xlviii. 11), have made us (like the standing waters), to gather a foul

scum, and, when we are jumbled, our dregs come up, and are seen. Many take but half a grip of Christ, and the wind bloweth them and Christ asunder. Indeed, when the mast is broken and blown into the sea, it is an art[395] then to swim upon Christ to dry land. It is even possible that the children of God, in a hard trial, lay themselves down as hidden in the lee-side of a bush whill Christ their Master be taken, as Peter did; and lurk there, whill the storm be over-past. All of us know the way to a whole skin; and the singlest heart that is hath a by-purse that will contain the denial of Christ, and a fearful backsliding. Oh, how rare a thing it is to be loyal and honest to Christ, when He hath a controversy with the shields of the earth! I wish all of you would consider, that this trial is from Christ; it is come upon you unbought. (Indeed, when we buy a temptation with our own money, no marvel that we be not easily free of it, and that God be not at our elbow to take it off our hand.) This is Christ's ordinary house-fire, that He maketh use of to try all the vessels of His house withal. And Christ is now about to bring His treasure out before sun and moon, and to tell His money, and, in the telling, to try what weight of gold, and what weight of watered copper, is in His house. Do not now jouk, or bow, or yield to your adversaries in a hair-breadth. Christ and His truth will not divide; and His truth hath not latitude and breadth, that ye may take some of it and leave other some of it. Nay, the Gospel is like a small hair, that hath no breadth, and will not cleave in two. It is not possible to twist and compound a matter betwixt Christ and Antichrist; and, therefore, ye must either be for Christ, or ye must be against Him. It was but man's wit, and the wit of prelates and their godfather the Pope (that _man without law_[396]), to put Christ and His prerogatives royal, and His truth, or the smallest nail-breadth of His latter will, in the new calender of indifferences, and to make a blank of uninked paper in Christ's testament that men may fill up; and to shuffle the truth, and matters which they call indifferent, through other, and spin both together, that Antichrist's wares may sell the better. This is but the device and forged dream of men whose consciences are made of stoutness, and who have a throat that a graven image, greater than the bounds of the kirk-door, would get free passage into. I am sure that when Christ shall bring us all out in our blacks and whites, at that day when He shall cry down time and the world, and when the glory of it shall lie in white ashes, like a May-flower cut down and which hath lost the blossom, there shall be few, yea none, that dare make any point, which toucheth the worship and honour of our King and Lawgiver, to be indifferent. Oh that this misled and blindfolded world would see that Christ doth not rise and fall, stand or lie, by men's apprehensions! What is Christ the lighter, that men do with Him, by open proclamation, as men do with clipped and light money? They are now crying down Christ some grain-weights, and some pounds or shillings; and they will have Him lie[397] for a penny or a pound, for one or for a hundred, according as the wind bloweth from the east or from the west. But the Lord hath weighed Him, and balanced Him already: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him!" His worth and His weight stand still. It is our part to cry, "Up, up with Christ, and down, down with all created glory before Him." Oh that I could heighten Him, and heighten His name, and heighten His throne! I know, and am persuaded, that Christ shall again be high and great in this poor, withered, and sun-burnt Kirk of Scotland; and that the sparks of our fire shall fly over the sea, and round about, to warm you and other sister churches; and that this tabernacle of David's house, that is fallen, even the Son of David's waste places, shall be built again. And I know the prison, crosses, persecutions, and trials of the two slain witnesses, that are now dead and buried (Rev. xi. 9), and of the faithful professors, have a back-door and back-entry of escape; and that death and hell, and the world, and the tortures, shall all cleave and split in twain, and give us free passage and liberty to go through toll-free: and we shall bring all God's good metal out of the furnace again, and leave behind us but our dross and our scum. We may then beforehand proclaim Christ to be victorious. He is crowned King of Mount Zion: God did put the crown upon His head (Ps. ii. 6, and xxi. 3), and who dare take it off again? Out of question, He hath sore and grievous quarrels against His church: and therefore He is called, "He whose fire is in Zion, and whose furnace is in Jerusalem" (Isa. xxxi. 9). But when He hath performed His work on Mount Zion, all Zion's haters shall be as the hungry and thirsty man, that dreameth he is eating and drinking, and behold, when he awakeneth, he is faint, and his soul empty. And this advantage we have also, that He will not bring before sun and moon all the infirmities of His wife. It is the modesty of marriage-anger or husband-wrath, that our sweet Lord Jesus will not come with chiding to the streets, to let all the world hear what is betwixt Him and us. His sweet glooms stay under roof, and that because He is God.

[395] It requires skill.

[396] Alluding to 2 Thess. ii. 8. "Ἄνομος," that Lawless one.

[397] Stand for.

Two special things ye are to mind: 1. Try and make sure your profession; that ye carry not empty lamps. Alas! security, security is the bane and the wrack of the most part of the world. Oh, how many professors go with a golden lustre, and are gold-like before men (who are but witnesses to our white skin), and yet are but bastard and base metal! Consider how fair before the wind some do ply with up-sails and white, even to the nick of "illumination," and "tasting of the heavenly gift;" and "a share and part of the Holy Ghost;" and "the tasting of the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come" (Heb. vi. 4, 5). And yet this is but a false nick of renovation, and, in a short time, such are quickly broken upon the rocks, and never fetch the harbour, but are sanded in the bottom of hell. Oh, make your haven sure, and try how ye come by conversion; that it be not stolen goods, in a white and well-lustred profession! A white skin over old wounds maketh an under-coating conscience. False under water, not seen, is dangerous, and that is a leak and rift in the bottom of an enlightened conscience; often falling and sinning against light. Wo, wo is me that the holy profession of Christ is made a stage garment by many, to bring home a vain fame, and Christ is made to serve men's ends! This is, as it were, to stop an oven with a king's robes.

Know, 2. Except men martyr and slay the body of sin in sanctified self-denial, they shall never be Christ's martyrs and faithful witnesses. Oh, if I could be master of that house-idol, myself, my own mind, my own will, wit, credit, and ease, how blessed were I! Oh, but we have need to be redeemed from ourselves, rather than from the devil and the world! Learn to put out yourselves, and to put in Christ for yourselves. It would make a sweet bartering and niffering, and give old for new, if I could shuffle out self, and substitute Christ my Lord, in place of myself; to say, "Not I, but Christ; not my will, but Christ's; not my ease, not my lust, not my feckless credit, but Christ, Christ." But, alas! in leaving ourselves, in setting Christ before our idol, self, we have yet a glaiked back-look to our old idol. O wretched idol, myself! when shall I see thee wholly decourted, and Christ wholly put in thy room? Oh, if Christ, Christ had the full place and room of myself, that all my aims, purposes, thoughts, and desires would coast and land upon Christ, and not upon myself! And, howbeit we cannot attain to this denial of me and mine, that we can say, "I am not myself, myself is not myself, mine own is no longer mine own," yet our aiming at this in all we do shall be accepted: for alas! I think I shall die but minting and aiming to be a Christian. Is it not our comfort, that Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant, is come betwixt us and God in the business, so that green and young heirs, the like of sinners, have now a Tutor that is God! And now, God be thanked, our salvation is bottomed on Christ. Sure I am, the bottom shall never fall out of heaven and happiness to us. I would give over the bargain a thousand times, were it not that Christ's free grace hath taken our salvation in hand.

Pray, pray and contend with the Lord, for your sister-church; for it would appear that the Lord is about to speer for His scattered sheep, in the dark and cloudy day. Oh that it would please our Lord to set up again David's old wasted and fallen tabernacle in Scotland, that we might see the glory of the second temple in this land! Oh that my little heaven were wadset, to redeem the honour of my Lord Jesus among the Jews and Gentiles! Let never dew lie upon my branches, and let my poor flower wither at the root, so that Christ were enthroned, and His glory advanced in all the world, and especially in these three kingdoms. But I know that He hath no need of me; what can I add to Him? But oh that He would cause His high and pure glory to run through such a foul channel as I am! And, howbeit He hath caused the blossom to fall off my one poor joy, that was on this side of heaven, even my liberty to preach Christ to His people, yet I am dead to that now, so that He would hew and carve glory, glory for evermore, to my royal King out of my silence and sufferings. Oh that I had my fill of His love! But I know ill-manners make an unco and strange bridegroom.

I entreat you earnestly for the aid of your prayers, for I forget not you; and I salute, with my soul in Christ, the faithful pastors, and honourable and worthy professors in that land. Now the God of peace, that brought again our Lord Jesus from the dead, the great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work, to do His will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight. Grace, grace be with you.

Yours, in his sweetest Lord Jesus,

S. R.

ABERDEEN, _Feb. 4, 1638_.

CCLXXXV.--_To_ ROBERT GORDON _of Knockbrex_.

(_NOT OUR CROSS, BUT CHRIST, THE OBJECT OF ATTRACTION--TOO LITTLE EXPECTED FROM HIM--SPIRITUAL DEADNESS._)

MY VERY DEAR BROTHER,--Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you.--I thought to have answered your two letters on this occasion, though I cannot say all that I would. Your timeous word, "not to delight in the cross, but in Him who sweeteneth it," came to me in due time. I find the consolation and off-fallings that follow the cross of Christ so sweet, that I almost forget myself. My desire and purpose is, when Christ's honeycombs drop, neither to refuse to receive and feed upon His comforts, nor yet to make joy my bastard-god, or my new-found heaven. But what shall I say? Christ very often in His sweet comforts cometh unsent for, and it were a sin to close the door upon Him. It is not unlawful to love and delight in Christ's apples, when I am not dotingly wooing, nor eagerly begging kisses; but when they come clean from the timber[398] (like kindness itself, that cometh of its own accord), then I cannot but laugh upon Him who laugheth upon me. If joy and comforts come single and alone, without Christ Himself, I think I would send them back again the gate they came, and not make them welcome; but, when the King's train cometh, and the King in the midst of the company, oh how I am overjoyed with floods of love! I fear not that too great spaits of love wash away the growing corn, and loose my plants at the roots. Christ doeth no skaith, where He cometh; but certainly, I would wish such spiritual wisdom, as to love the Bridegroom better than His gifts, His propines, or drink-money. I would be further in upon Christ than at His joys. They but stand in the outer side of Christ; I would wish to be in, as a seal upon His heart, in where His love and mercy lodgeth, beside His heart. My Well-beloved hath ravished me; but it is done with consent of both parties, and it is allowable enough. But, my dear brother, ere I part with this subject, I must tell you (that ye may lift up my King in praises with me), Christ hath been keeping something these fourteen years for me, that I have now gotten in my heavy days that I am in for His name's sake, even an opened coffer of perfumed comforts, and fresh joys, coming new, and green, and powerful, from the fairest face of Christ my Lord. Let the sour law, let crosses, let hell be cried down; love, love hath shamed me from my old ways. Whether I have a race to run, or some work to do, I see not; but I think Christ seemeth to leave heaven (to say so), and His court, and come down to laugh, and play, and sport with a daft bairn.

[398] The tree.

I am not thus plain with many I write to. It is possible I be misconstructed, and deemed to seek a name. But my witness above knoweth that I seek to have a good name raised upon Christ. I observe it to be our folly, to seek little from Christ, because our four-hours may not be our supper, nor our propines sent by the Bridegroom our tocher-good, nor our earnest our principal sum. But I trow that few of us know how much may be had of Christ for a four-hours, and a propine, and an earnest. We are like the young heir, who knoweth not the whole bounds of his own lordship. Certainly it is more than my part to say, "O sweetest Lord Jesus, what howbeit I were split and broken into five thousand shreds or bits of clay, so being that every shred had a heart to love Thee, and every one as many tongues as there are in heaven to sing praises to Thee, before men and angels for evermore!" Therefore, if my sufferings cry goodness, and praise, and honour upon Christ, my stipend is well paid. Each one knoweth not what a life Christ's love is. Scaur not at suffering for Christ; for Christ hath a chair, and a cushion, and sweet peace for a sufferer. Christ's trencher from the first mess of the high table is for a sinful witness. Oh, then, brother, who but Christ! who but Christ! Hold your tongue off lovers, where He cometh out. O all flesh, O dust and ashes, O angels, O glorified spirits, O all the shields of the world, be silent before Him! Come hither, and behold our Bridegroom; stand still and wonder for evermore at Him! Why cease we to love and wonder, to kiss and adore Him? It is a hard matter, that days lie betwixt Him and me, and hold us asunder. Oh, how long, how long! Oh, how many miles are there to my Bridegroom's dwelling-house! It is a pain to frist Christ's love any longer. But, it may be that a drunken man lose his feet, and miss a step. Ye write to me "Hall-binks are slippery." I do not think my dawting world will still[399] last, and that feasts will be my ordinary food. I would have humility, patience, and faith to set down both my feet, when I come to the north side of the cold and thorny hill. It is ill my common to be sweer to go an errand for Christ, and to take the wind upon my face for Him. Lord, let me never be a false witness, to deny that I saw Christ take the pen in His hand, and subscribe my writs.

[399] Always.

My dear brother, ye complain to me that ye cannot hold sight of me. But were I a footman, I would go at leisure; but sometimes the King taketh me into His coach, and draweth me, and then I outrun myself. But, alas! I am still a forlorn transgressor. Oh how unthankful! I will not put you off your sense of darkness; but let me say this, "Who gave you proctor-fee, to speak for the law, which can speak for itself better than ye can do?" I would not have you to bring your dittay in your own bosom with you to Christ. Let the "old man" and the "new man" be summoned before Christ's white throne, and let them be confronted before Christ, and let each of them speak for themselves. I hope, howbeit the new man complain of his lying among pots, which maketh the believer look black, yet he can also say, "I am comely as the tents of Kedar." Ye shall not have my advice not to bemoan your deadness; but I find by some experience (which ye knew before I knew Christ), that it suiteth not a ransomed man, of Christ's buying, to go and plea for the sour law, our old forcasten husband; for we are not now under the law (as a covenant), but under grace. Ye are in no man's common, but Christ's. I know that He bemoaneth you more than you do yourself. I say this, because I am wearied of complaining. I thought it had been humility to imagine that Christ was angry with me, both because of my dumb Sabbaths, and my hard heart; but I feel now nothing but aching wounds. My grief, whether I will or not, swelleth upon me. But let us die in grace's hall-floor, pleading before Christ. I deny nothing that the Mediator will challenge me of; but I turn it all back upon Himself. Let Him look His own old accounts, if He be angry; for He will get no more of me. When Christ saith, "I want repentance," I meet Him with this: "True, Lord, but Thou art made a King and a Prince to give me repentance" (Acts v. 34). When Christ bindeth a challenge upon us, we must bind a promise back upon Him. Be wo, and lay yourself in the dust before God (which is suitable), but withal let Christ take the payment in His own hand, and pay Himself off the first end of His own merits; else He will come behind for anything that we can do. I am every way in your case, as hard-hearted and dead as any man; but yet I speak to Christ through my sleep. Let us then proclaim a free market for Christ, and swear ourselves bare, and cry on Him to come without money and buy us, and take us home to our Ransom-payer's fireside, and let us be Christ's free-boarders. Because we dow not pay the old, we may not refuse to take on Christ's new debt of mercy; let us do our best, Christ will still be behind with us,[400] and many terms will run together. For my part, let me stand for evermore in His book, as a forlorn dyvour. I must desire to be thus far in His common of new, as to kiss His feet. I know not how to win to a heartsome fill and feast of Christ's love; for I dow neither buy, nor beg, nor borrow, and yet I cannot want it. I dow not want it! Oh, if I could praise Him! yea I would rest content with a heart submissive and dying of love for Him. And, howbeit I never win personally in at heaven's gates, oh, would to God I could send in my praises to my incomparable Well-beloved, or cast my love-songs of that matchless Lord Jesus over the walls, that they might light in His lap, before men and angels!

[400] Will not have got from us all He claims.

Now, grace, grace be with you. Remember my love to your wife and daughter, and brother John.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

S. R.

ABERDEEN, _June 11, 1638_.

CCLXXXVI.--_To the Parishioners of Kilmalcolm._[401]

[401] Kilmalcolm is a rural parish in Renfrewshire, and one of the most sequestered. It was once a favoured vineyard. Shortly after the Reformation, Knox dispensed the communion there when on a visit to Lord Glencairn, who resided within its bounds. In the days of the Covenant, Porterfield of Duchal, another heritor, exposed himself to much loss in maintaining the cause of truth. And, as is evident from Rutherford's letter, the number of those who feared the Lord, and thought upon His name, must have been considerable. There is nothing in history about them. "Their life was hid," but their names are in "the Lamb's Book of Life."

(_SPIRITUAL SLOTH--ADVICE TO BEGINNERS--A DEAD MINISTRY--LANGUOR--OBEDIENCE--WANT OF CHRIST'S FELT PRESENCE--ASSURANCE IMPORTANT--PRAYER-MEETINGS._)

WORTHY, AND WELL-BELOVED IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--Your letters could not come to my hand in a greater throng of business that I am now pressed with at this time, when our kirk requireth the public help of us all. Yet I cannot but answer the heads of both your letters, with provision that ye choose, after this, a fitter time for writing. 1. I would not have you to pitch upon me, as the man able by letters to answer doubts of this kind, while there are in your bounds men of such great parts, most able for this work. I know that the best are unable; yet it pleaseth that Spirit of Jesus to blow His sweet wind through a piece of dry stick, that the empty reed may keep no glory to itself. But a minister can make no such wind as this to blow; he is scarce able to lend it a passage to blow through Him. 2. Know that the wind of this Spirit hath a time when it bloweth sharp, and pierceth so strongly, that it would blow through an iron door; and this is commonly rather under suffering for Christ than at any other time. Sick children get of Christ's pleasant things, to play them withal, because Jesus is most tender of the sufferer, for He was a sufferer Himself. Oh, if I had but the leavings and the drawing of the bye-board of a sufferer's table! But I leave this to answer yours.

I. Ye write, that God's vows are lying on you; and security, strong and sib to nature, stealing on you who are weak. I answer: 1. Till we be in heaven, the best have heavy heads, as is evident. Cant. v. 1; Ps. xxx. 6; Job xxix. 18; Matt. xxvi. 33. Nature is a sluggard, and loveth not the labour of religion; therefore, rest should not be taken, till we know that the disease is over, and in the way of turning, and that it is like a fever past the cool. And the quietness and the calms of the faith of victory over corruption should be entertained, in place of security; so that if I sleep, I should desire to sleep faith's sleep in Christ's bosom. 2. Know, also, that none who sleep sound can seriously complain of sleepiness. Sorrow for a slumbering soul is a token of some watchfulness of spirit. But this is soon turned into wantonness, as grace in us too often is abused; therefore, our waking must be watched over, else sleep will even grow out of watching, and there is as much need to watch over grace as to watch over sin. Full men will soon sleep, and sooner than hungry men. 3. For your weakness to keep off security, that like a thief stealeth upon you, I would say two things:--(1.) To "want complaints of weakness" is for heaven, and angels that never sinned, not for Christians in Christ's camp on earth. I think that our weakness maketh us the church of the redeemed ones, and Christ's field that the Mediator should labour in. If there were no diseases on earth, there need be no physicians on earth. If Christ had cried down weakness, He might have cried down His own calling; but weakness is our Mediator's world; sin is Christ's only, only fair and market. No man should rejoice at weakness and diseases; but I think that we may have a sort of gladness at boils and sores, because, without them, Christ's fingers (as a slain Lord) would never have touched our skin. I dare not thank myself, but I dare thank God's depth of wise providence, that I have an errand in me while I live, for Christ to come and visit me, and bring with Him His drugs and His balm. Oh, how sweet is it for a sinner to put his weakness into Christ's strengthening hand, and to father a sick soul upon such a Physician, and to lay weakness before Him to weep upon Him, and to plead and pray! Weakness can speak and cry, when we have not a tongue. "And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, Live" (Ezek. xvi. 6). The kirk could not speak one word to Christ then: but blood and guiltiness out of measure spake, and drew out of Christ pity, and a word of life and love. (2.) As for weakness, we have it that we may employ Christ's strength because of our weakness. Weakness is to make us the strongest things; that is, when, having no strength of our own, we are carried upon Christ's shoulders, and walk as it were upon His legs. If our sinful weakness swell up to the clouds, Christ's strength will swell up to the sun, and far above the heaven of heavens.

II. Ye tell me, that there is need of counsel for strengthening of new beginners. I can say little to that, who am not well begun myself: but I know that honest beginnings are nourished by Him, even by lovely Jesus, who never yet put out a poor man's dim candle that is wrestling betwixt light and darkness. I am sure, that if new beginners would urge themselves upon Christ, and press their souls upon Him, and importune Him for a draught of His sweet love, they could not come wrong to Christ. Come once in upon the right nick and step of His lovely love, and I defy you to get free of Him again. If any beginners fall off Christ again, and miss Him, they never lighted upon Christ as Christ: it was but an idol, like Jesus, which they took for Him.

III. Whereas ye complain of a dead ministry in your bounds; ye are to remember that the Bible among you is the contract of marriage; and the manner of Christ's conveying His love to your heart is not so absolutely dependent upon even lively preaching, as that there is no conversion at all, no life of God, but that which is tied to a man's lips. The daughters of Jerusalem have done often that which the watchman could not do. Make Christ your minister. He can woo a soul at a dykeside in the field. He needeth not us, howbeit the flock be obliged to seek Him in the shepherds' tents. Hunger, of Christ's making, may thrive even under stewards who mind not the feeding of the flock. O blessed soul, that can leap over a man, and look above a pulpit up to Christ, who can preach home to the heart, howbeit we were all dead and rotten.

IV. So to complain of yourselves, as to justify God, is right; providing ye justify His Spirit in yourselves. For men seldom advocate against Satan's work and sin in themselves, but against God's work in themselves. Some of the people of God slander God's grace in their souls; as some wretches used to do, who complain and murmur of want ("I have nothing," say they; "all is gone, the ground yieldeth but weeds and windlestraws"), whenas their fat harvest, and their money in bank, maketh them liars. But for myself, alas! I think it is not my sin; I have scarce wit to sin this sin. But I advise you to speak good of Christ, for His beauty and sweetness, and speak good of Him for His grace to yourselves.

V. Light remaineth, ye say, but ye cannot attain to painfulness. See if this complaint be not booked in the New Testament; and the place is like this, "To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I know not" (Rom. vii. 18). But every one hath not Paul's spirit in complaining: for often, in us, complaining is but an humble backbiting and traducing of Christ's new work in the soul. But for the matter of the complaint; I would say, that the light of glory is perfectly obeyed in loving, and praising, and rejoicing, and resting in a seen and known Lord; but that light is not hereaway in any clay body. For while we are here, light is (in the most) broader and longer than our narrow and feckless obedience. But if there be light, with a fair train and a great back (I mean, armies) of challenging thoughts, and sorrow for coming short of performance in what we know and see ought to be performed, then that sorrow for not doing is accepted of our Lord for doing. Our honest sorrow and sincere aims, together with Christ's intercession, pleading that God would welcome that which we have, and forgive what we have not, must be our life, till we be over the bound-road, and in the other country, where the law will get a perfect soul.

VI. In Christ's absence, there is, as ye write, a willingness to use means, but heaviness after the use of them, because of formal and slight performance. In Christ's absence, I confess, the work lieth behind. But if ye mean absence of comfort, and absence of sense of His sweet presence, I think that absence is Christ's trying of us, not simply our sin against Him. Therefore, howbeit our obedience be not sugared and sweetened with joy (which is the sweetmeat bairns would still be at), yet the less sense, and the more willingness in obeying, the less formality in our obedience. Howbeit, we think not so; for I believe that many think obedience formal and lifeless, except the wind be fair in the west, and sails filled with joy and sense, till souls, like a ship fair before the wind, can spread no more sail. But I am not of their mind, who think so. But if ye mean, by absence of Christ, the withdrawing of His working grace, I see not how willingness to use means can be at all, under such an absence. Therefore, be humbled for heaviness in that obedience, and thankful for willingness; for the Bridegroom is busking His spouse oftentimes, while she is half sleeping; and your Lord is working and helping more than ye see. Also, I recommend to you heaviness for formality, and for lifeless deadness in obedience. Be casten down, as much as ye will or can, for deadness; and challenge that dull and slow carcase of sin, that will neither lead nor drive, in your spiritual obedience. Oh, how sweet to lovely Jesus are bills and grievances, given in against corruption and the body of sin! I would have Christ, in such a case, fashed (if I may speak so), and deaved with our cries, as ye see the Apostle doeth, "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. vii. 24). Protestations against the law of sin in you are law-grounds why sin can have no law against you. Seek to have your protestation discussed and judged, and then shall ye find Christ on your side of it.

VII. Ye hold, that Christ must either have hearty service, or no service at all. If ye mean that He will not have half a heart, or have feigned service, such as the hypocrites give Him, I grant you that; Christ must have honesty or nothing. But if ye mean, He will have no service at all where the heart draweth back in any measure, I would not that were true for my part of heaven, and all that I am worth in the world. If ye mind to walk to heaven without a cramp or a crook,[402] I fear that ye must go your lone. He knoweth our dross and defects; and sweet Jesus pitieth us, when weakness and deadness in our obedience is our cross, and not our darling.

[402] Halting of any kind.

VIII. The Liar (John viii. 44), as ye write, challengeth the work as formal; yet ye bless your Cautioner for the ground-work He hath laid, and dare not say but ye have assurance in some measure. To this I say: 1. It shall be no fault to save Satan's labour, and challenge it yourselves,[403] or at least examine and censure; but beware of Satan's ends in challenging, for he mindeth to put Christ and you at odds. 2. Welcome home faith in Jesus, who washeth still, when we have defiled our souls and made ourselves loathsome; and seek still the blood of atonement for faults little or meikle. Know the gate to the well, and lie about it. 3. Make meikle of assurance, for it keepeth your anchor fixed.

[403] To anticipate Satan by jealously searching into it yourselves.

IX. Outbreakings, ye say, discourage you, so that ye know not if ever ye shall win again to such overjoying consolations of the Spirit in this life, as formerly ye had; and, therefore, a question may be, If, after assurance and mortification, the children of God be ordinarily fed with sense and joy? I answer: I see no inconvenience to think it is enough, in a race, to see the goal at the starting-place, howbeit the runners never get a view of it till they come to the rink's end; and that our wise Lord thinketh it fittest that we should not always be fingering and playing with Christ's apples. Our Well-beloved, I know, will sport and play with His bride, as much as He thinketh will allure her to the rink's end. Yet I judge it not unlawful to seek renewed consolations, providing, 1. The heart be submissive, and content to leave the measure and timing of them to Him. 2. Providing they be sought to excite us to praise, and strengthen our assurance, and sharpen our desires after Himself. 3. Let them be sought, not for our humours or swellings of nature, but as the earnest of heaven. And I think many do attain to greater consolations after mortification, than ever they had formerly. But I know that our Lord walketh here still by a sovereign latitude, and keepeth not the same way, as to one hair-breadth, without a miss, toward all His children. As for the Lord's people with you, I am not the man fit to speak to them. I rejoice exceedingly that Christ is engaging souls amongst you; but I know that, in conversion, all the winning is in the first buying, as we used to say. For many lay false and bastard foundations, and take up conversion at their foot, and get Christ for as good as half-nothing, and had never a sick night for sin; and this maketh loose work. I pray you to dig deep. Christ's palace-work, and His new dwelling, laid upon hell felt and feared, is most firm: and heaven, grounded and laid upon such a hell, is surest work, and will not wash away with winter storms. It were good that professors were not like young heirs, that come to their rich estate long ere they come to their wit; and so is seen on it. The tavern, and the cards, and the harlots steal their riches[404] from them, ere ever they be aware what they are doing. I know that a Christ bought with strokes is sweetest. 4. I recommend to you conference and prayer at private meetings; for warrant whereof, see Isa. ii. 3; Jer. l. 4, 5; Hos. ii. 1, 2; Zech. viii. 20-23; Mal. iii. 16; Luke xxiv. 13-17; John xx. 19; Acts xii. 12; Col. iii. 16, and iv. 6; Ephes. iv. 29; 1 Pet. iv. 10; 1 Thess. v. 14; Heb. iii. 13, and x. 25. Many coals make a good fire, and that is a part of the communion of saints.

[404] Some read "ridges," _q.d._, their acres of land.

I must entreat you, and your Christian acquaintance in the parish, to remember me to God in your prayers, and my flock and ministry, and my transportation[405] and removal from this place, which I fear at this Assembly,[406] and be earnest with God for our mother-kirk. For want of time, I have put you all in one letter. The rich grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

S. R.

ANWOTH, _Aug. 5, 1639_.

[405] My being transferred to another part of the land.

[406] About this time Rutherford (who, it will be observed from the place whence this letter is dated, was now relieved from confinement at Aberdeen) had received two separate calls, one from Edinburgh, to become one of the city ministers, and the other from St. Andrews, to the theological chair in that University. These competing calls were to come before the Assembly.

CCLXXXVII.--_To the_ VISCOUNTESS OF KENMURE.

(_ON THE DEATH OF HER CHILD--CHRIST SHARES IN HIS PEOPLE'S SORROWS._)

MADAM,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--I know that ye are near many comforters, and that the promised Comforter is near at hand also. Yet, because I found your Ladyship comfortable to myself in my sad days, which are not yet over my head, it is my part and more, in many respects (howbeit I can do little, God knoweth, in that kind), to speak to you in your wilderness lot.

I know, dear and noble Lady, that this loss of your dear child[407] came upon you, one piece and part of it after another; and that ye were looking for it, and that now the Almighty hath brought on you that which ye feared; and that your Lord gave you lawful warning. And I hope that for His sake who brewed and masked this cup in heaven, ye will gladly drink, and salute and welcome the cross. I am sure, that it is not your Lord's mind to feed you with judgment and wormwood, and to give you waters of gall to drink (Ezek. xxxiv. 16; Jer. ix. 15). I know that your cup is sugared with mercy; and that the withering of the bloom, the flower, even the white and red of worldly joys, is for no other end than to buy out at the ground the reversion of your heart and love.

[407] John, second Viscount Kenmure who died in 1639.

Madam, subscribe to the Almighty's will; put your hand to the pen, and let the cross of your Lord Jesus have your submissive and resolute Amen. If ye ask and try whose this cross is, I dare say that it is not all your own, the best half of it is Christ's. Then your cross is no born-bastard, but lawfully begotten; it sprang not out of the dust (Job v. 6). If Christ and ye be halvers of this suffering, and He say, "Half mine," what should ail you? And I am sure that I am here right upon the style of the word of God: "The fellowship of Christ's sufferings" (Phil. iii. 10); "The remnant of the afflictions of Christ" (Col. i. 24); "The reproach of Christ" (Heb. ii. 6). It were but to shift the comforts of God, to say, "Christ had never such a cross as mine: He had never a dead child, and so this is not His cross; neither can He, in that meaning, be the owner of this cross." But I hope that Christ, when he married you, married you and all the crosses and wo hearts that follow you. And the word maketh no exception. "In _all_ their afflictions He was afflicted" (Isa. lxiii. 9). Then Christ bore the first stroke of this cross; it rebounded off Him upon you, and ye get it at the second hand, and ye and He are halvers in it. And I shall believe, for my part, that He mindeth to distil heaven out of this loss, and all others the like; for wisdom devised it, and love laid it on, and Christ owneth it as His own, and putteth your shoulder beneath only a piece of it. Take it with joy, as no bastard cross, but as a visitation of God, well-born; and spend the rest of your appointed time, till your change come, in the work of believing. And let faith, that never yet made a lie to you, speak for God's part of it, "He will not, He doth not, make you a sea or a whale-fish, that He keepeth you in ward" (Job vii. 12). It may be, that ye think not many of the children of God in such a hard case as yourself; but what would ye think of some, who would exchange afflictions? and give you to the boot? But I know that yours must be your own alone, and Christ's together.

I confess it seemed strange to me, that your Lord should have done that which seemed to ding out the bottom of your worldly comforts; but we see not the ground of the Almighty's sovereignty. "He goeth by on our right hand, and on our left hand, and we see Him not." We see but pieces of the broken links of the chains of His providence; and He coggeth the wheels of His own providence, that we see not. Oh, let the Former work His own clay into what frame He pleaseth! "Shall any teach the Almighty knowledge?" If He pursue the dry stubble, who dare say, "What doest Thou?" Do not wonder to see the Judge of the world weave, into one web, your mercies and the judgments of the house of Kenmure. He can make one web of contraries.

But my weak advice (with reverence and correction), were, for you, dear and worthy Lady, to see how far mortification goeth on, and what scum the Lord's fire casteth out of you. I know that ye see your knottiness, since our Lord whiteth, and heweth, and plaineth you. And the glancing of the furnace[408] is to let you see what scum or refuse ye must want, and what froth is in nature, that must be boiled out and taken off in the fire of your trials. I do not say that heavier afflictions prophesy heavier guiltiness; a cross is often but a false prophet in this kind. But I am sure that our Lord would have the tin and the bastard metal in you removed, lest the Lord say, "The bellows are burnt, the lead is consumed in the fire, the Founder melteth in vain" (Jer. vi. 29). And I shall hope that grief will not so far smother your light, as not to practise this so necessary a duty, to concur with Him in this blessed design.

[408] The brightness of glowing heat.

I would gladly plead for the Comforter's part of it, not against you, Madam (for I am sure ye are not his party[409]), but against your grief, which will have its own violent incursions in your soul: and I think it be not in your power to help it. But I must say, there are comforts allowed upon you; and, therefore, want them not. When ye have gotten a running-over soul with joy now, that joy will never be missed out of the infinite ocean of delight, which is not diminished by drinking at it, or drawing out of it. It is a Christian art to comfort yourself in the Lord; to say, "I was obliged to render back again this child to the Giver: and if I have had four years' loan of him, and Christ eternity's possession of him, the Lord hath kept condition with me. If my Lord would not have him and me to tryst both in one hour at death's door-threshold together, it is His wisdom so to do; I am satisfied. My tryst is suspended, not broken off, nor given up." Madam, I would that I could divide sorrow with you, for your ease. But I am but a beholder: it is easy to me to speak; the God of comfort speak to you, and allure you with His feasts of love.

[409] An opposing party to him.

My removal from my flock is so heavy to me, that it maketh my life a burden to me; I had never such a longing for death. The Lord help and hold up sad clay. I fear that ye sin in drawing Mr. William Dalgleish from this country, where the labourers are few, and the harvest great.

Madam, desire my Lord Argyle to see for provision to a pastor for his poor people. Grace be with you.

Your Ladyship's at all obedience in Christ,

S. R.

KIRKCUDBRIGHT, _Oct. 1, 1639_.

CCLXXXVIII.--_To the persecuted Church in Ireland._[410]

[410] When the National Covenant had been solemnly renewed throughout almost the whole of Scotland, every means was used to prevent the Presbyterians in Ireland from entering into it. To accomplish this, an oath was imposed in May 1639, known by the name of the _Black Oath_, from the calamities which it occasioned. The oath is as follows:--"I, ----, do faithfully swear, profess, and promise, that I will honour and obey my sovereign Lord, King Charles, and will bear faith and true allegiance unto him, and defend and maintain his royal power and authority; and that I will not bear arms, or do any rebellious or hostile act against his Majesty, King Charles, or protest against any his royal commands, but submit myself in all due obedience thereunto; and that I will not enter into any covenant, oath, or band of mutual defence and assistance against any person whatsoever by force, without his Majesty's sovereign and legal authority. And I do renounce and abjure all covenants, oaths, and bands whatsoever, contrary to what I have herein sworn, professed, and promised. So help me God, in Jesus Christ." All Scottish residents in Ulster, above the age of sixteen, were required to take this oath; and it was imposed equally on women and on men. Great numbers refusing to take it, the highest penalties of the law, short of death, were inflicted on them, and that, too, under circumstances of great cruelty. Such was the condition of the Presbyterians in Ireland at the date of this letter, which was written to comfort them under persecution, and to encourage their stedfastness (Reid's "History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland").

(_CHRIST'S LEGACY OF TROUBLE--GOD'S DEALINGS WITH SCOTLAND IN GIVING PROSPERITY--CHRIST TAKES HALF OF ALL SUFFERINGS--STEDFASTNESS FOR HIS CROWN--HIS LOVE SHOULD LEAD TO HOLINESS._)

MUCH HONOURED, REVEREND, AND DEARLY BELOVED IN OUR LORD,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you all.--I know that there are many in this nation more able than I to speak to the sufferers for, and witnesses of, Jesus Christ; yet pardon me to speak a little to you, who are called in question for the Gospel once committed to you.

I hope that ye are not ignorant that, as peace was left to you in Christ's testament, so the other half of the testament was a legacy of Christ's sufferings. "These things have I spoken, that in Me ye might have peace; in the world ye shall have trouble" (John xvi. 33). Because, then, ye are made assignees and heirs to a liferent of Christ's cross, think that fiery trial no strange thing; for the Lord Jesus shall be no loser by purging the dross and tin out of His church in Ireland. His wine-press is but squeezing out the dregs, the scum, the froth, and refuse of that church. I had once the proof of the sweet smell, and the honest and honourable peace, of that slandered thing, the cross of our Lord Jesus. But though, alas! these golden days that then I had be now in a great part gone, yet I dare say, that the issue and outgate of your sufferings shall be the advantage, the golden reign and dominion of the Gospel, and the high glory of the never-enough-praised Prince of the kings of the earth; and the changing of the brass of the Lord's temple among you into gold, and the iron into silver, and the wood into brass. Your officers shall yet be peace, and your exactors righteousness (Isa. lx. 17, 18). Your old, fallen walls shall get a new name, and the gates of your Jerusalem shall get a new style. They shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise. I know that Deputy,[411] prelates, Papists, temporizing lords, and proud mockers of our Lord, crucifiers of Christ for His coat, and all your enemies, have neither fingers nor instruments of war to pick out one stone out of your wall; for each stone of your wall is "Salvation." I dare give you my royal and princely Master's word for it, that Ireland shall be a fair bride to Jesus, and Christ will build on her a palace of silver (Cant. viii. 9). Therefore, weep not as if there were no hope; fear not, put on strength, put on your beautiful garments (Isa. lii. 1). Your foundation shall be sapphires, your windows and gates precious stones (Isa. liv. 11, 12). Look over the water, and behold and see who is on the dry land waiting for your landing. Your deliverance is concluded, subscribed, and sealed in heaven. Your goods, that are taken from you for Christ and His truth's sake, are but arrested and laid in pawn, and not taken away. There is much laid up for you in His storehouse, whose the earth and the fulness thereof is. Your garments are spun, and your flocks are feeding in the fields, your bread is laid up for you, your drink is brewn, your gold and silver is at the bank, and the interest goeth on and groweth: and yet I hear that your taskmasters do rob and spoil you, and fine you. Your prisons, my brethren, have two keys. The Deputy, prelates, and officers keep but the iron keys of the prison wherein they put you; but He that hath created the smith, hath other keys in heaven; therefore ye shall not die in the prison. Other men's ploughs are labouring for your bread; your enemies are gathering in your rents. He that is kissing His bride on this side of the sea, in Scotland, is beating her beyond the sea in Ireland, and feeding her with the bread of adversity and the water of affliction; and yet He is the same Lord to both.

[411] Wentworth, Earl of Stafford, was at this time Deputy or Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Previous to his appointment to that office, which was in 1632, the Scottish settlers in Ireland were not troubled on account of their nonconformity. After the Black Oath was imposed in this year, he declared that he would prosecute "to the blood" all who refused to take it, and drive them "root and branch" out of the kingdom. His violent and unconstitutional proceedings at length issued in his being arraigned for high treason before the English Parliament, and beheaded on Tower Hill, May 12, 1641, in the forty-ninth year of his age.

Alas! I fear that Scotland be undone and slain with this great mercy of reformation, because there is not here that life of religion, answerable to the huge greatness of the work that dazzleth our eyes. For the Lord is rejoicing over us in this land, as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride: and the Lord hath changed the name of Scotland. They call us now no more "Forsaken," nor "Desolate;" but our land is called "Hephzibah" and "Beulah" (Isa. lxii. 4). For the Lord delighteth in us, and this land is married to Himself. There is now an highway made through our Zion, and it is called the "Way of holiness;" the unclean shall not pass over it; the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err in it. The wilderness doth rejoice and blossom as the rose; "The ransomed of the Lord are returned back unto Zion, with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads" (Isa. xxxv. 10); the Canaanite is put out of our Lord's house: there is not a beast left to do hurt (at least, professedly) in all the holy mountain of the Lord. Our Lord is fallen to wrestle with His enemies, and hath brought us out of Egypt; we have "the strength of an unicorn" (Num. xxiii. 22). The Lord hath eaten up the sons of Babel; He hath broken their bones, and hath pierced them through with His arrows. We take them captives whose captives we were, and we rule over our oppressors (Isa. xiv. 2). It is not brick, nor clay, nor Babel's cursed timber and stones, that is in our second temple; but our princely King Jesus is building His house all palace-work and carved stones. It is the habitation of the Lord.

We do welcome Ireland and England to our Well-beloved. We invite you, O daughters of Jerusalem, to come down to our Lord's garden, and seek our Well-beloved with us; for His love will suffice both you and us. We do send you love-letters over the sea, to request you to come and to marry our King, and to take part of our bed. And we trust our Lord is fetching a blow upon the Beast, and the scarlet-coloured Whore, to the end that He may bring in His ancient widow-wife, our dear sister, the church of the Jews. Oh, what a heavenly heaven were it to see them come in by this mean, and suck the breasts of their little sister, and renew their old love with their first Husband, Christ our Lord! They are booked in God's word, as a bride contracted unto Jesus! Oh for a sight, in this flesh of mine, of the prophesied marriage between Christ and them! The kings of Tarshish, and of the isles, must bring presents to our Lord Jesus (Ps. lxxii. 10). And Britain is one of the chiefest isles; why then but we may believe that our kings of this island shall come in, and bring their glory to the New Jerusalem, wherein Christ shall dwell in the latter days? It is our part to pray, "That the kingdoms of the earth may become Christ's."

Now I exhort you, in the Lord Jesus, not to be dismayed nor afraid for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, the fierce anger of the Deputy with civil power, and of the bastard prelates with the power of the Beast; for they shall be cut off. They may well eat you and drink you, but they shall be forced to vomit you out again alive. If two things were firmly believed, sufferings would have no weight. If the fellowship of Christ's sufferings were well known, who would not gladly take part with Jesus? For Christ and we are halvers and joint-owners of one and the same cross: and, therefore, he that knew well what sufferings were, as he esteemed all things but loss for Christ, and did judge them but dung, so did he also judge of them, "that he might know the fellowship of His sufferings" (Phil. iii. 10). Oh, how sweet a sight is it, to see a cross betwixt Christ and us, to hear our Redeemer say, at every sigh, and every blow, and every loss of a believer, "Half mine!" So they are called "The sufferings of Christ," and "the reproach of Christ" (Col. i. 24; Heb. xi. 26). As, when two are partners and owners of a ship, the half of the gain and half of the loss belong to each of the two; so Christ in our sufferings is half-gainer and half-loser with us. Yea, the heaviest end of the black tree of the cross lieth on your Lord: it falleth first upon Him, and it but reboundeth off Him upon you: "The reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon Me" (Ps. lxix. 9). Your sufferings are your treasure, and are greater riches than the treasures of Egypt (Heb. xi. 26). And if your cross come through Christ's fingers ere it come to you, it receiveth a fair lustre from Him; it getteth a taste and relish of the King's spikenard, and of heaven's perfume. And the half of the gain, when Christ's shipful of gold cometh home, shall be yours. It is an augmenting of your treasure to be rich in suffering, "to be in labours abundant, in stripes above measure" (2 Cor. xi. 23); and to have the sufferings of Christ abounding in you (2 Cor. i. 5) is a part of heaven's stock. Your goods are not lost which they have plucked from you, for your Lord hath them in keeping; they are but arrested and seized upon. He shall loose the arrest. Ye shall be fed with the heritage of Jacob, your father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it (Isa. lviii. 14).

Till I shall be on the hall-floor of the highest palace, and get a draught of glory out of Christ's hand, above and beyond time and beyond death, I shall never (it is like) see fairer days than I saw under that blessed tree of my Lord's cross. His kisses then were king's kisses. Those kisses were sweet and soul-reviving; one of them, at that time, was worth two and a half (if I may speak so) of Christ's week-day kisses. Oh, sweet, sweet for evermore, to see a rose of heaven growing in as ill ground as hell! and to see Christ's love, His embracements, His dinners and suppers of joy, peace, faith, goodness, long-suffering, and patience, growing and springing like the flowers of God's garden, out of such stony and cursed ground as the hatred of the prelates, and the malice of their High Commission, and the Antichrist's bloody hand and heart! Is not here art and wisdom? Is not here heaven indented in hell (if I may say so), like a jewel set with skill in a ring with the enamel of Christ's cross? The ruby and riches of glory, that grow up out of the cross, are beyond telling. Now, the blackest and hottest wrath, and most fiery and all-devouring indignation of the Judge of men and angels, shall come upon them who deny our sweet Lord Jesus, and put their hand to that oath of wickedness now pressed. The Lord's coal at their heart shall burn them up both root and branch. The estates of great men that have done so, if they do not repent, shall consume away, and the ravens shall dwell in their houses, and their glory shall be shame. Oh, for the Lord's sake! keep fast by Christ, and fear not man that shall die and wither as the grass. The Deputy's bloom shall fall, and the prelates shall cast their flower, and the east wind of the Lord, of "the Lord strong and mighty," shall blast and break them; therefore, fear them not. They are but idols, that can neither do evil nor good. Walk not in the way of those people that slander the footsteps of our royal and princely anointed King Jesus, now riding upon His white horse in Scotland. Let Jehovah be your fear. That decree of Zion's deliverance, passed and sealed up before the throne, is now ripe and shall bring forth a child, even the ruin and fall of the prelates' black kingdom, and the Antichrist's throne, in these kingdoms. The Lord hath begun, and He shall make an end. Who did ever hear the like of this? Before Scotland travailed, she brought forth; and before her pain came, she was delivered of a man-child (Isa. lxvi. 7, 8).

And when all is done, suppose there were no sweetness in our Lord's cross, yet it is sweet for His sake, for that lovely One, Jesus Christ, whose crown and royal supremacy is the question this day in Great Britain, betwixt us and our adversaries. And who would not think Him worthy of the suffering for? What is burning quick, what is drinking of our own heart's blood, and what is a draught of melted lead, for His glory? Less than a draught of cold water to a thirsty man, if the right price and due value were put on that worthy, worthy Prince, Jesus! Oh, who can weigh Him! Ten thousand thousand heavens would not be one scale, or the half of the scale, of the balance to lay Him in. O black angels, in comparison of Him! O dim, and dark, and lightless sun, in regard of that fair Sun of righteousness! O feckless and worthless heaven of heavens, when they stand beside my worthy, and lofty, and high, and excellent Well-beloved! O weak and infirm clay-kings! O soft and feeble mountains of brass, and weak created strength, in regard of our mighty and strong Lord of armies! O foolish wisdom of men and angels, when it is laid in the balance beside that spotless, substantial Wisdom of the Father! If heaven and earth, and ten thousand heavens even (round about these heavens that now are), were all in one garden of paradise, decked with all the fairest roses, flowers, and trees that can come forth from the art of the Almighty Himself; yet set but our one Flower that groweth out of the root of Jesse beside that orchard of pleasure, one look of Him, one view, one taste, one smell of His sweet Godhead would infinitely exceed and go beyond the smell, colour, beauty, and loveliness of that paradise. Oh to be with child of His love! and to be suffocated (if that could be) with the smell of His sweetness were a sweet fill and a lovely pain. O worthy, worthy, worthy loveliness! Oh, less of the creatures, and more of Thee! Oh, open the passage of the well of love and glory on us, dry pits and withered trees! Oh, that Jewel and Flower of heaven! If our Beloved were not mistaken by us, and unknown to us, He would have no scarcity of wooers and suitors. He would make heaven and earth both see that they cannot quench His love, for His love is a sea. Oh to be a thousand fathoms deep in this sea of love! He, He Himself is more excellent than heaven; for heaven, as it cometh into the souls and spirits of the glorified, is but a creature; and He is something (and a great something) more than a creature. Oh, what a life were it to sit beside this Well of love, and drink and sing, and sing and drink! and then to have desires and soul-faculties stretched and extended out, many thousand fathoms in length and breadth, to take in seas and rivers of love!

I earnestly desire to recommend this love to you, that this love may cause you to keep His commandments, and to keep clean fingers, and make clean feet, that ye may walk as the redeemed of the Lord. Wo, wo be to them who put on His name, and shame this love of Christ, with a loose and profane life! Their feet, tongue, and hands, and eyes, give a shameless lie to the holy Gospel, which they profess. I beseech you in the Lord, to keep Christ and walk with Him: let not His fairness be spotted and stained by godless living. Oh, who can find in their heart to sin against love? and such a love as the glorified in heaven shall delight to dive into, and drink of for ever? For they are evermore drinking in love, and the cup is still at their head; and yet without loathing, for they still drink, and still desire to drink for ever and ever. Is not this a long-lasting supper?

Now, if any of our country people, professing Christ Jesus, have brought themselves under the stroke and wrath of the Almighty, by yielding to Antichrist in an hair-breadth, but especially by swearing and subscribing that blasphemous oath (which is the Church of Ireland's black hour of temptation), I would entreat them, by the mercies of God at their last summons, to repent, and openly confess before the world to the glory of the Lord their denial of Christ. Or otherwise, if either man or woman will stand and abide by that oath, then, in the name and authority of the Lord Jesus, I let them see that they forfeit their part of heaven! And let them look for no less than a back-burden of the pure, unmixed wrath of God, and the plague of apostates and deniers of our Lord Jesus.

Let not me, a stranger to you, who never saw your face in the flesh, be thought bold in writing to you: for the hope I have of a glorious church in that land, and the love of Christ, constraineth me. I know that the worthy servants of Christ, who once laboured among you, cease not to write to you also; and I shall desire to be excused that I do join with them.

Pray for your sister-church in Scotland; and let me entreat you for the aid of your prayers for myself, and flock, and ministry, and my fear of a transportation from this place of the Lord's vineyard.[412] Now the very God of peace sanctify you throughout. Grace be with you all.

[412] See note, Letter CCLXXXVI. The decision of the Commission was, to translate him from Anwoth to the professorship at St. Andrews.

Your brother and companion, in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ,

S. R.

ANWOTH, 1639.

CCLXXXIX.--_To his Reverend and much honoured Brother, DR. ALEXANDER LEIGHTON, Christ's Prisoner in bonds at London._

[DR. ALEXANDER LEIGHTON was descended of an ancient family in Forfarshire, whose chief seat was Ulys-haven, or Usen, near Montrose. Besides studying for the Christian ministry, he qualified himself as a physician, and, during the reign of James I., and the commencement of that of Charles I., practised medicine in London, as well as exercised his ministry there; but whether he had any fixed charge we are not informed. In his zeal for Presbyterian principles, and against the innovations of Laud, he published a work entitled "An Appeal to the Parliament; or, Zion's Plea against the Prelacy." For this work he was arrested in 1629, and thrown into an abominable cell in Newgate. After lying there sixteen weeks in great misery, he was served with an information of the crimes of which he was accused, and charged to appear before the Star Chamber. He was then unable to attend, being under severe distress that had brought skin and hair almost wholly off his body; but the Star Chamber condemned the afflicted and aged divine to be degraded as a minister, to have one of his ears cut off, and one side of his nose slit, to be branded on the face with a red-hot iron, to stand in the pillory, to be whipped at a post, to pay a fine of £1000, and to suffer imprisonment till the fine was paid. When this inhuman sentence was pronounced, Laud took off his hat, and holding up his hands, gave thanks to God, who had given the church victory over her enemies! The sentence was executed without mercy; and Leighton lay in prison until the meeting of the Long Parliament, that is, upwards of ten years. When liberated, he could hardly walk, see, or hear. He died in 1649. He was the father of the celebrated Robert Leighton, Archbishop of Glasgow. When this letter was written to him by Rutherford, he had languished many years in prison.]

(_PUBLIC BLESSINGS ALLEVIATE PRIVATE SUFFERINGS--TRIALS LIGHT WHEN VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN--CHRIST WORTHY OF SUFFERING FOR._)

REVEREND AND MUCH HONOURED PRISONER OF HOPE,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.-- It was not my part (whom our Lord hath enlarged) to forget you His prisoner.

When I consider how long your night hath been, I think Christ hath a mind to put you in free grace's debt so much the deeper, as your sufferings have been of so long continuance. But what if Christ mind you no joy but public joy, with enlarged and triumphing Zion. I think, Sir, that ye would love best to share and divide your song of joy with Zion, and to have mystical Christ in Britain halfer and copartner with your enlargement. I am sure that your joy, bordering and neighbouring with the joy of Christ's bride, would be so much the sweeter that it were public. I thought if Christ had halved my mercies, and delivered His bride and not me, that His praises should have been double to what they are; but now two rich mercies conjoined in one have stolen from our Lord more than half-praises. Oh that mercy should so beguile us, and steal away our counts and acknowledgment!

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_.

CCXC.--_To a Person unknown, anent Private Worship in time and place of public._[413]

[413] From a copy among the Wodrow MSS., vol. xxix. 4to, No. 13.

REVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,--I do not know a private worship, set and intended, compatible with a public worship set and intended. Ejaculations are fruits of public worship and breathings of the spirit in public speaking, but they are _aliquid cultus publici, non cultus publicus_ (something akin to public worship, but not public worship). 2. I know not a member in the kirk who should have a worship _in specie_ (in kind) different from the worship of the whole kirk; and so I do not see (saving better judgment) a lawfulness of private set praying, when there is another set worship of praising, reading, etc. 3. I doubt if there should be any set worship in the kirk to which all the hearers should not say Amen, even the rude and unbelievers (1 Cor. xiv. 23-25). But to a private prayer, when the worship is public, who can say Amen? 4. I think the people may all fall to their private prayers and private reading, in time the minister preacheth, if he fall to praying when they are praising or hearing the word read. 5. I dare not say they have a Pharisee's mind who pray in public after a private manner, and join not with the public service of the kirk. But _in natura operis_ (in regard to the nature of the work), I think them more pharisaical than the other case is Brownish.[414] 6. Brownism's life is in separation; but the private supplicator, when the kirk is praising and hearing the word read, in my weak judgment, is in the act of separation; that I should not say,[415] they are ignorant of Brownism, who object this to such as will not kneel in pulpit. 7. Neither Scripture nor Act of our Assemblies doth allow this human custom. I think they dare not be answerable to a General Assembly who dare call on them to censure for a human and unorderly custom against the word of God so directly. 8. If such as go not to private pulpit prayer neglect private prayer before they come in public, they deserve censure. Whatever hath been my practice before I examined this custom, I purpose now no more to confound worships. And thus recommending you to the grace of God, I rest,

S. R.

_January 16, 1640._

[414] Savours of the sect called "Brownists."

[415] While at the same time I may add.

CCXCI.--_To MR. HENRY STUART, his Wife, and two Daughters, all Prisoners of Christ at Dublin._

[HENRY STUART was a gentleman of considerable property in Ireland. He himself, his wife, and family, consisting of two daughters and a domestic servant named James Gray, having refused to swear the "Black Oath," were carried to Dublin by a serjeant-at-arms, and placed in close and rigorous confinement. On the 10th of August 1639, all of them were brought to trial in the Star Chamber. Stuart, being permitted to speak in his own defence, declared before the court, that he had no objection whatever to take the former part of the oath, "promising _civil allegiance_, but that he could not take the latter part, which he conceived bound the swearer to yield unlimited _ecclesiastical obedience to the King_." Wentworth, who presided at the trial, in reply, admitted that this interpretation of the oath was quite correct, and concluded by pronouncing the sentence of the court. Stuart was fined £5000, and his wife a similar sum; his daughters, £2000 each; and Gray although only a servant, £2000; a sum of £16,000 in all; and they were to be detained at Dublin in prison till these exorbitant fines were paid. They were at length liberated by the Irish Parliament, which set itself in 1641 to remedy the evils of Strafford's Government, after they had suffered an imprisonment of a year and three months. But Stuart's property having been confiscated by Strafford, the family were reduced to great poverty. He retired to Scotland, of which he was a native, and applied, in the month of September 1641, to the Parliament sitting at Edinburgh, to recommend to the English Parliament to take measures for enabling him to recover his property. The Scottish Parliament did so, but the result of their application is unknown (Reid's "History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland," vol. i.).]

(_FAITH'S PREPARATION FOR TRIAL--THE WORLD'S RAGE AGAINST CHRIST--THE IMMENSITY OF HIS GLORIOUS BEAUTY--FOLLY OF PERSECUTION--VICTORY SURE._)

"Fear none of these things, which ye shall suffer," etc.--REV. ii. 10.

TRULY HONOURED, AND DEARLY BELOVED,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord Jesus.

Think it not strange, beloved in our Lord Jesus, that Satan can command keys of prisons, and bolts, and chains. This is a piece of the devil's princedom that he hath over the world. Interpret and understand our Lord well in this. Be not jealous of His love, though He make devils and men His under-servants to scour the rust off your faith, and purge you from your dross. And let me charge you, O prisoners of hope, to open your window, and to look out by faith, and behold heaven's post (that speedy and swift salvation of God), that is coming to you. It is a broad river that faith will not look over: it is a mighty and a broad sea, that they of a lively hope cannot behold the furthest bank and other shore thereof. Look over the water; your anchor is fixed within the vail; the one end of the cable is about the prisoner of Christ, and the other is entered within the vail, whither the Forerunner is entered for you (Heb. vi. 19, 20). It can go straight through the flames of the fire of the wrath of men, devils, losses, tortures, death, and not a thread of it be singed or burnt: Men and devils have no teeth to bite it in two. Hold fast till He come. Your cross is of the colour of heaven and Christ, and passmented over with the faith and comforts of the Lord's faithful covenant with Scotland: and that dye and colour will abide foul weather, and neither be stained nor cast the colour. Yet, it reflects a scad like the cross of Christ, whose holy hands, many a day lifted up to God, praying for sinners, were fettered and bound, as if those blessed hands had stolen, and shed innocent blood. When your lovely, lovely Jesus had no better than the thief's doom, it is no wonder that your process be lawless and turned upside down; for He was taken, fettered, buffeted, whipped, spitted upon, before He was convicted of any fault, or sentenced. Oh, such a pair of sufferers and witnesses, as high and royal Jesus and a poor piece of guilty clay marrowed together under one yoke! Oh, how lovely is the cross with such a second!

I believe that your prison is enacted in God's court not to keep you till your hope breathe out its life and last. Your cross is under law to restore you again safe to your brethren and sisters in Christ. Take heaven's and Christ's back-bond for a fair back-door out of your suffering. The Saviour is on His journey with salvation and deliverance for Mount Zion; and the sword of the Lord is drunk with blood, and made fat with fatness. His sword is bathed in heaven against Babylon, for it is "the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompense for the controversy of Zion:" and persuade yourselves the streams of the river of Babylon shall be pitch, and the dust of the land brimstone and burning pitch (Isa. xxxiv. 8, 9). And if your deliverance be joined with the deliverance of Zion, it shall be two salvations to you.

It were good to be armed beforehand for death or bodily tortures for Christ; and to think what a crown of honour it is, that God hath given you pieces of living clay to be tortured witnesses for saving truth; and that ye are so happy, as to have some pints of blood to give out for the crown of that royal Lord, who hath caused you to avouch Himself before men. If ye can lend fines of three thousand pounds sterling for Christ, let heaven's register and Christ's count-book keep in reckoning your depursements for Him. It shall be engraven and printed in great letters upon heaven's throne, what you are willing to give for Him. Christ's papers of that kind cannot be lost, or fall by.

Do not wonder to see clay boist the great Potter, and to see blinded men threaten the Gospel with death and burial, and to raze out truth's name. But where will they make a grave for the Gospel, and the Lord's bride? Earth and hell shall be but little bounds for their burial. Lay all the clay and rubbish of this inch of the whole earth above our Lord's Spouse, yet it will not cover her nor hold her down; she shall live and not die; she shall behold the salvation of God. Let your faith frist God a little, and not be afraid for a smoking firebrand. There is more smoke in Babylon's furnace than there is fire. Till doomsday shall come, they shall never see the kirk of Scotland and our Covenant burnt to ashes; or, if it should be thrown into the fire, yet it cannot be so burnt or buried as not to have a resurrection. Angry clay's wind shall shake none of Christ's corn: He will gather in all His wheat into His barn. Only let your fellowship with Christ be renewed.

Ye are sibber to Christ now, when you are imprisoned for Him, than before; for now the strokes laid on you do come in remembrance before our Lord, and He can own His own wounds. A drink of Christ's love, which is better than wine, is the drink-silver which suffering for His majesty leaveth behind it. It is not your sins which they persecute in you, but God's grace, and loyalty to King Jesus. They see no treason in you to your prince the King of Britain, albeit they say so; but it is heaven in you that earth is fighting against. And Christ is owning His own cause. Grace is a party that fire will not burn, nor water drown. When they have eaten and drunken you, their stomach shall be sick, and they shall spue you out alive. Oh, what glory is it to be suffering abjects (Ps. xxxv. 15) for the Lord's glory and royalty! Nay, though His servants had a body to burn for ever for this Gospel, so being that the high glory of triumphing and exalted Jesus did rise out of these flames, and out of that burning body, oh what a sweet fire! oh what soul-refreshing torment would that be! What if the pickles of dust and ashes of the burnt and dissolved body were musicians to sing His praises, and the highness of that never-enough-exalted Prince of ages? Oh, what love is it in Him that He will have such musicians as we are, to tune that psalm of His everlasting praises in heaven! Oh, what shining and burning flames of love are these, that Christ will divide His share of life, of heaven and glory, with you! (Luke xxii. 29; John xvii. 24; Rev. iii. 21). A part of His throne, one draught of His wine (His wine of glory and life that cometh from under the throne of God and of the Lamb), and one apple of the tree of life, will do more than make up all the expenses and charges of clay, lent out for heaven. Oh! oh! but we have short, and narrow, and creeping thoughts of Jesus, and do but shape Christ in our conceptions according to some created portraiture! O angels, lend in your help to make love-books and songs of our fair, and white, and ruddy Standard-bearer amongst ten thousand! O heavens! O heaven of heavens! O glorified tenants, and triumphing house-holders with the Lamb, put in new psalms and love-sonnets of the excellency of our Bridegroom, and help us to set Him on high! O indwellers of earth and heaven, sea and air, and O all ye created beings within the bosom of the utmost circle of this great world, oh come help to set on high the praises of our Lord! O fairness of creatures, blush before His uncreated beauty! O created strength, be amazed to stand before your strong Lord of hosts! O created love, think shame of thyself before this unparalleled love of heaven! O angel-wisdom, hide thyself before our Lord, whose understanding passeth finding out! O sun in thy shining beauty, for shame put on a web of darkness, and cover thyself before thy brightest Master and Maker! Oh, who can add glory, by doing or suffering, to the never-enough admired and praised Lover! Oh we can but bring our drop to this sea, and our candle, dim and dark as it is, to this clear and lightsome Sun of heaven and earth! Oh but we have cause to drink ten deaths in one cup dry, to swim through ten seas, to be at that land of praises, where we shall see that wonder of wonders, and enjoy this Jewel of heaven's jewels! O death, do thy utmost against us! O torments, O malice of men and devils, waste your strength on the witnesses of our Lord's Testament! O devils, bring hell to help you in tormenting the followers of the Lamb! We will defy you to make us too soon happy, and to waft us too soon over the water to the land where the noble Plant, the Plant of Renown, groweth. O cruel time, that tormenteth us, and suspendeth our dearest enjoyments that we wait for, when we shall be bathed and steeped, soul and body, down in the depths of this Love of Loves! O time, I say, run fast! O motions, mend your pace? O well-beloved, be like a young roe on the mountains of separation! Post, post, and hasten our desired and hungered-for meeting. Love is sick to hear tell of to-morrow.

And what, then, can come wrong to you, O honourable witnesses of His kingly truth? Men have no more of you to work upon than some inches and span-lengths of sick, coughing, and phlegmatic clay. Your spirits are above their Benches, Courts, or High Commissions. Your souls, your love to Christ, your faith, cannot be summoned nor sentenced, nor accused nor condemned, by pope, deputy, prelate, ruler, or tyrant. Your faith is a free lord, and cannot be a captive. All the malice of hell and earth can but hurt the scabbard of a believer; and death, at the worst, can get but a clay pawn[416] in keeping till your Lord make[417] the King's keys, and open your graves. Therefore, upon luck's head (as we use to say) take your fill of His love, and let a post-way or causeway be laid betwixt your prison and heaven, and go up and visit your treasure. Enjoy your Beloved, and dwell upon His love, till eternity come in time's room, and possess you of your eternal happiness. Keep your love to Christ, lay up your faith in heaven's keeping, and follow the Chief of the house of the martyrs that witnessed a fair confession before Pontius Pilate. Your cause and His is all one. The opposers of His cause are like drunken judges and transported, who, in their cups, would make acts and laws in their drunken courts that the sun should not rise and shine on the earth, and send their officers and pursuivants to charge the sun and moon to give no more light to the world; and would enact in their court-books, that the sea, after once ebbing, should never flow again. But would not the sun, moon, and sea break these acts, and keep their Creator's directions? The devil (the great fool, and father of these under-fools) is older and more malicious than wise, that setteth the spirits in earth on work to contend and clash with heaven's wisdom, and to give mandates and law-summons to our Sun, to our great Star of heaven, Jesus, not to shine in the beauty of His Gospel to the chosen and bought ones. O thou fair and fairest Sun of righteousness, arise and shine in Thy strength, whether earth or hell will or not. O victorious, O royal, O stout, princely Soul-conqueror, ride prosperously upon truth; stretch out Thy sceptre as far as the sun shineth, and the moon waxeth and waneth. Put on Thy glittering crown, O Thou Maker of kings, and make but one stride, or one step of the whole earth, and travel in the greatness of Thy strength (Isa. lxii. 1, 2). And let Thy apparel be red, and all dyed with the blood of Thy enemies. Thou art fallen righteous Heir by line to the kingdoms of the world.

[416] A security of clay or earth. Often, in his sermon on Dan. vi. 26, before the House of Commons, 1644, he uses such expressions as, "Clay triumpheth over angels and hell, through the strength of Jesus" (p. 8); "Men are but pieces of breathing, laughing, and then dying, clay" (p. 41).

[417] Is it not "_take_?"

Laugh ye at the giddy-headed clay pots, and stout, brain-sick worms, that dare say in good earnest, "This man shall not reign over us!" as though they were casting the dice for Christ's crown, which of them should have it. I know that ye believe the coming of Christ's kingdom; and that there is a hole out of your prison, through which ye see daylight. Let not faith be dazzled with temptations from a dying Deputy,[418] and from a sick Prelate. Believe under a cloud, and wait for Him when there is no moonlight nor starlight. Let faith live and breathe, and lay hold on the sure salvation of God, when clouds and darkness are about you, and appearance of rotting in the prison before you. Take heed of unbelieving hearts, which can father lies upon Christ. Beware of "Doth His promise fail for evermore?" (Ps. lxxvii. 8). For it was a man, and not God, that said it, who dreamed that a promise of God could fail, fall aswoon, or die. We can make God sick, or His promises weak, when we are pleased to seek a plea with Christ. O sweet, O stout word of faith, "Though He may slay me, yet will I trust in Him!" (Job xiii. 15). O sweet epitaph, written upon the grave-stone of a dying believer, namely, "I died hoping, and my dust and ashes believe in life!" Faith's eyes, that can see through a mill-stone, can see through a gloom of God, and under it read God's thoughts of love and peace. Hold fast Christ in the dark; surely ye shall see the salvation of God. Your adversaries are ripe and dry for the fire. Yet a little while, and they shall go up in a flame; the breath of the Lord, like a river of brimstone, shall kindle about them (Isa. xxx. 33).

[418] Deputy, or Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

What I write to one, I write to you all that are sound-hearted in that kingdom, whom, in the bowels of Christ, I would exhort not to touch that oath. Albeit the adversaries put a fair meaning on it, yet the swearer must swear according to the professed intent and godless practice of the oath-makers, which is known to the world. Otherwise I might swear that the Creed is false, according to this private meaning and sense put upon it. Oh, let them not be beguiled to wash perjury and the denial of Christ and the Gospel with ink water, some foul and rotten distinctions. Wash, and wash again and again, the devil and the lie, it will be long ere their skin be white.

I profess it should beseem men of great parts rather than me to write to you. But I love your cause, and desire to be excused; and must entreat for the help of your prayers, in this my weighty charge here for the university and pulpit, and that ye would intreat your acquaintance also to help me. Grace be with you all. Amen.

Your brother and companion, in the patience and kingdom of Jesus Christ,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, 1640.

CCXCII.--_To MRS. PONT, Prisoner at Dublin._

[MRS. PONT, whose maiden name was Isabel Stewart, was the wife of Mr. Pont, minister of a parish in the diocese of Raphoe. Pont declined to use the prescribed ceremonies of the church, and condemned the increasing severities towards nonconformists, together with the unscriptural jurisdiction of the prelates. It appears that he had also held meetings for worship and public preaching, contrary to the canons; and that his wife had in some way signalized herself by her opposition to Prelacy, and her frequenting these more private assemblies. John Leslie, Bishop of Raphoe, reporting the matter to Wentworth, was recommended to deprive Pont of his benefice, and "to proceed against his wife in such way as her fault deserves, and the laws will bear." Pont himself escaped to Scotland, but his wife was imprisoned in the castle of Dublin. She lay in prison nearly three years, not being liberated till 1641 by the Irish Parliament. In May 1641 she presented a petition to the Irish House of Commons against the Bishop of Raphoe, for committing her to prison, and charging her with high treason, solely on his own authority. The House resolved that the Bishop, by his illegal conduct, had involved himself in the penalties of the statute of _præmunire_; but no further proceedings appear to have been taken against him. "In these proceedings," says Dr. Reid, "Mrs. Pont is styled, 'Mrs. Isabel Pont _alias_ Stewart, widow;' whence it appears that her husband must have died soon after he had fled to Scotland" (Reid's "History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland," vol. i.). This lady afterwards came over to Scotland, and died on the 9th of November 1704. Wodrow visited her repeatedly under her last illness. He calls her "this extraordinary person." On visiting her the night preceding her death, she said to him, "I never had so few temptations as now. I am only waiting God's time of departure." Again calling upon her next morning, he says, "I think her last breath went out just when I resigned her to God, as far as I could notice, about seven in the morning" ("Analecta," vol. i. p. 55).]

(_SUPPORT UNDER TRIALS--THE MASTER'S REWARD._)

WORTHY AND DEAR MISTRESS,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--The cause which ye suffer for, and your willingness to suffer, is ground enough of acquaintance for me to write to you; although I do confess myself unable to speak for the encouragement of a prisoner of Christ.

I know that ye have advantage beyond us who are not under sufferings; for your sighing (Ps. cii. 20) is a written bill for the ears of your Head, the Lord Jesus; and your breathing (Lam. iii. 56), and your looking up (Ps. v. 3, and lxix. 3). And, therefore, your meaning, half-spoken, half-unspoken, will seek no jailor's leave, but will go to heaven without leave of prelate or deputy, and be heartily welcome; so that ye may sigh and groan out your mind to Him who hath all the keys of the king's three kingdoms and dominions. I dare believe that your hope shall not die. Your trouble is a part of Zion's burning; and ye know who guideth Zion's furnace, and who loveth the ashes of His burnt bride, because His servants love them (Ps. cii. 14). I believe that your ashes, if ye were burnt for this cause, shall praise Him: for the wrath of men and their malice shall make a psalm to praise the Lord (Ps. lxxvi. 10). And, therefore, stand still, and behold and see what the Lord is to do for this island. His work is perfect (Deut. xxxii. 4). The nations have not seen the last end of His work; His end is more fair and more glorious than the beginning.

Ye have more honour than ye can be able to guide well, in that your bonds are made heavy for such an honourable cause. The seals of a controlled[419] Gospel, and the seals by bonds, and blood, and sufferings, are not committed to every ordinary professor. Some that would back Christ honestly in summer-time, would but spill the beauty of the Gospel if they were put to suffering. And, therefore, let us believe that Wisdom dispenseth to every one here, as He thinketh good, who beareth them up that bear the cross. And since our Lord hath put you to that part which was the flower of His own sufferings, we all expect that, as ye have in the strength of our Captain begun, so ye will go on without fainting. Providence maketh use of men and devils for the refining of all the vessels of God's house, small and great, and for doing of two great works at once in you, both for smoothing a stone to make it take band with Christ in Jerusalem's wall, and for witnessing to the glory of this reproached and borne-down Gospel, which cannot die though hell were made a grave about it. It shall be timeous joy for you, to divide joy betwixt you and Christ's laughing bride in these three kingdoms. And what if your mourning continue till mystical Christ (in Ireland and in Great Britain) and ye laugh both together? Your laughing and joy were the more blessed, that one sun should shine upon Christ, the Gospel, and you, laughing altogether in these three kingdoms. Your time is measured, and your days and hours of suffering from eternity were, by infinite Wisdom, considered. If heaven recompense not to your own mind inches of sorrow, then I must say that infinite Mercy cannot get you pleased; but if the first kiss of the white and ruddy cheek of the Standard-bearer and Chief among ten thousand thousand (Cant. v. 10), shall overpay your prison at Dublin, in Ireland, then ye shall have no counts unanswered to give in to Christ. If your faith cannot see a nearer term-day, yet let me charge your hope to give Christ a new day, till eternity and time meet in one point. A paid sum, if ever paid, is paid if no day be broken to the hungry creditor. Take heaven's bond and subscribed obligation for the sum (John xiv. 3). If hope can trust Christ, I know that He can, and will pay. But when all is done and suffered by you, ten hundred deaths for lovely, lovely Jesus is but eternity's halfpenny; figures and cyphers cannot lay the proportion. Oh, but the surplus of Christ's glory is broad and large! Christ's items of eternal glory are hard and cumbersome to tell; and if ye borrow, by faith and hope, ten days or ten hundred years from that eternity of glory that abideth you, ye are paid and more, in your own hand. Therefore, O prisoner of hope, wait on; posting, hasting salvation sleepeth not. Antichrist is bleeding, and in the way to death; and he biteth the sorest, when he bleedeth the fastest. Keep your intelligence betwixt you and heaven, and your court with Christ. He hath in heaven the keys of your prison, and can set you at liberty when He pleaseth. His rich grace support you. I pray you to help me with your prayers. Grace be with you.

[419] The Gospel, the preaching of which men are seeking to hinder.

Your brother, in the patience and kingdom of Jesus Christ,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, 1640.

CCXCIII.--_To_ MR. JAMES WILSON.

[There was a cotemporary of that name, the minister of Inch, in the Presbytery of Stranraer. There was also a _James Wilson_ who was a friend of Blair, and minister of Dysart in 1653. (See Row's "Life of Blair.") This letter indicates that the correspondent was a man of thought and education.]

(_ADVICES TO A DOUBTING SOUL--MISTAKES ABOUT HIS INTEREST IN GOD'S LOVE--TEMPTATION--PERPLEXITY ABOUT PRAYER--WANT OF FEELING._)

DEAR BROTHER,--Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied upon you.--I bless our rich and only wise Lord, who careth so for His new creation that He is going over it again, and trying every piece in you, and blowing away the motes of His new work in you. Alas! I am not so fit a physician as your disease requireth. Sweet, sweet, lovely Jesus be your physician, where His under-chirurgeons cannot do anything for putting in order the wheels, paces, and goings of a marred[420] soul. I have little time; but yet the Lord hath made me so to concern myself in your condition, that I dow not, I dare not, be altogether silent.

[420] A soul that has been put out of order. The edition of 1675, and some others, has "married soul."

First: ye doubt, from 2 Cor. xiii. 5, whether ye be in Christ or not? and so, whether you are a reprobate or not? I answer three things to the doubt.--1. Ye owe charity to all men, but most of all to lovely and loving Jesus, and some also to your self; especially to your renewed self, because your new self is not yours, but another Lord's, even the work of His own Spirit. Therefore, to slander His work is to wrong Himself. Love thinketh no evil: if ye love grace, think not ill of grace in yourself. And ye think ill of grace in yourself when ye make it but a bastard and a work of nature; for a holy fear that ye be not Christ's, and withal a care and a desire to be His, and not your own, is not, nay cannot be, bastard nature. The great Advocate pleadeth hard for you; be upon the Advocate's side, O poor feared client of Christ! Stay, and side with such a Lover, who pleadeth for no other man's goods than His own; for He (if I may say so) scorneth to be enriched with unjust conquest. And yet He pleadeth for you, whereof your letter (though too, too full of jealousy) is a proof. For, if ye were not His, your thoughts (which, I hope, are but the suggestions of His Spirit, that only bringeth the matter into debate to make it sure to you) would not be such, nor so serious as these, "Am I His?" or "Whose am I?" 2. Dare ye forswear your Owner, and say in cold blood, "I am not His"? What nature or corruption saith at starts in you, I regard not. Your thoughts of yourself, when sin and guiltiness round you in the ear, and when you have a sight of your deservings, are Apocrypha, and not Scripture, I hope. Hear what the Lord saith of you: "He will speak peace." If your Master say, "I quit you," I shall then bid you eat ashes for bread, and drink waters of gall and wormwood. But, however Christ out of His own mouth should seem to say, "I come not for thee," as He did, Matt. xv. 24; yet let me say that the words of the tempting Jesus[421] are not to be stretched as Scripture, beyond His intention, seeing His intention in speaking them is to strengthen, not to deceive. And, therefore, here faith may contradict what Christ seemeth at first to say, and so may ye. I charge you by the mercies of God, be not that cruel to grace and the new birth as to cast water on your own coal by misbelief. If ye must die (as I know ye shall not), it were a folly to slay yourself. 3. I hope that ye love the new birth and a claim to Christ, howbeit ye do not make it good; and if ye were in hell, and saw the heavenly face of lovely, ten thousand times lovely Jesus, that hath God's hue, and God's fair, fair and comely red and white, wherewith it is beautified beyond comparison and imagination, ye could not forbear to say, "Oh, if I could but blow a kiss from my sinful mouth from hell up to heaven, upon His cheeks that are a bed of spices as sweet flowers!" (Cant. v. 13). I hope ye dare say, "O fairest sight of heaven! O boundless mass of crucified and slain love for me, give me leave to wish to love Thee! O Flower and Bloom of heaven and earth's love! O angels' Wonder! O Thou, the Father's eternal, sealed Love! and O Thou, God's old Delight! give me leave to stand beside Thy love, and look in and wonder; and give me leave to wish to love Thee, if I can do no more." 4. We being born in atheism, and bairns of the house that we are come of, it is no new thing, my dear brother, for us to be under jealousies and mistakes about the love of God. What think ye of this, that the man, Christ, was tempted to believe there were but two persons in the blessed Godhead, and that the Son of God, the substantial and coeternal Son, was not the lawful Son of God? Did not Satan say, "If Thou be the Son of God?"

[421] Jesus, when He puts us to trial (Gen. xxii.).

Secondly: Ye say, that ye know not what to do. Your Head said once the same word, or not far from it. "Now is My soul troubled, and what shall I say?" (John xii. 27). And faith answered Christ's "What shall I say?" with these words: "O tempted Saviour, askest Thou, 'What shall I say?' Say, 'Pray, Father, save Me from this hour.'" What course can ye take but pray and frist Christ His own comforts? He is no dyvour; take His word. "Oh," say ye, "I cannot pray?" Answer--Honest sighing is faith breathing and whispering Him in the ear. The life is not out of faith where there is sighing, looking up with the eyes, and breathing toward God. Hide not Thine ear at my breathing (Lam. iii. 56). "But what shall I do in spiritual exercises?" ye say. Answer--1. If ye knew particularly what to do, it were not a spiritual exercise. 2. In my weak judgment, ye should first say, "I would glorify God in believing David's salvation, and the Bride's marriage with the Lamb, and love the church's slain Husband, although I cannot for the present believe mine own salvation." 3. Say, "I will not pass from my claim: suppose Christ should pass from His claim to me, it shall not go back upon my side. Howbeit my love to Him be not worth a drink of water, yet Christ shall have it, such as it is." 4. Say, "I shall rather spill twenty prayers, than not pray at all. Let my broken words go up to heaven: when they come up into the Great Angel's golden censer, that compassionate Advocate will put together my broken prayers, and perfume them." Words are but the accidents[422] of prayer.

[422] The incidental accompaniments.

"Oh," say ye, "I am slain with hardness of heart, and troubled with confused and melancholious thoughts." Answer--My dear brother, what would ye conclude thence? That ye know not well who aughteth you? I grant: "Oh, my heart is hard! oh, my thoughts of faithless sorrow! _Ergo_, I know not who aughteth me," were good logic in heaven amongst angels and the glorified; but down in Christ's hospital, where sick and distempered souls are under cure, it is not worth a straw. Give Christ time to end His work in your heart. Hold on, in feeling and bewailing your hardness; for that is softness to feel hardness. 2. I charge you to make psalms of Christ's praises for His begun work of grace. Make Christ your music and your song; for complaining and feeling of want doth often swallow up your praises. What think ye of those who go to hell never troubled with such thoughts? If your exercises be the way to hell, God help me! I have a cold coal to blow at, and a blank paper for heaven. I give you Christ caution, and my heaven surety, for your salvation. Lend Christ your melancholy, for Satan hath no right to make a chamber in your melancholy. Borrow joy and comfort from the Comforter. Bid the Spirit do His office in you; and remember that faith is one thing, and the feeling and notice of faith another. God forbid that _feeling_ were _proprium quarto modo_[423] to all the saints; and that this were good reasoning, "No feeling, no grace." I am sure ye were not always, these twenty years by-past, actually knowing that ye live! yet all this time ye are living. So it is with the life of faith.

[423] This is a term of logic, and refers to the fourth kind of categorical proposition, in which some particular point is proved in the negative.

But, alas! dear brother, it is easy for me to speak words and syllables of peace; but Isaiah telleth you, "I create peace" (Isa. lvii. 19). There is but one Creator, ye know. Oh that ye may get a letter of peace sent you from heaven!

Pray for me, and for grace to be faithful, and for gifts to be able, with tongue and pen, to glorify God. I forget you not.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, _Jan. 8, 1640_.

CCXCIV.--_To my_ LADY BOYD.

(_SINS OF THE LAND--DWELLING IN CHRIST--FAITH AWAKE SEES ALL WELL._)

MADAM,--I received your Ladyship's letter; but because I was still going through the country for the affairs of the church, I had no time to answer it.

I had never more cause to fear than I have now, when my Lord hath restored me to my second created heaven on earth, and hath turned my apprehended fears into joys, and great deliverance to His church, whereof I have my share and part. Alas! that weeping prayers, answered and sent back from heaven with joy, should not have laughing praises! Oh that this land would repent, and lay burdens of praises upon the top of the fair Mount Zion! Madam, except this land be humbled, a Reformation is rather my wonder than belief, at this time. But surely it must be a wonder, and what is done already is a wonder. Our Lord must restore beauty to His churches without hire; for we are sold without money, and now our buyers repent them of the bargain, and would gladly give again better-cheap than they bought us. They devoured Jacob, and eat up His people as bread; now Jacob is growing a living child in their womb, and they would fain be delivered of the child, and render the birth. Our Lord shall be midwife. Oh that this land be not like Ephraim, "An unwise son, that stayeth too long in the place of the breaking forth of children!" Your Ladyship is blessed with children who are honoured to build up Christ's waste places again. I believe that your Ladyship will think them well bestowed on that work, and that Zion's beauty is your joy. This is a mark and evidence from heaven, which helpeth weak ones to hold their grip, when other marks fail them.

I hope that your Ladyship is at a good understanding with Christ, and that, as becometh a Christian, ye take Him up aright; for many mistake and misshape Christ in His comings and goings. Your wants and falls proclaim that ye have nothing of your own but what ye borrow; nay, yourself is not your own, but Christ hath given Himself to you. Put Christ to the bank, and heaven shall be your interest and income. Love Him, for ye cannot over-love Him. Take up your house in Christ. Let Him dwell in you, and abide in Him; and then ye may look out of Christ, and laugh at the clay-heavens that the sons of men are seeking after on this side of the water. Christ mindeth to make your losses grace's great advantage. Christ will lose nothing of you; nay, not even your sins, for He hath a use for them, as well as for your service; howbeit ye are to loathe yourself for these. I hope that ye fetch all the heaven ye have here in this life from that which is up above, and that your anchor is casten as high and deep as Christ. (Oh, but it is far and many a mile to the bottom!) If I had known long since, as I do now (though still, alas! I am ignorant), what was in Christ, I would not have been so late in starting to the gate to seek Him. Oh what can I do or say to Him who hath made the North render me back again! A grave is no sure prison to Him for the keeping of dry bones. Wo is me, that my foolish sorrow and unbelief, being on horseback, did ride so proudly and witlessly over my Lord's providence! But when my faith was asleep, Christ was awake; and now, when I am awake, I say He did all things well. O infinite wisdom! O incomparable loving-kindness! Alas, that the heart I have is so little and worthless for such a Lord as Christ is! Oh what odds find the saints in hard trials, when they feel sap at their roots, betwixt them and sun-burned, withered professors! Crosses and storms cause them to cast their blooms and leaves. Poor worldlings, what will ye do when the span-length of your forenoon's laughter is ended, and when the weeping side of providence is turned to you?

I put all the favours which ye have bestowed on my brother upon Christ's score; in whose books are many such counts, and who will requite them. I wish you to be builded more and more upon the stone laid in Zion, and then ye shall be the more fit to have a hand in rebuilding our Lord's fallen tabernacle in this land; in which ye shall find great peace when ye come to grips with death, the king of terrors.

The God of peace be with your Ladyship, and keep you blameless till the day of our Lord Jesus.

Your Ladyship's, at all obedience in his sweet Lord and Master,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS.

CCXCV.--_To his very dear Friend_, JOHN FENWICK.

[MR. JOHN FENWICK was an Englishman, who suffered considerably for nonconformity. He is mentioned in Row's "Life of R. Blair," where it is said that "John Fenwick was one of the best of the Commissioners sent by Cromwell to visit the Universities." He was a Puritan and Nonconformist.]

(_CHRIST THE FOUNTAIN--FREENESS OF GOD'S LOVE--FAITH TO BE EXERCISED UNDER FROWNS--GRACE FOR TRIALS--CHRIST YET TO BE EXALTED ON THE EARTH._)

MUCH HONOURED AND DEAR FRIEND,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--The necessary impediments of my calling have hitherto kept me from making a return to your letter, the heads whereof I shall now briefly answer.

I approve of your going to the Fountain, when your own cistern is dry. A difference there must be betwixt Christ's well and your borrowed water; and why but ye have need of emptiness and drying up, as well as ye have need of the well? Want and a hole there must be in our vessel, to leave room to Christ's art. His well hath its own need of thirsty drinkers, to commend infinite love which, from eternity, did brew such a cellar of living waters for us.

Ye commend His free love; and it is well done. Oh, if I could help you! and if I could be master-convener to gather an earth-full and an heaven-full of tongues, dipped and steeped in my Lord's well of love, or His wine of love, even tongues drunken with His love, to raise a song of praises to Him, betwixt the east and west end, and furthest points of the broad heavens! If I were in your case (as, alas! my dry and dead heart is not now in that garden), I would borrow leave to come and stand upon the banks and coasts of that sea of love, and be a feasted soul to see love's fair tide, free love's high and lofty waves, each of them higher than ten earths, flowing in upon pieces of lost clay. Oh, welcome, welcome, great sea! Oh, if I had as much love, for wideness and breadth, as twenty outmost shells and spheres of the heaven of heavens, that I might receive in a little flood of His free love! Come, come, dear friend, and be pained that the King's wine-cellar of free love, and His banqueting-house (oh so wide, so stately! oh so God-like, so glory-like!) should be so abundant, so overflowing, and your shallow vessel so little to take in some part of that love. But since it cannot come into you for want of room, enter yourself into this sea of love, and breathe under these waters, and die of love; and live as one dead and drowned of this love.

But why do ye complain of waters going over your soul, and that the smoke of the terrors of a wrathful Lord do almost suffocate you, and bring you to death's brink? I know that the fault is in your eyes, not in Him. It is not the rock that fleeth and moveth, but the green sailor. If your sense and apprehension be made judge of His love, there is a graven image made presently, even a changed god, and a foe-god, who was once ("When ye washed your steps with butter, and the rock poured you out rivers of oil," Job xxix. 6) a Friend-God. Either now or never, let God work. Ye had never, since ye were a man, such a fair field for faith; for a painted hell, and an apprehension of wrath in your Father, is faith's opportunity to try what strength is in it. Now, give God as large a measure of charity as ye have of sorrow. Now, see faith to be faith indeed, if ye can make your grave betwixt Christ's feet, and say, "Though He should slay me, I will trust in Him. His believed love shall be my winding-sheet, and all my grave-clothes; I shall roll and sew in my soul, my slain soul, in that web, His sweet and free love; and let Him write upon my grave, 'Here lieth a believing dead man, breathing out and making a hole in death's broadside, and the breath of faith cometh forth through the hole.'" See now if ye can overcome and prevail with God, and wrestle God's tempting to death, quite out of breath, as that renowned wrestler did: "And by his strength he had power with God; yea, he had power over the angel and prevailed" (Hosea xii. 3, 4). He is a strong man indeed who overmatcheth heaven's Strength, and the Holy One of Israel, the strong Lord: which is done by a secret supply of divine strength within, wherewith the weakest, being strengthened, overcome and conquer. It shall be great victory, to blow out the flame of that furnace ye are now in, with the breath of faith. And when hell, men, malice, cruelty, falsehood, devils, the seeming glooms of a sweet Lord, meet you in the teeth, if ye then, as a captive of hope, as one fettered in hope's prison, run to your stronghold, even from God glooming to God glooming, and believe the salvation of the Lord in the dark, which is your only victory, your enemies (that are but pieces of malicious clay) shall die as men, and be confounded. But, that your troubles are many at once, and arrows come in from all airths, from country, friends, wife, children, foes, estate, and right down from God who is the hope and stay of your soul, I confess is more, and very heavy to be borne. Yet all these are not more than grace; all these bits of coals casten into your sea of mercy cannot dry it up. Your troubles are many and great; yet not an ounce-weight beyond the measure of infinite wisdom, I hope, nor beyond the measure of grace that He is to bestow. For our Lord never yet brake the back of His child, nor spilled His own work. Nature's plastering and counterfeit work He doth often break in shreds, and putteth out a candle not lighted at the Sun of righteousness; but He must cherish His own reeds (Isa. xlii. 3), and handle them softly (never a reed getteth a thrust with the Mediator's hand!), to lay together the two ends of the reed. Oh, what bands and ligaments hath our Chirurgeon of broken spirits, to bind up all His lame and bruised ones with! Cast your disjointed spirit into His lap; and lay your burden upon One who is so willing to take your cares and your fears off you, and to exchange and niffer your crosses, and to give you new for old, and gold for iron; even to give you garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

It is true, in great part, what ye write of this kirk, that the letter of religion only is reformed, and scarce that. I do not believe our Lord will build His Zion in this land upon this skin of reformation. So long as our scum remaineth, and our heart-idols are kept, this work must be at a stand; and, therefore, our Lord must yet sift this land, and search us with candles. And I know that He will give and not sell us His kingdom. His grace and our remaining guiltiness must be compared; and the one must be seen in the glory of it, and the other in the sinfulness of it. But I desire to believe, and would gladly hope to see, that the glancing and shining lustre of glory coming from the diamonds and stones set in the crown of our Lord Jesus shall cast rays and beams many thousand miles about. I hope that Christ is upon a great marriage; and that His wooing and suiting of His excellent Bride doth take its beginning from us, the ends of the earth. Oh, what joy and what glory would I judge it, if my heaven should be suspended till I might have leave to run on foot to be a witness of that marriage-glory, and see Christ put on the glory of His last-married bride, and His last marriage-love on earth; when He shall enlarge His love-bed, and set it upon the top of the mountains, and take in the Elder Sister, the Jews, and the fulness of the Gentiles! It were heaven's honour and glory upon earth to be His lackey, to run at His horse's foot, and hold up the train of His marriage-robe royal, in the day of our high and royal Solomon's espousals. But oh, what glory to have a seat, or bed, in the chariot of King Jesus, that is bottomed with gold, and paved, and lined over, and floored within with love, for the daughters of Jerusalem (Cant. iii. 10). To lie upon such a King's love, were a bed next to the flower of heaven's glory.

I am sorry to hear you speak in your letter of a "God angry at you," and of "the sense of His indignation;" which only ariseth from suffering for Jesus all that is now come upon you. Indeed, "apprehended wrath" flameth out of such ashes as "apprehended sin," but not from "suffering for Christ." But, suppose ye were in hell for bygones and for old debt, I hope ye owe Christ a great sum of charity, to believe the sweetness of His love. I know what it is to sin in that kind. It is to sin (if it were possible) the unchangeableness of a Godhead out of Christ, and to sin away a lovely and unchangeable God. Put more honest apprehensions upon Christ. Put on His own mask upon His face, and not your vail made of unbelief, which speaketh as if He borrowed love to you, from you and your demerits and sinful deservings. Oh, no! Christ is man, but He is not like man. He hath man's love in heaven, but it is lustred with God's love, and it is very God's love ye have to do with. When your wheels go about, He standeth still. Let God be God. And be ye a man, and have ye the deserving of man, and the sin of one who hath suffered your Well-beloved to slip away, nay, hath refused Him entrance when He was knocking, till His head and locks were frozen: yet what is that to Him? His book keepeth your name, and is not printed and reprinted, and changed, and corrected. And why but He should go to His place, and hide Himself? Howbeit His departure be His own good work, yet the belief of it, in that manner, is your sin. But wait on till He return with salvation, and cause you to rejoice in the latter end. It is not much to complain; but rather believe than complain, and sit in the dust, and close your mouth, till He make your sown light[424] grow again. For your afflictions are not eternal; time will end them, and so shall ye at length see the Lord's salvation. His love sleepeth not, but is still working for you. His salvation will not tarry nor linger; and suffering for Him is the noblest cross that is out of heaven. Your Lord had the wale and choice of ten thousand other crosses beside this, to exercise you withal; but His wisdom and His love waled and choosed out this for you, beside them all. And take it as a choice one, and make use of it so as ye look to this world as your stepmother, in your borrowed prison. For it is a love-look to heaven and the other side of the water that God seeketh; and this is the fruit, the flower and bloom growing out of your cross, that ye be a dead man to time, to clay, to gold, to country, to friends, wife, children, and all pieces of created nothings; for in them there is not a seat nor bottom for soul's love. Oh, what room is for your love (if it were as broad as the sea) up in heaven, and in God! And what would not Christ give for your love? God gave so much for your soul; and blessed are ye if ye have a love for Him, and can call in your soul's love from all idols, and can make a God of God, a God of Christ, and draw a line betwixt your heart and Him. If your deliverance came not, Christ's presence and His believed love must stand as caution and surety for your deliverance, till your Lord send it in His blessed time. For Christ hath many salvations, if we could see them; and I would think it better-born comfort and joy that cometh from the faith of deliverance, and the faith of His love, than that which cometh from deliverance itself. It is not much matter, if ye find ease to your afflicted soul, what be the means, either of your own wishing or of God's choosing. The latter, I am sure, is best, and the comforts strongest and sweetest. Let the Lord absolutely have the ordering of your evils and troubles; and put them off you by recommending your cross and your furnace to Him who hath skill to melt His own metal, and knoweth well what to do with His furnace. Let your heart be willing that God's fire have your tin, and brass, and dross. To consent to want corruption is a greater mercy than many professors do well know; and to refer the manner of God's physic to His own wisdom, whether it be by drawing blood, or giving sugared drinks. That He cureth sick folks without pain, is a great point of faith; and to believe Christ's cross to be a friend, as He Himself is a Friend, is also a special act of faith. But when ye are over the water, this case shall be a yesterday past a hundred years ere ye were born; and the cup of glory shall wash the memory of all this away, and make it as nothing. Only now take Christ in with you under your yoke, and let patience have her perfect work; for this haste is your infirmity. The Lord is rising up to do you good in the latter end; put on the faith of His salvation, and see Him posting and hasting towards you.

[424] Ps. xcvii. 11.

Sir, my employments (being so great) hinder me to write at more length. Excuse me; I hope to be mindful of you. I shall be obliged to you, if ye help me with your prayers for this people, this college, and my own poor soul.

Grace be with you. Remember my love to your wife.

Yours, in Christ Jesus,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, _Feb. 13, 1640_.

CCXCVI.--_To the much honoured_ PETER STIRLING.

[He may have been related to James Stirling, minister of Paisley, who, along with Sir J. Stuart of Goodtrees, wrote "Naphtali;" or to John Stirling, minister of Edinburgh, one who suffered much, and is referred to in the notice to Letter XCI.]

(_BELIEVERS' GRACES ALL FROM CHRIST--ASPIRATION AFTER MORE LOVE TO HIM--HIS REIGN DESIRED._)

MUCH HONOURED AND WORTHY SIR,--I received yours, and cannot but be ashamed that mistaken love hath brought me into court[425] and account in the heart of God's children, especially of another nation. I should not make a lie of the grace of God, if I should think I have little share of it myself. Oh, how much better were it for me to stand in the counting-table of many for a halfpenny, and to be esteemed a _liker_, rather than a _lover_ of Christ! If I were weighed, vanity would bear down the scale, as having weight in the balance above me, except my lovely Saviour should cast in beside me some of His borrowed worth. And oh if I were writing now sincerely in this extenuation, which may be (and I fear is) subtle and cozening pride! I would I could love something of heaven's worth, in you and all of your metal. Oh how happy were I, if I could regain and conquer back from the creature my sold and lost love, that I might lay it upon heaven's Jewel, that ever, ever blooming Flower of the highest garden, even my soul-redeeming and never-enough prized Lord Jesus! Oh that He would wash my love, and put it on the Mediator's wheel, and refine it from its dross and tin, that I might propine and gift that Lord, so love-worthy, with all my love! Oh, if I could set a lease of thousands of years, and a suspension of my part of heaven's glory, and frist, till a long day, my desired salvation, so being that I could, in this lower kitchen and undervault of His creation, be feasted with His love, and that I might be a footstool to His glory before men and angels! Oh, if He would let out heaven's fountain upon withered me, dry and sapless me! If I were but sick of love for His love. And oh, how would that sickness delight me! How sweet should that easing and refreshing pain be to my soul!

[425] Favour.

I shall be glad to be a witness, to behold the kingdoms of the world become Christ's. I could stay out of heaven many years to see that victorious triumphing Lord act that prophesied part of His soul-conquering love, in taking into His kingdom the greater sister, that kirk of the Jews, who sometime courted our Well-beloved for her little sister (Cant. viii. 8); to behold Him set up as an ensign and banner of love, to the ends of the world. And truly we are to believe that His wrath is ripe for the land of graven images, and for the falling of that millstone into the midst of the sea. Grace be with you.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, _March 6. 1640_.

CCXCVII.--_To the_ LADY FINGASK.

[This lady has been supposed to be LADY ANNE MONCRIEFF, wife of Sir John Dundas of Fingask in Perthshire. She was daughter of William Moncrieff of that ilk, and her mother was one of the Murrays of Abercarnie. See notice prefixed to the letter to "The Laird of Moncrieff." At the same time, it is not impossible that Rutherford, who was then at St. Andrews, may be writing to a lady in the neighbourhood; for we find ("Inquisit. Retornat. Abbreviat.") that the ancestors of the martyr Thomas Forret possessed the estate of "_Fyngask_, in regalitate Sanctæ Andreæ."]

(_FAITH'S MISGIVINGS--SPIRITUAL DARKNESS NOT GRACE--CHRIST'S LOVE INIMITABLE._)

MADAM,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--Though not acquainted, yet, at the desire of a Christian, I make bold to write a line or two unto you, by way of counsel, howbeit I be most unfit for that.

I hear, and I bless the Father of lights for it, that ye have a spirit set to seek God, and that the posture of your heart is to look heavenward, which is a work and cast of the Mediator Christ's right hand, who putteth on the heart a new frame. For the which I would have your Ladyship to see a tie and bond of obedience laid upon you, that all may be done, not so much from obligation of law, as from the tie of free love; that the law of ransom-paying by Christ may be the chief ground of all our obedience, seeing that ye are not under the law, but under grace. Withal, know that unbelief is a spiritual sin, and so not seen by nature's light; and that all which conscience saith is not Scripture. Suppose that your heart bear witness against you for sins done long ago: yet, because many have pardon with God that have not peace with themselves, ye are to stand and fall by Christ's esteem and verdict of you, and not by that which your heart saith. Suppose it may, by accident, be a good sign to be jealous of your heavenly Husband's love, yet it is a sinful sign; as there be some happy sins (if I may speak so), not of themselves, but because they are neighboured with faith and love. And so, worthy Lady, I would have you to hold by this, that the ancient love of an old husband standeth firm and sure. And let faith hing by this small thread, that He loved you before He laid the corner-stone of the world, and therefore He cannot change His mind; because He is God, and resteth in His love. Neither is sin in you a good reason wherefore ye should doubt of Him, or think, because sin hath put you in the courtesy and reverence of justice, that therefore He is wroth with you: neither is it presumption in you to lay the burden of your salvation on One mighty to save, so being that ye lay aside all confidence in yourself, your worth and righteousness. True faith is humble, and seeth no way to escape but only in Christ. And I believe that ye have put an esteem and high price upon Christ: and they cannot but believe, and so be saved, who love Christ, and to whom He is precious; for the love of Christ has chosen Christ as a lover. And it were not like God, if ye should choose Him as your liking, and He not choose you again. Nay, He hath prevented you in that, for ye have not chosen Him, but He hath chosen you.

O consider His loveliness and beauty, and that there is nothing which can commend and make fair heaven, or earth, or the creature, that is not in Him in infinite perfection; for fair sun and fair moon are black, and think shame to shine before His fairness (Isa. xxiv. 23; Job xxv. 5). Base heavens, and excellent Jesus! weak angels, and strong and mighty Jesus! foolish angel-wisdom, and only wise Jesus! short-living creature, and long-living and ever-living Ancient of days! Miserable, and sickly, and wretched are those things that are within time's circle, and only, only blessed Jesus! If ye can wind-in into His love (and He giveth you leave to love Him, and allurements also), what a second heaven's paradise, a young heaven's glory, is it to be hot and burned with fevers of love-sickness for Him! And the more your Ladyship drink of this love, there is the more room, and the greater delight and desire for this love. Be homely, and hunger for a feast and fill of His love; for that is the borders and march of heaven. Nothing hath a nearer resemblance to the colour, and hue, and lustre of heaven than Christ loved, and to breathe out love-words and love-sighs for Him. Remember what He is. When twenty thousand millions of heaven's lovers have worn their hearts threadbare of love, all is nothing, yea, less than nothing, to His matchless worth and excellency. Oh so broad and so deep as the sea of His desirable loveliness is! Glorified spirits, triumphing angels, the crowned and exalted lovers of heaven, stand without His loveliness (Ps. xvi. 2), and cannot put a circle on it. Oh if sin and time were from betwixt us and that royal King's love! that high Majesty (eternity's Bloom and Flower of high lustred beauty) might shine upon pieces of created spirits, and might bedew and overflow us, who are portions of endless misery and lumps of redeemed sin.

Alas! what do I? I but spill and lose words in speaking highly of Him who will bide and be above the music and songs of heaven, and never be enough praised by us all; to whose boundless and bottomless love I recommend your Ladyship, and am,

Your Ladyship's, in Christ Jesus,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, _March 27, 1640_.

CCXCVIII.--_To his Reverend and dear Brother, MR. DAVID DICKSON, on the Death of his Son._

["When told that Mr. Dickson had some children removed by death, Mr. S. Rutherford presently called for a pen, and wrote a profitable letter to Mr. Dickson; 'for' (said he) 'when one arm is broken off and bleeds, it makes the other bleed with it'" (Wodrow's "Analecta").]

(_GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY, AND DISCIPLINE BY AFFLICTION._)

REVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,--Ye look like the house whereof ye are a branch: the cross is a part of the liferent that lieth to all the sons of the house. I desire to suffer with you, if I could take a lift of your house-trial off you; but ye have preached it ere I knew anything of God. Your Lord may gather His roses, and shake His apples, at what season of the year He pleaseth. Each husbandman cannot make harvest when he pleaseth, as He can do. Ye are taught to know and adore His sovereignty, which He exerciseth over you, which yet is lustred with mercy. The child hath but changed a bed in the garden, and is planted up higher, nearer the sun, where he shall thrive better than in this outfield muir-ground. Ye must think your Lord would not want him one hour longer; and since the date of your loan of him was expired (as it is, if ye read the lease), let Him have His own with gain, as good reason were. I read on it an exaltation and a richer measure of grace, as the sweet fruit of your cross; and I am bold to say, that that college where your Master hath set you now shall find it.

I am content that Christ is so homely with my dear brother David Dickson, as to borrow and lend, and take and give with him. And ye know what are called the visitations of such a friend: it is, Come to the house, and be homely with what is yours. I persuade myself, upon His credit, that He hath left drink-money, and that He hath made the house the better of Him. I envy[426] not His waking love, who saw that this water was to be passed through, and that now the number of crosses lying in your way to glory are fewer by one than when I saw you. They must decrease. It is better than any ancient or modern commentary on your text, that ye preach upon in Glasgow. Read and spell right, for He knoweth what He doeth. He is only lopping and snedding a fruitful tree, that it may be more fruitful. I congratulate heartily with you His new welcome to your new charge.

[426] Read "envy not," that is, fret not at His love, which is fully awake to what it is doing.

Dearest brother, go on, and faint not. Something of yours is in heaven, beside the flesh of your exalted Saviour; and ye go on after your own. Time's thread is shorter by one inch than it was. An oath is sworn and past the seals, whether afflictions will or not, ye must grow, and swell out of your shell, and live, and triumph, and reign, and be more than a conqueror. For your Captain, who leadeth you on, is more than conqueror, and He maketh you partaker of His conquest and victory. Did not love to you compel me, I would not fetch water to the well, and speak to one who knoweth better than I can do what God is doing with him.

Remember my love to your wife, to Mr. John,[427] and all friends there. Let us be helped by your prayers, for I cease not to make mention of you to the Lord, as I can.

[427] Dickson's eldest son, who became Clerk to the Exchequer of Scotland.

Grace be with you.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, _May 28, 1640_.

CCXCIX.--_To my LADY BOYD, on the loss of several Friends._

(_TRUST EVEN THOUGH SLAIN--SECOND CAUSES NOT TO BE REGARDED--GOD'S THOUGHTS OF PEACE THEREIN--ALL IN MERCY._)

MADAM,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--Impute it not to a disrespective forgetfulness of your Ladyship, who ministered to me in my bonds, that I write not to you.

I wish that I could speak or write what might do good to your Ladyship; especially now when I think we cannot but have deep thoughts of the deep and bottomless ways of our Lord, in taking away, with a sudden and wonderful stroke, your brethren and friends. Ye may know, that all who die for sin die not in sin; and that "none can teach the Almighty knowledge." He answereth none of our courts,[428] and no man can say, "What doest Thou?" It is true that your brethren saw not many summers; but adore and fear the sovereignty of the great Potter, who maketh and marreth His clay-vessels when and how it pleaseth Him.

[428] When we summon Him into our court to explain.

The under-garden is absolutely His own, and all that groweth in it. His absolute liberty is law-biding. The flowers are His own. If some be but summer apples, He may pluck them down before others. Oh what wisdom is it to believe, and not to dispute; to subject the thoughts to His court, and not to repine at any act of His justice? He hath done it: all flesh be silent! It is impossible to be submissive and religiously patient, if ye stay your thoughts down among the confused rollings and wheels of second causes; as, "Oh the place!" "Oh the time!" "Oh if this had been, this had not followed!" Oh the linking of this accident with this time and place! Look up to the master-motion and the first wheel. See and read the decree of Heaven and the Creator of man, who breweth death to His children, and the manner of it. And they see far into a millstone, and have eyes that make a hole to see through the one side of a mountain to the other, who can take up His ways. "How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" His providence halteth not, but goeth with even and equal legs. Yet are they not the greatest sinners upon whom the tower of Siloam fell. Was not time's lease expired? and the sand of heaven's sand-glass, set by our Lord, run out? Is not he an unjust debtor who payeth due debt with chiding?

I believe, Christian lady, your faith leaveth that much charity to our Lord's judgments as to believe (howbeit ye be in blood sib to that cross) that yet ye are exempted and freed from the gall and wrath that is in it. I dare not deny but "the king of terrors dwelleth in the wicked man's tabernacle: brimstone shall be scattered on his habitation" (Job xviii. 15); yet, Madam, it is safe for you to live upon the faith of His love whose arrows are over-watered and pointed with love and mercy to His own, and who knoweth how to take you and yours out of the roll and book of the dead. Our Lord hath not the eyes of flesh in distributing wrath to the thousandth generation without exception. Seeing ye are not under the law, but under grace, and married to another Husband, wrath is not the court that you are liable to.

As I would not wish, neither do I believe, that your Ladyship doth "_despise_," so neither "_faint_" (Prov. iii. 11). Read and spell aright all the words and syllables in the visitation, and miscall neither letter nor syllable in it. Come along with the Lord, and see; and lay no more weight upon the law than your Christ hath laid upon it. If the law's bill get an answer from Christ, the curses of it can do more. And I hope you have resolved that, if He should grind you to powder, your dust and powder will believe His salvation.

And who can tell what thoughts of love and peace our Lord hath to your children? I trust He will make them famous in executing the written judgments upon the enemies of the Lord ("this honour hath all the saints," Ps. cxlix. 9), and that they shall bear stones on their shoulders for building that fair city that is called "The Lord is there" (Ezek. xlviii. 35). And happy shall they be who have a hand in the sacking of Babel, and come out in the year of vengeance for the controversy of Zion, against the land of graven images. Therefore, Madam, let the Lord make out of your father's house any work, even of judgment, that He pleaseth. What is wrath to others is mercy to you and your house. It is faith's work to claim and challenge loving-kindness out of all the roughest strokes of God. Do that for the Lord which ye will do for time: time will calm your heart at that which God hath done, and let our Lord have it now. What love ye did bear to friends now dead, seeing they stand now in no need of it, let it fall as just legacy to Christ. Oh how sweet to put out many strange lovers, and to put in Christ! It is much for our half-slain affections to part with that which we believe we have right unto; but the servant's will should be our will, and he is the best servant who retaineth least of his own will and most of his Master's. That much wisdom must be ascribed to our Lord, that He knoweth how to lead His own, in-through and out-through the little time-hells and the pieces of time-during wraths in this life; and yet keep safe His love, without any blur upon the old and great seal of free election. And, seeing His mountains of brass,[429] the mighty and strong decrees of free grace in Christ, stand sure, and the covenant standeth fast for ever as the days of heaven, let Him strike and nurture. His striking must be a very act of saving, seeing strokes upon His secret ones come from the soft and heavenly hand of the Mediator, and His rods are steeped and watered in that flood and river of love that cometh from the God-man's heart of our soul-loving and soul-redeeming JESUS.

[429] Zech. vi. 1.

I hope that ye are content to frist the Cautioner of mankind His own conquest, heaven, till He pay to you, and bring you to a state of glory, where He will never crook a finger upon, nor lift a hand to you again. And be content, and withal greedily covetous of grace, the interest and pledge of glory. If I did not believe your crop to be on the ground, and (your part of that heaven of the saints-heaven) white and ruddy, fair, fair, and beautiful Jesus were come to the bloom and the flower, and near your hook, I would not write this. But, seeing time's thread is short, and ye are upon the entry of heaven's harvest, and Christ, the field of heaven's glory, is white and ripe-like, the losses that I wrote of to your Ladyship are but summer-showers that will only wet your garments for an hour or two, and the sun of the New Jerusalem shall quickly dry the wet coat; especially seeing rains of affliction cannot stain the image of God, or cause grace to cast colour. And, since ye will not alter upon Him who will not change upon you, I durst, in my weakness, think myself no spiritual seer if I should not prophesy that daylight is near, when such a morning-darkness is upon you; and that this trial of your Christian mind towards Him (whom you dare not leave, howbeit He should slay you) shall close with a doubled mercy. It is time for faith to hold fast as much of Christ as ever ye had, and to make the grip stronger, and to cleave closer to Him, seeing Christ loveth to be believed in and trusted to. The glory of laying strength upon one that is mighty to save is more than we can think. That piece of service, believing in a smiting Redeemer, is a precious part of obedience. Oh what glory to Him to lay over the burden of our heaven upon Him that purchased for us an eternal kingdom! O blessed soul, who can adore and kiss His lovely free grace!

The rich grace of Christ be with your spirit.

Yours, at all obedience in Christ Jesus,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, _Oct. 15, 1640_.

CCC.--_To AGNES MACMATH, on the Death of a Child._

[AGNES MACMATH was the daughter of Mr. Macmath, a merchant in Edinburgh, and the sister of Rutherford's second wife.]

(_REASON FOR RESIGNATION._)

DEAR SISTER,--If our Lord hath taken away your child, your lease of him is expired; and seeing that Christ would want him no longer, it is your part to hold your peace, and worship and adore the sovereignty and liberty that the Potter hath over the clay, and pieces of clay-nothings, that He gave life unto. And what is man to call and summon the Almighty to His lower court down here? "for He giveth account of none of His doings." And if ye will take the loan of a child, and give him back again to our Lord laughing (as His borrowed goods should return to Him), believe that he is not gone away, but sent before; and that the change of the country should make you think, that he is not lost to you who is found to Christ, and that he is now before you; and that the dead in Christ shall be raised again. A going-down star is not annihilated, but shall appear again. If he hath casten his bloom and flower, the bloom is fallen in heaven, into Christ's lap. And as he was lent a while to time, so is he given now to eternity, which will take yourself. The difference of your shipping and his to heaven and Christ's shore, the land of life, is only in some few years, which weareth every day shorter; and some short and soon-reckoned summers will give you a meeting with him. But what! With him? Nay, but with a better company; with the Chief and Leader of the heavenly troops, that are riding on white horses, that are triumphing in glory.

If death were a sleep that had no wakening, we might sorrow: but our Husband shall quickly be at the bedsides of all that lie sleeping in the grave, and shall raise their mortal bodies. Christ was death's Cautioner, who gave His word to come and loose all the clay-pawns, and set them at His own right hand; and our Cautioner, Christ, hath an act of law-surety upon death, to render back his captives. And that Lord Jesus, who knoweth the turnings and windings that are in that black trance of death, hath numbered all the steps of the stair up to heaven. He knoweth how long the turnpike is, or how many pair of stairs high it is; for He ascended that way Himself: "I was dead and am alive" (Rev. i. 18). And now He liveth at the right hand of God, and His garments have not so much as a smell of death.

Your afflictions smell of the children's case; the bairns of the house are so nurtured (Heb. xii. 6, 7, 8). And suffering is no new life, it is but the rent of the sons; bastards have not so much of the rent. Take kindly and heartsomely with His cross, who never yet slew a child with the cross. He breweth your cup: therefore, drink it patiently and with the better will. Stay and wait on, till Christ loose the knot that fasteneth His cross on your back; for He is coming to deliver. And I pray you, sister, learn to be worthy of His pains who correcteth. And let Him wring, and be ye washen; for He hath a Father's heart, and a Father's hand, who is training you up, and making you meet for the high hall. This school of suffering is a preparation for the King's higher house; and let all your visitations speak all the letters of your Lord's summons. They cry--1. "O vain world!" 2. "O bitter sin!" 3. "O short and uncertain time!" 4. "O fair eternity that is above sickness and death!" 5. "O kingly and princely Bridegroom, hasten glory's marriage, shorten time's short-spun and soon-broken thread, and conquer sin!" 6. "O happy and blessed death, that golden bridge laid over by Christ my Lord, between time's clay-banks and heaven's shore!" And the Spirit and the Bride say, "Come!" and answer ye with them, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus! come quickly!"

Grace be with you.

Your Brother, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, _Oct. 15, 1640_.

CCCI.--_To_ MR. MATTHEW MOWAT.

(_WORTHINESS OF GOD'S LOVE AS MANIFESTED IN CHRIST--HEAVEN WITH CHRIST._)

REVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,--What am I to answer you? Alas! my books are all bare, and show me little of God. I would fain go beyond books into His house-of-love to Himself. Dear brother, neither you nor I are parties worthy of His love or knowledge. Ah! how hath sin bemisted and blinded us, that we cannot see Him. But for my poor self; I am pained and like to burst, because He will not take down the wall, and fetch His uncreated beauty, and bring His matchless, white, and ruddy face out of heaven once-errand, that I may have heaven meeting me, ere I go to it, in such a wonderful sight. Ye know that majesty and love do humble; because homely love to sinners dwelleth in Him with majesty. Ye should give Him all His own court-styles, His high and heaven-names. What am I, to shape conceptions of my highest Lord? How broad, and how high, and how deep He is above and beyond what these conceptions are, I cannot tell: but for my own weak practice (which alas! can be no rule to one so deep in love-sickness with Christ as ye are), I would fain add to my thoughts and esteem of Him, and make Him more high, and would wish a heart and love ten thousand times wider than the utmost circle and curtain that goeth about the heaven of heavens, to entertain Him in that heart, and with that love. But that which is your pain, my dear brother, is mine also. I am confounded with the thoughts of Him. I know that God is casten (if I may speak so) in a sweet mould, and lovely image, in the person of that Heaven's Jewel, the Man Christ; and that the steps of that steep ascent and stairs to the Godhead is the flesh of Christ, the New and Living Way; and there is footing for faith in that curious Ark of the humanity, wherein dwelleth the Godhead, married upon our humanity. I would be in heaven, suppose I had not another errand than to see that dainty golden Ark, and God personally looking out at ears and eyes and a body such as we sinners have, that I might wear my sinful mouth in kisses on Him for evermore. And I know all the Three blessed Persons would be well pleased that my piece of faint and created love should first coast upon the Man Christ. I should see them all through Him.

I am called from writing by my great employments in this town, and have said nothing. But what can I say of Him? Let us go and see.

Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, 1640.

CCCII.--_To my LADY KENMURE, on her Husband's Death._

(_GOD'S METHOD IN AFFLICTION--FUTURE GLORY._)

MADAM,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Ladyship.--I am heartily sorry that your Ladyship is deprived of such a husband, and the Lord's kirk of so active and faithful a friend.[430] I know your Ladyship long ago made acquaintance with that wherein Christ will have you to be joined in a fellowship with Himself (even with His own cross), and hath taught you to stay your soul upon the Lord's good-will, who giveth not account of His matters to any of us. When He hath led you through this water that was in your way to glory, there are fewer behind: and His order in dismissing us, and sending us out of the market, one before another, is to be reverenced. One year's time of heaven shall swallow up all sorrows, even beyond all comparison. What, then, will not a duration of blessedness so long as God shall live, fully and abundantly recompense! It is good that our Lord hath given a debtor, obliged by gracious promises, far more in eternity than time can take from you. And I believe that your Ladyship hath been, now many years, advising and thinking what that glory will be, which is abiding the pilgrims and strangers on the earth when they come home, and which we may think of, love, and thirst for. But we cannot comprehend it nor conceive of it as it is; far less we can over-think or over-love it. Oh, so long a Chapter, or rather so large a Volume, as Christ is, in that Divinity of Glory! There is no more of Him let down now to be seen and enjoyed by His children, than as much as may feed hunger in this life, but not satisfy it. Your Ladyship is a debtor to the Son of God's cross, that is wearing out love and affiance in the creature out of your heart by degrees. Or rather the obligation standeth to His free grace who careth for your Ladyship in this gracious dispensation; and who is preparing and making ready the garments of salvation for you; and who calleth you with a new name, that the mouth of the Lord hath named; and purposeth to make you a crown of glory, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God (Isa. lxii. 2, 3). Ye are obliged to frist Him more than one heaven; and yet He craveth not a long day; it is fast coming, and is sure payment. Though ye give no hire for Him, yet hath He given a great price and ransom for you; and if the bargain were to make again, Christ would give no less for you than what He hath already given. He is far from ruing. I shall wish you no more (till time be gone out of the way), than the earnest of that which He hath purchased and prepared for you, which can never be fully preached, written, or thought of, since it hath not entered into the heart to consider it.

[430] Hon. Sir Henry Montgomery of Giffen, her Ladyship's second husband, died about this time. See Letter III.

So, recommending your Ladyship to the rich grace of our Lord Jesus, I am, and rest, your Ladyship's at all respectful observance in Christ Jesus,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS.

CCCIII.--_For the Right Honourable, my_ LADY BOYD.

(_SIN OF THE LAND--READ PRAYERS--BROWNISM._)

MADAM,--I doubt not but the debt of many more than ordinary favours to this land layeth guiltiness upon this nation. The Lord hath put us in His books as a favoured people in the sight of the nations, but we pay not to Him the rent of the vineyard. And we might have had a gospel at an easier rate than this Gospel; but it would have had but as much life as ink and paper have. We stand obliged to Him who hath in a manner forced His love on us, and would but love us against our will.

Anent read prayers. Madam, I could never see precept, promise, or practice for them, in God's word. Our church never allowed them, but men took them up at their own choice. The word of God maketh reading (1 Tim. iv. 3) and praying (1 Thess. v. 17) two different worships. In reading, God speaketh to us (2 Kings xxii. 10, 11); in praying, we speak to God (Ps. xxii. 2, xxviii. 1). I had never faith to think well of them. In my weak judgment, it were good if they were out of the service of God. I cannot think them a fruit or effect of the Spirit of adoption, seeing the user cannot say of such prayers, "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer," which the servants of God ought to say of their prayers (Ps. xix. 14). For such prayers are meditations set down in paper and ink, and cannot be his heart-meditations who useth them. The saints never used them, and God never commanded them; and a promise to hear any prayers, except the pouring out of the soul to God, we can never read.

As for separation from worship for some errors of a church, the independency of single congregations, a church of visible saints, and other tenets of Brownists,[431] they are contrary to God's word. I have a treatise at the press at London against these conceits, as things which want God's word to warrant them.[432] The Lord lay it not to their charge, who depart from the covenant of God with this land to follow such lying vanities.

[431] The Brownists were a sect which owed their origin to Robert Brown, who studied at Cambridge. He maintained that every single congregation ought to have the complete power of jurisdiction within itself. In the year 1581 he organized a sect according to those principles. Yet afterwards he returned to the Church of England, and was presented to a living in Northamptonshire, of which he received the emoluments without discharging the duties. The sect he formed remained; but in process of time the name of Brownists was merged in that of Congregationalists or Independents.

[432] The treatise to which Rutherford here refers is, no doubt, his work entitled, "A Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbytery in Scotland, or a Modest Dispute of the Government of the Church of Scotland, wherein our Discipline is demonstrated to be the true Apostolic way of Divine Truth, and the arguments on the contrary are friendly dissolved, the grounds of separation, and the independency of particular congregations, in defence of Ecclesiastical Presbyteries, Synods, and Assemblies, are examined and tried." It was printed at London in 1642. "This," says Murray, "is one of the most temperate, judicious, and best written works he ever gave to the world. It corresponds in every respect with the promise which its title holds out; with this exception, that it is much more learned, dispassionate, and conclusive than the promise implies. It must have had a very considerable effect on public sentiment, and have served to pave the way for that introduction of the Presbyterian system into England which soon took place."

I did see lately your daughter, the Lady Ardross.[433] The Lord hath given her a child and deliverance.

[433] See notice on this lady prefixed to a subsequent Letter.

Now, recommending your Ladyship to the rich grace of Christ, I rest yours at all respectful observance in Christ,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS.

CCCIV.--_To_ JAMES MURRAY'S WIFE. [See Letter CCLXXIV.]

(_HEAVEN A REALITY--STEDFASTNESS TO BE GROUNDED ON CHRIST._)

MY VERY DEAR AND WORTHY SISTER,--You are truly blessed in the Lord, however a sour world gloom and frown on you, if ye continue in the faith settled and grounded, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel. It is good that there is a heaven, and it is not a night-dream and a fancy. It is a wonder that men deny not that there is a heaven, as they deny there is any way to it but of men's making. You have learned of Christ that there is a heaven; contend for it and for Christ. Bear well and submissively the hard thrust of this stepmother world, which God will not have to be yours. I confess it is hard, and, would to God, I were able to lighten you of your burden; but believe me, this world, which the Lord will not have to be yours, is but the dross, refuse, and scum of God's creation, the portion of the Lord's poor hired servants, the moveables, not the heritage, a hard bone cast to the dogs holden out of the New Jerusalem, whereupon they rather break their teeth than satisfy their appetite. It is your father's blessing and Christ's birthright that our Lord is keeping for you; and persuade yourself also that (if it be good for them and you) your seed also shall inherit the earth; for that is promised to them, and God's bond is as good as if He would give every one of them a bond for thousand thousands.

Ere ye were born, crosses in number, measure and weight, were written for you; and your Lord will lead you through them. Make Christ sure, and the world and the blessings of the earth shall be at Christ's back and beck. I see many professors for the fashion, professors of glass; I would make a little knock of persecution ding them in twenty pieces, and the world would laugh at the shreds. Therefore, make fast work; see that Christ be the ground-stone of your profession. The sore wind and rain will not wash away His building; His work hath no less date than to stand for evermore. I should twenty times have perished in my affliction, if I had not laid my weak back and pressing burden, both, upon the Stone, the Corner-stone laid in Zion. I am not twice fain (as the proverb is), but once and for ever, of this Stone. Now the God of peace establish you to the day of the appearance of Jesus Christ. Yours,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS.

CCCV.--_For the Right Honourable Lady, my_ LADY KENMURE.

(_SINS OF THE TIMES--PRACTICAL ATHEISM._)

MADAM,--I am a little moved at your infirmity of body and health; I hope it is to you a real warning. "And if in this life only we had hope, we should be of all men the most miserable." Sure the huge[434] generations of the seekers of the face of Jacob's God must be in a life above the things that are now much taking with us; such as, to see the sun, to enjoy this life in health, and some good worldly accommodations too. And if we be making that[435] sure, it is our wisdom. The times would make any that love the Lord sick and faint, to consider how iniquity aboundeth, and how dull we are in observing sins in ourselves, and how quick-sighted to find them out in others, and what bondage we are in. And yet very often, when we complain of times, we are secretly slandering the Lord's work and wise government of the world, and raising a hard report of Him. "He is good, and doeth good," and all His ways are equal.

[434] Must even here be in possession of a life far superior to the things that at present attract us. "_Huge_" may mean "vast as to number" (Isa. xlviii. 19), and also, great in other respects.

[435] If we are making this living above the world sure.

Madam, I have been holding out to some others (oh, if I could to myself!) some more of this, to read and study God well, and make the serious thoughts of a Godhead, and a Godhead in Christ, the work, and the only work, all the day. Oh, we are little with God! and do all without God! We sleep and wake without Him; we eat, we speak, we journey, we go about worldly business and our calling without God! and, considering what deadness is upon the hearts of many, it were good that some did not pray without God, and preach and praise, and read and confer of God without God! It is universally complained of, that there is a strange deadness upon the land, and on the hearts of His people. Oh, if we could help it! But He that watereth every moment His garden of red wine must help it. I believe that He will burn the briers and the thorns that come against Him.

I desire to remember your Ladyship to God; but little can I do that way. His everlasting goodness will be with you.

Yours, in the Lord Jesus,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, _July 24_.

CCCVI.--_To_ MR. THOMAS WYLIE, _Minister of Borgue_.

[MR. THOMAS WYLIE was minister of Borgue, a parish in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in which are to be seen, close to the sea-shore, the remains of what is supposed to have been one of the old Culdee churches, _Kirk Andrews_. He was afterwards translated to Mauchline, a parish in Ayrshire; but he remained there only a short time, having soon after his translation to it accepted a call to Kirkcudbright. But he was not allowed long to prosecute his useful labours in that place. Shortly after the restoration of Charles II., his fidelity to his Presbyterian principles rendering him obnoxious to the Government, he was, by a particular act of Privy Council, ejected from his charge, and banished to the north of Tay, with his family. In 1670 he went over to Ireland (where some of his relatives appear to have resided), and officiated in a congregation at Coleraine for nearly three years, when he returned to Scotland, and was settled minister of Fenwick, in the Presbytery of Irvine, under the second Indulgence. He died on July 20, 1676.]

(_SUFFICIENCY OF DIVINE GRACE--CALL TO ENGLAND TO ASSIST AT WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY--FELT UNWORTHINESS._)

REVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,--I neither can nor dow write to you anent the business, in respect it is my case more as yours, and ye write to me that which I should write to you. If grace pay not our debts and bond-surety for us, I see not how I shall make a reckoning for one soul, far less for multitudes; only it is God's will that we put grace to the utmost, and engage Christ for His own work. If He refuse charges to His own factors, the lost bankruptcy will redound to Him. But He must not be a loser, nor can His glory suffer. But I must entreat you for the help of your prayers, as you will do for me anything out of heaven, and possible to you. I am now called for to England; the government of the Lord's house in England and Ireland is to be handled.[436] My heart beareth me witness, and the Lord who is greater knoweth, my faith was never prouder than to be a common rough country barrowman in Anwoth; and that I could not look at the honour of being a mason to lay the foundation for many generations, and to build the waste places of Zion in another kingdom, or to have a hand or finger in that carved work in the cedar and almug trees in that new temple. I desire but to lend a shut,[437] and cry, "Grace, grace upon the building." I hope ye will help my weakness in this; and seek help to me from others as if I had named them, and intercede for the favour of my Father's seas, winds, and tides, and for the victory of strong and prevailing truth.

[436] On the 18th of August 1643, the General Assembly appointed a committee to proceed to London, to consult, treat, and conclude with the Assembly of Divines then sitting at Westminster, in all matters which might further the union of the churches of Scotland and England in one form of Church Government, one Confession of Faith, one Catechism, and one Directory for the worship of God. Of this committee Rutherford was one. The others were--Mr. Alexander Henderson, Mr. Robert Douglas, Mr. Robert Baillie, and Mr. George Gillespie, ministers; John Earl of Cassillis, John Lord Maitland, and Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston, elders.

[437] A push; but probably we should read "shout."

Grace be with you.

Yours in Christ,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS, _20th Oct. 1643_.

CCCVII.--_To a Young Man in Anwoth_.

[This letter is from the "Christian Instructor" of January 1839, furnished by one who was in possession of the MS. It was written at _St. Andrews_, but both date and address are lost. It is supposed to have been addressed to one of his former parishioners, a young man in Anwoth, of some influence.]

(_NECESSITY OF GODLINESS IN ITS POWER._)

WORTHY SIR,--I am heartily glad that you have any mind of me, or my ministry while I was with you. I wish you the fruit of it. I trust that you strive for the power of godliness, that has been so preached in the land; for salvation cometh not to every man's door, and the way to heaven is a straiter and narrower passage than each man thinketh. And you are now in the most glassy part of your life, when it is easy to follow, and when the lusts of youth are rank and strong. And happy are you that can pass through these dangers with a good conscience. So my real advice is, that you acquaint yourself with prayer, and with searching the Scriptures of God, that He may show you that good way that bringeth rest to the soul. The ordinary faith and the country godliness will not save you. There must be more nor the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees ere ever a man enter the kingdom of God. And I shall desire that you will take to heart the worth and price of an immortal soul, and the necessity of dying, and the fearful account of judgment at the back of death, that you may be saved.

As for my ministry among you again, I can easier desire it than see through it. The Lord of the harvest take care for you, and send you a pastor according to God's heart; and that's as rare as ever, for all our reformation.

Remember my heart's love and respect to your mother and sister. Grace be with you.

Your sometime pastor and still friend in God,

S. R.

ST. ANDREWS.

CCCVIII.--_For the Right Honourable, my Lady_ VISCOUNTESS OF KENMURE.

(_WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY--RELIGIOUS SECTS._)

MADAM,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--I am glad to hear that your Ladyship is in any tolerable health; and shall pray that the Lord may be your Strength and Rock. Sure I am, that He took you out of the womb; and you have been casten on Him from the breasts. I am confident that He will not leave you till He crown the work begun in you.

There is nothing here but divisions in the Church and Assembly;[438] for beside Brownists and Independents[439] (who, of all that differ from us, come nearest to walkers with God), there are many other sects here, of Anabaptists,[440] Libertines who are for all opinions in religion, fleshly and abominable Antinomians,[441] and Seekers,[442] who are for no church-ordinances, but expect apostles to come and reform churches; and a world of others, all against the government of presbyteries.[443] Luther observed, when he studied to reform, that two-and-thirty sundry sects arose; of all which I have named a part, except those called Seekers, who were not then arisen. He said, God should crush them, and that they should rise again: both which we see accomplished. In the Assembly, we have well near ended the government, and are upon the power of Synods, and I hope near at an end with them; and so I trust to be delivered from this prison shortly. The King hath dissolved the treaty of peace at Uxbridge, and adhereth to his sweet prelates, and would abate nothing but a little of the rigour of their courts, and a suspending of laws against the ceremonies, not a taking away of them.[444] The not prospering of our armies there in Scotland is ascribed here to the sins of the land, and particularly to the divisions and back-slidings of many from the cause, and the not executing of justice against bloody malignants.

[438] The Assembly of Divines at Westminster.

[439] The Independents are well known. Their real founder is considered to have been one Mr. John Robinson, who became a Brownist and was admitted pastor of the English church at Leyden. When he died, many of his congregation went from Leyden into New England, whither they carried his opinions, which spread widely there, and then by letters and other means were conveyed back into Old England.

[440] The Anabaptists of England at that time are not to be confounded with the fanatics of the same name who appeared in Germany in 1521, soon after the dawn of the Reformation. The peculiar opinions of English Anabaptists were, that baptism ought to be administered only to adults, and that the mode of it ought to be by immersion, or dipping. They were divided into _General_ and _Particular_, the former holding Arminian views of Christian doctrine, while the latter were strictly Calvinistic.

[441] The Antinomians professed to hold doctrinal sentiments rigidly Calvinistic; but they deduced from them conclusions deeply injurious to the interests of religion and morality.

[442] Of the _Seekers_ or _Expecters_, Pagitt has given the following account:--"They deny that there is any true church, or any true minister, or any ordinances: some of them affirm the church to be in the wilderness, and they are asking for it there; others say that it is in the smoke of the temple, and that they are groping for it there" ("Heresiography," p. 141).

[443] Thomas Edwards, in his "Gangræna," enumerates sixteen sorts of sectaries of that time. 1. Independents; 2. Brownists; 3. Chiliasts, or Millennaries; 4. Antinomians; 5. Anabaptists; 6. Manifestarians, or Arminians; 7. Libertines; 8. Familists; 9. Enthusiasts; 10. Seekers and Waiters; 11. Perfectists; 12. Socinians; 13. Arians; 14. Antitrinitarians; 15. Antiscripturists; 16. Sceptics and Questionists, who question everything in matters of religion. In these different sects there were many subdivisions.

[444] In the contest between Charles I. and his English Parliament, Charles was induced to make proposals of a treaty to the Parliament. Uxbridge was fixed on as the place for conducting the treaty; and commissioners from the King, the Parliament, and Scotland, were appointed. But they found it impracticable to come to any agreement. He alludes to this in his sermon before the House of Lords.

My wife here, under the physicians, remembereth her service to your Ladyship. So recommending you to the rich grace of Christ, I rest, your Ladyship's, at all obedience in Christ,

S. R.

LONDON, _March 4, 1644_.

CCCIX.--_For the Right Honourable, my_ LADY BOYD.

(_PROCEEDINGS OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY._)

MADAM,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--I received your letter on May 19th.

We are here debating, with much contention of disputes, for the just measures of the Lord's temple. It pleaseth God, that sometimes enemies hinder the building of the Lord's house; but now friends, even gracious men (so I conceive of them), do not a little hinder the work. Thomas Goodwin,[445] Jeremiah Burroughs,[446] and some others, four or five, who are for the Independent way, stand in our way, and are mighty opposites to presbyterial government. We have carried through some propositions for the Scripture right of presbytery, especially in the church of Jerusalem (Acts ii. iv. v. vi. and xv.), and the church of Ephesus, and are going on upon other grounds of truth; and by the way have proven, that ordination of pastors belongeth not to a single congregation, but to a college of presbyters, whose it is to lay hands upon Timothy and others (1 Tim. iv. 14, v. 17; Acts xiii. 1, 2, 3, vi. 5, 6). We are to prove that one single congregation hath not power to excommunicate, which is opposed not only by Independent men, but by many others. The truth is, we have at times grieved spirits with the work; and for my part, I often despair of the reformation of this land, which saw never anything but the high places of their fathers, and the remnants of Babylon's pollutions; and except that, "not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord," I should think God hath not yet thought it time for England's deliverance. For the truth is, the best of them almost have said, "A half reformation is very fair at the first;" which is no other thing than, "It is not time yet to build the house of the Lord." And for that cause, many houses, great and fair in the land, are laid desolate.

[445] Thomas Goodwin, a distinguished Puritan divine, and latterly pastor of a church in London, styled by Anthony Wood "one of the Atlasses and patriarchs of Independency." He was in high favour with Cromwell. He was born at Rolesby, in Norfolk, in 1600, and died in 1679. His works extended to five volumes folio, and are invaluable. In his exposition of the first and part of the second chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, there is an admirable defence of Calvinism.

[446] Jeremiah Burroughs, another eminent Puritan divine, was also a minister in London. He was born in 1599, and died in 1646. He is the author of numerous theological works, which, if not important, are useful. It is said that the divisions of the times broke his heart.

Multitudes of Anabaptists, Antinomians, Familists,[447] Separatists,[448] are here. The best of the people are of the Independent way. As for myself, I know no more if there be a sound Christian (setting aside some, yea, not a few learned, some zealous and faithful ministers whom I have met with) at London (though I doubt not but there are many), than if I were in Spain; which maketh me bless God that the communion of saints, how desirable soever, yet is not the thing, even that great thing, Christ and the remission of sins. If Jesus were unco,[449] as His members are here, I should be in a sad and heavy condition.

[447] The sect of the _Familists_ or _Family of Love_, have been associated with one David George of Delft, who, in 1544, fled out of Holland to Basle, giving it out that he was banished from the Low Countries, and changed his name, calling himself John of Brugg. He affirmed that he was the true David whom God had promised to send to restore again the kingdom of Israel, and wrote various books in support of his pretensions. He died on the 16th of September 1556. After him rose up one Henry Nicholas, born in Amsterdam, who maintained the same doctrine, but applied it to himself and not to David George. (See Works of Greenham, p. 219, H. N.) One Christopher Vivet, a joiner dwelling in Southwark, who had been in Queen Mary's days an Arian, translated out of Dutch into English several of the books of Henry Nicholas, among which was his "Evangelium Regni." The claims of Nicholas were those of a fanatic, and his system was a lie. (Pagitt's "Heresiography," pp. 81-91.)

[448] The "Separatists" were a kind of Anabaptists, so called because they pretended to be separate from the rest of the world. They condemned fine clothes. To them that laughed they would cry, "Woe be to you that laugh, for hereafter ye shall mourn." They did look sadly, and fetched deep sighs; they avoided marriage meetings, feasts, music; and condemned the bearing of arms and Covenants. (Pagitt's "Heresiography," p. 30.)

[449] Strange.

The House of Peers are rotten men, and hate our Commissioners and our cause both. The life that is is in the House of Commons, and many of them also have their religion to choose. The sorrows of a travailing woman are come on the land. Our army is lying about York, and have blocked up them of Newcastle,[450] and six thousand Papists and Malignants, with Mr. Thomas Sydserf, and some Scottish prelates; and if God deliver them into their hands (considering how strong the Parliament's armies are, how many victories God hath given them since they entered into covenant with Him, and how weak the King is), it may be thought the land is near a deliverance. But I rather desire it than believe it.

[450] In the end of the year 1643, the Scottish army raised by the Convention of Estates for the assistance of the English Parliament marched into England, and, having joined the Parliamentary forces, blockaded Newcastle, as Rutherford here describes.

We offered this day to the Assembly a part of a directory for worship, to shoulder out the service-book. It is taken into consideration by the Assembly.

Your son Lindsay[451] is well: I receive letters from him almost every week.

Yours at all obedience in God,

S. R.

LONDON, _May 25, 1644_.

[451] Afterwards Earl of Crawford. See notice of, Letter CCXXXI.

CCCX.--_To_ MISTRESS TAYLOR, _on her son's death_. [_Her son was a parishioner of Mr. Blair._]

(_SUGGESTIONS FOR COMFORT UNDER SORROW._)

MISTRESS,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--Though I have no relation worldly or acquaintance with you, yet (upon the testimony and importunity of your elder son now at London, where I am, but chiefly because I esteem Jesus Christ in you to be in place of all relations) I make bold, in Christ, to speak my poor thoughts to you concerning your son lately fallen asleep in the Lord, who was sometime under the ministry of the worthy servant of Christ, my fellow-labourer, Mr. Blair, by whose ministry I hope he reaped no small advantage. I know that grace rooteth not out the affections of a mother, but putteth them on His wheel who maketh all things new, that they may be refined: therefore, sorrow for a dead child is allowed to you, though by measure and ounce-weights. The redeemed of the Lord have not a dominion, or lordship, over their sorrow and other affections, to lavish out Christ's goods at their pleasure. "For ye are not your own, but bought with a price;" and your sorrow is not your own. Nor hath He redeemed you by halves; and therefore, ye are not to make Christ's cross no cross. He commandeth you to weep: and that princely One, who took up to heaven with Him a man's heart to be a compassionate High Priest, became your fellow and companion on earth by weeping for the dead (John xi. 35). And, therefore, ye are to love that cross, because it was once at Christ's shoulders before you: so that by His own practice He hath over-gilded and covered your cross with the Mediator's lustre. The cup ye drink was at the lip of sweet Jesus, and He drank of it; and so it hath a smell of His breath, and I conceive that ye love it not the worse that it is thus sugared. Therefore, drink, and believe the resurrection of your son's body. If one coal of hell could fall off the exalted head, Jesus (Jesus the Prince of the kings of the earth!), and burn me to ashes, knowing I were a partner with Christ, and a fellow-sharer with Him (though the unworthiest of men), I think that I should die a lovely death in that fire with Him. The worst things of Christ, even His cross, have much of heaven from Himself; and so hath your Christian sorrow, being of kin to Christ in that kind. If your sorrow were a bastard (and not of Christ's house because of the relation ye have to Him, in conformity to His death and sufferings), I should the more compassionate your condition; but the kind and compassionate Jesus, at every sigh you give for the loss of your now glorified child (so I believe, as is meet), with a man's heart crieth, "Half mine."

I was not a witness to his death, being called out of the kingdom; but, if you will credit those whom I do credit (and I dare not lie), he died comfortably. It is true, he died before he did so much service to Christ on earth, as I hope and heartily desire that your son Mr. Hugh (very dear to me in Jesus Christ) will do. But that were a real matter of sorrow if this were not to counterbalance it, that he hath changed service-houses, but hath not changed services or Master. "And there shall be no more curse; but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him" (Rev. xxii. 3). What he could have done in this lower house, he is now upon that same service in the higher house; and it is all one: it is the same service and the same Master, only there is a change of conditions. And ye are not to think it a bad bargain for your beloved son, where he hath gold for copper and brass, eternity for time.

I believe that Christ hath taught you (for I give credit to such a witness of you as your son Mr. Hugh) not to sorrow because he died. All the knot must be, "He died too soon, he died too young, he died in the morning of his life." This is all; but sovereignty must silence your thoughts. I was in your condition; I had but two children, and both are dead since I came hither.[452] The supreme and absolute Former of all things giveth not an account of any of His matters. The good Husbandman may pluck His roses, and gather in His lilies at mid-summer, and, for aught I dare say, in the beginning of the first summer month; and He may transplant young trees out of the lower ground to the higher, where they may have more of the sun, and a more free air, at any season of the year. What is that to you or me? The goods are His own. The Creator of time and winds did a merciful injury (if I dare borrow the word) to nature, in landing the passenger so early. They love the sea too well who complain of a fair wind, and a desirable tide, and a speedy coming ashore, especially a coming ashore in that land where all the inhabitants have everlasting joy upon their heads. He cannot be too early in heaven. His twelve hours were not short hours. And withal if ye consider this; had ye been at his bed-side, and should have seen Christ coming to him, ye would not, ye could not, have adjourned Christ's free love, who would want him no longer.

[452] He had lost two children before going to London, and the above is in reference to the death of other two after he came thither.

And dying in another land, where his mother could not close his eyes, is not much. Who closed Moses' eyes? And who put on his winding-sheet? For aught I know, neither father, nor mother, nor friend, but God only. And there is as expeditious, fair, and easy a way betwixt Scotland and heaven, as if he had died in the very bed he was born in. The whole earth is his Father's; any corner of his Father's house is good enough to die in.

It may be that the living child (I speak not of Mr. Hugh) is more grief to you than the dead. Ye are to wait on, if at any time God will give him repentance. Christ waited as long possibly on you and me, certainly longer on me; and if He should deny repentance to him, I could say something to that. But I hope better things of him.

It seemeth that Christ will have this world your stepdame. I love not your condition the worse. It may be a proof that ye are not a child of this lower house, but a stranger. Christ seeth it not good only, but your only good, to be led thus to heaven. And think this a favour, that He hath bestowed on you free, free grace, that is, mercy without hire: ye paid nothing for it. And who can put a price upon anything of royal and princely Jesus Christ? And God hath given to you to suffer for Him the spoiling of your goods. Esteem it as an act of free grace also. Ye are no loser, having Himself; and I persuade myself, that if ye could prize Christ, nothing could be bitter to you.

Grace, grace be with you.

Your brother and well-wisher,

S. R.

LONDON, 1645.

CCCXI.--_To_ BARBARA HAMILTON.

[BARBARA HAMILTON was the wife of Mr. John Mein, merchant, Edinburgh, noticed before (see Letter CLI.), and sister to the first wife of the famous Mr. Robert Blair. She was a woman of eminent piety, and also distinguished for her public spirit. When Mr. Blair, and other Presbyterian ministers, who had been deposed by the bishops in Ireland for nonconformity, had come over to Scotland in 1637, she, finding that they were threatened with still harsher treatment from the Scottish prelates, suggested a petition to the Privy Council, for liberty to these ministers to preach the Gospel publicly, engaging that she and some other like-minded women would put it into the hands of the Treasurer as he went into the Council. Blair drew it up; upon which she convened a considerable number of the religious matrons of Edinburgh, and ranged them in a line from the Council-house door to the street. The oldest matron was appointed to present the petition to the Treasurer. The Treasurer, suspecting that it was something which would be disagreeable to the Council, put the aged petitioner aside, and went quickly from her towards the Council-house door. Observing this, Barbara Hamilton immediately stepped forward, and, taking the paper out of the old feeble woman's hand, came up to the Treasurer, and "did with her strong arm and big hand fast grip his gardie" (i.e. arm), saying, "Stand, my Lord! in Christ's name, I charge you, till I speak to you." His Lordship, looking back, replies, "Good woman, what would you say to me?" "There is," said she, "a humble supplication of Mr. Blair's. All that he petitions for, is that he may have liberty to preach the Gospel. I charge you to befriend the matter, as you would expect God to befriend you in your distress, and at your death!" He replied, "I shall do my endeavour, and what I can in it." The result was, that Blair's supplication was granted by the Council. The following letter, which Rutherford addresses to this lady, was written on the occasion of the death of her son-in-law, probably Mr. William Hume, minister, who was married to her daughter Barbara Mein. (See