Your affectionate brother in Christ,
S. R.
[CCCLXIV.—To [Brethren in] Aberdeen.]
(SINFUL CONFORMITY AND SCHISMATIC DESIGNS REPROVED.)
R EVEREND AND DEARLY BELOVED IN THE LORD,—Grace be to you, and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
There were some who rendered thanks, with knees bowed to Him "of whom is named the whole family in heaven and earth," when they heard of "your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus;" and rejoiced not a little, that where Christ was scarce named, in savouriness and power of the Gospel, even in Aberdeen, there Christ hath a few names precious to Him, who shall walk with Him in white. We looked on it (He knoweth whom we desire to serve in our spirit in the Gospel of His Son) as a part of the fulfilling of that, "The wilderness and solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose" (Isa. xxxv. 1). But now it is more grievous to us than a thousand deaths, when we hear that you are shaken, and so soon removed from that which you once acknowledged to be the way of God. Dearly beloved, the sheep follow Christ, who calleth them by name: a stranger they will not follow, but they flee from him, for they know not the voice of a stranger. Ye know the way, by which ye were sealed to the day of redemption; and ye received the Spirit, by the hearing of faith. Part not with that way, except ye see there be no rest for your souls therein. Neither listen to them that say, "Many were converted under episcopal as well as under presbyterial government, and yet the godly gave testimony against bishops;" for the instruments of conversion loathed Episcopacy, with the ceremonies thereof, and never sealed it with their sufferings. We shall desire instances of any engaged by oaths, and sufferings of the faithful messengers of God, and the manifestations of the Lord's presence, in the way ye now forsake, who yet turned from it, and went one step toward sinful separation (and did it in that way ye now aim at), and did yet flourish and grow in grace. But we can bring proofs of many who left it, and went further on to abominable ways of error. And you have it not in your power where you shall lodge at night, having once left the way of God. And many, we know, lost peace and communion with God, and fell into a condition of withering, and not being able to find their lovers, were forced to return to their first Husband. We shall entreat you, consider what a stumbling it is to malignant opposers of the way and cause of God (who with their ears heard you, and with their eyes saw you, so strenuously take part with the godly in their sufferings, and profess yourselves for religion truth, doctrine, government of the house of God, His Covenant and cause), if now you build again what you once destroyed, and destroy what you builded. And shall you not make yourselves, by so doing, transgressors? How shall it wound the hearts of the godly, stain the profession, darken the glory of the Gospel, shake the faith of many, weaken the hands of all, if you (and you first of all in this kingdom) shall stretch out the hand to raze the walls of our Jerusalem, by reason of which the Lord made her "terrible as an army with banners!" For when kings came, and saw the palaces and bulwarks thereof, they marvelled and were troubled, and hasted away; fear took hold upon them there, and pain as of a woman in travail. And we shall be grieved, if you should be heirs to the guiltiness of breaking down the same hedge of the vineyard, for the which the sad indignation of God pursueth this day the Royal Family, many Nobles, houses great and fair, and all the Prelatical party in these three kingdoms. And when your dear brethren are weak and fainting, shall we believe that you will leave us, and be divided from this so blessed a conjunction? The Lord Jesus Christ, we trust, shall walk in the midst of the golden candlesticks, and be with us, if you will be gone from us. Beloved in the Lord, we cannot but be persuaded better things of you; and we shall not conceal from you that we are ignorant what to answer when we are reproved, on your behalf, in regard that your change to another gospel-way (which the Lord avert!) is so much the more scandalous, that the sudden alteration (unknown to us before) now overtaketh you when men come amongst you against whom the furrows of the fields of Scotland do complain. Forget not, dear brethren, that Christ hath now the fan in His hand, and this is also the day of the Lord, that shall burn as an oven; and that Christ now sitteth as a refiner of silver, purifying the sons of Levi, and purging them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering of righteousness; and those that keep the word of His (not their own) patience shall be delivered from the hour of temptation, that shall come on all the earth to try them.
If ye exclude all non-converts from the visible city of God (in which, daily, multitudes in Scotland, in all the four quarters of the land, above whatever our fathers saw, throng into Christ), shall they not be left to the lions and wild beasts of the forest, even to Jesuits, seminary-priests, and other seducers? For the magistrate hath no power to compel them to hear the Gospel, nor have ye any church-power over them, as ye teach; and they bring not love to the Gospel and to Christ out of the womb with them; and so they must be left to embrace what religion is most suitable to corrupt nature. Nor can it be a way approven by the Lord in Scripture, to excommunicate from the visible church (which is the office-house of the free grace of Christ, and His draw-net) all the multitudes of non-converts, baptized, and visibly within the covenant of grace, which are in Great Britain, and all the reformed churches; and so to shut the gates of the Lord's gracious calling upon all these (because they are not, in your judgment, chosen to salvation), when once you are within yourselves.[527] For how can the Lord call Egypt His people, and Assyria the work of His hands, and all the Gentiles (who for numbers are as the flocks of Kedar, and the abundance of the sea) the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, if you number infants (as many do), and all such as your charity cannot judge converts (as others do) among heathens and pagans, who have not a visible claim and interest in Christ? The candlestick is not yours, nor the house; but Christ fixeth and removeth the one, and buildeth or casteth down the other, according to His sovereignty. We in humility judge ourselves, though the chief of sinners, the sons of Zion and of the seed of Christ; if ye remove from us, and carry from hence the candlestick, let our Father be judge, and show us why the Lord hath bidden you come out from among us. We look upon this visible church, though black and spotted, as the hospital and guest-house of sick, halt, maimed, and withered, over which Christ is Lord, Physician, and Master: and we would wait upon those that are not yet in Christ, as our Lord waited upon us and you both. We, therefore, your brethren, children of one Father, cannot but with tears and exceeding sorrow of heart earnestly entreat, beseech, and obtest you, by the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, by His sufferings and precious ransom which He paid for us both, by the consolations of His Spirit, by your appearance before the dreadful tribunal of our Lord Jesus, yea, and charge you before God and the same Lord Jesus, "who shall judge the quick and the dead, at His appearing, and His kingdom;" break not the spirits and hearts of those to whom ye are dear as their own soul. Forsake not the assemblies of the people of God; let us not divide.
Not a few of the people of God in this shire of Fife (in whose name I now write) dare say, if ye depart, that ye will leave Christ behind you with us, and the golden candlesticks; and shut yourselves, we much fear, out of the hearts and prayers of thousands dear to Jesus Christ in Scotland. Therefore, before ye fix judgment and practice on any untrodden path, let a day of humiliation be agreed upon by us all, and our Father's mind and will inquired, through our one common Saviour. And let us see one another's faces at best conveniency, and plead the interest of Christ, and be comforted; and not be stumbled at your ways.