense complain more, and be more acquaint with all the cramps, stitches, and soul-swoonings that trouble you. The more pain, and the more night-watching, and the more fevers, the better. A soul bleeding to death, till Christ were sent for, and cried for in all haste, to come and stem the blood, and close up the hole in the wound with His own hand and balm, were a very good disease, when many are dying of a whole heart. We have all too little of hell-pain and terrors that way; nay,[317] God send me such a hell as Christ hath promised to make a heaven of. Alas! I am not come that far on the way, as to say in sad earnest, "Lord Jesus, great and sovereign Physician, here is a pained patient for Thee." But the thing that we mistake is the want of victory. We hold that to be the mark of one that hath no grace. Nay, say I, the want of fighting were a mark of no grace; but I shall not say the want of victory is such a mark. If my fire and the devil's water make crackling like thunder in the air, I am the less feared; for where there is fire, it is Christ's part, which I lay and bind upon Him, to keep in the coal, and to pray the Father that my faith fail not, if I in the meantime be wrestling, and doing, and fighting, and mourning. For prayer putteth not Paul's devil (the thorn in the flesh, and the messenger of Satan) to the door at first; but our Lord will have them to try every one, and let Paul fend for himself, by God's help, God keeping the stakes, and moderating the play. And ye do well not to doubt, if the ground-stone be sure, but to try if it be so; for there is great odds between doubting that we have grace, and trying if we have grace. The former may be sin, but the latter is good. We are but loose in trying our free-holding of Christ, and making sure work of Christ. Holy fear is a searching of the camp, that there be no enemy within our bosom to betray us, and a seeing that all be fast and sure. For I see many leaky vessels fair before the wind, and professors who take their conversion upon trust, and they go on securely, and see not the under-water, till a storm sink them. Each man had need twice a-day, and oftener, to be riped, and searched with candles.
Pray for me, that the Lord would give me house-room again, to hold a candle to this dark world.—Grace, grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord and Master,
S. R.
Aberdeen, 1637.