Worthy Sir, I hope that I need not exhort you to go on in hoping for the salvation of God. There hath not been so much taken from your time of ease and created joys, as eternity shall add to your heaven. Ye know when one day in heaven hath paid you (yea, and overpaid your blood, bonds, sorrow, and sufferings), that it would trouble angels' understanding to lay the count of that surplus of glory which eternity can and will give you. Oh but your sand-glass of sufferings and losses cometh to little, when it shall be counted and compared with the glory that abideth you on the other side of the water! Ye have no leisure to rejoice and sing here, while time goeth about you, and where your psalms will be short; therefore, ye will think eternity, and the long day of heaven that shall be measured with no other sun, nor horologe, than the long life of the Ancient of Days, to measure your praises, little enough for you. If your span-length of time be cloudy, ye cannot but think that your Lord can no more take your blood and your bands without the income and recompense of free grace, than He would take the sufferings of Paul and His other dear servants, that were well paid home beyond all counting (Rom. viii. 18). If the wisdom of Christ hath made you Antichrist's eyesore and his envy, ye are to thank God that such a piece of clay, as ye are, is made the field of glory to work upon. It was the Potter's aim that the clay should praise Him, and I hope it satisfieth you that your clay is for His glory. Oh, who can suffer enough for such a Lord! and who can lay out in bank, enough of pain, shame, losses, and tortures to receive in again the free interest of eternal glory! (2 Cor. iv. 17). Oh, how advantageous a bargaining is it with such a rich Lord! If your hand and pen had been at leisure to gain glory on paper, it had been but paper glory: but the bearing of a public cross so long, for the now controverted privileges of the crown and sceptre of free King Jesus, the Prince of the kings of the earth, is glory booked in heaven. Worthy and dear brother, if ye go to weigh Jesus, His sweetness, excellency, glory, and beauty, and lay foregainst Him your ounces or drachms of suffering for Him, ye shall be straitened two ways. 1. It will be a pain to make the comparison, the disproportion being by no understanding imaginable: nay, if heaven's arithmetic and angels' were set to work, they should never number the degrees of difference. 2. It would straiten you to find a scale for the balance to lay that high and lofty One (that over-transcending Prince of excellency) in. If your mind could fancy as many created heavens as time hath had minutes, trees have had leaves, and clouds have had raindrops, since the first stone of the creation was laid, they should not make half a scale in which to bear and weigh boundless excellency. And, therefore, the King whose marks ye are bearing, and whose dying ye carry about with you in your body, is, out of all cry and consideration, beyond and above all our thoughts.
For myself, I am content to feed upon wondering, sometimes, at the beholding but of the borders and skirts of the incomparable glory which is in that exalted Prince. And I think ye could wish for more ears to give than ye have, since ye hope these ears ye now have given Him shall be passages to take in the music of His glorious voice. I would fain both believe and pray for a new bride of Jews and Gentiles to our Lord Jesus, after the land of graven images shall be laid waste; and that our Lord Jesus is on horseback, hunting and pursuing the Beast; and that England and Ireland shall be well-sweeped chambers for Christ and His righteousness to dwell in; for He hath opened our graves in Scotland, and the two dead and buried witnesses are risen again, and are prophesying. Oh that princes would glory and boast themselves in carrying the train of Christ's robe royal in their arms! Let me die within half an hour after I have seen the temple of the Son of God enlarged, and the cords of Jerusalem's tent lengthened, to take in a more numerous company for a bride to the Son of God! Oh, if the corner or foundation-stone of that house, that new house, were laid above my grave!
Oh! who can add to Him who is that great All! If He would create suns and moons, new heavens, thousand and thousand degrees more perfect than these that now are; and again, make a new creation ten thousand thousand degrees in perfection beyond that new creation; and again, still for eternity multiply new heavens, they should never be a perfect resemblance of that infinite excellency, order, weight, measure, beauty, and sweetness that is in Him. Oh, how little of Him do we see! Oh, how shallow are our thoughts of Him! Oh, if I had pain for Him, and shame and losses for Him, and more clay and spirits for Him! and that I could go upon earth without love, desire, hope, because Christ hath taken away my love, desire, and hope to heaven with Him!
I know, worthy Sir, your sufferings for Him are your glory; and, therefore, weary not. His salvation is near at hand, and shall not tarry.
Pray for me. His grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,
S. R.
St. Andrews, Nov. 22, 1639.