It is true that it is now accounted wisdom for men to be partners in pulling up the stakes, and loosing the cords, of the tent of Christ. But I am persuaded, that that wisdom is cried down in heaven, and shall never pass for true wisdom with the Lord, whose word crieth shame upon wit against Christ and truth; and, accordingly, it shall prove shame and confusion of face in the end. Our Lord hath given your Lordship light of a better stamp, and learning also, wherein ye are not behind the disputer and the scribe. Oh what a blessed thing is it to see nobility, learning, and sanctification, all concur in one! For these ye owe yourself to Christ and His kingdom. God hath bewildered and bemisted the wit and the learning of the scribes and disputers of this time; they look asquint to the Bible. This blinding and bemisting world blindfoldeth men's light, that they are afraid to see straight out before them; nay, their very light playeth the knave, or worse, to truth. Your Lordship knoweth that, within a little while, policy against truth shall blush, and the works of men shall be burned up, even their spider's-web who spin out many hundred ells and webs of indifference in the Lord's worship; more than ever Moses, who would have[372] a hoof material (Exod. x. 26), and Daniel, who would have a look out at a window a matter of life and death, than ever, I say, these men of God dreamed of. Alas! that men dare to shape, carve, cut, and clip our King's princely testament in length and breadth, and in all dimensions, answerable to the conception of such policy, as a head-of-wit thinketh a safe and trim way of serving God! How have men forgotten the Lord, that they dare to go against even that truth which once they preached themselves, howbeit their sermons now be as thin sown as strawberries in a wood or wilderness! Certainly the sweetest and safest course is, for this short time of the afternoon of this old and declining world, to stand for Jesus. He hath said it, and it is our part to believe it, that ere it be long, "Time shall be no more, and the heaven shall wax old, as a garment." Do we not see it already an old holie and threadbare garment. Doth not cripple and lame nature tell us, that the Lord will fold up the old garment, and lay it aside; and that the heavens shall be folded together as a scroll, and this pesthouse shall be burnt with fire, and that both plenishing and walls shall melt with fervent heat? For at the Lord's coming, He will do with this earth, as men do with a leper-house; He will burn the walls with fire, and the plenishing of the house also (2 Pet. iii. 10, 12). My very dear Lord, how will ye rejoice in that day, to have Christ, angels, heaven, and your own conscience to smile upon you? I am persuaded that one sick night, through the terrors of the Almighty, would make men, whose conscience hath such a wide throat that an image like a cathedral church, would go down it, have other thoughts of Christ and His worship, than now they please themselves with. The scarcity of faith in the earth saith, "We are hard upon the last nick of time:" blessed are those who keep their garments clean against the Bridegroom's coming. There shall be spotted clothes, and many defiled garments, at His last Coming; and, therefore, few found worthy to walk with Him in white.
I am persuaded, my Lord, that this poor travailing Woman, our pained church, is with child of victory, and shall bring forth a Man-child all lovely and glorious, that shall be caught up to God and to His throne, howbeit the dragon, in his followers, be attending the childbirth pain, as an Egyptian midwife, to receive the birth and strangle it. But they shall be disappointed who thirst for the destruction of Zion. "They shall be as when a hungry man dreameth that he eateth, but, behold, he awaketh, and his soul is empty; or when a thirsty man dreameth that he drinketh, but, behold, he awaketh, and is faint, and his soul is not satisfied: so shall it be," I say, "with the multitude of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion" (Isa. xxix. 8). Therefore, the weak and feeble, those that are "as signs and wonders in Israel," have chosen the best side, even the side that victory is upon. And I think this is no evil policy.
Verily, for myself, I am so well pleased with Christ, and His noble and honest-borne cross, this cross that is come of Christ's house and is of kin to Himself, that I should weep if it should come to niffering and bartering of lots and condition with those that are "at ease in Zion." I hold still my choice, and bless myself in it. I see and I believe that there is salvation in this way, which is everywhere spoken against. I hope to go to eternity, and to venture on the last evil to the saints (even upon death), fully persuaded that this only, even this, is the saving way for racked consciences, and for weary and laden sinners to find ease and peace for evermore in. And, indeed, it is not for any worldly respect that I speak so of it. The weather is not so hot that I have great cause to startle in my prison, or to boast of that entertainment that my good friends, the prelates, intend for me (which is, banishment), if they shall obtain their desire, and effectuate what they design. But let it come; I rue not that I made Christ my wale and my choice; I think Him aye the longer the better.
My Lord, it shall be good service to God, to hold your noble friend and chief[373] upon a good course for the truth of Christ. Now the very God of peace establish your Lordship in Christ Jesus unto the end.
Your Lordship's, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
Aberdeen, Sept. 10, 1637.