^RV OF PRIW0S;js <^fa tOGICAL SEV^- iiX 8915 Tr79 1894 ^VeeV^"^^' ^^™"^'' 1600?- Letters of Samuel Rutherfo Letters Samuel Rutherford Rkprint of i8qi Edition Printed by Morrison and Gibb Limited, Edinburik for OLIPHANT ANDERSON &- rERKlER EDINBURGH AND LONDON F} oiithp'ucc. See ApJ>endix, j>age 745. SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. Letters auj;A/'iV^aMr;/t<.- -Troubles threatening the Church, . . 113 45. To Marion M'Naught.— In the Prospect of the Loi-d's Supper, and of Trials to the Church, . . . . . . .113 46. To Marion M'Naught.— Tossing of Spirit— Her Children and Husband, 114 47. To Marion M'Naught. — Submission to God's Arrangements, . . 116 48. To Marion M'Naught.— Tronhies from False Brethren— Occnrrences— Christ's Coming— Intercession, . . . . .117 49. To Marion M'Naught.— %\)0\\.ing of Goods— Call to Kirkcudbright— The Lord Rcigncth, . . . . • • .119 50. To Marion M'Naught.— Christ coming as Captain of Salvation— His Church's Conflict and Covenant— The Jews— Last Days' Apostasy, . 121 61. To Marion M'Naught.— Fublic Temptations— The Security of every Saint— Occurrences in the Country-side, . . . .123 62. To Marion M'Naright.-ln the Prospect of her Husband being compelled to receive the Commands of the Prelates— Saints are yet to Judge, . 125 CONTENTS. ix 53. To Marion M' Naught. — Encouragement under Trial by prospect of Brighter Daj's, ........ 126 54. To Marion M'Naught. — Public Wrongs — Words of Comfort, . . 126 55. To Marion M'Naught. — When he had been threatened with Persecution for Preaching the Gospel, ...... 128 56. To Lady Kenmure.—'Reasona for Resignation — Security of Saints— The End of Time, 129 57. To Marion M'Nauglit. — In the Prospect of Removal to Aberdeen, . 131 58. To Lady Kenmure. — On occasion of Efforts to introduce Episcopacy, . 131 59. To Earlsion, Elder. — No Suffering for Christ unrewarded — Loss of Children — Christ in Providence, . . . . .132 60. To Marion M'Naught. — When he was under Trial by the High Commission, ........ 135 61. To Lady Kenmure, on the evening of his banishment to Aberdeen. — His only Regrets — The Cross unspeakably Sweet — Retrospect of his Ministry, . . . . . . . .136 62. To Lady Culross, on the occasion of his banishment to Aberdeen. — Challenges of Conscience — The Cross no Burden, . . . 138 63. To Mr. Hohert Cunningham, at Hohjioood, in Ireland. — Consolation to a Brother in Tribulation — His own Deprivation of Ministry — Christ worth Suffering for, . . . . . . .140 64. To Alexander Gordon of Earlston, — His Feelings upon Leaving Anwoth, ........ 143 65. To Robert Gordon of Knoclcbreck, on his way to Aberdeen. — How Upheld on the Way, ........ 144 66. To Robert Gordon of KnocJcbreck, after arriving at Aberdeen. — Challenges of Conscience — Ease in Zion, . . . . . .144 67. To William Fullerion, Provost oj Kirkcudbright. — Encouragement to Suffer for Christ, ....... 145 68. To John Fleming, Bailie of Leith. — The Sweetness and Faithfulness of Christ's Love, . . . . . . . .147 69. To Lady Kenmure. — His Enjoyment of Christ in Aberdeen — A Sight of Christ exceeds all Reports — Some ashamed of Him and His, . . 148 70. To Lady Kenmure. — Exercise under Restraint from Preaching — The Devil — Christ's Loviug-kindness — Progress, . . . .160 71. To Mr. Hugh M'Kail, Minister of Irvine. — Christ to be Tmsted amid Trial, ......... 152 72. To William Gordon of Roberton. — How Trials are Misimproved — ^The Infinite Value of Christ — Despised Warnings, . . . .153 73. To Earlston, the Elder. — Satisfaction with Christ's Ways — Private and Public Causes of Sorrow, ...... 156 74. To Lady Culross. — Suspicions of God's Ways — God's Ways always Right — Grace Grows under Trial, . . . . . .157 75. To John Kennedy, Bailie of Ayr. — Longing after Discoveries of Christ — His Long-suffering — Trying Circumstances, . . .158 76. To Robert Gordon of Knockbreck. — Benefit of Affliction, . . . 161 77. To Lady ^oyc?.— Aberdeen— Experience of himself Sad— Taking Pains to win Grace, ........ 163 78. To Lord J5oi/cZ.— Encouragement to Exertion for Christ's Cause, . 164 79. To Margaret Ballantine.—Y alae of the Soul, and Urgency of Salvation, 166 80. To Marion M'Naught.— Ris Comfort under Tribulations, and the Prison a Palace, ........ 168 81. To Mr. John Jtf^eine (JMn.),— Experience— Patient Waiting — Sanctifica- tion, ......... 169 CONTENTS. 82. To John Gordon of Cardoness, Elder. — Win Christ at all Hazards — Christ's Beauty— A Word to Children, . . . .170 83. To the Earl of Lothian. — Advice as to Public Conduct — Everything to be endured for Christ, . . . . . . .174 84. To Jean Bi-own. — The Joys of this Life embittered by Sin — Heaven an Object of Desire— Trial a Blessed Thing, . . . .177 85. To John Kennedy, Bailie of Ayr. — The Reasonableness of Believing under all Affliction — Obligations to Free Grace, . . .179 86. To Lord Graighall. — Episcopalian Ceremonies — How to Abide in the Truth — Desire for Liberty to preach Christ, .... 181 87. To Elizabeth Kennedy. — Danger of Formality — Christ wholly to be Loved — Other Objects of Love, ...... 183 88. To Janet Kennedy, — Christ to be kept at every sacrifice — His incompar- able Loveliness, . . . . . . .185 89. To the Rev. Robert Blair. — God's Arrangements sometimes Mysterious, 187 90. To the Rev. John Livingstone. — Resignation — Enjoyment — State of the Church, ........ 190 91. To Mr. Ephraim Mdvin. — Kneeling at the Lord's Supper a species of Idolatry, ........ 192 92. To Mr. Robert Gordon of Knockbrech — Visits of Christ — The Things which Affliction Teaches, . . . . . .195 93. To Lady Kenmure. — God's Dealings with Scotland — The Eye to be directed Heavenward, . . . . . . .197 94. To Lady Kenmure.— T\lb Times — Christ's Sweetness in Trouble — Long- ing after Him, ....... 198 95. To Lady Kenmure. — Christ's Cross Sweet — His Coming to be Desired — Jealous of any Rival, ....... 200 96. To Lady Kenmure. — Christ all Worthy — Anwoth, . . . 201 97. To Alexander Gordon of Earlston. — Christ Endeared by Bitter Ex- periences— Searchings of Heart — Fears for the Church, . , 202 98. To Mr. Alexander Golville of Blair. — Increasing Experience of Christ's Love — God with His Saints, ...... 204 99. To Earlston, Younger. — Christ's Ways Misunderstood — His increasing Kindness — Spiritual Delicacy — Hard to be Dead to the World, . 205 100. To Lady Cardoness. — The One Thing Needful — ConscierLtious Acting in the World — Advice under Dejecting Trials, . . . 208 101. To Jonet Macculloch. — Christ's Sufficiency — Stedfastncss in the Trath, 210 102. To Alexander Gordon of Knoclgray. — Grounds of Praise — Affliction tends to misrepresent Christ — Idols, . , . . .211 103. To Lady Cardoness, Elder. — Christ and His Cause Recommended — Heavenly-mindedness — Caution against Compliances — Anxiety about his Parish, ........ 218 104. To Lajdy Kenmure. — Painstaking in the Knowledge of Christ — Unusual enjoyment of His Love — Not Easy to be a Christian — Friends must not mislead, ........ 216 105. To a Gentlewoman, upon the death of her Htisband. — Resignation under Bereavement — His own Enjoyment of Christ's Love, . . . 217 106. To Lady Kenmure. — Weak Assurance — Grace dilferent from Learning — Self-accusations, . . . . . . .218 107. To Lady Boyd. — Consciousness of Defects no argument of Christ being unknown — His Experience in Exile, ..... 220 108. To Lady Kaskibcn-y.—Qr at\tni\e for Kindness— Christ's Presence felt, 222 109. To Lady Earlston. — FoUowiui:; Christ nut Easy — Children not to bo over-loved — Joy in the Lord, ...... 223 CONTENTS. xi 110. To Mr. David Dickson. — God's Dealings — The Bitter Sweetened — Notes on Scripture, ........ 224 111. To Jean Brown. — Christ's Untold Preciousness — A Word to her Boy, 226 112. To Mr. John Fergushill. — The Rod upon God's Children — Pain from a sense of Christ's Love — His Presence a Support under Trials — Con- tentedness with Him alone, ...... 227 113. To Mr. Robert Douglas. — Greatness of Christ's Love revealed to those who suffer for Him, ....... 229 114. To William Bigg of Athemie. — Sustaining Power of Christ's Love — Satan's Opposition — Yearnings for Christ Himself — Fears for the Church, 230 115. To Mr. Alexander Henderson. — Sadness because of Christ's Headship not set forth— His Cause attended with Crosses — The Believer seen of all, . . . . . . . .232 116. To Lord Loudon. — Blessedness of Acting for Christ — His Love to His Prisoner, ........ 234 117. To Mr. William Dalgleish, Minister of Kirkdale and Kirkmahreck. — Christ's Kindness — Dependence on Providence — Controversies, . 237 118. To Mr. Hugh M' Kail, Minister at Irvine. — Christ's Bountiful Dealings — Joy in Christ through the Cross, ..... 239 119. To Mr. David Dickson. — Joyful Experience — Cup Overflowing in Exile, 240 120. To Mr. Matthew Mowat, Minister at Kilmarnock. — Plenitude of Christ's Love — Need to use Grace aright — Christ the Ransomer — Desire to proclaim His Gospel — Shortcomings and Sufferings, . 242 121. To William Halliday. — Diligence in securing Salvation, . . 245 122. To a Gentlewoman after the death of her Husband. — Vanity of Earthly Possessions — Christ a suflBcient Portion — Design of Affliction, . 245 123. To John Gordon of Cardoness, Younger. — Reasons for being earnest about the Soul, and for Resignation, . . . . .247 124. To John Gordon of Cardoness, Elder. — CaUto Earnestness about Salva- tion— Intrusion of Ministers, ..... 248 125. To Lady Forret. — Sickness a Kindness — Christ's Glooms better than the World's Joys, ....... 249 126. To Marion M' Naught. — Adherence to Duty amidst Opposition — Power of Christ's Love, ....... 250 127. To John Carsen. — Nothing worth the Finding but Christ, . . 251 128. To the Earl of Cassillis. — Honour of testifying for Christ, . . 252 129. To Mr. Robert Gordon, Bailie of Ayr.— Christ above All, . . 253 130. To John Kennedy, Bailie of Ayr. — Christ's Love — The Three Wonders — Desires for His Second Coming, ..... 254 131. To Jean Brown. — His Wisdom in our Trials — Rejoicing in Tribulation, 257 132. To Jean Macmillan. — Strive to enter In, ... . 259 133. To Lady B2isbie. — Complete Surrender to Christ — No Idols — Trials dis- cover Sins — A Free Salvation — The Marriage Supper, . . 260 134. To John Ewart, Bailie of Kirkcudbright. — The Cross no Burden — Need ' of Sure Foundation, ....... 262 135. To William Fullerton, Provost of Kirkcudbright. — Fear not them who kill the Body — Unexpected Favour, ..... 263 136. To Robert Glendinning, Minister of Kirkcudbright. — Prepare to meet thy God— Christ his Joy, ...... 264 137. To William Glendinning. — Perseverance against Opposition, . . 265 138. To Mr. Hugh Henderson, Minister of the Gospel. — Trials selected by God— Patience — Looking for the Judge, .... 266 xiv CONTENTS. 197. To Mr. William Dalgleish, Minister oj the Gospel. — Thoughts aa to God's Arrangements — Winning Souls to be Supremely Desired — Longings for Christ, . . . . . . ,386 198. To the Laird of Cally. — Spiritual Sloth — Danger of Compromise — Self, the Root of all Sin — Self-renunciation, .... 388 199. To John Gordon of Gardoness, the Younger. — Dangers of Youth — Early Decision, ........ 390 200. To Robert Gordon, Bailie of Ayr. — The Misery of mere Worldly Hope — Earnestness about Salvation, ..... 393 201. To Alexander Gordon of Earlston. — Christ's Kingdom to be Exalted over all ; and more Pains to be taken to Win farther into Him, . 395 202. To the Laird of Cally. — Youth a Precious Season — Christ's Beauty, . 397 203. To William Gordon, at Kenmure. — Testimony to Christ's Worth — Marks of Grace in Conviction of Sin and Spiritual Conflict, . . . 399 204. To Margaret FuUerton. — Christ, not Creatures, worthy of all Love — Love not to be measured by Feeling, . . . , . . 401 205. To Lady Kenmure. — Difficulties in the way to the Kingdom — Christ's Love, ......... 402 206. To Lady Kenmure. — The Use of Sufferings — Fears under them — Desire that Christ be Glorified, . . . . . .404 207. To John Henderson of Rusco. — Practical Hints, . . . 407 208. To Alexander Colville of Blair. — Regrets for not being able to Preach — Longings for Christ, ...... 408 209. To Mr. John Nevay. — Christ's Surpassing Excellency— His Cause in Scotland, ........ 409 210. To I^ady Boyd. — His Soul Fainting for Christ's Matchless Beauty — ■ Prayer for a Revival, ....... 410 211. To a Christian Gentlewoman. — God's Skill to bless by Affliction — Unkindness of Men — Near the Day of Meeting the Lord, . .412 212. To William Glendinning. — Search into Christ's Loveliness — What he would Suffer to see it — His Coming to Deliver, . . . 414 213. To Robert Lennox of Disdove. — Men's Folly in Undervaluing Christ — It is He that satisfieth — Admiration of Him, . . . .416 214. To Mr. James Hamilton, Minister of the Gospel. — Suffering for Christ's Headship — How Christ visited him in Preaching, . . ,418 215. To Mistress Stuart. — Personal Unworthiness — Longing after Holiness — ' Winnowing Time, ....... 421 216. To Mr. Hugh M'Kail, Minister of Irvine. — Advantages of our Wants and Distempers — Christ Unspeakable, .... 423 217. To Alexander Gordon of Garloch. — Free Grace finding its Materials in us, . . . . . . . . . 425 218. To John Bell, Elder. — Danger of Tnisting to a Name to Live — Con- version no Superficial Work — Exhortation to Make Sure, . . 427 219. To Mr. John Row, Minister of the Gospel. — Christ's Crosses better than the World's Joys— Christ Extolled, . , . . .429 220. To Lord Craighall. — Duty of being disentangled from Christ-dis- honouring Compliances, . . . . . . 430 221. To Marion M'Naught. — Her Prayers for Scotland not Forgotten, . 430 222. To Lady Cu/ross.— Christ's Way of Sliowiug Himself the Best— What Fits for Him — Yeai'uing after Him insatiably — Domestic Matters, . 431 223. To Alexander Gordon of Knockgray. — State of the Church — Believers purified by Affliction — Folly of seeking Joy in a Doomed World, . 434 224. To Fulwood, the Younger. — Vanity of the World in the light of Death and Christ — The Present Truth — Christ's Coming, , . . 436 CONTENTS. 225. To his Parishioners. — Protestation of Care for their Souls, and for the Glory of God — Delight in his Ministry, and in his Lord — Efforts for their Souls — Warnings against Errors of the Day — Awful Words to the Backslider — Intense Admiration of Christ — A Loud Call to All, . 438 226. To Lady Kilconquhar. — The Interests of the Soul and Urgent — Folly of the World — Christ altogether Lovely — His Pen fails to set forth Christ's Unspeakable Beauty, ...... 445 227. To Lord Craighall. — Staudinr^ for Christ — Danger from Fear, or Promises of Men — Christ's Requitals — Sin against the Holy Ghost, . 449 228. To Mr. James Fleming, Minister of the Gospel. — Glory Gained to Christ — Spiritual Deadness — Help to Praise Him — The Ministry, . . 451 229. To Mr. Hugh M'Kail, Minister of Irvine.— The Law— This World under Christ's Control for the Believer, .... 454 230. To Lady Kenmure. — Believer Safe though Tried — Delight in Christ's Truth, ......... 455 231. To Lord Lindsay of Byres. — The Church's Desolations — The End of the World, and Christ's Coming — His Attractiveness, . . . 457 232. To Lord Boyd. — Seeking Christ in Youth — Its Temptations — Christ's Excellence — The Church's Cause concerns the Nobles, . . 460 233. To Fulk Ellis. — Friends in Ireland — Difficulties in Providence — Unfaith- fulness to Light — Constant Need of Christ, .... 463 234. To James Lindsay. — Desertions, their Use — Prayers of Reprobates, and how the Gospel affects their Responsibility, .... 466 235. To Lord Craighall. — Fear God, not Man — Sign of Backsliding, . 470 236. To Mr. James Hamilton, Minister of the Gospel. — Christ's Glory not affected by His People's Weakness, . . . . .471 237. To the Laird of Gaitgirth. — Truth worth Suffering for — Light Sown, but Evil in this World till Christ come, .... 471 238. To Lady Gaitgirth. — Christ an Example in Bearing Crosses — The extent to which Cliildren should be Loved — Why Saints Die, . 473 239. To Mr. Matthew Mowat, Minister of Kilmarnock. — What am I ? — Longing to Act for Christ— Unbelief — Love in the Hiding of Christ's Face — Christ's Reproach, ...... 474 240. To Mr. John Meine, Jun. — Christ the Same — Youthful Sins — No Dis- pensing with Crosses, ....... 476 241. To John Fleming, Bailie of Leith. — Riches of Christ Fail Not — Salvation — Vanity of Created Comforts — Longing for more of Christ, . . 477 242. To Lady Bowallan. — Jesus the Best Choice, and to be made sure of — The Cross and Jesus inseparable — Sorrows only Temporary, . 478 243. To 3farion M'Naught.— His own Ti-osj)ects — Hopes— Salutations, . 480 244. To Marion M' Naught. — Proceedings of Parliament — Private Matters — Her Daughter's Marriage, ...... 481 245. To Lady Boyd. — Imperfections — Yearnings after Christ — Christ's Supremacy not inconsistent with Civil Authority, . . . 483 ' 246. To Mr. Thomas Garven. — Heaven's Happiness — Joy in the Cross, . 485 247. To Janet Kennedy.— The Heavenly Mansions— Earth a Shadow, . 486 248. To if ar^are« jSeic?.— Benefits of the Cross, if we are Christ's, . . 487 249. To James Bautie. — Spiritual Difficulties Solved, . . . 489 250. To Lady Largirie.—V a,xt with all for Christ — No Unmixed Joy here, . 494 251. To Lady Dungueich. — Jesus or the World— Scotland's Trials and Hopes, ........ 495 252. To Jonet Macculloch. — Cares to be cast on Christ— Christ a Steady Friend, •....,., 496 253. To Mr. George Gillespie.— Ghnat the True Gain, . . .497 xvi CONTENTS. 254. To Mr, Rohtrt Blair. — Personal Unwortliiness — God's Grace — Prayer for Others, ........ 498 255. To Lady Carleton. — Submission to God's Will — Wonders in the Love of Christ— No debt to the World, . . . . .500 256. To William Rigge of Athernie. — The Law — Grace — Chalking out Provi- dences for ourselves — Prescribing to His Love, . . . 501 257. To Lady Craighall. — The Comforts of Christ's Cross — Desires for Christ, 503 258. To Lord Loudon. — The Wisdom of adhering to Christ's Cause, . . 504 259. To Mr. DaHd Dickson. — Danger of Worldly Ease — Personal Occurrences, 507 260. To Alexander Gordon of Earlsion. — All Crosses Well Ordered — Provi- dences, ........ 508 261. To Lady Kilconquhair. — The Kingdom to be taken by Violence, . 510 262. To Robert Lennox of Disdove. — Increasing Experience of Christ's Love — Salvation to be made sure, ...... 512 263. To Marion M'Naught. — Hope in Trial — Prayer and Watchfulness, . 513 264. To Thomas Corbet.— Godly Counsels— Following Christ, . . 514 265. To Mr. George Dunbar, Minister of the Gospel. — Chiist's Love in Affliction — The Saint's Support and Final Victory, . . .515 266. To John Fleming, Bailie of Leith. — Comfort Abounding under Trials, . 517 267. To William Glendinning, Bailie of Kirkcudbright. — The Past and tlie Future — Present Happiness, . . . . . .517 268. To the Earl ofGassillis. — Anxiety for the Prosperity of Zion — Encourage- ment for the Nobles to Support it — The Vanity of this World, and the Folly and Misery of forsaking Christ — The One Way to Heaven, . 519 269. To his Parishioners at Anwoth. — Exhortation to abide in the Truth, in prospect of Christ's Coming — Scriptural Mode of Observing Ordinances such as the Sabbath, Family Prayer, and the Lord's Supper — Judg- ments Anticipated, . . . . . . .521 270. To Lady Busbie. — His Experience of Christ's Love— State of the Laud and Church — Christ not duly Esteemed — Desire after Him, and for a Revival, ........ 524 271. To Earlston, Younger. — Prosperity under the Cross— Need of Sincerity, and being founded on Christ, ...... 526 272. To John Gordon.— Christ all Worthy— This World a Clay Prison- Desire for a Revival of Christ's Cause, .... 527 278. To William Rigge of Athernie. — Comfort in Trials from the Knowledge of Christ's Power and Work — Corruption — Free Grace, . . 529 274. To James Murray. — The Christian Life a Mystery to the World — Christ's Kindness, ....... 530 275. To Mr. John FergmhilL—SiAvitnaX Longings under Christ's Cross- How to bear it — Christ Precious, and to be had without Money— The Church, ........ 531 276. To William Glendinning.— Syfeetness of Trial— Swiftness of Time — Prevalence of Sin, ....... 534 277. To Lady Boyd.— Sense oi Unworthiness— Obligation to Grace — Christ's Absence — State of the Land, ...... 536 278 To the Earl of Ccwat^/is.— Ambition— Christ's Royal Prerogative — Prelacy, ........ 538 279. To J/arion itf^'^aw^A^.-A Spring-tide of Christ's Love, . . 540 280. To John Gordon of Rusco. — Heaven hard to be won— Many come short in Attaining — Idol Sins to be renounced — Likeness to Christ, . 541 281. To Lord Loudoun. — True Honour in maintaining Christ's Cause — Pre- lacy—Light of Eternity, . . . . . .643 CONTENTS. xvii 282. To Lady Bobertland. — Afflictions purify — The World's Vanity — Christ's wise love, ........ 545 283. To TTiomas MaccuUoch of Nether Ardwdl.—'Eia.Tnest Call to Diligence — Circumspect Walking, ...... 548 284. To the Professors of Christ and His Truth in Ireland. — The Way to Heaven ofttimes through Persecution — Christ's Worth — Making sure our Profession — Self-denial — No Compromise — Tests of Sincerity — His own Desire for Christ's Glory, ..... 549 285. To Robert Gordon of KnockbrecL — Not the Cross, but Christ the Object of Attraction — Too little expected from Him — Spiritual Deadness, . 555 286. To the Parishioners of Kilmalcolm. — Spiritual Sloth — Advice to Beginners — A Dead Ministry— Languor — Obedience — Want of Christ's Felt Presence — Assurance Important — Prayer-Meetings, . . 559 287. To Lady Kenmure.—Qn the Death of her Child— Christ Shares His People's Sorrows, ....... 565 288. To the Persecuted 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, ........ 568 289. To Dr. Alexander Leighton. — Public Blessings alleviate Private Suffer- ings— Trials Light when viewed in the Light of Heaven — Christ worthy of Suffering for, ...... 575 290. To a Person unknown. — Auent Private Worship, . . . 578 291. To Henry Stuart, and Family, Prisoners of Christ at Dublin. — Faith's preparation for Trial — The World's Rage against Christ — The Im- mensity of His Glorious Beauty — Folly of Persecution — Victory Sure, 579 292. To Mrs. Pont, Prisoner at Diiblin. — Support under Trials — The Master's Reward, ....... 585 293. To Mr. James Wilson. — Advices to a Doubting Soul — Mistakes about his Interest in God's Love — Temptation — Perplexity about Prayer — Want of Feeling, ....... 588 294. To Lady Boyd. — Sins of the Land — Dwelling in Christ—Faith awake sees all well, ........ 591 295. To John Fenwich. — Christ the Fountain — Freeness of God's Love — Faith to be exercised under Frowns — Grace for Trials — Hope of Christ yet to be exalted on the Earth, . . . . . .693 296. To Peter Stirling. — Believers' Graces all from Christ — Aspiration after more Love to Him — His Reign Deshed, .... 599 297. To Lady FingasTc.— Fail's Misgivings — Spiritual Darkness not Grace — Christ's Love Inimitable, ...... 600 298. To Mr. David Dickson, on the Death of his Son. — God's Sovereignty, and Discipline by Affliction, ...... 602 299. To 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, ....... 603 300. To Agnes Macmath, on the Death of a Child. — Reason for Resignation, 607 301. To Mr. Mattheiu Mowat, Minister of Kilmarnock. — Worthiness of God's Love as manifested in Christ — Heaven with Christ, . . . 608 302. To Lady Kenmure, on her Husband's Death. — God's Method in Afflic- tion— Future Glory, ....... 609 303. To Lady .Boyd.— Sin of the Land— Read Prayers— Brownism, . . 611 304. To James Murray's W^i/e.— Heaven a Reality— Stedfastness to be grounded on Christ, , . . . . • .612 805. To Lady ^enrnwre— Sins of the Times— Practical Atheism, . , 613 b xviii CONTENTS. 806. To Mr. Thomas Wylie, Minister of Borgue. — Sufficiency of Divine Grace — Call to England to assist at Westminster Assembly — Felt Unworthiness, . . . . . . .614 307. To a Young Man in Anwoth, — Necessity of Godliness in its Power, . 615 308. To Lady Kenmure, — Westminster Assembly — Religious Sects, . . 616 309. T^o Lady Boyd. — Proceedings of Westminster Assembly, . . 618 310. To Mistress Taylor, on hrr Son's Death. — Suggestions for Comfort under Sorrow, ........ 620 811. To Barbara Hamilton. — On Death of her Son-in-Law — God's Purposes, 623 312. To Mistress Hume, on her Htishand's Death. — God's Voice in the Rod, 625 313. To Lady Kenmure. — Christ's Designs in Sickness and Sorrow, . . 626 814. To Barbara Hamilton, on her Son-in-Law slain in Battle. — God does all Things Well, and with Design, . . . . .627 315. To a Christian Friend, on the Death of his Wife. — God the First Cause —The End of Affliction, ...... 629 816. To a Christian Brother, on the Death of his Daughter, — Consolation in her having gone before — Christ the Best Husband, . . . 630 317. To a Christian Gentlewoman. — Views of Death and Heaven — Aspira- tions, ......... 632 818. To Lady Kenmure. — Christ never in our Debt — Riches of Christ — Excellence of the Heavenly State, ..... 635 319. To Mr. James Guthrie. — Prospects for Scotland — His own Darkness — Christ's Ability, ....... 636 320. To Lady Kenmure. — Trials cannot Injure Saints — Blessedness in Seeing Christ, ......... 638 821. To Lady Ardross, in Fife, on her Mother's Death. — Happiness of Heaven, and Blessedness of Dying in the Lord, . . . 639 322. To M. 0.— Gloomy Prospects for the Backsliding Church— The Mis- understandings of Believers cause of great grief — The Day of Christ, ......... 640 823. To Earlston the Elder.— Christ's Way of Afflicting the Best— Obligation to Free Grace— Enduring the Cross, ..... 642 324, To Mr. George Gillespie. — Prospect of Death — Christ the true support in Death, ........ 644 325. To Sir James Stewart, Lord Provost of Edinburgh. — Declining Chair in Edinburgh, . . . . . . . .645 826. To Mistress Gillespie, Widow of Oeorge Gillespie, — On the Death of a Child — God Afflicts in order to save us from the World, . , 646 827, To the Earl of Balcarras. — Regarding some Misunderstanding, . 648 828, To Colonel Gilbert Ker. — Singleness of Aim — Judgment in regard to Adversaries, ........ 649 829. To Colonel Gilbert Ker. — Courage in Days of Rebuke — God's Arrange- ments all Wise, ....... 651 880, To William Guthrie. — Depression under Dark Trials — Dangers of Compliance, ........ 652 331. To Colonel Gilbert Ker. — Courage in the Lord's Cause — Duty in regard to Providence to be observed — Safety in this, . . . .654 832, To Colonel Gilbert Ker. — Christ's Cause deserves Service and Suffering from us, ....... . 656 333. To Colonel Gilbert Ker, when taken Prisoner. — Comforting Thoughts to the Afflicted — Darkness of the Times — Fellowship in Christ's Suffer- ings— Satisfaction with His Providences, .... 658 334. To Colonel Gilbert Ker. — Comfort under the Cloud hanging over Scot- land— Dissuasion from Leaving Scotland, .... 662 CONTENTS. xix Pi.O> 835. To Lady Kenmure. — Difference between what is Man's and Christ's, and between Christ Himself and His Blessings, . . , 663 336. To Lady Balaton, Ursula Mure. — Duty of Preferring to Live rather than Die — Want of Union in the judgments of the Godly, . . 665 337. To a Minister of Glasgow. — Encouraging Words to a Suffering Brother — "WTiy men shrink from Christ's Testimony, . . . 668 838. To Lady Kenmure. — A Word to Cheer in Times of Darkness, . . 671 839. To Chizzd FuUerton. — Exhortation to Follow Christ fully when others are cold, ........ 672 340. To Mr. Thomas Wylie. — Regarding a Letter of Explanation, , . 673 341. To Lady Kenmure. — Present Need helped by past Experience, . . 674 342. To Colonel Oilbert Ker. — Deadness— Hopes of Refreshment — Distance from God — Nearness Delighted in, . , . . , 675 843. To Colonel Oilbert ^er.— The State of the Land, . . .678 344. To Mr. John Scot, at Oxnam. — Excuse for Absence from Duty, . 679 345. To Lady Kenmure, — Thoughts for a Time of Sickness about the Life to Come, ........ 680 346. To Simeon Ashe. — Views of the Presbyterians as to Allegiance to the Protector, ........ 681 347. To Lady Kenmure. — Unkindness of the Creature— God's Sovereignty in permitting His Children to be Injured by Men, . . . 682 348. To Lady Kenmure. — God's Dealings with the Land, . . , 683 349. To Mr. John Scot, at Oxnam. — Protesters' Toleration, . . . 683 350. To Mr. John Scot, at Oxnam.— Gloomy Times — Means of promoting Godliness, ........ 684 361, To Mr. James Durham, Minister of Olasgow, some few days before his Death. — Man's Ways not God's Ways, .... 685 352. To Mr. John Scot, at Oxnam. — Adherence to the Testimony against Toleration, ........ 686 353. To Lady Kenmure.— Tri&ls — Deadness of the Spirit — Danger of False Security, ........ 686 354. To Lady Kenmure. — Prevailing Declension, Decay, and Indifference to God's Dealings — Things Future, ..... 688 355. To the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright. — Union — Humiliation— Choice of a Professor, ........ 689 366. To Mr. John Murray, Minister at Methven. — A Synod Proposal for Union — Brethren under Censure, ..... 691 367. To Mr. Outhrie, Mr. Trail, and the rest of their Brethren imprisoned in the Castle of Edinburgh. — On Suffeiing for Christ — God's Presence ever with His People — Firmness and Constancy, . . . 692 358. To Several Brethren. — Reasons for Petitioning his Majesty after his return, and for owning such as were censured while about so necessary a Duty, ••...... 694 359. To a Brother Minister.— Judgment of a Draught of a Petition, to have been presented to the Committee of Estates, .... 696 360. To Lady Kenmure, on the Imprisonment of her Brother, the Ma/rquis of Argyle.— God's Judgments— Calls to Flee to Him— The Results of timid Compliance, ....... 698 361. To Mistress Craig, upon the Death qf her hopeful Son.— 'Nine Reasons for Resignation, . . . , . . .699 362. To Mr. James Outhrie, Minister of the Gospel at Stirling.— Stedfa.st though Persecuted— Blessedness of Martyrdom, . . .701 863. To Mr. Robert Campbell. ~^ted^d.st\\ess to Protest against Prelacy and I'opery, ........ 703 jK CONTENTS. PAua 864. To Believers at Aberdeen. — Sinful Conformity and Schismatic Designs reproved, . . . . . . . . 701 365. To Mr. John Murray, Minhler at Melhven. — Proiiusal of a Season of Prayer, ........ 708 Index of the Chief Places and Individuals referred to in th« Letters, , 711 Index of Special Subjects, ...... 715 Glossary, ......••. 718 APPENDIX. Editions of Rutherford's Letters, ...... 736 Sample of the old Orthography, . , , , , ,740 Last Words ; Poem by Mrs. Cousin, ..... 741 Concerning the Portrait of Samuel Rutherford, . . . 745 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. [jHEREVER the palm-tree is, there is water," says the Eastern proverb ; and so, wherever the godly flourish, there, we are sure, must the Word of God be found. In the history of the Eeformation we read of Brother Martin, a poor monk at Basle, whose hope of salvation rested solely on the Lord Jesus, long before Luther sounded the silver trumpet that summoned sin-convinced souls to the One Sacrifice, Having written out his confession of faith, his statement of reliance on the righteousness of Christ alone, the monk placed the parchment in a wooden box, and shut up the wooden box in a hole of the wall of his cell. It was not till last century that this box, with its interesting contents, was discovered : it was brought to light only when the old wall of the monastery was taken down. The palm-tree speaks of the existence of water at its root ; the pure Word of God taught this man his simple faith. And herein we learn how it was that Basle so early became a peculiar centre of light in that region ; the prayer and the faith of that hidden one, and others like-minded, and the Word on which they fed, may explain it all. There is a fact not unlike the above in the history of the district where Samuel Eutherford laboured so lovingly. The people of that shire tell that there was found, some generations ago, in the wall of the old castle of Earlston, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, a copy of " Wickliffe's Bible." It was deposited in that receptacle in order to be hid from the view of enemies ; but from time to time it was the lamp of light to a few souls, 2 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. who, perhaps in the silence of night, found opportunity to draw it out of its ark, and peruse its pages. It seems that the Lollards of Kyle (the adjoining district) had brought it to Earlston. We know that there were friends and members of the family of Earlston who embraced the Gospel even in those days. In the sixteenth century, some of the ancestors of Viscount Kenmure are found holding the doctrines of Wickliffe, which had been handed down to them. May we not believe that the Gordons of Earlston, in after days, were not a little indebted to the faith and prayers of these ancient witnesses who hid the sacred treasure in the castle wall ? As in the case of the monk of Basle, their faith and patience were ac- knowledged in after days by the blessing sent down on that quarter, when the Lord, in remembrance of His hidden ones, both raised up the Gordons of Earlston, with many others of a like spirit, and also sent thither His servant Samuel Eutherford, to sound forth the Word of Life, and make the lamp of truth blaze, like a torch, over all that region. Samuel Eutherford was born about the year 1600. His father is understood to have been a respectable farmer. He had two brothers, James and George. But the place of his birth was not near the scene of his after labours. It is almost certain that Nisbet, a village of Eoxburghshire close to the Teviot, in the parish of Crailing, was his birthplace ; the name Eutherford frequently occurs in the churchyard. Not long ago, there were some old peoj)le in that parish who remembered the gable-end of the house in which it was said that he was born, and which, from respect to his memory, was permitted to stand as long as it could keep together. And there was there a village well where, when very young, Samuel nearly lost his life.^ He had been amusing himself with some companions, when he fell in, and was left there till they ran and procured assistance ; but on returning to the spot they found him seated on a knoll, cold and dripping, yet uninjured. He told them that "A bonnie white man came and drew him out of the well ! " Whether or not he really fancied that an angel had delivered him, we cannot tell ; but it is plain that, at all events, his boyish thoughts were already wandering in the region of the sky. He owed little to his native place. There was not so much of Christ known in that parish then as there is now ; for in after ^ This village well is about three feet deep. It is now closed up aud worked by a pump. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 3 days he writes, " My soul's desire is, that the place to which I owe my first birth — in which, I fear, Christ was scarcely named, as touching any reality of the power of godliness — may blossom as the rose " (Letter cccxxxiv.). We have no account of his revisiting these scenes of his early life, though he thus wrote to his friend, Mr Scott, minister of the adjoining parish of Oxnam. Like Donald Cargill, born in Perthshire yet never known to preach there even once, Kutherford had his labours in other parts of the land, distant from his native place. In this arrangement we see the Master's sovereignty. The sphere is evidently one of God's choosing for the man, instead of being the result of the man's gratifying his natural predilections. It accords, too, with the example of the Master, who never returned to Bethlehem, where He was born, to do any of His works. Jedburgh is a town three or four miles distant from Nisbet, and thither Samuel went for his education ; either walking to it, and returning home at evening, — as a school-boy would scarcely grudge to do, — or residing in the town for a season. The school at that time met in a part of the ancient Abbey, called, from this circumstance, the Latiners' Alley. In the year 1617 we find him farther from home, — removed to Edinburgh, which, forty years before, had become the seat of a College, though not as yet a University. There he obtained, in 1621, the degree of Master of Arts. A single specimen (not elegant, however) of his Latin verse remains in the lines he prefixed to an edition of Eow's "Hebrew Grammar," published at Glasgow, 1644 — Verba Sionfese gentis, submersa tenebris Cimmeriis, mendax Kimchius ore crepat. Quae vos Rabbini sinuosa aenigmata vultis, Nunc facilem linguam dicite quseso sacram. Falleris, Hippocrates ; male parcse stamina vitae Curta vocas, artem vociferare /j-ccKpicv ; Sit cita mors, rapido sit et hora fugacior Euro, Belleropliontseis vita volato rotis : Roufei Hebracis sit mors male grata Camoenis. Haec rclege, ast artem dixeris esse brevem. Soon after, he was appointed Eegent, or Professor, of Humanity, though there were three other competitors ; for his talents had attracted the notice of many. But, on occasion of a rumour that charged him with some irregularity — whether with or without foundation, it is now difficult to ascertain — he demitted his office in 1625, and led a private life, attending prelections on theology, and devoting himself to that study. That there could not have been anything very serious in the 4 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. rumour, may be inferred from the fact that no church court took any notice of the matter, though these were days when the reins of discipline were not held with a slack hand. But it is not unlikely that this may have been the time of which he says in a letter, " I knew a man who wondered to see any in this life laugh or sport."' It may have been then that he was led by the Spirit to know the things that are freely given us of God.^ We have no proof that he was converted at an earlier period, but rather the opposite. He writes, " Like a fool as I was, I suffered my sun to be high in the heaven, and near afternoon, before ever I took the gate by the end."^ And again, " I had stood sure, if in my youth I had borrowed Christ for my bottom."* The clouds returned after the rain ; family trials, and other similar dealings of Providence, combined to form his character as a man of God and as a pastor. In 1627 he was settled at Anwoth,^ a parish situated in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, on the Eiver Fleet, near the Solway. The church stood in a wide hollow, or valley, at the foot of the Boreland Hill. Embosomed in wood, with neither the smoke nor the noise of a village near, it must always have been a romantic spot — the very ideal of a country church, set down to cherish rural godliness. Though at this period Episcopacy had been obtruded upon Scotland, and many faithful ministers were suffering on account of their resistance to its ceremonies and services, yet he appears to have been allowed to enter on his charge without any compliance being demanded, and " without giving any engagement to the bishop." He began his ministry with the text, John ix. 39. The same Lord that would not let Paul and Timothy preach in Asia,^ nor in Bithynia, and yet sent to the one region the beloved John,^ and to the other the scarcely less beloved Peter,^ in this instance prevented John Livingstone going to Anwoth, which the patron had designed, and sent Rutherford instead. This was the more remarkable, because Livingstone was sent to Ancrum, the parish that borders on Nisbet, while he who was by birth related to that place was despatched to another spot. This is the Lord's doing. Llinisters must not choose according to the flesh. During the first years of his labours here, the sore illness of his wife was a bitter grief to him. Her distress was very severe. 1 Letter ccxxiv. - 1 Cor. ii. 12. ^ Letter clxxvii. * Letter ccxli. * See notice of tlio topography at Letter cxcviii. It is a mile and a half from the moderu Gatehouse of Fleet, a clean, English-looking village. « Acts xvi. 6, 7. ' Rev. i. 11. * 1 Pet. i. 1. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 5 He writes of it : " She is sore tormented night and day. — My life is bitter unto me. — She sleeps none, and cries as a woman travailing in birth ; my life was never so wearisome." ^ She continued in this state for no less than a year and a month, ere she died. Besides all this, his two children had been taken from him. Such was the discipline by which he was trained for the duties of a pastor, and by which a shepherd's heart of true sympathy was imparted to him. The parish of Anwoth had no large village near the church. The people were scattered over a hilly district, and were quite a rural flock. But their shepherd knew that the Chief Shepherd counted them worth caring for; he was not one who thought that his learning and talents would be ill spent if laid out in seeking to save souls, obscure and unknown. See him setting out to visit ! He has just laid aside one of his learned folios, to go forth among his flock". • See him passing along yonder field, and climbing that hill on his way to some cottage, his " quick eyes " occasionally glancing on the objects around, but his " face upward " for the most part, as if he were gazing into heaven. He has time to visit, for he rises at three in the morning, and at that early hour meets his God in prayer and meditation, and has space for study besides. He takes occasional days for catechising. He never fails to be found at the sick-beds of his people. Men said of him, " He is ahoays praying, alvxiys preaching, always visiting the sick, always catechising, always writing and studying." He was known to fall asleep at night talking of Christ, and even to speak of Him during his sleep. Indeed, himself speaks of his dreams being of Christ.2 His preaching could not but arrest attention. Though his elocution was not good, and his voice rather shrill, he was, nevertheless, " one of the most moving and affectionate preachers in his time, or perhaps in any age of the church." ^ " In the pulpit (says one of his friends), he had a strange utterance — a kind of shreigh, that I never heard t^e like. Many times I thought he would have flown out of the pulpit when he came to speak of Jesus Christ." Aij English merchant said of him, even in days when controversy had sorely vexed him and distracted his spirit, "I came to Irvine, and heard a well-favoured, proper old man (David Dickson), with a long beard, and that man showed me all my heart. Then I went to St. Andrews, where I heard a sweet, ^ Letter xviii. - Letter cclxxxvi. ^ << Wodrow's Church Hist." i. 205. 6 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. majestic-looking man (E. Blair), and he showed me the majesty of God. After him I heard a little, fair man (Rutherford), and he showed me tlie loveliness of Christ" ^ Anwoth was dear to him rather as the sphere appointed him by his Master, than because of the fruit he saw of his labours. Two years after being settled there, he writes, " I see exceedingly small fruit of my ministry. I would be glad of one soul, to be a crown of joy and rejoicing in the day of Christ." His people were " like hot iron, which cooleth when out of the fire." In a sermon on Song ii. 8, he complains of it being spiritually winter in Anwoth, " The very repairing of God's house, in our own parish church, is a proof. Ye need not go any farther. The timber of the house of God rots, and we cannot move a whole parish to spend twenty or thirty pounds Scots upon the house of God, to keep it dry." Still he laboured in hope, and laboured often almost beyond his strength. Once he says, " I have a grieved heart daily in my calling." He speaks of his pained breast, at another time, on the evening of the Lord's day, when his work was done.^ But he had seasons of refreshing to his own soul at least ; especially when the Lord's Supper was dispensed. Of these seasons he frequently speaks. He asks his friend, Marion M'Naught, to help with her prayers on such an occasion, " that being one of the days wherein Christ was wont to make merry with His friends."^ It was then that with special earnestness he besought the Father to distribute " the great Loaf, Christ, to the children of His family." Another church was filled, but not altogether by parishioners.* Many came from great distances ; among others, several that were 'converted, seventeen years before, under John Welsh, at Ayr. These all helped him by their prayers, as did also a goodly number of godly people in the parish itself, who were the fruit of the ministry of his predecessor. Yet over the unsaved he yearned most tenderly. At one time we hear him say, " I ^ " M'Crie's Sketches." ' Letter clxxxv. ' Letter xiv. * The oak pulpit out of which he preached was preserved till a few years ago. The old church (60 feet by 18) is in the shape of a barn, and could hold only 250 sitters. It is now entirely a ruin. The years 1631 and 1633 were carved on some of the seats — perhaps the scats of the Gordons, or other heritors. We may add, while speaking of this old edifice, where "the swallows building their nest," seemed to the exiled pastor "blessed birds," that the rusty key of that kirk-door is now deposited in the New College, Edinburgh, sent to the museum there as a precious relic several years ago by a friend, through Dr. Welsh. The church is now roofless, its walls overgrown with ivy, in which tlie sparrows build their nests at will. The tomb of Lady Cardoncss, an antique pile at the eido of the wall, was removed in 1878, though the slabs are preserved. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 7 would lay my dearest joys in the gap between you and eternal destruction." ^ At another, " My witness is in heaven, your heaven, would be two heavens to me, and your salvation two salvations." He could appeal to his people, " My day-thoughts and my night-thoughts are of you ; " and he could appeal to God, " 0 my Lord, judge if my ministry be not dear to me ; but not so dear by many degrees as Christ my Lord." ^ All classes of people of Anwoth were objects of his care. He maintained a friendly intercourse with people of high rank, and very many of his Letters are addressed to such persons. He seems to have been remarkably blessed to the gentry in the OLD CHURCH OF AXWOTH. neighbourhood — more far than to the common people. There was at that time some friend of Christ to be found in almost every gentleman's seat many miles around Anwoth. But the li&ni hoys were not beneath his special attention. He writes of them when at Aberdeen, and exclaims, " 0 if I might but speak to thee, or your herd boys, of my worthy Master." ^ He had a heart for the young of all classes, so that he would say of two children of one of his friends, " I pray for them by name ; " "* and could thus take time to notice one, " Your daughter desires a Bible and a gown. I hope she shall use the Bible well, which, if she do, the gown is the better bestowed." ^ Letter ccxvii. - Letter ccxvii, ^ Letter clxiii. * Letter xiv. 8 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. He lamented over the few that cry " Hosanna " in their youth. " Christ is an unhnoiun Christ to young ones ; and therefore they seek Him not, because they know Him not." He dealt with individual parishioners so closely and so personally as to be able to appeal to them regarding his faithful ness in this matter. He addresses one of them, Jean M'Millan : " I did what I could to put you within grips of Christ ; I told you Christ's testament and latter-will plainly." ^ He so carried them on liis heart (like the priest with the twelve tribes on his breastplate), that he could declare to Gordon of Cardoness, " Thoughts of your soul depart not from me in my sleep." ^ " My soul was taken up when others were sleeping, how to have Christ betrothed with a bride in that part of the land," viz. Anwoth. 2 He so prayed over them and for them, that he fears not to say, " There I wrestled with the angel and prevailed. Woods, trees, meadows, and hills, are my witnesses that I drew on a fair match betwixt Christ and Anwoth." * It is related that, on first coming to the parish, there was a piece of ground on Mossrobin farm, in the hollow of a hill, where on Sabbath after- noon the people used to play at foot-ball. On one occasion he repaired to that spot, and pointed out their sin, solemnly calling on the objects round to be witnesses against them, especially three large stones ^ close at hand on the slope of the hill, two of which still remain, and are called " Rutherford's Witnesses." The third was wantonly dislodged some years ago ; and it is said that the other two were removed to the other side of the stone dyke, where they are now, for the sake of security. This is the spot which is especially taken notice of by Dr. Chalmers, in recording a visit to Anwoth and its neighbourhood (Life, vol. iii. 130): — " Wednesday, August 23, 1826. — Started at five o'clock ; ordered the gig forw.ird on the public road to inect us after a scramble of about two miles among the hills, in the line of 'Rutherford's Memorials.' Went first to his churcli ; the identical fabric he preached in, and whicli is still preached in.' The floor is a causeway. There are dates of 1628^ and 1C33 on some old carved seats. The pulpit is the same, and I sat in it. It is smaller than Kilmany, and very nide and simple. The church bell is said to have been given him by Lady Kenmure, one of his correspond- ents in his Letters. It is singularly small for a church, having been the Kenmure house bell. We then passed to the new church that is building ; but I am happy to say the old fabric and Rutherford's pulpit are to be spared. It is a cniel circum- stance that tliey pulled down (and that only three weeks ago) his dwelling-house, his old manse ; which has not been used as a manse for a long time, but was recently occupied. It should have been spared. Some of the masons who were ordered to pull it down refused it, as thoy would an act of sacrilege, and have been ^ Letter cxxxii. ' Letter clxxx. " Letter clxxxvi. * Letter cclxxvii. •* Josh. xxiv. 27. 'It ha8 not been preached in since the year 1827. 'A mistake for 1631. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 9 dismissed from their employment. We went and mourned over the rubbish of the I'oundation. Then ascended a bank, still known by the name of Rutherford' s Walk.^ Then went further among the hills, to Rutherford's Witnesses, — so many stones which he called to witness against some of his parishioners who were amusing them- selves at the place with some game on the Sunday, and whom he meant to reprove. The whole scene of our morning's walk was wild, and primitive, and interesting. " Once, while in Anwoth,lii.s labours were interrupted (Letter xii.) by a tertian fever which laid him aside for thirteen weeks. Even when well recovered he could for a long time only preach on the Sabbath : visiting and catechising were at a stand. This was just before his wife's death in 1630, and he writes in the midst of it, " Welcome, v/elcome, cross of Christ, if Christ be with it." "An afflicted life looks very like the way that leads to the kingdom." And some years thereafter, when his mother (who came from Nisbet and resided with him six years after his first wife's death) was in a dangerous illness, he touchingly informs oue of his correspondents, to whom he writes from Anwoth, " Mjj mother is weak, and I think shall leave me alone ; but I am not alone, because Christ's Father is with me." ^ And what was his recreation ? The manse of Anwoth had many visits of kind friends, who, in Eutherford's fellowship, felt that saying verified, " They that dwell under His shadow shall return ; they shall revive as the corn." ^ The righteous com- passed him about, because the Lord had dealt bountifully with him. His Letters would be enough of themselves to show that his friendship and counsel were sought by the godly on all sides. One of his visitors was his own brother, George, at Kirkcudbright. This good man was a teacher in that town, who often repaired to Anwoth to take sweet counsel with Samuel ; and then, together, they talked of and prayed for their only other brother James, an officer in the Dutch service, who had sympathy with their views, and, in after days, conveyed to Samuel the invitation to become Professor at Utrecht. Visits of those friends who resided near were not unfrequent — such as the Gordons, Viscount Kenmure and his lady, and Marion M'Naught. But at times Anwoth manse was lighted up by the glad visit of unexpected guests. There is a tradition that Archbishop Usher, passing through Galloway, turned aside on a Saturday to enjoy the congenial society of Rutherford, He came, however, in disguise ; and being welcomed as a guest, took his place with the rest of the family when they were catechised, as was usual, that evening. The stranger was ' It was a walk among trees, close to the manse, 2 Letter xlix. 3 Hos. xiv. 7. TO SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. asked, " How many commandments are there ? " His reply was " Eleven." ^ The pastor corrected him ; but the stranger main- tained his position, quoting our Lord's words, " A new coMxMAND- MENT I give unto you, that ye love one another." They retired to rest, all interested in the stranger. Sabbath morning dawned. Rutherford arose and repaired, as was his custom, for medita- tion to a walk that bordered on a thicket,^ but was startled by hearing the voice of prayer — prayer too from the heart, and in behalf of the souls of the people that day to assemble. It was no other than the holy Archbishop Usher ; and soon they came BiSH o' BEiLD — Rutherford's hou&e to an explanation, for Eutherford had begun to suspect he had "entertained angels unawares." With great mutual love they conversed together; and at the request of Eutherford, the Archbishop went up to the pulpit, conducted the usual ser- 1 In tlie parish cliurcli of Chiseldon, North Wilts, there are to be seen Eleven Command nients inscribed on a slab (which is affixed to the chancel arch) ; the additional one consisting of onr Saviour's precept— "A new commandment I give unto you, tliat ye love one anotlier " (John xiii. 34). The clnirch is (piite an ancient oin', dating back to 1641. -The [.lace is still pointed out by tradition, as "Rutherford's Walk." It was close to the old manse, which was pulled down many years ago. It stood about a quarter of a mile from the church, and bore the name, Diishy Bield, or Bush o Bidd, i.e., the Vuish of shelter. Some make it Bimh o' Biel, and say it is a corruption of Bosco-bcllo, fair-wood, Boscohcl. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. ii vice of the Presbyterian pastor, and preached on "the New Commandment." Scarcely less interesting is the record of another unlooked-for meeting, Eutherford had one day left home to go to the neigh- bouring town of Kirkcudbright, the next day being a day of humiliation in that place. Having no doubt spent some time with his like-minded brother, he turned his steps to the house of another friend, Provost Fullerton, whose wife was Marion M'lSTaught. While sitting with them in friendly converse a knock at the door was heard, and then a step on the threshold. It was worthy Mr. Blair, who, on his way from London to Port- patrick, had sought out some of his godly friends, that with them he might be refreshed ere he returned to Ireland. He told them, when seated, that " he had a desire to visit both Mr. Eutherford at Anwoth, and Marion M'Naught at Kircudbright ; but not knowing how to accomplish both, had prayed for direction at the parting of the road, and laid the bridle on the horse's neck. The horse took the way to Kirkcudbright, and there he found both the friends he so longed to see." It was a joyful and refreshing meeting on all sides. Wodrow tells ^ another incident that, in part, bears some resemblance to this. Eutherford had been reasoning at Stirling with the Marquis of Argyle, and had set out homeward. But his horse was very troublesome, and he was feeling in his mind that he should have been more urgent and plain ! He returned, and dealt freely this time. And now his horse went on pleasantly all the way. In 1634 he attended the remarkable deathbed of Lord Kenmure, a narrative of which he published fifteen years after, in " The Last and Heavenly Speeches and Glorious Departure of John Viscount Kenmure." The inroads of Episcopacy were at this time threatening to disquiet Anwoth. His own domestic afflictions were still affecting him ; for he writes that same year, in referring to his wife's death many years before, " which wound is not yet fully healed and cured." About that time, too, there was a proposal (never carried into effect) to call him to Cramond near Edinburgh, 2 and another to get him settled at Kirkcud- bright. Meanwhile he persevered in study as well as in labours, and with no common success. He had a metaphysical turn, as well 1 " Analecta," vol. ii. p. 161. " Letter xliii. His friend anrl neighbour Sir. Dalgleish, minister of Kirkdale and Kirkmabreck, was translated to Cramond in 1639. 12 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. as great readiness in using the accumulated learning of other . days. It might be instructive to inquire why it is that wher- ever godliness is healthy and progressive, we almost invariably find learning in the Church of Christ attendant on it : while on I the other hand, neglect of study is attended sooner or later by decay of vital godliness. Not that all are learned in such times ; but there is always an element of the kiiiJ in the circle of those whom the Lord is using. The energy called forth by the knowledge of God in the soul leads on to the study of whatever is likely to be useful in the defence or propagation of the truth ; whereas, on tlie other hand, when decay is at work and lifeless- ness prevailing, sloth and ease creep in, and theological learning is slighted as uninteresting and dry. With Samuel Eutherford I and his contemporaries we find learning side by side with vital, ■ and singularly deep, godliness. Gillespie, Henderson, Blair, Dickson, and others, are well-known examples. Nor less dis- tinguished was Eutherford, who was led by circumstances in 1636 to publish his elaborate defence of grace against the Arminiaus, in Latin. Its title is, " Exercitationes de Gratia." So highly was it esteemed at Amsterdam, where it was published, that a second edition was printed that very year ; and repeated invitations were addressed soon after to the author to come to Holland, and occupy one or other of their Divinity chairs. Soon after, the contest for Christ's Icingly office, became increasingly earnest and keen. To Eutherford it appeared no small matter. " I could wish many pounds added to my cross to know that by my suffering Christ was set forward in His Idngly office in this land."^ July 27, 1636, was a day that put his principles to the test. He was called before the High Commission Court, because of nonconformity to the acts of Episcopacy, and because of His work against the Arminians. The Court was presided over by Sydserff, Bishop of Galloway, and was held at Wigton, about ten miles from Anwoth, accross the Bay. He appeared in person there, and defended himself. The issue could not be doubtful, though Lord Lorn made every exertion in his behalf. He was deprived of his ministerial office, which he had exercised at Anwoth for a period of nine years,^ and banished to Aberdeen. The next day (writing at evening on the subject), he tells of his sentence, and calls it, " The honour that I have prayed for these sixteen years." He made up his mind to leave Anwoth at once, observing, with a submissiveness which we might wonder at in * Letter cxv. .9ce aUo TiCtlor liv. "^ Letter cclxix. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 13 the author of " Lex Eex," " I propose to obey the king, who has power over my body." His only alarm was lest this separation from his flock might be a chastisement on him from the Lord, " because I have not been so faithful in the end as I was in the two first years of my ministry, when sleep departed from mine eyes through care for Christ's lambs." ^ On leaving Anwoth he directed his steps by Irvine, spending a night there with his beloved friend David Dickson. What a night that must have been ! To hear these two in solemn con- verse ! The one could not perhaps handle the harp so well as the other ; for David Dickson could express his soul's weary longings and its consoling hopes in such strains as that which has made his name familiar in Scotland, " 0 mother dear Jerusalem ; " but Eutherford, nevertheless, had so much of poetry and sublime enthusiasm in his soul, that any poet could sympathise with him to the full. Many of his letters " from Christ's palace in Aberdeen " are really strains of true poetry. What else is such an effusion as this, when, rising on eagles' wings, he exclaims, "A land that has more than four summers in the year ! What a singing life is there ! There is not a dumb bird in all that large field, but all sing and breathe out heaven, joy, glory, dominion, to the High Prince of that new- found land. And verily the land is sweeter that He is the glory of that land." ^ "0 how sweet to be wholly Christ's, and wholly in Christ ; to dwell in Immanuel's high and blessed land, and live in that sweetest air, where no wind bloweth but the breath- ings of the Holy Ghost, no sea nor floods flow but the pure water of life that floweth from under the throne and from the Lamb, no planting, but the tree of life that yieldeth twelve manner of fruits every month ! What do we here but sin and suffer ? 0 when shall the night be gone, the shadows flee away, and the morning of the long, long day, without cloud or night, dawn ? The Spirit and the bride say, ' Come ! ' 0 when shall the Lamb's wife be ready, and the Bridegroom say, ' Come ? ' " ^ Whoever compares such breathings with David Dickson's hymn will see how congenial were their feelings and their hopes, and even their mode of expressing what they felt and hoped, though the one used prose and the other tried more memorable verse. We follow Eutherford to Aberdeen, the capital of the North, whither he was accompanied by a deputation of his affectionate parishioners from Anwoth, in whose company he would forget ^ Letter cix. 2 Letter cccxxiii. ^ Letter cccxxxiv. M SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. the leugth aud tediousness of the way. He arrived here in September 1636. This town was at that time the stronghold of Episcopacy and Arminianism, and in it the state of religion was very low. " It consisted of Papists, and men of Gallio's naughty faith." 1 The clergy and doctors took the opportunity of Ruther- ford's arrival to commence a series of attacks on the special doctrines of grace which he held. But in disputation he foiled them ; and when many began to feel drawn to him in consequence of his earnest dealings and private exhortations, there was a proposal made to remove him from the town. " So cold," writes he, " is northern love ! But (added he) " Christ and I will hear it;" 2 deeply feeling his union to Him who said to Saul, " Why persecutest thou Me ? " Often, on the streets,^ he was pointed as " the banished minister ; " aud hearing of this, he remarked, " I am not ashamed of my garland." He had visitors from Orkney, and from Caithness, to the great annoyance of his persecutors.* Some blamed him for not being "'prudent enough" as we have seen men ready to do in similar cases in our own day ; but he replies, " It is ordinary that that should he j^cirt of the cross of those ivho suffer for Him." Still he enjoyed, in his solitude, occasional inter- course with some of the godly ones, among whom were Lady ritsligo. Lady Burnet of Largs, Andrew Cant, and James Martin. His deepest affliction was separation from his flock at Anwoth. Nothing can exceed his tender sorrow over this flock.^ It was a saying of his own, " Gold may be gold, and bear the King's stamp upon it, when it is trampled upon by men." MARKET CROSS, ABERDEEN. ^ Letter Ixvi. Dr. James Sil)l>ald, said to have been a man of f;reat learning, was minister in one of the ehnrches of New Aberdeen. Rutherford attended his preaching, and finding tliat he tauglit Arminianism, testified against liim. * Letter cxvii. ^ The impression of some readers might be that he was in prison. But he never was so. He was in exile ; but the whoki town was his prison. He was, in this respect, like Shimei confined to Jerusalem (Letters Ixviii., Ixix., etc.). His house was in the Upper Kirkgatc. * Letter clxi. 5 Letter clxxxi. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 15 And this was true of himself. But he came out of his trial not only unscorchecl, but, as his many letters from Aberdeen show, greatly advanced in every grace. The Latin lines prefixed to the early editions of these Letters scarcely exaggerate when they sing — " Quod Chebar et Patmos divinis vatibus olim ; Huic fuerant sancto claustra Abredsea viro." But we err if we suppose that it was only while there that he experienced that almost ecstatic enjoyment of his Lord. He carried it away with him ; for is not this the same strain as perv^ades his Letters, when, preaching in 1644, before the House of Commons in London, he exclaims, " 0 for eternity's leisure, to look on Him, to feast upon a sight of His face ! 0 for the long summer day of endless ages to stand beside Him and enjoy Him ! 0 time, 0 sin, be removed out of the way ! 0 day ! 0 fairest of days, dawn ! " He was, during part of two years, closely confined to that town, though not in prison ; but in 1638 public events had taken another turn. The Lord had stirred up the spirit of the people of Scotland, and the covenant was again triumphant in the land. Rutherford hastened back to Anwoth. During his absence, " For six quarters of a year," say his parishioners, " no sound of the Word of God was heard in our kirk." The swallows had made their nests there undisturbed for two summers. His Letters do not refer to the proceedings of the Glasgow Assembly of 1638. It is well known, however, that he was no mere indifferent spectator to what then took place, but was present, and was member of several committees which at that time sat on the affairs of the church. Presbytery being fully restored by that Assembly, it was thought right that one so gifted should be removed to a more important sphere. He was sent by the church to several districts to promote the cause of Eeformation and the Covenant ; and at length, in spite of his reluctance, arising chiefly from love to his flock — his rural flock at Anwoth — he was constrained to yield to the united opinion of his brethren, and be removed to the Professor's Chair in St. Andrews in 1639, and become Principal of the New College. He bargained to be allowed to preach regularly every Sabbath in his new sphere ; for he could not endure silence when he might speak a word for his Lord. He seems to have preached also, as i6 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. occasion offered, in the parishes around, especially at Scoonie, in which the village of Leven stands.^ His hands were necessarily filled with work in his new sphere ; yet still he relaxed nothing of his diligence in study. Nor did he lack anything of former blessing. It was here the English merchant heard him preach so affectingly on the loveli- ness of Christ ; while such was his success as a Professor that " the University became a Lebanon out of which were taken cedars for building the house of God throughout the land." In the year 1640, he married his second wife, Jean M'Math, " a woman," says one, " of such worth, that I never knew any among men exceed him, nor any among women exceed her. He who heard either of them pray or speak, might have learnt to bemoan his own ignorance. Oh how many times I have been convinced, by observing them, of the evil of unseriousness unto God, and unsavouriness in discourse." They had seven children ; but only one survived the father, a little daughter, Agnes, who does not seem to have been a comfort to her godly mother.2 In July 1643, the Westminster Assembly began their sittings ; and to it he was sent up as one of the Commissioners from the ^ " In 1650, Mr. Samuel Rutherford, minister of St. Andrews, did preacli the preparation sermon in Cant. v. 2. Mr. Samuel had a lecture on Monday following on the 20th chapter of Matthew's Gospel." "1651, July 13. — The comm. was given at Scoonie, Mr. Alex. Moncrieff, m. there, did preach the Preparation Sennon, and on Monday morning Mr. Sa. Rutherford did preach ; his text at both occasions was Luke vii. 36 till 39 ver. At this time was present, besides Mr. Sa. Rutherford, Mr. Ja. Guthrie, and Mr. David Bennet, Mr, Ephraim Melvin, and Mr William Oliphant, m. in Dumfermlin. Thither did resort many sti'angers, so that the throng was great. Mr. Ephraim and Mr. D. Bennet both did sit within the pulpit while the minister had his sermon." So again, "In 1652, June, 13. — Mr S. R. of St. Andrews, did preach on the'Sabbath afternoon ; his lecture Luke xiv. ; his sermon Luke vii. 36, 38, to end. Mr S. did exhort on Monday following, on his foresaid text, Luke vii. 40, 44." Once more, "1653, Aug. 11. — A fast keepit at Scoonie kirk, Mr. S. R. in the morning, lecture, Jonah ii. ; his text, Rev. iii. 1, at end. Afternoon preached on same; his lecture Psalms cxxx.,cxxxi." " 1654, Jan. 4. — Being Saturday, there was a Preparation Sermon for a Thanksgiving preached at Scoonie in Fyfe, for the continuance of the Gospel in the land and for the spreading of it in some ]ilaces of the Highlands in Scotland, where in some familips two and in some families one, began to call on God by jirayer. Mr Samuel Rutherford, m. in St. Andrews, preached on Saturday ; his text, Isa. xlix. 9, 10, 11, 12. On the Sabbath, Mr. Alex Moncrieff, m., then preached ; his lecture, 1 Thess. ch. i. ; his text, Coloss. i 27. In the afternoon of the Sabbath, Mr Sanmel preached again upon his fore- mentioned text. On Monday morning, Mr Samuel had a lecture on Psal. IxxxviiL He did read tlie whole Psalm. Observe, that on Saturday Mr Samuel had this expression in his prayer alter sermon, desiring that the Lord would rebuke Presby- teries and others tliat had taken the keys and the power in their hands, and keened out, and would suffer none to enter (meaning in the ministry) but such as said as they said." — " Laniont's Diary." - In the " Statistical Account of Scotland " it is stated that in 1642 he was presented to the church of Mid-Calder. But he must have declined it at once ; for in 1643 Mr. Hugh Kennedy is found the ordained and settled pastor of that parish. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 17 Church of Scotland. A sketch of a " Shorter Catechism " exists in MS., in the library of the Edinburgh University, in Ruther- ford's handwriting, very much resembling the Catechism as it now stands, from which it has been inferred that he had the principal hand in drawing it up for the Assembly. He con- tinued four years attending the sittings of this famous synod, and was of much use in their deliberations. So prominent a part did he take, that the great Milton has singled him out for attack in his lines, " On the new forcers of conscience, under the Long Parliament." Milton knew him only as an opponent of his sectarian and independent principles, and so could scorn measures proposed by " Mere A. S.^ and Eutherford." But had he known the soul of the man, would not even Milton have found a sublimity of thought and feeling in his adversary, that at times approached his own lofty poesy ? How interesting, in any point of view, to find the devoted pastor of Anwoth, on the streets of London, crossing the path of England's greatest poet. During his residence in London he was tried with many afflictions. Several of his family died ; and his own health began to give way, so that he and his brother minister, Mr. G. Gillespie, visited Epsom to drink the waters. Yet such was the amazing spirit of the man, under a sense of duty, that amid the trials and bustle of that time he wrote, " The Due Eight of Presbyteries," " Lex Eex," i.e. " The Law, The King," and " Trial and Triumph of Faith." Nor was he soured by controversy. In the preface to one of his controversial works, he discovers his large-hearted charity and manly impartiality in regard to what he saw in these parts. He writes : " I judge that in England the Lord hath many names, and a fair company, that shall stand at the side of Christ when He shall render up the kingdom to the Father ; and that in that renowned nation there be men of all ranks, wise, valorous, generous, noble, heroic, faithful, religious, gracious, learned." 2 Eeturning home to St. Andrews, he resumed his labours both in the college and in the pulpit with all his former zeal. In 1644, it appears from the old minutes of Lanark Presbytery, a vacancy having occurred, Eutherford was unanimously called to Lanark. He was inclined to go, but the Presbytery of St. Andrews refused to loose him. He had often preached at Lanark. 1 A. S. stands for Adavi Stewart, wlio wrote a pamphlet, "Zenibbabel to San- ballat." ^ Preface to "Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist." 18 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. He declined two invitations to the professorship in Holland ; one from Harderwyck in 1648, the other from Utrecht in 1651; though the former offered the chair both of Divinity and of Hebrew. He joined the Protestors in determinedly opposing the proceedings of tlie Commission of Assembly, who had censured such as protested against the admission to power of persons in the class of malignants. His friend David Dickson keenly opposed him, and Mr. Blair also, though less violently.^ It was this controversy that made John Livingstone say, in a letter to Blair, " Your and Mr. D. Dickson's accession to these resolutions is the saddest thing I have seen in my time. My wife and I have had more bitterness in this respect, these several months, than ever we had since we knew what bitten: ess meant." Rutherford wrote too violently on this matter.^ Some say he was naturally hot and fiery ; but at this time all parties were greatly excited. Still he did not lose his brotherly love — the same brotherly love that led him so fervently to embrace Arch- bishop Usher as a fellow-believer. We may get a lesson for our times from his remarks on occasion of these bitter controversies. " It is hard when saints rejoice in the sufferings of saints, and redeemed ones hurt, and go nigh to hate, redeemed ones. For contempt of the communion of saints, we have need of new-born crosses, scarce ever heard of before. — Our star-light hideth us from ourselves, and hideth us from one another, and Christ from us all." And then he subjoins (and is he not borne out by the words of the Lord in John xvii. 22?): "A doubt it is if we shall have fully one heart till we shall enjoy one heaven." The state of tilings lay heavy on his mind : " I am broken and wasted by the wrath that is upon this land." It was in 1651 that he published his work "De Divina Providentiu," a work in which he assailed Jesuits, Socinians, and Arminiaus. Richard Baxter (tinged as he was with the Arminian theology), in referring to this treatise, remarked (says Wodrow), that " His Letters were the best piece, and this work the worst, he had ever read." Of course, this was the language * When the Lord's Siipiier was to be dispensed, Blair in vain used every argument to induce Rutherford to take ]iart with himself and ilr. Wood in serving tables ; and, being forced to do it alone, began thus : "We must have water in our wine while here. 0 to be above, where there will be no mistakes ! " — " Wodrow's Anal." ' "Brodie's Diary "(May 27, 1653)says that S. K. in a conference in "Warriston's Chambers " retorted, that he iiad heard much of peace with men, but would like better to hear of a peace with God, and with sin, that His wrath may be turned away, without which a patched ])eace would be little effectual " (p. 43). In June ft longer conference (pp. 48, 49, 50), SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 19 of controversy, for the book is one of great ability. It was this work, indeed, that drew forth several invitations from foreign Universities. The ten years that followed were times of much distraction, being the times of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, as well as of the Protesters and Eesolutioners. In 1651 the Scottish nation resolved to crown Charles II., as lawful king, at Scone ; and when the young king was at St. Andrews, in prospect of that event, he visited the colleges. It fell to Eutherford to deliver, on that occasion, an oration in Latin before His Majesty, on a subject which he could handle well, both as a patriot and a Christian, " The Duty of Kings." Milton sings — "God doth not need Either man's work, or His own gifts ; His state Is kingly ; thousands at His bidding speed. And post o'er land and ocean without rest : Tliey also serve who only stand arid wait," It is mentioned in " Lamont's Diary," 27th Sept. 1653, that at the Provincial Synod of Fyfe, which met at St. Andrews, Mr. Samuel Eutherford presented a paper to the Moderator, relating to the sins of the ministry, which was not accepted. Upon the refusal of it, some words passed between Eutherford and Mr. Eobert Blair, the Moderator, anent the public business. At the close of that meeting, two English officers entered ; upon which they were asked, " If they had come to sit and voice with them ? " They said, " No ; only to see that they ruled nothing in prejudice to the Commonwealth." The days were evil, and Eutherford was longing now for such quiet service. He sometimes refers to this desire ; he wishes for a harbour in his latter days ; only (adds he), " failing is serving " — and he did delight in serving his Lord to the last.^ His friend M'Ward, in an advertisement prefixed to the earlier editions of the Letters, bitterly laments the loss of a Commentary on Isaiah, on which " this true Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God," ^ employed his leisure time during the closing years of his life.^ " His heart travailed more," says he, " in birth of this piece than ever I knew him of any; neither was there ever anything he put his hand to that would have so powerfully persuaded this panter after the 1 In 1655, we find in "Diary of Brodie of Brodie," p. 141 :— "Quhil Mr. Paitherford, Mr. Blair, Mr. Wood, and many others, are labouring in places, and as we hear come small speed ; Oh, is it not a marvel that we should be discouraged ! " ^ 2 Chrou. xxvi. 5. * He planned a Commentary on Hosea in 1657, but the design was not executed. Reference is made to this in Letter ex. 20 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. enjoyment of his Master's company, to have had his heaven and the immediate fruition of God suspended for a season, as the eager desire he had to finish this work before he finished his course." But all these papers were carried off, and never recovered. So true is it, that of the seed we sow, we " know not whether shall prosper, either this or that " (Eccles. xi. 6). When Charles II. was fully restored, and had begun to adopt arbitrary measures, Eutherford's work, " Lex Eex," was taken notice of by the Government ; for, reasonable as are its principles in defence of the liberty of subjects, its spirit of freedom was intolerable to rulers, who were, step by step, advancing to acts of cruelty and death. Indeed, it was so hateful to them, that they burnt it, in 1661, first at Edinburgh, by the hands of the hangman ; and then, some days after, by the hands of the infamous Sharpe, under the windows of its author's College in St. Andrews. He was next deposed from all his offices ; and, last of all, was summoned to answer at next Parliament a charge of high treason. But the citation came too late. He was already on his deathbed, and on hearing of it, calmly remarked, that he had got another summons before a superior Judge and judicatory, and sent the message, " I behove to answer my first summons ; and, ere your day arrive, I will be where few kings and great folks come." We have no account of the nature of his last sickness, except that it was a lingering disease. He had a daughter who died a few weeks before himself. All that is told us of his deathbed is characteristic of the man. At one time he spoke much of " the white stone " and " the new name." When he was on the threshold of glory, ready to receive the immortal crown, he said, "Now my tabernacle is weak, and I would think it a more glorious way of going home to lay down my life for the cause, at the Cross of Edinburgh or St. Andrews ; but I submit to my Master's will." Some days before his death, after a fainting fit, he said, " Now I feel, I believe, I enjoy, I rejoice." And turning to Mr. Blair, " I feed on manna : I have angels' food. My eyes shall see my Redeemer. I know that He shall stand on earth at the latter day, and I shall be caught up in the clouds to meet Him in the air." ^ When asked, " What think ye now of Christ ? " he replied, " I shall live and adore Him. Glory, glory to ray Creator and Redeemer for ever. Glory shineth in ^ " Lamont's Diary," p. 133. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 21 Immanuel's land." The same afternoon he said, " I shall sleep in Christ ; and when I awake, I shall be satisfied with His likeness. 0 for arms to embrace Him ! " Then he cried aloud, " 0 for a well-tuned harp ! " This last expression he used more than once, as if already stretching out his hand to get his golden harp, and join the redeemed in their new song. He also said on another occasion, " I hear Him saying to me, * Come up hither.' " His little daughter Agnes (the only survivor of six children), eleven years of age, stood by his bedside ; he looked on her, and said, " I have left her upon the Lord." Well might the man say so, who could so fully testify of his portion in the Lord, as a goodly heritage. To four of his brethren, who came to see him, he said, " My Lord and Master is chief of ten thousands of thousands. None is comparable to Him, in heaven or in earth. Dear brethren, do all for Him. Pray for Christ. Preach for Christ. Do all for Christ ; beware of men-pleasing. The Chief Shepherd will shortly appear." He often called Christ " His Kingly King." While he spoke even rapturously, " I shall shine ! I shall see Him as He is ! I shall see Him reign, and all His fair company with Him, and I shall have my large share " — he at the same time would protest, " I renounce all that ever He made me will or do as defiled or imperfect as coming from myself. I betake myself to Christ for sanctifica- tion as well as justification." Repeating 1 Cor. i. 30, he said, " I close with it ! Let Him be so. He is my all and all." "If He should slay me ten thousand times I will trust." He spoke as if he knew the hour of his departure ; not perhaps as Paul (2 Tim. iv. 6) or Peter (2 Peter i. 14), yet still in a manner that seems to indicate that the Lord draws very near His servants in that hour, and gives glimpses of what He is doing. On the last day of his life, in the afternoon, he said, " This night will close the door, and fasten my anchor within the veil, and I shall go away in a sleep by five o'clock in the morning." And so it was. He entered Immanuel's land at that very hour, and is now (as himself would have said) " sleeping in the bosom of the Almighty," till the Lord come. We may add his latest words. "There is nothing now between me and the Resurrection but ' This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise.' " He interrupted one speaking in praise of his painfulness in the ministry, " I disclaim all. The port I would be in at is redemption and forgiveness of sin through His blood." Two of his biographers record that his last words were, »2 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. " Glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel's land ! " as if he had caught a glimpse of its mountain-tops. It was at St. Andrews he died, on 30th March 1661, and there he was buried. " Lamont's Diary," p. 133, says : " He was interred on the 30th of March, in the ordinary burial place." Had he lived a few weeks his might have been the cruel death endured by his friend James Guthrie, whom he had encouraged, by his letters, in stedfastness to the end. The sentence which the Parliament passed, when told that he was dying, did him no dishonour. When they had voted that he should not die in the College, Lord Burleigh rose and said, " Ye cannot vote him out of heaven." His death was lamented throughout the land ; and to this day few names are so well known and honoured. So great was the reverence which some of the godly had for this man of God, that they requested to be buried where his body was laid. This was Thomas Halyburton's dying request.^ An old man in the parish of Crailing (in which Nisbet, his birthplace, is situated) remembers the veneration entertained for him by the great- grandfather of the present Marquis of Lothian. This good Marquis used to lift his hat, as often as he passed the spot where stood the cottage in which Samuel Eutherford was born. He was twice married. His widow survived him fourteen years. If ever there was any por- trait of him, it is not now known. The portraits some- times given of him are all imaginary. We are most familiar with the likeness of his soul. There is one ex- pressive line in the epitaph on his tombstone, in the churchyard at the boundary wall opposite the door of St Ilegulus' Tower — " What tongue, wluit pen, or skill of men, Can famous Rutherford commend ! His learning justly raised liis fame, True godliness adorn'd his name. He did converse with things above, Acquainted icith Immanuel's love." KUINS OK ST. ANDREWS CATHEDRAL. ^ See (ch. vi. ) of "Memoir of Halyburton," who, on his deathbed, quoted Rutherford's words, "Glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel's land." SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 23 A monument to his memory was erected in 1842, by sub- scription, on the Boreland Hill, in the parish of Anwoth. It is sixty feet in height, and thus, seen all around, it seems to remind the inhabitants of that region how God once visited His people there. His Letters have long been famous among the godly. The pre- sent edition of them has several things to recommend it. 1. The Letters are chronologically arranged. 2. They have biographical notices prefixed to a large number of them. Most of these are from the pen of the Rev. James Anderson. The present editor has added, here and rutherford-s monument on there, topographical notes that boreland hill. seemed to have some interest, most of them gleaned on the spot. The explanatory notes in the edition by the Eev. C. Thomson, 1836, have often been consulted with much advantage. 3. There are contents prefixed to each Letter, describing generally what are the main subjects of each. 4. There are some new letters inserted in this collection ; and there is a facsimile of an uniyidjlished letter directed to the Provost of Edinburgh, at the time when there was an attempt made to call Rutherford to that city. The letter, which is preserved in the Records of the Edinburgh Town Council, entreats them to drop the matter. It is written in a very small hand, as was usual with him , and the seal on it has the armorial bearing of the Rutherford family. If it be asked how it came about that these letters should have been at first printed in an order entirely unchronological, the explanation is simple: Tlie first edition appeared in 1664, and in it there were only two hundred and eighty-four of his letters gathered and published ; but many being edified thereby, an edition soon appeared with sixty-eight more letters appended. All these seem to have been printed ^'ery much in the order in which they came to hand, and the additional sixty-eight, more especially, disturbed all arrangement. The collector was Mr. M'Ward,^ who, as a student, being much beloved by Rutherford, ^ In " Lamont's Diary," April 1650, we read of " Mr. Robert Makeward, some- time servant (i.e. secretary) to Mr. Samuel Rutherford, minister of St Andrews," 2 4 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. went to the Westminster Assembly with him as his amanuensis or secretary. He was afterwards successor to Andrew Gray in Glasgow, and finally minister in Rotterdam. He gave them to the public with an enthusiastic recommendation, under the title, " Joshua Eedivivus ; ^ published for the use of all the people of God, but more particularly for those who are now, or afterwards may be, put to suffering for Christ and His cause ; by a well- wisher to the work and people of God. John xvi. 2 ; 2 Thessal. i. 6." The edition was in duodecimo, and was printed at Eotterdam. Not only were the Letters first published in Holland, but also, in 1674, there appeared a Dutch translation of them at Flushing. It will be noticed, in reading the Letters as they stand chronologically, that at times the pen of the ready writer ran on with amazing rapidity. He has written many in one day when his heart was overflowing. It was easy to write when the Lord was pouring on him the unction that teacheth all things. He would lia\'e written still more, but he had heard that people looked up to him and overpraised his Letters. During his confinement at Aberdeen, he wrote about two hundred and twenty of these letters. There are a few distasteful expressions in these epistolary effusions, the sparks of a fancy that sought to appropriate everything to spiritual purposes ; but as to extravagance in the thoughts conveyed, there is none. An old Memoir of Eichard Cameron, the martyr, mentions at the close that it had become a fashion among " profane preachers and expectants " to say of these Letters, " They are fit only for old wives." Dr. Love, on the other hand, protests, " The haughty contempt of that book which is in the heart of many will be ground for condemnation when the Lord cometh to make inquisition after such things" (Letter xiv.). The extravagance in sentiment alleged against them by some is just that of Paul, when he spoke of knowing " the height and depth, length and breadth," of the love of Christ ; or that of Solomon, when the Holy Ghost inspired him to write " The Song of Songs." Eather would we say of these Letters, what Livingstone in a letter says of John Welsh's dying words, " 0 for a sweet fill of this fanatic humour ! " In modern days, Eichard Cecil has said of Eutherford, " He is one of my classics ; he is a real original ; " and, in older times, Eichard 1 Why " Joshua " ? Did he think of the faithful witnessing in Joshua xxiv. ? Or is the reference to Joshua as one of the spies ? See Letter cxviii. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 25 Baxter, some of whose theological leanings might have prejudiced him, if anything could, said of his Letters, " Hold off the Bible, such a book the world never saw." They were long ago translated into Dutch, and of late years they have been trans- lated into German. Both in these, and in his other writings, we see sufficient proof that had he cultivated literature as a pursuit, he might have stood high in the admiration of men.^ His correspondents were chiefly persons residing either in Galloway, where Anwoth was, or in Ayrshire ; for these two counties at that time were rich in godly men of some standing. His pen suggests often, by a few strokes, very much that is profound and impressive. There is something not easily forgotten in the words used to express the Church's indestructibleness when he says, " The bush has been burning these five thousand years, and no man yet saw the ashes of that fire " (Letter cccxvii.). How much truth is conveyed in that saying, " Losses for Christ are but goods given out in bank in Christ's hand." There is an ingenious use of Scripture that often delights the reader ; as when he speaks of " The corn on the house-tops that never got the husbandman's prayer," or of " Him that counteth the basons and knives of His house (Ezra i. 9, 10), and bringeth them back safe to His second temple " (Letter cccxxxiii.). ^ Even in his controversial works, sparks of the same poetic fire fly out when opportunity occurs. In his Treatise "De Divina Providentia, " the following paragrajih occurs, extolling the glory of Godhead wisdom. " Comparentur cum ilia increata sapientia Dei Patris umbratiles scintillulas creatse gloriola; quotquot nominis celebritate inclaruenint. Delirat Plato. Mentitur Aristoteles. Cicero balbutit, hsesitat, nescit Latine loqui. Demosthenes mutus et elinguis obstupescit ; virtutis viam ignorat Stneca ; nihil canit Homerus ; male canit Virgilius ! Accedant ad Christum qui virtutis gloria fulgent ! Aristides virtutem mentitur. Fabius cespitat, a via justitise deviat. Socrates ne hoc quidem scit, se nihil scire. Cato levis et futilis est ; Solon est mundi et voluptatum servus et mancipiura, non legislator. Pythagoras nee sophos, nee philosophus est. Bias nee mundi nee inanis glorifc contemptor. Alexander Macedo ignavus est," &c. Another work bears tliis title: " Exercitationes Apologeticse- pro Divina Gratia, studio et industria Samuelis Rhoetorfortis, Anwetensis, in Gallovidia, Scotioe provincii Pastoris." The preface, or dedication, to Gordon of Kenmure, is very characteristic, ending thus : " Non enim ignoras in hac valle miseriarum minime sistendum, neque tentoriiim figendum ; ad aeternitatem ipsam (quod vere magnum nomen est & ineff'abile) te vocari ; crescere iter, decrescere diem, omnia alia aliena, tempus tantum nostrum esse, si modo nostrum est." In this preface he calls himself " Pastor Anwetennis," the old spelling of Anwoth being Aniveth. 26 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. These letters will ever be precious to — 1. All who are sensible of their own, and the Churches decay and corruptions. — The wound and the cure are therein so fully opened out : self is exposed, specially spiritual self. He will tell you, " There is as much need to watch over grace, as to watch over sin," He will show you God in Christ, to fill up the place usurped by self. The subtleties of sin, idols, snares, temptations, self-deceptions, are dragged into view from time to time. And what is better still, the cords of Christ are twined round the roots of these bitter plants, that they may be plucked up. Nor is it otherwise in regard to corruption in public, and in the Church. We do not mean merely the open corruption of error, but also the secret " grey hairs " of decay. Hear him cry, " There is universal deadness on all that fear God. 0 where are the sometime quickening breathings and influences from heaven that have refreshed His hidden ones ! " And then he laments, in the name of the saints, "We are half satisfied with our witheredness ; nor have we as much of his strain who doth eight times breathe out that suit (Psalm cxix.). Quicken me ! " " We live far from the well, and complain but dryly of our dryness." 2. All who delight in the Surety's imputed righteousness. — If thoroughly aware of the body of sin in ourselves we cannot but feel that we need a person in our stead — the person of the God- man in the room of our guilty person. " To us a Son is given ; " not salvation only, but a Saviour. " He gave Himself for us." These letters are ever leading us to the Surety and His righteousness. The eye never gets time to rest long on anything apart' from Him and His righteousness. We are shown the deluge- waters undried up, in order to lead us into the ark again : " I had fainted, had not want and penury chased me to the storehouse of all." 3. All luho rejoice in the Gospel of free grace. — Lord Kenmure having said to him, " Sin causeth me to be jealous of His love to such a man as I have been," he replied, " Be jealous of yourself, my Lord, but not of Jesus Christ." In his " Trial and Triumph of Faith " he remarks, " As holy walking is a duty coming from us, it is no ground of true peace. Believers often seek in themselves what they should seek in Christ." It is to \ the like effect he says in one of his letters, " Your heart is not the compass that Christ saileth by," — turning away his friend SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 27 from looking inward, to look upon the heart of Jesus. And this is his meaning, when he thus lays the whole burden of salvation on the Lord, and leaves nothing for us but acceptance, " Take ease to thyself, and let Him bear all." ^ Then, pointing us to the risen Saviour as our pledge of complete redemption, "Faith may dance, because Christ singeth ; " ^ " Faith apprehendeth pardon, but never payeth a penny for it." ^ On his death-bed he said to his friends, " I disclaim all that ever God made me will or do, and I look upon it as defiled and imperfect." And so in his Letters he will admit of no addition, or intermixture of other things, " The Gospel is like a small hair .that hath no breadth, and will not cleave in two." ^ He exhorts to Assurance as being the way to be humbled very low before God : " Com- plaining is but a humble backbiting and traducing of Christ's new work in the soul." " Make meikle of assurance, for it keepeth your anchor fixed." ^ He warns us, in his " Trial and Triumph of Faith," " not to be too desirous of keen awakenings to chase us to Christ. Let Christ tutor me as he thinketh good. He has seven eyes : I have but one, and that too dim." In a similar strain he writes : — " The law shall never be my doomster, by Christ's grace ; I shall find a sure enough doom in the Gospel to humble and cast me down. There cannot be a more Immhle soul than a believer. It is no pride in a droioning man to catch hold of a roch." * How much truth there is here ! Naaman never was humble in any degree, until he felt himself completehj healed of his scaly leprosy ; but truly he was humbled and humble then. And what one word is there that suggests so many humbling thoughts as that word " grace " .? 4. All who seek to groiu in holiness. — The Holy Ghost delights to show us the glorious Godhead, in the face of Jesus. And this is a very frequent theme in these Letters. " Take Christ for sanctification, as well as justification," is often his theme. And in him we see a man who seems to have fought for holiness as unceasingly and as eagerly as other men seek for pardon and 'peace. In him " Holiness to the Lord " seems written on every affection of the heart, and on every fresh- springing thought. Fellowship with the living God is a distinguishing feature in the holiness given by the Holy Ghost ; we get " access by one Spirit to the Father through Him." ^ Paitherford could some- 1 Letter cixxxu. * Letter clxxxiii. ^ Letter clxxxii. * Letter cclxxix, * Letter cclxxxviii. ^ Letter ccxxx. ' Ephes. ii. 18, 28 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. times say, " I have been so near Him that I have said, ' I take instruments that this is the Lord.'" ^ And he could from experience declare, " I dare avouch, the saints know not the length and largeness of the sweet Earnest, and of the sweet green sheaves before the harvest, that might be had on this side of the water, if we. sliould take more pains." ^ " I am every way in your case, as hard-hearted and dead as any man, but yet I speak to Christ through my sleep." ^ All this is from the pen of a man who was a metaphysician, a controversialist, a leader in the church, and learned in ancient and scholastic lore. Why are there not such gracious, as well as great men now ? 5. All afflicted i^f-rsons. — Here he had the very " tongue of the learned, to speak a word in season to him that was weary." And with what tender sympathy does he speak, leading the mourner so gently to the heart of Jesus ! He knew the heart of a stranger, for he had been a stranger. " Let no man after me slander Christ for His cross." * Yes, says he. His most loved are often His most tried : " The lintel-stone and pillars of His New Jerusalem suffer more knocks of God's hammer and tools than the common side- wall stones." ^ Even as to reproach and calumny, he declares, " I love Christ's worst reproaches." It was to Hugh M'Kail, uncle of the youthful martyr, that he penned the words, " Some have written me that I am possibly too joyful of the cross ; but my joy overleapeth the cross — it is bounded and terminated on Christ."® And there it was he found a well of comfort never dry. 6. All who love the Person of Christ. — We have too often been satisfied with speculative truth and abstract doctrine. On the one hand, the orthodox have too often rested in the statements of our Catechisms and Confessions ; and, on the other, the " Election- doubter^ " (as Bunyan would have called them) have pressed their favouriHe dogma, that Christ died for all men, as if mere assent to a proposition could save the soul. Kutherford places the truth Jefore us in a more accurate, and also more savoury way, full of) life and warmth. The Person of Him who gave Himself for Hii church is held up in all its attractiveness. With him, it is ever ihe Person as much as the work done ; or rather, never the one apart from the other. Like Paul, he would fain know Him, as well ns the power of His resurrection,^ 1 Letter xcix. ^y^etter ccii. ^ Letter cclxxxvi. * Letter cvii. » Letter cii. "^ Letter ccvi. ' Phil. iii. 10. SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 29 Once, wheu Lord Ken mure asked liim, " What will Christ be like when He cometh ? " his reply was, " All lovely." And this is everywhere the favourite theme with him. At times he tells of His love. " His love surroundeth and surchargeth me." ^ " If His love was not in heaven, I should be unwilling to go thither." ^ Often he checks his pen to tell of Christ Himself, " Welcome, welcome, sweet, sweet cross of Christ ; " — then correcting his language, " Welcome, fair, lovely, royal King, with Thine own cross." ^ " 0 if I could doat as much upon Himself as I do upon His love." * "I fear I make more of His love than of Himself." ^ How startling yet how true, is this remark, " I see that in communion with Christ we may make more gods than one," ^ — meaning that we may be tempted to make the enjoyment itself our god. It was his habitual aim to pass through privi- leges, joys, even fellowship, to God Himself : " I have casten this work upon Christ, to get me Himself." ^ "I would be farther in upon Christ than at His joys ; in, where love and mercy lodgeth ; beside His heart." ^ " He who sitteth on the throne is His lone a sufficient heaven." ® " Sure I am He is the far best half of heaven," i<^ In a word, such was his soul's view of the living Person, that he writes, " Holiness is not Christ, nor the blossoms and flowers of the tree of life, nor the tree itself."" He had found out the true fountain-head, and would direct all Zion's travellers thither. And let a man try this ; let the Holy Spirit lead a man to this Person ; — and surely his experience will be, " None ever came up dry from David's well." 7. All who love that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God our Saviour. — The more we love the Person of Christ, the more ought we to love His appearing ; and the more we cherish both feelings, the holier shall we become. Eutherford abounds in aspirations for that day ; he is one who " looks for and hastens unto the coming of the day of God ! " While in exile at Aberdeen in 1637, he writes, " 0 when will we meet! 0 how long is it to the dawning of the marriage day ! 0 sweet Jesus, take wide steps ! 0 my Lord, come over mountains at one stride ! 0 my Beloved, flee as a roe or young hart upon the mountains of separation." Now and then he utters the expression ^ Letter civ. * Letter civ. ' Letter Ixi. * Letter clx. * Letter clxxix. ® Letter clxviii. ' Letter clxxxvii. * Letter cclxxxvi. • Letter ccclii. ^* Letter cclxxix. " Letter cccxxxvi. 30 SKETCH OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. of an intense desire for the restoration of Israel to their Lord, and the fulness of the Gentiles ; but far oftener his desires go forth to his Lord Himself. " 0 fairest among the sons of men, why stayest Thou so long away ? 0 heavens, move fast ! 0 time, run, run, and hasten the marriage day ! " To Lady Ken- mure his words are, " The Lord hath told you what you should be doing till He come. ' Wait and hasten,' saith Peter, ' for the coming of the Lord.' Sigh and long for the dawning of that morning, and the breaking of that day, of the coming of the Son of Man, when the shadows shall flee away. Wait with the wearied night-watch for the breaking of the eastern sky." Those saints who feel most keenly the world's enmity, and the Church's imperfection, are those who will most fervently love their Lord's appearing. It was thus with Daniel on the banks of Ulai, and with John in Patmos ; and Samuel Eutherford's most intense aspirations for that day are breathed out in Aberdeen. His description of himself on one occasion is, " A man often borne down and hungry, and waiting for the marriage supper of the Lamb." ^ He is now gone to the " mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense ; " and there he no doubt still wonders at the unopened, unsearchable treasures of Christ. But 0 for his insatiable desires Christward ! 0 for ten such men in Scot- land to stand in the gap ! — men who all day long find nothing but Christ to rest in, whose very sleep is a pursuing after Christ in dreams, and who intensely desire to " awake with Hia likeness." ' Letter Ixiii. LIST OF HIS WORKS. 1. Exercitationes Apologeticce pro Divina Gratia. Amstelodami, 12mo, 1636. Franekerae, 1651, 2. A Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbytery in Scotland. London, 4to, 1642. 3. A Sermon before the House of Commons, on Daniel vi, 26. London, 4to, 1644. 4. A Sermon before the House of Lords, on Luke vii. 22 ; Mark iv. 38 ; Matt. viii. 26, London, 4to, 1645. 5. "LexEex:" The Law and the Prince. London, 4to, 1644. In Fullarton's Scottish Nation, 1862, mention is made of another work which is in reality the same as this ; on Civil Polity. London, 4to, 1657, It is not, however, a separate work, but merely one of the editions of the well-known Lex Rex — the edition of 1657, which has the following title: — Lex Rex; a Treatise of Civil Polity; being a Resolution oj Forty -three Questions concerning Prerogative, Right, and Privilege, in reference to the Supreme Prince and People. The change in the title was a device of the printer, in order to elude the Gofvernmenc, who sought to suppress the book, 6. The Due Right of Presbyteries. London, 4to, 1644. 7. The Trial and Triumph of Faith. London, 4to, 1645, 8. Tlie Divine Right of Ghiirch Government and Excommunication. London, 4to, 1646. Appended to this is A Dispute touching Scandal and Christian Liberty. 9. Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself. London, 4to, 1647. 10. A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist. London, 1648. To which is appended, A Modest Survey of the Secrets of Antinomianism. 11. A Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience. London, 4to, 1649. 12. The Last and Heavenly Speeches of John Gordon, Viscount Kenmure. Edin- burgh, 4to, 1649. 13. Disputatio Scholastica de Divina Procidentia. Edinburgh, 4to, 1651. 14. The Covenant of Life Opened. Edinburgh, 4to, 1655. \b. A Survey of Mr. Hooker's Cliurch Discipline; or, A Survey of the Survey of that Summe of Discipline penned by Mr. Thomas Hooker. London, 4to, 1658. 16, Influences of the Life of Grace. The last work published in his lifetime. London, 4to, 1659. The original title page adds: — "A Practical Treatise concerning the way, rtmnner, and means of having and improving spiritual dispositions and quickening influences from Christ, the Resurrection and the Life." SI $9 LIST OF ins WORKS. POSTHUMOUS. 17. Joshua Redivivus; or, Mr. Rutherford's Letters. First Edition, 12mo, 1664. No printer's name and no place mentioned. 18. Examen Arminianismi. Ultrajecti (Utrecht), 12uio, 1668. 19. A Testimony left by Mr. S. Rutherford to the Work of Reformation in Great Britain and Ireland before his death. Date uncertain. 20. Twelve Communion Sermons. Glasgow, 1876. This collection includes Christ's Napkin; and Song ii. 14-17, Christ and the Dove's Heavenly Salutation. These have internal evidence in their favour, viz. the language and general strain of thought. Add to these The Lamb's Marriage, Kev. xix. 7 ; and another on Song ii. 1-8 appended to a second edition, 1877, with the title, " Fourteen Communion Sermons," 1877. 21. The Cruel Watchmen. TJie Door of Salvation Opened. Edinburgh, 1735. Song V. 7, 8, 9, 10. These two are doubtful ; at all events, very imperfect, as usually printed. The old edition of The Cruel Watchmen is good. 22. There is a Treatise on Prayer ; The Poioer and Prevalency of Truth and Prayer evidenced, in a Practical Discourse upon Matt. ix. 27-31. Printed in the year 1713. It is a small duodecimo of 111 pp., and has this note appended : " The rest of this Discourse cannot be found, it being above fifty years since the author died." An old Catalogue of the most Vendible Books, in 1658, gives as one of his works, A Rationale on the Book of Common Prayer, 8vo. But this is a mistake ; Antony Sparrow wrote the book entitled, The Rationale, or Practical Exposition of the Book of Common Prayer. The Diaries of Brodie of Brodie (Spalding Club— Preface p. xix.), refer to " Shorthand Notes of two Sermons by S. Rutherford." Brodie used to correspond with him, for we find, August 6, 1655: "Mr. Rutherford exhorted me in his letter that my right hand might not know what my left hand did ; and he says that he knows not but that the Lord may divorce the mother, but be a sanctuary to the little ones." We find further that S. R. wrote urging Brodie " to present Mr. Thomas Ross to Ila." 23. QuMint Sermons (eighteen in number), by S. R., never before published, with a prefatory note by Rev. And. A. Bonar. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1885. LETTERS. I. — For Marion M 'Naught, on the retxirn home of her daughter > [In the early editions the date stands " 1624," by a mistake for " 1627 ; " for Rutherford was not settled in Anwoth in 1624. For a full notice of Marion M' Naught, see what is prefixed to Letter VL] {CHILDREN TO BE DEDICATED TO GOD.) ELL-BELOVED AND DEAP. SISTEE,— My love in Christ remembered. I have sent to you your daughter Grizel with Eobert Gordon, who came to fetch her. I am in good hopes that the seed of God is in her, as in one born of God ; and God's seed will come to God's harvest. I have her promise she shall be Christ's. Eor I have told her she may promise much in His worthy name ; for He becomes caution to His Father for all such as resolve and promise to serve Him. I will remember her to God. I trust you will acquaint her with good company, and be diligent to know with whom she loveth to haunt. Eemember Zion, and our necessities. I bless your daughter from our Lord, and pray the Lord to give you joy and comfort of her. Eemember my love to your hus- band, to William and Samuel your sons. The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Yours at all power in the Lord Jesus, Anwoth, June 6, 1627. S. R, 34 LETTER 11. II. — To a Christian Gentlcwomar d71 the death of her daughter. {CHRIST'S SYMPATHY WITH, AND PROPERTY IN US- REASONS FOR RESIGNATION.) "^ISTEESS, — My love in Christ remembered to you. I was indeed sorrowful at my departure from ycu, especially since ye were in such heaviness after your daughter's death. Yet I do persuade myself, ye know that the weightiest end of the cross of Christ that is laid upon you lieth upon your strong Saviour ; for Isaiah saith, " In all your afflictions He is afflicted " (Isa. Ixiii. 9). 0 blessed Second who suffereth with you ! and glad may your soul be even to walk in the fiery furnace with one like unto the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God. Courage ! up your heart ! When ye do tire, He will bear both you and your burden (Ps. Iv. 22). Yet a little while and ye shall see the salvation of God. Remem- ber of what age your daughter was, and that just so long was your lease of her. If she was eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old, I know not ; but sure I am, seeing her term was come, and your lease run out, ye can no more justly quarrel your great Superior for taking His own at His just term day, than a poor farmer can complain that his master taketh a portion of his own land to himself when his lease is expired. Good mistress, if ye would not be content that Christ would hold from you the heavenly inheritance which is made yours by His death, shall not that same Christ think hardly of you if ye refuse to give Him your daughter willingly, who is a part of His inheritance and conquest ? I pray the Lord to give you all your own, and to grace you with patience to give God His also. He is an ill debtor who payeth that which he hath borrowed with a grudge. Indeed, that long loan of such a good daughter, an heir of grace, a member of Christ (as I believe), deserveth more thanks at your Creditor's hands, than that ye should gloom and murmur when He craveth but His own. I believe you would judge them to be but thankless neighbours who would pay you a sum of money after this manner. But what ? Do you think her lost, when she is but sleeping in the bosom of the Almighty ? Think her not absent who is in such a friend's house. Is she lost to you who is found to Christ ? If she were with a dear friend, although you should never see her again, your care for her would be but small. Oh, now, is she not with a dear Friend ? and gone >t<528.] LETTER II. 35 higher, upon a certain hope that ye shall, in the Resurrection, see )her again, when (be ye sure) she shall neither be hectic nor con- sumed in body ? You would be sorry either to be, or to be esteemed, an atheist ; and yet, not I, but the Apostle, thinketh those to be hopeless atheists who mourn excessively for the dead (Thess. iv. 13). But this is not a challenge on my part. I do speak this only fearing your weakness ; for your daughter was a part of yourself ; and, therefore, nature in you, being as it were cut and halved, will indeed be grieved. But ye have to rejoice, that when a part of you is on earth, a great part of you is glorified in heaven. Follow her, but envy her not ; for indeed it is self-love in us that maketh us mourn for them that die in the Lord. V/hy ? Because for them we cannot mourn, since they are never happy till they be dead ; therefore we mourn for our own private respect. Take heed, then, that in sliovv'ing your affection in mourning for your daughter, ye be not, out of self- affection, mourning for yourself. Consider what the Lord is doing in it. Your daughter is plucked out of the fire, and she restetli from her labours ; and your Lord, in that, is trying you, and casting you in the fire. Go through all fires to your rest ; and now remember that the eye of God is upon the bush burning and not consumed ; and He is gladly content that such a weak woman as you should send Satan away, frustrate of his design. Now honour God, and shame the strong roaring lion, wlien ye seem weakest. Should such an one as ye faint in tlie day of adversity ? Call to mind the days of old. The Lord yet liveth. Trust in Him, although He should slay you. Faith is exceeding charitable, and believeth no evil of God.-^ Now is the Lord laying, in the one scale of the balance, your making conscience of submission to His gracious will, and in the other, your affec- tion and love to your daughter. Which of the two will ye then choose to satisfy ? Be wise, then ; and as I trust ye love Christ better than a sinful woman, pass by your daughter, and kiss the Lord's rod. Men do lop the branches off their trees round about, to the end they may grow up high and tall. The Lord hath this way lopped your branch in taking from you many children, to the end you should grow upward, like one of the Lord's cedars, setting your heart above, where Christ is, at the right hand of the Father. What is next, but that your Lord cut down the stock after He hath cut the branches ? Prepare yourself ; you 1 So in his " sermon before the House of Lords," 1645 : " Faith thinketh no evil of Christ." Also Letters XX. and XCIL ; " Love believeth no evil." 36 LETTER IIL [1628. are nearer your daughter this day than you were yesterday. "While ye prodigally spend time in mourning for her, ye are speedily posting after her. Eun your race with patience. Let God have His own ; and ask of Him, instead of your daughter which He hath taken from you, the daughter of faith, which is patience ; and in patience possess your soul. Lift up your head : ye do not know how near your redemption doth draw, Thus recommending you to the Lord, who is able to establish you, I rest, your loving and affectionate friend in the Lord Jesus, Anwoth, April 23, 1628, S. R. KENMURE HOUSE. III.- -To the Viscountess of Kenmure, on occasion of illness and spiritual depression . [Lady Jaxk Camimskll, Viscountess of Kenmure, was the third daughter of Archibald Campbell, seventh Earl of Argj^le, and sister to the Manpis of Argyle who was beheaded in 1661. She was a woman distinguished, in her day, for the depth of her piety, and her warm attachment to the Presbyterian interest in Scot- land. Nor was she less distinguished for generosity and muniticcuce, tlian for ])iety. Her bounty was in a particular manner extended to those whom suffering for conscience' sake liad reduced to poverty or exile. In the year 1628 she was married to Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar, afterwards Viscount Kenmure and Lord Gordon of Lochinvar, which is not far from Carsphairn. This union did not last many years. In 1634 she became a widow, his Lordship having died at Kenmure Castle, on the 12th of Sci>tember that year, in the 35th year of his age. But her sorrow on this occasion was alleviated by the Christian resignation and faith which he was enalded to exercise under his last illness. To this noble man she had two daughters, Avho died in infancy, one about the beginning of the year 1629, and the i628.] LETTER III. 37 other in 1634, as may be gathered from allusions to these bereavements, contained in two consolatory letters written to her by Rutherford in these years. She had also, by the same marriage, a son, John, second Viscount of Kenmure, who, however, died under age and unmarried, in August 1649. This event forms the subject of a letter written to her by Rutherford the 1st of October that year. She married a second husband, on the 21st of September 1640, the Hon. Sir Henry Montgomery of Giffen, second son of Alexander, fifth Earl of Eglinton ; but this marriage was without issue. Sir Henry's religious views were congenial to her own ; and he is described as an "active and faithful friend of the Lord's kirk." She was soon left a widow a second time, in which state she lived till a very venerable age, having survived the Restoration a number of years, as appears from the fact that Livingstone, at the time of his death (which took place at Rotterdam in 1672), speaks of her as the oldest acquaintance he then had aUve in Scotland. She was a regular corre- spondent of Rutherford, the last of whose letters to her is dated July the 24th, 1661, after the execution of her brother above mentioned. Nor after Mr. Rutherford's death was she unmindful of his widow. " Madam," says Mr. M'Ward, in a letter to her, " Mrs. Rutherford gives me often an account of the singular testimony which she met with of your Ladyship's affection to her and her daughter." Kenmure Castle is well seen from the road that leads along the banks of the Ken. The loch, the river, the old baronial house, combine to attract notice. It is built on an insulated knoll, well wooded all around. It is four- miles from Dairy, and the ap])roach is through an avenue of lime-trees. The old garden has a hedge of very lofty beech trees, and a curious dial with a Latin inscription, dated " 1623. Joannes Bonar fecit"— the name of the person who (it is said) brought it from the Continent. {ACQUIESCENCE IN GOD'S PURPOSE—FAITH IN EXERCISE- ENCOURAGEMENT IN VIEW OF SICKNESS AND DEATH- PUBLIC AFFAIRS.) ADAM, — All dutiful obedience in the Lord remembered. I have heard of your Ladyship's infirmity and sickness with grief ; yet I trust ye have learned to say, " It is the Lord, let Him do whatsoever seemeth good in His eyes." It is now many years since the apostate angels made a question, whether their will or the will of their Creator should be done ; and since that time, froward mankind hath always in that same suit of law compeared to plead with them against God, in daily repining against His will. But the Lord being both party and judge, hath obtained a decreet, and saith, " My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure (Isa. xlvi. 10). It is then best for us, in the obedience of faith, and in an holy submission, to give that to God which the law of His almighty and just power will have of us. Therefore, Madam, your Lord willeth you, in all states of life, to say, " Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven : " and herein shall ye have comfort, that He, who seeth perfectly through all your evils, and knoweth the frame and constitution of your nature, and what is most healthful for your soul, holdeth every cup of affliction to your head, with His own gracious hand. Never believe that your tender-hearted 3fr LETTER III. [1628. Saviour, who knoweth the strength of your stomach, will mix that cup with one drachm-weight of poison. Drink then with the patience of the saints, and the God of patience bless your physic. I have heard your Ladyship complain of deadness, and want of the bestirring power of the life of God. But courage ! He who walked in the garden, and made a noise that made Adam hear His voice, will also at some times walk in your soul, and make you hear a more sweet word. Yet, ye will not always hear the noise and the din of His feet, when He walketh. Ye are, at such a time, like Jacob mourning at the supposed death of Joseph, when Joseph was living. The new creature, the image of the second Adam, is living in you ; and yet ye are mourning at the supposed death of the life of Christ in you. Ephraim is be- moaning and mourning (Jer. xxxi. 18), when he thinketh God is far off and heareth not ; and yet God is like the bridegroom (Song ii. 9), standing only behind a thin wall and laying to His ear ; for He saith Himself, " I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself." I have good confidence. Madam, that Christ Jesus, whom your soul through forests and mountains is seeking, is within you. And yet I speak not this to lay a pillow under your head, or to dissuade you from a holy fear of the loss of your Christ, or of provoking and " stirring up the Beloved before He please," by sin. I know, in spiritual confidence, the devil will come in, as in all other good works, and cry " Half mine ; " and so endeavour to bring you under a fearful sleep, till He whom your soul loveth be departed from the door, and have left off knocking. And, therefore, here the Spirit of God must hold your soul's feet in the golden mid-line, betwixt confident resting in the arms of Christ, and presumptuous and drowsy sleeping in the bed of fleshly security. Therefore, worthy lady, so count little of yourself, because of your own wretchedness and sinful drowsiness, that ye count not also little of God, in the course of His unchangeable mercy. Eor there be many Christians most like unto young sailors, who think the shore and the whole land doth move, when the ship and they them- selves are moved ; just so, not a few do imagine that God moveth and saileth ^ and changeth places, because their giddy souls are under sail, and subject to alteration, to ebbing and fiowing. But " the foundation of the Lord abideth sure." God knoweth that ye are His own. Wrestle, fight, go forward, watch, fear, believe, * So it ia in the earlier editious ; not " faileth." r628.] LETTER III. 39 pray ; and then ye have all the infallible symptoms of one of the elect of Christ within you. Ye have now, Madam, a sickness before you ; and also after that a death. Gather then now food for the journey. God give you eyes to see through sickness and death, and to see something beyond death. I doubt not but that, if hell were betwixt you and Christ, as a river which ye behoved to cross ere you could come at Him, but ye would willingly put in your foot, and make through to be at Him, upon hope that He would come in Himself, in the deepest of the river, and lend you His hand, Now, I believe your hell is dried up, and ye have only these two shallow brooks, sickness and death, to pass through ; and ye have also a promise that Christ shall do more than meet you, even that He shall come Himself, and go with you foot for foot, yea and bear you in His arms. 0 then ! 0 then ! for the joy that is set before you ; for the love of the Man (who is also " God over all, blessed for ever "), that is standing upon the shore to welcome you, run your race with patience. The Lord go with you. Your Lord will not have you, nor any of His servants, to exchange for the worse. Death in itself includeth both the death of the soul and the death of the body ; but to God's children the bounds and the limits of death are abridged and drawn into a more narrow compass. So that when ye die, a piece of death shall only seize upon you, or the least part of you shall die, and that is the dissolution of the body ; for in Christ ye are delivered from the second death ; and, therefore, as one born of God, commit not sin (although ye cannot live and not sin), and that serpent shall but eat your earthly part. As for your soul, it is above the law of death. But it is fearful and dangerous to be a debtor and servant to sin ; for the count of sin ye will not be able to make good before God, except Christ both count and pay for you. I trust also. Madam, that ye will be careful to present to the Lord the present estate of this decaying kirk. For what shall be concluded in Parliament anent ^ her, the Lord knoweth. Sure I am, the decree of a most fearful parliament in heaven is at the very point of coming forth, because of the sins of the land. For " v;e have cast away the law of the Lord, and despised the words of the Holy One of Israel" (Isa. v. 24). "Judgment is turned away backvvard, and justice standeth afar off; truth is fallen in the streets, and equity cannot enter " (Isa. lix. 14). Lo ! the ^ " In reference to her, "-—alluding to the known design of Charles I. to enforce conformity to Episcopacy. 40 LETTER IV. [1629. prophet, as if he had seen us and our kirk, reserableth Justice to be handled as an enemy holden out at the ports of our city [so is she banished !], and Truth to a person sickly and diseased, fallen down in a deadly swooning fit in the streets, before he can come to an house. " The priests have caused many to stumble at the law, and have corrupted the covenant of Levi " (Mai. ii. 3). " But what will they do in the end ? " Therefore give the Lord no rest for Zion. Stir up your husband, your brother,^ and all with whom ye are in favour and credit, to stand upon the Lord's side against Baal. I have good hope that your husband loveth the peace and prosperity of Zion. The peace of God be upon him, for his intended courses anent the establishment of a powerful ministry in this land. Thus, not willing to weary your Ladyship further, I commend you now, and always, to the grace and mercy of that God who is able to keep you, that ye fall not. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Your Ladyship's servant at all dutiful obedience in Christ, Anwoth, Jvly 27, 1628. S. E. IV. — To the Elect and Nolle Lady, my Lady Kenmure, on occasion of the death of her infant daughter. (TRIBULATION THE PORTION OF GOD'S PEOPLE, AND INTENDED TO WEAN THEM FROM THE WORLD.) ADAM, — Saluting your Ladyship with grace and mercy from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, — I was sorry, at my departure, leaving your Lady- ship in grief, and would still be grieved at it, if I were not assured that ye have One with you in the furnace, whose visage is like unto the Son of God. I am glad that ye have been acquainted from your youth with the wrestlings of God, and that ye get scarce liberty to swallow down your spittle, being casten from furnace to furnace, knowing if ye were not dear to God, and if your health did not require so much of Him, He would not spend so much physic upon you. All the brethren and sisters of Christ must be conform to His image and copy in suffeviiig (Rom. viii. 29). And some do more vively resemble the copy than others. Think, Madam, that it is a part of your glory to be enrolled among those whom one of the elders ]juinted out to John, " These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made tliem white in the blood ^ The Marquis of Aigyle. 1629.] LETTER IV. 4t of the Lamb." Behold your Forerunner going out of the world all in a lake of blood, and it is not ill to die as He did. Fulfil with joy the remnant of the grounds and "remainders of the afflictions of Christ" in your body (Col. i. 24), Ye have lost a child : nay she is not lost to you who is found to Christ. She is not sent away, but only sent before, like unto a star, which going out of our sight doth not die and evanish, but shineth in another hemisphere. Ye see her not, yet she doth shine in another country. If her glass was but a short hour, what she wanteth of time that she hath gotten of eternity ; and ye have to rejoice that ye have now some plenishing up in heaven. Build your nest upon no tree here ; for ye see God hath sold the forest to death ; and every tree whereupon we would rest is ready to be cut down, to the end we may fly ^ and mount up, and build upon the Eock, and dwell in the holes of the Rock. What ye love besides Jesus, your husband, is an adulterous lover. Now it is God's special blessing to Judah, that He will not let her find her paths in following her strange lovers. " Therefore, behold I will hedge up her way with thorns, and make a wall that she shall not find her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them " (Hos. ii. 6, 7). 0 thrice happy Judah, when God buildeth a double stone wall betwixt her and the fire of hell ! The world, and the things of the world, Madam, is the lover ye naturally affect beside your own husband Christ. The hedge of thorns and the wall which God buildeth in your way, to hinder you from this lover, is the thorny hedge of daily grief, loss of cliildren, weakness of body, iniquity of the time, uncertainty of estate, lack of worldly comfort, fear of God's anger for old unrepented-of sins. What lose ye, if God twist and plait the hedge daily thicker ? God be blessed, the Lord will not let you find your paths. Return to your first husband. Do not weary, neither think that death walketh towards you with a slow pace. Ye must be riper ere ye be shaken. Your days are no longer than Job's, that were " swifter than a post, and passed away as the ships of desire, and as the eagle that hasteth for the prey " (ix. 25, 26, margin). There is less sand in your glass now than there was yesternight. This span-length of ever-posting time will soon be ended. But the greater is the mercy of God, the more years ye get to advise, upon what terms, and upon what conditions, ye cast your soul in the huge gulf of never-ending eternity. The Lord hath told you what ye should 1 In the earlier editions it is given " fly " throughout ; not " flee," 42 LETTER V. [1629. be doing till He come. " Wait and hasten," saith Peter, " for the Coming of our Lord." All is night that is here, iu respect of ignorance and daily ensuing troubles, one always making way to another, as the ninth wave of the sea to the tenth ; therefore sigh and long for the dawning of that morning, and the breaking of that day of the Coming of the Son of Man, when the shadows shall flee away. Persuade yourself the King is coming ; read His letter sent before Him, " Behold, I come quickly " (Eev. iii. 11). Wait with the wearied night-watch for the breaking of the eastern sky, and think that ye have not a morrow. As the wise father said, who, being invited against to-morrow to dine with his friend, answered, " Those many days I have had no morrow at all." I am loth to weary you. Show yourself a Christian, by suffering without murmuring, for which sin fourteen thousand and seven hundred were slain (Numb. xvi. 49). In patience possess your soul. They lose nothing who gain Christ. Thus remembering my brother's and my wife's humble service to your Ladyship, I commend you to the mercy and grace of our Lord Jesus, assuring you that your day is coming, and that God's mercy is abiding you. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours in the Lord Jesus at all dutiful obedience, Anwoth, Jan. 15, 1629. S. E. V. — To my Lady Kenmurb, ui)on her removal with her husband from, the parish of Anwoth. {CHANGES AND LOSS OF FRIENDS— THIS WORLD NO ABIDING PLACE.) I ADAM, — Saluting you in Jesus Christ, — to my grief I must bid you (it may be, for ever) farewell, in paper, having small assurance ever to see your face again till the last general assembly, where the whole church universal shrdl meet ; yet promising, by His grace, to present your Ladyship and your burdens to Him who is able to save you, and give you an inheritance with the saints, after a more special manner than ever I have done before.^ Ye are going to a country where the Sun of righteousness, in the Gospel, shineth not so clearly as in this kingdom ; but if ye ^ Lord Kenmurc and his lady resided at Rusco, in the ])arish of Anwotli, during the first two years ui' Rutherford's ministry there ; but they were now about to leave it. See Letter CXLVII. 1629.] LETTER K 43 would know where He whom your soul loveth doth rest, and where He feedeth at the noontide of the day, wherever ye be, get you forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed yourself beside the shepherds' tents (Song i. 7, 8), that is, ask for some of the watchmen of the Lord's city, who will tell you truly, and will not lie, where ye shall find Him whom your soul loveth. I trust ye are so betrothed in marriage to the true Christ, that ye will not give your love to any false Christ. Ye know not how soon your marriage-day will come ; nay, is not eternity hard upon you ? It were time, then, that ye had your wedding garment in readiness. Be not sleeping at your Lord's Coming. I pray God you may be upon your feet standing when He knocketh. Be not discouraged to go from this country to another part of the Lord's earth : " The earth is His, and the fulness thereof." This is the Lord's lower house ; while we are lodged here, we have no assurance to lie ever in one chamber, but must be content to remove from one corner of our Lord's nether house to another, resting in hope that, when we come up to the Lord's upper city, " Jerusalem that is above," we shall remove no more, because then we shall be at home. And go wheresoever ye will, if your Lord go with you, ye are at home ; and your lodging is ever taken before night, so long as He who is Israel's dwelling-house is your home (Psa. xc. 1). Believe me. Madam, my mind is tliat ye are well lodged, and that in your house there are fair ease- rooms and pleasant lights, if ye can in faith lean down your head upon the breast of Jesus Christ : and till this be, ye shall never get a sound sleep, Jesus, Jesus, be your shadow and your covering. It is a sweet soul-sleep to lie in the arms of Christ ; for His breath is very sweet. Pray for poor friendless Zion. Alas ! no man will speak for her now, although at home in her own country she hath good friends, her husband Christ, and His Father her Father-in-law. Beseech your husband to be a friend to Zion, and pray for her. I have received many and divers dashes and heavy strokes since the Lord called me to the ministry ; but indeed I esteem your departure from us amongst the weightiest. But I perceive God will have us to be deprived of whatsoever we idolize, that He may have His own room. I see exceeding small fruit of my ministry, and would be glad to know of one soul to be my crown and rejoicing in the day of Christ. Though I spend my strength in vain, yet my labour is with my God (Isa. xlix. 4). I wish and pray that the Lord would harden my face against all, and 44 LETTER VI. [1629. make me to learn to go with my face against a storm. Again I commend you, body and spirit, to Him who hath loved us, and washed us from our sin in His own blood. Grace, grace, grace for ever be with you. Pray, pray continually. Your Ladyship's at all dutiful obedience in Christ, Anwoth, Sept. 14, 1629. S. R. VI. — For Marion M'Naught, on occasion of the illness of his wife. [Makion M'Nauoht was daiighter to the Laird of Kilquliaiiatie, in Kirkpatiick Durham (see Letter XXV. ), tlie representative of an ancient family, now extinct, and connected also witli the house of Kennuue, through ^^_; =^fiL- her mother, Margaret Gordon, -S^ ;?*T2ji sister to Lord Kenniure. She '^^^^ '^^ became tlie wife of William _ -^^;r^^^ w?^ . FuUerton, Provost of Kirkcud- — ' bright, and was a woman exten- &-" * sivelyknown and held in honour ^^. by the most eminent Christians ^g=^ ^ - and ministers of her day, on account of lier rare godliness and public spirit. We find in "The Last and Heavenly Speeches of Viscount Kenmure," that by the special desire of that nobleman (who was her relative), she was in continual attendance on him as he lay on his deathbed. Her name is sometimes spelt "M'Knaight," or "M'Knaichte," the modern "Macknight." She had three children — one daughter, Griz- zel, and two sons, Sanuiel and William, — who are often alfectionately remembered in Rutherford's letters to her. The following epitaph was inscriljed on her tomb, in tlie churchyard of Kirkcudbright : — " Marion M'Naught, sister to John M'Naught of Kilquhanatie, an ancient and lionourable baron, and spouse to William Fullerton, Provost of Kirkcudbright, died April 1643, age r)8. Sexiim cmimis, pietatc genua, genorosa, locumque Virlutc exsupc7-ans, conditur hoc tumulo." The tombstone was lost sight of, but in 1863 was discovered again in removing the earth for a grave close by. It was only in 1860 that her house (in which the meeting between Blair and Rutherford took place) was pulled down. It stood at the foot of the High Street, which was then the principal street of the town. A relative of this lady's husband, Fullerton of Carlton (see Letter CLVII. ), wrote on her the following acrostic : — M More happy than imagined can be, A And lilessed, are such as with heart sincere 11 Ki'solve to cleave to Christ, to live and die I In Him, with Him, and for Him to appear. O 0 what transcendent glory grows from grace ! N None but — no, not — the soul relincd shall KIRKCUDBRIGHT. 1629. j LETTER VI. 45 M' Make to appear ; that life, that light, that peace, K Known only to the pure possessors all. N Now, THOU, by grace, art into glory gone, A And gained the garland of eternal bliss, I In seeing Him who, on that glorious throne, C Created, uncreated, glory is. H Heaven's quire did sing at thy conversion s'.vcet, T Time posts thy final comforts to complete. {Apj)end. to " Minute- Book of Committee of Covenanters") {INWARD CONFLICT ARISING FROM OUTWARD TRIAL.) OVING AND DEAE SISTER,— If ever you would pleasure me, entreat the Lord for me, now when I am so comfortless, and so full of heaviness, that I am not able to stand under the burthen any longer. The Almighty hath doubled His stripes upon me, for my wife is so sore tormented night and day, that I have wondered why the Lord tarrieth so long. My life is bitter unto me, and I fear the Lord be my contrair party. It is (as I now know by experience) hard to keep sight of God in a storm, especially when He hides Himself, for the trial of His children. If He would be pleased to remove His hand, I have a purpose to seek Him more than I have done. Happy are they that can win away with their soul. I am afraid of His judgments. I bless my God that there is a death, and a heaven. I would weary to begin again to be a Christian, so bitter is it to drink of the cup that Christ drank of, if I knew not that there is no poison in it. God give us not of it till we vomit again, for we have sick souls when God's physic works not. Pray that God would not lead my wife into tempta- tion. Woe is my heart, that I have done so little against the kingdom of Satan in my calling ; for he would fain attempt to make me blaspheme God in His face. I believe, I believe, in the strength of Him who hath put me in His work, he shall fail in that which he seeks. I have comfort in this, that my Captain, Christ, hath said, I must fight and overcome the world, and with a weak, spoiled, weaponless devil, " the prince of this world Cometh, and hath nothing in me" (John xvi. 33, and xiv. 30). Desire Mr. Robert 1 to remember me, if he love me. Grace, grace be with you, and all yours. Remember Zion. There is a letter procured from the King by Mr. John Maxwell to urge conformity, to give the communion ^ Mr. Robert Glendinning, then minister of Kirkcudbright. His grave may be seen there. 4^ LETTER VIl. [1630. at Christmas in Edinburgh.^ Hold fast that which you have, that no man take the crown from you. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours in the Lord, ANVVOxn, Nov. 17, 1629. S. R VII. — To my Lady Kenmurb. {THE EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT— COMMUNION WITH CHRIST— FAITH IN THE PROMISES.) ADAM, — I have longed exceedingly to hear of your life and health, and growth in the grace of God. I lacked the opportunity of a bearer, in respect I did not understand of the hasty departure of the last, by whom I might have saluted your Ladyship, and therefore I could not write before this time. I entreat you, Madam, let me have two lines from you concerning your present condition, I know ye are in grief and heaviness ; and if it were not so, ye might be afraid, because then your way should not be so like the way that (our Lord saith) leadeth to the New Jerusalem. Sure I am, if ye knew what were before you, or if ye saw but some glances of it, ye would with gladness swim through the present floods of sorrow, spreading forth your arms out of desire to be at laud. If God have given you the Earnest of the Spirit, as part of pay- ment of God's principal sum, ye have to rejoice ; for our Lord will not lose His earnest, neither will He go back or repent Him of the bargain. If ye find at some time a longing to see God, joy in the assurance of that sight, howbeit that feast be but like the Passover, that coraeth about only once a year. Peace of conscience, liberty of prayer, the doors of God's treasure cast up to the soul, and a clear sight of Himself looking out, and saying, witli a smiling countenance, " Welcome to Me, afflicted soul ; " this is the earnest that He giveth sometimes, and which maketh glad the heart, and is an evidence that the bargain will hold. But to the end ye may get this earnest, it were good to come oft into terms of speech with God, both in prayer and hearing of the word. For this is the house of wine, where ye meet with your ^ Mr J. MaxwoU iioie mentioned was at this lime a. minister in Edinburgh, and afterwards Ijecame IJishop of Ross, — a man of talent, but devoid of principle, whose aim was to secure the favour of the notorious Laud, by forwarding his designs for forcing Episcopacy upon the Scottish people. The letter above referred to was from the King, urging the adoption of the Engiihh service. 1630.] LETTER VII. 47 Well-Beloved. Here it is where He kisseth you with the kissea of His mouth, and where ye feel the sraell of His garments ; and they have indeed a most fragrant and glorious smell. Ye must, I say, wait upon Him, and be often communing with Him, whose lips are as lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh, and by the moving thereof He will assuage your grief ; for the Christ that saveth you is a speaking Christ ; the church knoweth Him by His voice (Song ii. 8), and can discern His tongue amongst a thousand. I say this to the end ye should not love those dumb masks of antichristian ceremonies, that the church ^ where ye are for a time hath cast over the Christ whom your soul loveth. This is to set before you a dumb Christ. But when our Lord Cometh, He speaketh to the heart in the simplicity of the Gospel. I have neither tongue nor pen to express to you the happiness of such as are in Christ. When ye have sold all that ye have, and bought the field wherein this pearl is, ye will think it no bad market ; for if ye be in Him, all His is yours, and ye are in Him ; therefore, " because He liveth, ye shall live also " (John xiv. 19). And what is that else, but as if the Son had said, "I will not have heaven except My redeemed ones be with Me : they and I cannot live asunder. Abide in Me, and I in yuu." 0 sweet communion, when Christ and we are through-other,'^ and are no longer two ! " Tather, I will that those whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, to behold My glory that Thou hast given Me" (John xvii. 24). Amen, dear Jesus, let it be according to that word. I wonder that ever your heart should be cast down, if ye believe this truth. I and they are not worthy of Jesus Christ, who will not suifer forty years' trouble for Him, since they have such glorious promises. But we fools believe those promises as the man that read Plato's writings concerning the immortality of the soul : so long as the book was in his hand he believed all was true, and that the soul could not die ; but so soon as he laid by the book, he began to imagine that the soul is but a smoke or airy vapour, that perisheth with the expiring of the breath. So we at starts do assent to the sweet and precious promises ; but, laying aside God's book, we begin to call all in question. It is faith indeed to believe without a pledge, and to hold the heart constant at this work ; and when we doubt, to run to the Law and to the Testimony, and stay there. Madam, hold you here: here is your Father's testament,— read it; in it He ^ Episcopal. 2 Mixed up with each other. 48 LETTER VlL [1630. hath left to you remission of sins and life everlasting. If all that ye have here be crosses and troubles, down-castings, frequent desertions, and departure of the Lord, who is suiting you in marriage, courage ! He who is wooer and suitor should not be an household man with you till ye and He come up to His Father's house together. He purposeth to do you good at your latter end (Deut. viii. 16), and to give you rest from the days of adversity (Ps. xciv. 13). "It is good to bear the yoke of God in your youth" (Lam. iii. 27). "Turn in to your stronghold as a prisoner of hope" (Zech. ix. 12). "For the vision is for an appointed time ; but at the end it shall speak, and not lie : though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry " (Hab. ii. 3). Hear Himself saying, " Come, My people " (rejoice, He calleth on you !), " enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee ; hide thyself, as it were for a little moment, till the indignation be past" (Isa. xxvi. 20). Believe, then, believe and be saved; think not hard if ye get not your will, nor your delights in this life ; God will have you to rejoice in nothing but Himself. God forbid that ye should rejoice in anything but in the cross of Christ (Gal. vi. 14). Our church. Madam, is decaying, — she is like Ephraim's cake (Hos. vii. 9) ; " and grey hairs are here and there upon her, and she knoweth it not." She is old and grey-haired, near the grave, and no man taketh it to heart. Her wine is sour and is corrupted. Now if Phinehas's wife did live she might travail in birth and die, to see the ark of God taken, and the glory depart from our Israel. The power and life of religion is away. " Woe be to us ! for the day goeth away, for the shadows of the even- ing are stretched out" (Jer. vi. 4). Madam, Zion is the ship wherein ye are carried to Canaan ; if she suffer shipwreck, ye will be cast overboard upon death and life, to swim to land upon broken boards. It were time for us, by prayer, to put upon our master-pilot, Jesus, and to cry, " Master, save us ; we perish." Grace, grace be with you. We would think it a blessing to our kirk to see you here ; but our sins withhold good things from us. The great Messenger of the Covenant preserve you in body and spirit. Yours in the Lord, Anwoth, Ftb. 1, 1630. S. R. 1630.] LETTER VIII. 49 VIII.— -For Marion M'Nauqht, on occasion of his wife's illness. {WRESTLINGS WITH GOD.) ISTKESS, — My love in Jesus Christ remembered. I am in good health ; honour to my Lord ; but my wife's disease increaseth daily, to her great torment and pain night and day. She has not been in God's house since our communion, neither out of her bed. I have hired a man to Edinburgh to Doctor Jeally and to John Hamilton.^ I can hardly believe her disease is ordinary, for her life is bitter to her ; she sleeps none, but cries as a woman travailing in birth. What will be the event, He that hath the keys of the grave knoweth. I have been many times, since I saw you, that I have besought the Lord to loose her out of body, and to take her to her rest. I believe the Lord's tide of afflictions will ebb again ; but at present I am exercised with the wrestlings of God, being afraid of nothing more than this, that God has let loose the tempter upon my house. God rebuke him and his instruments. Because Satan is not cast out but by fasting and prayer, I entreat you^ remember our estate to our Lord, and entreat all good Christians whom ye know, but especially your pastor,^ to do the same. It becomes us still to knock, and to lie at the Lord's door, until we die knocking. If He will not open, it is more than He has said in His word. But He is faithful. I look not to win away to my home without wounds and blood. Welcome, wel- come cross of Christ, if Christ be with it. I have not a ' calm spirit in the work of my calling here, being daily chastised ; yet God hath not put out my candle, as He does to the wicked. Grace, grace be with you and all yours. Yours in the Lord, Anwoth. S. U, ^ Probably a relative of his wife, whose name was Eupham Hamilton. He was "ChSra-tcrS"''^ ^"^"'"^^' ^^^ '^ mentioned among the godly in Livingstone's ^ The llcv. Mr. Robert Glendinning, then minister of Kirkcudbright. so LETTERS IX., X. [1630. IX. — For Marion M'Nauqht, recommending a friend to her love. [PHAYERS ASKED.) rSTRESS, — My love in Christ remembered. At the desire of this bearer, whom I love, I thought to request you if ye can help his wife with your advice, for she is in a most dangerous and deadly-like con- dition. For I have thought she was changed in her carriage and life, this sometime bypast, and had hope that God would have brought her home ; and now, by appearance, she will depart this life, and leave a number of children behind her. If ye can be entreated to help her, it is a work of mercy. My own wife is still in exceeding great torment night and day. Pray for us, for my life was never so wearisome to me. God hath filled me with gall and wormwood ; but I believe (which holds up my head above the water), " It is good for a man," saith the Spirit of God, " that he bear the yoke in his youth" (Lam. iii. 27). I do remember you. I pray you be humble and believe ; and I entreat you in Jesus Christ, pray for John Stuart and his wife, and desire your husband to do the same. Eemember me heartily to Jean Brown. Desire her to pray for me and my wife : I do remember her. Forget not Zion. Grace, grace upon them, and peace, that pray for Zion. She is the ship we sail in to Canaan. If she be broken on a rock, we will be cast over- board, to swim to land betwixt death and life. The grace of Jesus' be with your husband and children. Yours in Christ, Anwoth. ^* ■**• X. — For Marion M'Nauqht. {SUBMISSION, PERSEVERANCE, AND ZEAL RECOMMENDED.) ELL-BELOVED AND DEAE SISTER IN CHRIST, — I could not get an answer written to your letter till now, in respect of my wife's disease ; and she is yet mightily pained. I hope that all shall end in God's mercy. I know that an afflicted life looks very like the way that leads to the kingdom ; for the Apostle hath drawn the line and the King's market- way, " through much tribulation, to 1630.] LETTER X. SI tlie kingdom" (Acts xiv. 22 ; 1 Thess, iii. 4). The Lord grant us the whole armour of God, Ye write to me concerning your people's disposition, how that their hearts are inclined toward the man ye know, and whom ye desire most earnestly yourself. He would most gladly have the Lord's call for transplantation ; for he knows that all God's plants, set by His own hand, thrive well ; and if the work be of God, He can make a stepping-stone of the devil himself for set- ting forward the work, For yourself, I would advise you to ask of God a submissive heart. Your reward shall be with the Lord, although the people be not gathered (as the prophet speaks) ; and suppose the word ^ do not prosper, God shall account you " a repairer of the breaches." And take Christ caution, ye shall not lose your reward. Hold your grip fast. If ye knew the mind of the glorified in heaven, they think heaven come to their hand at an easy market, when they have got it for threescore or four- score years wrestling with God. When ye are come thither, ye shall think, " All I did, in respect of my rich reward, now enjoyed of free grace, was too little," Now then, for the love of the Prince of your salvation, who is standing at the end of your way, holding up in His hand the prize and the garland to the race- runners. Forward, forward ; faint not. Take as many to heaven with you as ye are able to draw. The more ye draw with you, ye shall be the welcomer yourself. Be no niggard or sparing churl of the grace of God ; and employ all your endeavours for establishing an honest ministry in your town, now when ye have so few to speak a good word for you. I have many a grieved heart daily in my calling. I would be undone, if I had not access to the King's chamber of presence, to show Him all the business. The devil rages, and is mad to see the water drawn from his own mill ; but would to God we could be the Lord's instruments to build the Son of God's house. Pray for me. If the Lord furnish not new timber from Lebanon to build the house, the work will cease, I look to Him, who hath begun well with me, I have His handwrite, He will not change. Your daughter is well, and longs for a Bible. The Lord establish you in peace. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit Yours at all power in Christ, Anwoth. S. H. 1 Work? 5a LETTER XI. [1630. XI.— To my Lady Kenmdre. {GOD'S INEXPLICABLE DEALINGS WITH HIS PEOPLE WELL ORDERED — WANT OF ORDINANCES — CONFORMITY TO CHRIST— TROUBLES OF THE CHURCH— DEATH OF MR. RUTHERFORD'S WIFE.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied upon you. I received your Ladyship's letter, iu the which I perceive your case in this world snielleth of a fellowship and communion with the Son of God in His sufiferings. Ye cannot, ye must not, have a more pleasant or more easy condition here, than He had, who " through afflic- tions was made perfect" (Heb. ii. 10). We may indeed think, Cannot God bring us to heaven with ease and prosperity ? Who doubteth but He can ? But His infinite wisdom thinketh and decreeth the contrary ; and we cannot see a reason of it, yet He hath a most just reason. We never wiA our eyes saw our own soul ; yet we have a soul. We see many rivers, but we know not their first spring and original fountain ; yet they have a beginning. Madam, when ye are come to the other side of the water, and have set down your foot on the shore of glorious eternity, and look back again to the waters and to your weari- some journey, and shall see, in that clear glass of endless glory, nearer to the bottom of God's wisdom, ye shall then be forced to say, " If God had done otherwise with me than Pie hath done, I had never come to the enjoying of this crown of glory." It is your part now to believe, and suffer, and hope, and wait on ; for I protest, in the presence of that all-discerning eye, who knoweth what I write and what I think, that I would not want the sweet experience of the consolations of God for all the bitterness of affliction. Nay, whether God come to His children with a rod or a crown, if He come Himself with it, it is well. Welcome; welcome, Jesus, what way soever Thou come, if we can get a sight of Thee ! And sure I am, it is better to be sick, providing Christ come to the bedside and draw by the curtains, and say, " Courage, I am Thy salvation," than to enjoy health, being lusty and strong, and never to be visited of God. Worthy and dear lady, in the strength of Christ, fight and overcome. Ye are now yourself alone, but ye may have, for the seeking, three always in your company, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I trust they are near you. Ye are now deprived of the 1630.] LETTER XL 53 comfort of a lively ministry ; so was Israel in their captivity ; yet hear God's promise to them : " Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God, although I have cast them far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come" (Ezek. xi. 16). Behold a sanctuary! for a sanctuary, God Himself in the place and room of the temple of Jerusalem ! I trust in God, that carrying this temple about with you, ye shall see Jehovah's beauty in His house. We are in great fears of a great and fearful trial to come upon the kirk of God ; for these, who would build their houses and nests upon the ashes of mourning Jerusalem, have drawn our King upon hard and dangerous conclusions against such as are termed Puritans, for the rooting of them out. Our prelates (the Lord take the keys of His house from these bastard porters !) assure us that, for such as will not conform, there is nothing but imprisonment and deprivation.^ The spouse of Jesus will ever be in the fire ; but I trust in my God she shall not consume, because of the good-will of Him who dwelleth in the Bush ; for He dwelleth in it with good-will. All sorts of crying sins without controlment abound in our land. The glory of the Lord is departing from Israel, and the Lord is looking back over His shoulder, to see if any one will say, " Lord, tarry," and no man requesteth Him to stay. Corrupt and false doctrine is openly preached by the idol-shepherds of the land. For myself, I have daily griefs, through the disobedience unto, and contempt of, the word of God. I was summoned before the High Com- mission by a profligate person in this parish, convicted of incest. In the business, Mr. Alexander Colvill ^ (for respect to your Ladyship) was my great friend, and wrote a most kind letter to me. The Lord give him mercy in that day. Upon the day of my compearance, the sea and winds refused to give passage to the Bishop of St. Andrews.^ I entreat your Ladyship, thank Mr. Alexander Colvill with two lines of a letter. My wife now, after long disease and torment, for the space of a year and a month, is departed this life. The Lord hath done it ; blessed be His name. I have been diseased of a. fever tertian for the space of thirteen weeks, and am yet in the sick- ness, so that I preach but once on the Sabbath with great ^The prelates, when the Courts of High CoiTiiinssion were erected in 1610, wore invested with the powers of imprisoning and depriving Nonconformists. 2 One of the judges. * Archbishop Spottiswoode. 54 LETTER XII. [1630. difficulty. I am not able either to visit or examine the congre- gation. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Your Ladyship's at all obedience, Anwoth, June 26, 1630. S. R. XII.— For Mabion M'Naught. {GOD MIXETH THE CUP— THE WICKED HAVE THEIR REWARD- FA ITHFULNESS—FORBEA RANGE— TRIALS. ) ELL-BELOVED AND DEAR SISTER,— My love in the Lord Jesus remembered. I understand that you are still under the Lord's visitation, in your former business with your enemies, which is God's dealing. For, till He take His children out of the furnace that knoweth how long they should be tried, there is no deliverance ; but after God's highest and fullest tide, that the sea of trouble is gone over the souls of His children, then comes the gracious long- hoped-for ebbing and drying up of the waters. Dear sister, do not faint ; the wicked may hold the bitter cup to your head, but God mixeth it, and there is no poison in it. They strike, but God moves the rod ; Shimei curseth, but it is because the Lord bids Him. I tell you, and I have it from Him before whom I stand for God's people, that there is a decreet given out, in the great court of the highest heavens, that your present troubles shall be dispersed as the morning cloud, and God shall bring forth your righteousness, as the light of the noontide of the day. Let me intreat you, in Christ's name, to keep a good conscience in your proceedings in that matter, and beware of yourself: yourself is a more dangerous enemy than I, or any without you. Innocence and an upright cause is a good advocate before God, and shall plead for you, and win your cause. And count much of your Master's approbation and His smiling. He is now as the king that is gone to a far country. God seems to be from home (if I may say so), yet He sees the ill servants, who say, " Our Master deferreth His coming," and so strike their fellow- servants. But patience, my beloved ; Christ the King is coming home ; the evening is at hand, and He will ask an account of His servants. Make a fair, clear count to Him. So cany yourself as at night you may say, ]\Iaster, I have wronged none ; behold, you have your own with advantage. 0 ! your soul then will esteem much of one of God's kisses and embra cements, in 1630.] LETTER XII, 55 the testimony of a good conscience. The wicked, howbeit they be casting many evil thoughts, bitter words, and sinful deeds behind their back, yet they are, in so doing, clerks to their own process, and doing nothing all their life but gathering dittayes against themselves ; for God is angry at the wicked every day. And I hope your present process shall be sighted one day by Him, who knoweth your just cause ; and the bloody tongues, crafty foxes, double-ingrained hypocrites, shall appear as they are before His majesty, when He shall take the mask off their faces. And 0, thrice happy shall your soul be then, when God finds you covered with nothing but the white robe of the saint's innocence, and the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You have been of late in the King's wine-cellar, where you were welcomed by the Lord of the inn, upon condition that you walk in love. Put on love, and brotherly kindness, and long- suffering ; wait as long upon the favour and turned hearts of your enemies as your Christ waited upon you, and as dear Jesus stood at your soul's door, with dewy and rainy locks, the long cold night. Be angry, but sin not. I persuade myself, that holy unction within you, which teacheth you all things, is also saying, " Overcome evil with good." If that had not spoken in your soul, at the tears of your aged pastor, you would not have agreed, and forgiven his foolish son, who wronged you ; but my Master bade me tell you, God's blessing shall be upon you for it ; and from Him I say, Grace, grace, grace, and everlasting peace be upon you. It is my prayer for you, that your carriage may grace and adorn the Gospel of that Lord who hath graced you. I heard your husband also was sick ; but I beseech you in the bowels of Jesus, welcome every rod of God, for I find not in the whole book of God a greater note of the child of God, than to fall down and kiss the feet of an angry God. And when He seems to put you away from Him, and loose your hands that grip Him, to look up in faith, and say, " I shall not, I will not, be put away from Thee. Howbeit Thy Majesty draw to free Thyself of me, yet. Lord, give me leave to hold, and cleave unto Thyself." I will pray, that your husband may return in peace. Your decreet comes from heaven ; look up thither, for many (says Solomon) seek the face of the ruler, but every man's judgment cometh from the Lord. And be glad that it is so, for Christ is the clerk of your process, and will see that all go right ; and I persuade myself He is saying, " Yonder servants of mine are wronged ; for My blood, father, give them justice." Think 56 LETTER XII. [1630. you not, dear sister, but our High Priest, our Jesus, the Master of requests, presents our bills of complaint to the great Lord Justice ? Yea I believe it, since He is our Advocate, and Daniel calls Hira the Spokesman, whose hand presents all to the Father. For other business, I say nothing, till the Lord give me to see your face. I am credibly informed, that multitudes of England, and especially worthy preachers, and silenced preachers of London, are gone to New England ; and I know one learned holy preacher, who hath written against the Arminians, who is gone thither.^ Our Blessed Lord Jesus, who cannot get leave to sleep with His spouse in this land, is going to seek an inn where He will be better entertained. And what marvel ? Wearied Jesus, after He had travelled from Geneva, by the ministry of worthy Mr. Knox, and was laid in His bed, and reformation begun, and the curtains drawn, had not gotten His dear eyes well together, when irreverent bishops came in, and with the din and noise of ceremonies, holy days, and other Eomish corruptions, they awake our Beloved. Others came to His bedside, and drew the curtains, and put hands on His servants, banished, deprived, and confined them ; and for the pulpit they got a stool and a cold fire in the Blackness ; ^ and the nobility drew the covering off Him, and have made Him a poor naked Clnist, spoiling His servants of the tithes and kirk rents. And now there is such a noise of crying sins in the land, as the want of the knowledge of God, of mercy, and truth ; such swearing, whoring, lying, and blood touching blood ; that Christ is putting on His clothes; and making Him,^ like an ill-handled stranger, to go to other lands. Pray Him, sister, to lie down again with His beloved. Eemember my dearest love to John Gordon, to whom I will write when I am strong, and to John Brown, Grissel, Samuel, and William ; grace be upon them. As you love Christ, keep Christ's favour, and put not upon Him when He sleeps, to awake Him before He please. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Your brother in Christ, Anwoth, July 21, 1630. S. E. ^ The emigration of preacliers and people to New England was llic consequence of the persecuting measures pursued by Archbishop Laud for enforcing conformity, in the prosecution of his favourite scheme of bringing the Church of England as near to that of Rome as could consort with his own supremacy and that of his sovereign. About seventy ministers and four thousand other persons emigrated to the American continent to escape the tyranny of Laud and his agents. - Pdackness Castle, on the Forth, was used as a prison. ' In the scn.se of making a show of or appearing as if lie would go ; Luke x.xiv. 28. 1631.] LETTER XIIl. 57 XIII. — Fm Marion M'N aught, vihen exposed to ref roach for her principles. (JESUS A PATTERN OF PATIENCE UNDER SUFFERING.) JELL-BELOVED SISTER, — I have been thinking, since my departure from you, of the pride and malice of your adversaries ; and ye may not (since ye have had the Book of Psalms so often) take hardly with this ; for David's enemies snuffed at him, and through the pride of their heart said, "The Lord will not require it " (Ps. x. 13). I beseech you, therefore, in the bowels of Jesus, set before your eyes the patience of your forerunner Jesus, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again ; when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him who judgeth righteously (1 Pet. ii. 23). And since your Lord and Picdeemer with patience received many a black stroke on His glorious back, and many a buffet of the unbelieving world, and says of Himself, " I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair ; I hid not my face from shame and spitting " (Isa. iv. 6) ; follow Him, and think it not hard that you receive a blow with your Lord. Take part with Jesus of His sufferings, and glory in the marks of Christ. If this storm were over, you must prepare yourself for a new wound ; for, five thousand years ago, our Lord proclaimed deadly war betwixt the Seed of the Woman and the seed of the Serpent. And marvel not that one town cannot keep the children of God and the children of the devil, for one belly could not keep Jacob and Esau (Gen. xxv. 22) ; one house could not keep peaceably together Isaac, the son of the promise, and Ishmael, the son of the handmaid (Gen. xxi. 10). Be you upon Christ's side of it, and care not what flesh can do. Hold yourself fast by your Saviour, howbeit you be buffeted, and those that follow Him. Yet a Little while and the wicked shall not be. " We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed ; we are perplexed, but not in despair ; persecuted, but not forsaken ; cast down, but not destroyed " (2 Cor. iv. 8, 9). If you can possess your soul in patience, their day is coming. Worthy and dear sister, know to carry yourself in trouble ; and when you are hated and reproached, the Lord shows it to you — " All this is come upon us, yet have we not forgotten Thee, neither have we dealt falsely in Thy covenant " (Ps. xliv. 17). "Unless Thy law had been my delight, I liad perished in mine affliction " (Ps. cxix. 92). Keep God's covenant 58 LETTER XIV. [1631. in your trials. Hold you by His blessed word, and sin not. Flee anger, wrath, grudging, envying, fretting. Forgive an hundred pence to your fellow-servant, because your Lord hath forgiven you ten thousand talents. For I assure you by the Lord, your adversaries shall get no advantage against you, except you sin and offend your Lord in your sufferings. But the way to overcome is by patience, forgiving and praying for your enemies, in doing whereof you heap coals upon their heads, and your Lord shall open a door to you in your troubles. Wait upon Him, as the night watch waiteth for the morning. He will not tarry. Go up to your watch-tower, and come not down ; but by prayer, and faith, and hope, wait on. When the sea is full, it will ebb again ; and so soon as the wicked are come to the top of their pride, and are waxed high and mighty, then is their change approaching. They that believe make not haste. Eemember Zion, forget her not, for her enemies are many ; for the nations are gathered together against her. " But they know not the thoughts of the Lord, neither understand they His counsel : for He shall gather them as the sheaves into the floor. Arise and thresh, 0 daughter of Zion" (Micah iv. 12, 13). Behold, God hath gathered His enemies together, as sheaves to the threshing. Let us stay and rest upon these promises. Now again, I trust in our Lord you shall by faith sustain yourself, and comfort yourself in your Lord, and be strong in His power ; for you are in the beaten and common way to heaven when you are under our Lord's crosses. You have reason to rejoice in it, more t'han in a crown of gold ; and rejoice, and be glad to bear the reproaches of Christ. I rest, recommending you and yours for ever to the grace and mercy of God. Yours in Christ, Anwotu, Fth. 11, 1631. S. R XIV. — For Marion M'Naught, in the prospect of a Communion seasoji. {.ABUNDANCE IN JESUS— THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS- ENEMIES OF GOD.) iia>L-BELOVED IN THE LOED,— You are not un- acquainted with the day of our Communion. I entreat, therefore, the aid of your prnyers for that great work, which is one of our feast days, wherein our Well- beloved Jesus rejoiceth, and is merry with His friends. 1631.] LETTER XIV. 59 Good cause have we to wonder at His love, since the day of His death was such a sorrowful day to Him, even the day when His mother, the kirk, crowned Him with thorns, and He had many against Him, and compeared His lone in the fields against them all ; yet He delights with us to remember that day. Let us love Him, and be glad and rejoice in His salvation. I am confident that you shall see the Son of God that day, and I dare in His name invite you to His banquet. Many a time you have been well entertained in His house ; and He changes not upon His friends, nor chides them for too great kindness. Yet I speak not this to make you leave off to pray for me, who have nothing of myself, but in so far as daily I receive from Him, who is made of His Father a running-over fountain, at which I and others may come with thirsty souls, and fill our vessels. Long hath this well been standing open to us. Lord Jesus, lock it not up again upon us, I am sorry for our desolate kirk ; yet I dare not but trust, so long as there be any of God's lost money here He shall not blow out the candle. The Lord make fair candlesticks in His house, and remove the blind lights. I have been this time bypast thinking much of the incoming of the kirk of the Jews.^ Pray for them. When they were in their Lord's house, at their Father's elbow, they were longing for the incoming of their little sister, the kirk of the Gentiles. They said to their Lord, " We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts : what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for ? " (Cant. viii. 8). Let us give them a meet- ing. What shall we do for our elder sister, the Jews ? Lord Jesus, give them breasts. That were a glad day to see us and them both sit down to one table, and Christ at the head of the table. Then would our Lord come shortly with his fair guafd to hold His great court. Dear sister, be patient, for the Lord's sake, under the wrongs that you suffer of the wicked. Your Lord shall make you see your desire on your enemies. Some of them shall be cut off; " they shall shake off their unripe grapes as the vine, and cast off their flower as the olive" (Job. xv. 33): God shall make them like unripe sour grapes, shaken off the tree with the blast of God's wrath ; and therefore pity them, and pray for them. Others of them must remain to exercise you. God hath said of them, Let the tares grow up until ha.rvest (Matt. xiii. 30). It proves you to be your Lord's wheat. Be patient ; Christ went to 1 So iu his " Trial of Faith" p. 133 (published 1656). 6o LETTER XV. [1631. heaven with many a wrong. His visage and countenance was all marred more than the sons of men. You may not be above your Master ; many a black stroke received innocent Jesus, and He received no mends, but referred them all to the great court- day, when all things shall be righted. I desire to hear from you within a day or two, if Mr. Robert remain in his purpose to come and help us. God shall give you joy of your children. I pray for them by their names. I bless you from our Lord, your husband and children. Grace, grace, and mercy be multiplied upon you. Yours in the Lord for ever, Anwoth, May 7, 1631. S. R. XV. — For Marion M 'Naught on occasion of the threatened introduction of the Episcopalian Service-Booh. {TROUBLES OF THE CHURCH— PRIVATE WRONGS.) ELL-BELOVED SISTER,— My love in Christ remem- bered. I have received a letter from Edinburgh, certainly informing me that the English service, and the organs, and King James' Psalms, are to be imposed upon our kirk ; and that the bishops are dealing for a General Assembly. A. R. hath confirmed the news also, and says he spoke with Sir William Alexander,^ who is to come down with his prince's warrant for that effect. I am desired in the received letter to acquaint the best-affected about me with that storm : therefore I entreat you, and charge you in the Lord's name, pray ; but do not communicate this to any till I see you. My heart is broken at the remembrance of it, and it was my fear, and answereth to my last letter except one, that I wrote unto you. Dearly beloved, be not casten down, but let us, as our Lord's doves, take us to our wings (for other armour we have none), and flee into the hole of the rock. It is true A. R. says, the worthiest men in England are banished, and silenced, about the number of sixteen or seventeen choice Gospel preachers, and the persecution is already begun. Howbeit I do not write this unto you with a dry face, yet I am confident in the Lord's strength, Christ and His side shall overcome ; and you shall be assured ; the kirk were not a kirk, if it were not so. As our dear Husband, in wooing His kirk, received many a black stroke, ^ Sir W. Alexander of Menstrie, afterwards Earl of Stirling. 1 63 1.] LETTER XV. 6i so His bride, in wooing Him, gets many blows, and in this woo- ing there are strokes upon both sides. Let it be so. The devil will not make the marriage go back, neither can he tear the contract ; the end shall be mercy. Yet notwithstanding of all this, we have no warrant of God to leave off all lawful means. I have been writing unto you the counsels and draughts of men against the kirk ; but tliey know not, as Micah says, the counsel of Jehovah. The great men of the world may make ready the fiery furnace for Zion ; but trow ye that they can cause the fire to burn ? No. He that made the fire, I trust, shall not say amen to their decreets. I trust in my Lord, that God hath not subscribed their bill, and their conclusions have not yet passed our great King's seal. Therefore, if ye think good, address your- self first to the Lord, and then to A. K., anent the business that you know. I am most unkindly handled by the presbytery ; and (as if I had been a stranger, and not a member of that seat, to sit in judgment with them) I was summoned by their order as a wit- ness against B. A. But they have got no advantage in that matter. Other particulars you shall hear, God willing, at meeting. Anent the matter betwixt you and L E., I remember it to God. I entreat you in the Lord, be submissive to His will ; for the higher that their pride mounts up, they are the nearer to a fall. The Lord will more and more discover that man. Let your husband, in all matters of judgment, take Christ's part, for the defence of the poor and needy, and the oppressed, for the maintenance of equity and justice in the town. And take you no fear. He shall take your part, and then you are strong enough. What ? Howbeit you receive indignities for your Lord's sake, let it be so. When He shall put His holy hand up to your face in heaven, and dry your face, and wipe the tears from your eyes, judge if ye will not have cause then to rejoice. Anent other particulars, if you would speak with me, appoint any of the first three days of the next week in Carletoun,^ when Carletoun is at home, and acquaint me with your desires. And remember me to God, and my dearest affection to your husband ; and for Zion's sake hold not your peace. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, and your husband and children. Yours in the Lord, Anwoth, June 2, 1631. S. R. ^ Carleton, in Galloway (see note at Letter CLVII.), not far from Anwoth, where Mr. Fullerton, a true friend, resided. 62 LETTER XVI. [1631. XVI. — For Marion M'Naught, on occasion of a proposal to remove him from Anwoth. {BABYLON'S DESTRUCTION AND CHRIST'S COMING— THE YOUNG INVITED.) lOKTHY AND DEAE MISTEESS,— My dearest love in Christ remembered. As to the business which I know you would so fain have taken effect, my earnest desire is, that you stand still. Haste not, and you shall see the salvation of God. The great Master Gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in a wonderful providence, with His own hand (I dare, if it were for edification, swear it), planted me here,^ where, by His grace, in this part of His vineyard, I grow. — I dare not say but Satan and the world (one of his pages whom he sends on his errands) have said otherwise. And here I will abide till the great Master of the Vineyard think fit to transplant me. But when He sees meet to loose me at the root, and to plant me where I may be more useful, both as to fruit and shadow, and when He who planted pulleth up that He may transplant, who dare put to their hand and hinder ? If they do, Qod shall break their arm at the shoulder blade, and do His turn. When our Lord is going west, the devil and world! go east ; and do you not know that it hath been ever this way betwixt God and the world — God drawing, and they holding, God "yea," and the world "nay " ? But they fall on their back and are frustrate, and our Lord holdeth His grip. Wherefore doth the word say, that our Christ, the Goodman of this house. His dear kirk, hath feet like fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace (Eev. i. 15)? For no other cause but be- cause where our Lord setteth down His brazen feet. He will forward ; and whithersoever He looketh. He will follow His look ; and His feet burn all under them, like as fire doth stubble and thorns. I think He hath now given the world a proof of His exceeding great power, when He is doing such great things, wherein Zion is concerned, by the sword of the Swedish kiiig,^ as of a Gideon. As you love the glory of God, pray instantly (yea engage all your praying acquaintance, and take their faithful promise to do the like) for this king, and every one that Zion's King armeth, to execute the written vengeance on Babylon. Our Lord hath begun to loose some of Babylon's corner stones. Pray to Him to hold on, for that city must fall, and the birds of * At Anwoth. * Gustavus Adolphus. 1 63 1.] LETTER XVI. 63 the air and the beasts of the earth must make a banquet of Babylon ; for He hath invited them to eat the flesh of that whore, and to drink her blood. And the cup of the Lord's right hand shall be turned unto her, and shameful spewing shall be upon her glory. He whose word must stand hath said, " Take this cup at the hand of the Lord, and drink and be drunken, and spew, and fall, and rise no more" (Jer. xxv. 27). Our Jesus is setting up Himself, as His Father's ensign (Isa. xi. 10), as God's fair white colours, that His soldiers may all flock about Him. Long, long may these colours stand. It is long since He dis- played a banner against Babylon in the fight of men and angels. Let us rejoice and triumph in our God. The victory is certain ; for when Christ and Babel wrestle, then angels and saints may prepare themselves to sing, " Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen." Howbeit that Prince of renown, precious Jesus, be now weeping and bleeding in His members, yet Christ will laugh again ; and it is time enough for us to laugh, when our Lord Christ laugheth, — and that will be shortly. For when we hear of wars and rumours of wars, the Judge's feet are then before the door, and He must be in heaven giving order to the angels to make themselves ready, and prepare their hooks and sickles for that great harvest. Christ will be upon us in haste ; watch but a little, and ere long the skies will rive, and that fair lovely person, Jesus, shall come in the clouds, freighted and loaded with glory. And then all these knaves and foxes that destroyed tlie vines shall call to the hills, and cry to the mountains to cover them, and hide them from the face of Him who sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. Eemember me to your husband, and desire him from me to help Christ, and to take His part, and in judgment sit ever beside Him, and receive a blow patiently for His sake ; for He is worthy to be suffered for, not only to blows, but also to blood. He shall find that innocency and uprightness in judgment shall hold its feet and make him happy, when jouking will not do it. I speak this because a person said to me, " I pray God the country be not in worse case now when the provost and bailies are agreed, than formerly," — to whom I replied, "I trust the provost is agreed with the man's person, but not with his faults." I pray for you, with my whole soul and desire, that your children may walk in the truth, and that the Lord may shine upon them, and make their faces to shine, when the faces of others shall blush. I dare promise them, in His name, whose truth I preach, 64 LETTER XVIl. [1631 if they will but try God's service, that they shall find Him the sweetest Master that ever they served. And desire them from me but to try for a while the service of this blessed Master, and then, if His service be not sweet, if it afibrd not what is pleasant to the soul's taste, change Him upon trial, and seek a better. Christ is an unknown Christ to the young ones ; and therefore they seek Him not, because they know Him not. Bid them come and see, and seek a kiss of His mouth ; and then they will find His mouth is so sweet, that they will be everlastingly chained unto Him by their own consent. If I have any credit with your children, I entreat them in Christ's name to try what truth and reality is in what I say, and leave not His service till they have found me a liar. I give you, your husband, and them, to His keeping to whom I have,^ and dare venture myself and soul, even to our dear Friend Jesus Christ, in whom I am. Yours, Anwoth. ^* -'^• XVIL — For Marion M'Naught, vihen in distress as to prospects of the Church. {ARMINIANISM—CALL TO PR A YER—NO HELP BUT IN CHRIST.) ELL-BELOVED SISTER,— My dearest love in Christ remembered to you. Know that I am in great heaviness for the pitiful case of our Lord's kirk. I hear the cause why Dr. Burton ^ is committed to prison is his writing and preaching against the Arminians. I therefore entreat the aid of your prayers for myself, and the Lord's captives of hope, and for Zion. The Lord hath let and daily lets me see clearly, how deep furrows Arminianism and the followers of it draw upon the back of God's Israel (but our Lord cut the cords of the wicked !). " Zion said. The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me " (Isa. xlix. 1-4). " Zion weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are upon her cheeks ; amongst all her lovers she hath none to comfort her : all her friends have dealt treacherously with her ; they are become her enemies " (Lam. i. 2). " Our silver is become dross, our wine mixed with water" (Isa. i. 22). "How is the gold ^ To wliom I have given, and dare venture to give. * Henry Burton, an able divine of the Church of England, wrote several vigorous pieces against Popery, and against Montague's '* Appello Caesarem." 1 63 1.] LETTER XVII. 65 become dim ! how is the most fine gold changed ! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street. The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter! " (Lam. ix. 1, 2). It is time now for the Lord's secret ones, who favour the dust of Zion, to cry, " How long, Lord ? " and to go up to their watch-tower, and to stay there, and not to come down until the vision speak ; for it shall speak (Hab. ii. 3). In the mean time, the just shall live by faith. Let us wait on and not weary. I have not a thread to hang upon and rest, but this one, " Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb ? Yea, she may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands ; Thy walls are continually before Me (Isa. xlix. 15, 16). For all outward helps do fail ; it is time therefore for us to hang ourselves, as our Lord's vessels, upon the nail that is fastened in a sure place. We would make stakes of our own fastening, but they will break. Our Lord will have Zion on His own nail. Edom is busy within us, and Babel without us, against the handful of Jacob's seed. It were best that we were upon Christ's side of it, for His enemies will get the stalks to keep, as the proverb is. Our greatest difficulty will be to win upon the rock now, when the wind and waves of persecution are so lofty and proud. Let sweet Jesus take us by the hand. Neither must we think that it will be otherwise ; for it is told to the souls under the altar, " That their fellow-servants must be killed as they were " (Kev. vi. 11). Surely, it cannot be long to the day. Nay, hear Him say, " Behold, I come. My dear bride ; think not long. I shall be at you at once. I hear you, and am coming." Amen ; even so come. Lord Jesus, come quickly ; for the prisoners of hope are looking out at the prison windows, to see if they can behold the King's ambassador coming with the King's warrant and the keys. I write not to you by guess now, because I have a warrant to say unto you, the garments of Christ's spouse must be once again dyed in blood, as long ago her husband's were. But our Father sees His bleeding Son. What I write unto you, show it to I. G-. Grace, grace, grace and mercy be with you, your husband, and children. Yours in the Lord, Anwoth, S. B. 66 LETTER XVIII. [1631. XVIII. — For Marion M*N aught, in the prospect of a Communion season. {PRAYER SOLICITED— THE CHURCITS PROSPECTS.) ISTEESS, — My love in Christ as remembered. Our Communion is on Sabbath come ^ eight days. I will entreat you to recommend it to God, and to pray for me in that work. I have more sins upon lue nov/ than the last time. Therefore I v/ill beseech you in Clirist, seek this petition to me from God, that the Lord would give me grace to vow and perform new obedience. I have cause to suit this of you ; and show it to Thomas Carson, Fergus and Jean Brown, for I have been and am exceedingly cast down, and am fighting against a malicious devil, of whom I can win little ground. I would think a spoil plucked from him, and his trusty servant sin, a lawful and just conquest. And it were no sin to take from him, in the name of the Goodman of our house, our King Jesus. I invite you to the banquet. He saith, ye shall be dearly welcome to Him. And I desire to believe (howbeit not without great fear) He shall be as hearty in His own house as He has been before. For me, it is but small reckoning ; but I would fain have our Father and Lord to break the great fair loaf, Christ, and to distribute His slain Son amongst the bairns of His house, and that if any were a step-bairn, in respect of comfort and sense, it were rather myself than His poor bairns. Therefore bid our Well-beloved come to His garden and feed among the lilies. And as concerning Zion, I hope our Lord, who sent His angel (Zech. ii. 1, 2) with a measuring line in his hand to measure the length and breadth of Jerusalem, in token He would not want a foot length or inch of His own free heritage, shall take order with those who have taken away many acres of His own land from Him. And God will build Jerusalem in the old sted and place where it was before. In this hope rejoice and be glad. Christ's garment was not dipped in blood for nothing, but for His Bride, whom He bought with strokes. I will desire you to remember my old suits to God, Cod's glory and the increase of light, that 1 dry not up. For your town, hope and believe that the Lord will gather in His loose sheaves among you to His barn, and send one with a well-toothed, sharp hook, and strong gardies, to reap His harvest. And the Lord ' Sabbath that comes eight days after this. 1631.] LETTER XIX. 67 Jesus be Husbandman, and oversee the growing. E^member my love to your husband and to Samuel. Grace upon you and your children. Lord, make them corner-stones in Jerusalem, and give them grace in their youth to take band with the fair Chief Corner-stone, who was hewed out of the mountain without hands, and got many a knock with His Father's forehammer, and endured them all, and the stone did neither cleave nor break. Upon that stone make your soul to lie. King Jesus be with your spirit. Your friend in his well- beloved Lord Jesus, Anwoth. ^' ■*•*'• XIX. — To my Lady Kenmure. {ENCOURAGEMENT TO ABOUND IN FAITH FROM THE PROSPECT OF GLORY— CHRISrs UNCHANGEABLENESS.) ADAM, — Having saluted you in the Lord Jesus, I thought it my duty, having the occasion of this bearer, to write again unto your ladyship, though I have no new purpose but what I wrote of before. Yet ye cannot be too often awakened to go forward towards your city, since your way is long, and (for anything ye know) your day is short. And your Lord requireth of you, as ye advance in years and steal forward insensibly towards eternity, that your faith may grow and ripen for the Lord's harvest. For the great Husbandman giveth a season to His fruits that they may come to maturity, and having gotten their fill of the tree they may then be shaken and gathered in for use ; whereas the wicked rot upon the tree, and their branch shall not be green. " He shall shake off his unripe grape as the vine, and shall cast off his flower as the olive " (Job xv. 33). It is God's mercy to you. Madam, that He giveth you your fill, even to loathing, of this bitter world, that ye may willingly leave it, and, like a full and satisfied banqueter,^ long for the drawing of the table. And at last, having trampled under your feet all the rotten pleasures that are under sun and moon, and having rejoiced as though ye rejoiced not, and having bought as though ye possessed not (1 Cor. vii. 30), ye may, like an old crazy ship, arrive at our Lord's harbour, and be made welcome, as one of those who have ^ Allusion to Horace, Sat. i. 1, 19. One of the few allusions to the classics that occur in Rutherford. 68 LETTER XIX. [1631. ever had one foot loose from the earth, longing for that place where your soul shall feast and banquet for ever and ever upon a glorious sight of the incomprehensible Trinity, and where ye shall see the fair face of the man Christ, even the beautiful face that was once for your cause more marred than any of the visages of the sons of men (Isa. lii. 1 4), and was all covered with spitting and blood. Be content to wade through the waters betwixt you and glory with Ilim, holding His hand fast, for He knoweth all the fords. Howbeit ye may be ducked, but ye cannot drown, being in His company ; and ye may all the way to glory see the way bedewed with His blood v/ho is the Fore- runner. Be not afraid, therefore, when ye come even to the black and swelling river of death, to put in your foot and wade after Him. The current, how strong soever, cannot carry you down the water to hell : the Son of God, His death and resurrec- tion, are stepping-stones and a stay to you ; set down your feet by faith upon these stones, and go through as on dry land. If ye knew what He is preparing for you, ye would be too glad. He will not (it may be) give you a full draught till you come up to the well-head and drink, yea, drink abundantly, of the pure river of the water of life, that proceedeth out from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Eev. xxii. 1). Madam, tire not, weary not ; I dare find you the Son of God caution, when ye are got up thither, and have cast your eyes to view the golden city, and the fair and never-withering Tree of Life, that beareth twelve manner of fruits every month, ye shall then say, " Foifr-and-twenty hours' abode in this place is worth threescore and ten years' sorrow upon earth," If ye can but say, that ye long earnestly to be carried up thither (and I hope you cannot for shame deny Him the honour of having wrought that desire in your soul), then hath your Lord given you an earnest. And, Madam, do ye believe that our Lord will lose His earnest, and rue of the bargain, and change His mind, as if He were a man that can lie, or the son of man that can repent ? Nay, He is unchangeable, and the same this year that He was the former year. And His Son Jesus, who upon earth ate and drank with publicans and sinners, and spake and conferred with whores and harlots, and put up His holy hand and touched the leper's filthy skin, and came evermore nigh sinners, even now in glory, is yet that same Lord. His honour, and His great court in heaven, hath not made Him forget His poor friends on earth. In Him honours change not manners, and He doth yet desire your 1632.] LETTER XX. 69 company. Take Him for the old Christ, and claim still kindness to Him, and say, " 0 it is so ; He is not changed, but I am changed." Nay, it is a part of His unchangeable love, and an article of the new covenant, to keep you that ye cannot dispone Him, nor sell Him. He hath not played fast and loose with us in the covenant of grace, so that we may run from Him at our pleasure. His love hath made the bargain surer than so ; for Jesus, as the cautioner, is bound for us (Heb. vii. 22). And it cannot stand with His honour to die in the borrows (as we use to say), and lose thee, whom He must render again to the Father when He shall give up the kingdom to Him. Consent and say " Amen " to the promises, and ye have sealed that God is true, and Christ is yours. This is an easy market. Ye but look on with faith ; for Christ suffered all, and paid all. Madam, fearing I be tedious to your Ladyship, I must stop here, desiring always to hear that your Ladyship is well, and that ye have still your face up the mountain. Pray for us, Madam, and for Zion, whereof ye are a part. We expect a trial. God's wheat in this land must go through Satan's sieve, but their faith shall not fail. I am still wrestling in our Lord's work, and have been tried and tempted with brethren who look awry to the Gospel. Now He that is able to keep you unto that day preserve your soul, body, and spirit, and present you before His face with His own Bride, spotless and blameless. Your Ladyship's, to be commanded always in the Lord Jesus, Anwoth, Nov. 26, 1631. S. B. XX. — To my Lady Kenmure. {ASSURANCE OF CHRIST S LOVE UNDER TRIALS— FULNESS OF CHRIST— HOPE OF GLORY.) ADAM, — I am grieved exceedingly that your Ladyship should think, or have cause to think, that such as love you in God, in this country, are forgetful of you. For myself, Madam, I owe to your Ladyship all evidences of my high respect (in the sight of my Lord, whose truth 1 preach, I am bold to say it) for His rich grace in you. My Communion, put off till the end of a longsome and rainy harvest, and the presbyterial exercise (as the bearer can inform your Ladyship), hindered me to see you. And for my people's sake (finding them like hot iron, that cooleth being out of the 7© LETTER XX, [1632. fire, and that is pliable to no work), I do not stir abroad ; neither have I left them at all, since your Ladyship was in this country, save at one time only, about two years ago. Yet I dare not say but it is a fault, howbeit no defect in my affection ; and I trust to make it up again, so soon as possibly I am able to wait upon you. Madam, I have no new purpose to write unto you, but of that which I think (nay, which our Lord thinketh) needful, that one thing, Mary's good part, which ye have chosen (Luke x, 42). Madam, all that God hath, both Himself and the creatures. He is dealing and parting amongst the sons of Adam. There are none so poor as that they can say in His face, " He hath given them nothing." But there is no small odds betwixt the gifts given to lawful bairns and to bastards ; and the more greedy ye are in suiting, the more willing He is to give, delighting to be called open-handed. I hope your Ladyship laboureth to get assurance of the surest patrimony, even God Himself. Ye will find in Christianity, that God aimeth, in all His dealings with His children, to bring them to a high contempt of, and deadly feud with the world, and to set an high price upon Christ, and to think Him One who cannot be bought for gold, and well worthy the fighting for. And for no other cause, Madam, doth the Lord withdraw from you the childish toys and the earthly delights that He giveth unto others, but that He may have you wholly to Himself. Think therefore of the Lord, as of one who cometh to woo you in marriage, when ye are in the furnace. He seeketh His answer of you in affliction, to see if ye will say, Even so I take Him. Madam, give Him this answer pleasantly, and in your mind do not secretly grudge nor murmur. When He is striking you in love, beware to strike again : that is dangerous ; for those who strike again shall get the last blow. n I hit not upon the riglit string, it is because I am not acquainted with your Ladyship's present condition ; but I believe your Ladyship goeth on foot, laughing, and putting on a good countenance before the world, and yet ye carry heaviness about with you. Ye do well, Madam, not to make them v/itnesses of your grief, who cannot be curers of it. But be exceedingly charitable of your dear Lord. As there be some friends worldly of whom ye will not entertain an ill thought, far more ought ye to believe good evermore of your dear friend, that lovely fair person, Jesus Christ, The thorn is one of the most cursed, and angry, and crabbed weeds that the earth yieldeth, and yet out 1632.] LETTER XX. 71 of it springeth the rose, one of the sweetest-smelled flowers, and most delightful to the eye, that the earth hath. Your Lord shall make joy and gladness out of your afflictions ; for all His roses have a fragrant smell. Wait for the time when His own holy hand shall hold them to your nose ; and if ye would have present comfort under the cross, be much in prayer, for at that time your faith kisseth Christ and He kisseth the soul. And oh ! if the breath of His holy mouth be sweet, I dare be caution, out of some small experience, that ye shall not be beguiled ; for the world (yea, not a few number of God's children) know not well what that is which they call a Godhead. But, Madam, come near to the Godhead, and look down to the bottom of the well ; there is much in Him, and sweet were that death to drown in such a well. Your grief taketh liberty to work upon your mind, when ye are not busied in the meditation of the ever- delighting and all-blessed Godhead. If ye would lay the price ye give out (which is but some few years' pain and trouble) beside the commodities ye are to receive, ye would see they are not worthy to be laid in the balance together : but it is nature that maketh you look what ye give out, and weakness of faith that hindereth you to see what ye shall take in. Amend your hope, and frist your faithful Lord awhile. He maketh Himself your debtor in the new covenant. He is honest ; take His word : " Affliction shall not spring up the second time " (Nahum i. 9). " He that overcometh shall inherit all things " (Eev. xxi. 7). Of all things, then, which ye want in this life. Madam, I am able to say nothing, if that be not believed which ye have in Eev. iii. 5, 21 : "The overcomer shall be clothed in white raiment. To the overcomer I will give to sit with Me in My throne, as I overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne." Consider, Madam, if ye are not high up now, and far ben in the palace of our Lord, when ye are upon a throne in white raiment, at lovely Christ's elbow. 0 thrice fools are we, who, like new-born princes weeping in the cradle, know not that there is a kingdom before them ! Then let our Lord's sweet hand square us and hammer us, and strike off the knots of pride, self-love, and world -worship, and infidelity, that He may make us stones and pillars in His Father's house (Eev. iii. 12). Madam, what think ye to take binding with the fair corner-stone Jesus ? The Lord give you wisdom to believe and hope your day is coming. I hope to be witness of your joy, as I have been a hearer and beholder of your grief. Think ye much to follow the heir of the crown, who 72 LETTER XXI. [1632. had experience of sorrows, and was acquainted with grief ? (Isa. liii. 3). It were pride to aim to be above the King's Son : it is more than we deserve, that we are equals in glory, in a manner. Now commending you to the dearest grace and mercy of God, I rest Your Ladyship's, at all obedience in Christ, Anwoth, Jan. 4, 1632. S* ^' XXI. — To my Lady Kenmure. {SELF-DENIAL— HOPE OF CHRIST S COMING— LOVING GOD FOR HIMSELF.) ADAM, — Understanding (a little after the writing of my last letter) of the going of this bearer, I would not omit the opportunity of remembering your Lady- ship, still harping upon that string, which in our whole lifetime is never too often touched upon (nor is our lesson well enough learned), that there is a necessity of advancing in the way to the kingdom of God, of the contempt of the world, of denying ourself and bearing of our Lord's cross, which is no less needful for us than daily food. And among many marks that we are on this journey, and under sail toward heaven, this is one, when the love of God so filleth our hearts, that we forget to love, and care not much for the having, or wanting of, other things ; as one extreme heat burnetii out another. By this, Madam, ye know, ye have betrothed your soul in marriage to Christ, when ye do make but small reckon- ing of all other suitors or wooers ; and when ye can (having little in hand, but much in hope) live as a young heir, during the time of his non-age and minority, being content to be as hardly handled and under as precise a reckoning as servants, because his hope is upon the inheritance. For this cause God's bairns take well with spoiling of their goods, knowing in them- selves that they have in heaven a better and an enduring substance (Heb. x. 34). That day that the earth and the works therein shall be burned with fire (2 Pet. iii. 10), your hidden hope and your life shall appear. And therefore, since ye have not now many years to your endless eternity, and know not how soon the sky above your head will rive, and the Son of man will be seen in the clouds of heaven, what better and wiser course can ye take, than to think that your one foot is here, and your other foot in the life to come, and to leave off loving, 1633.] LETTER XXI. 73 desiring, or grieving for the wants that shall be made up when your Lord and ye shall meet, and when ye shall give in your bill, that day, of all your wants here ? If your losses be not made up, ye have place to challenge the Almighty ; but it shall not be so. Ye shall then rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, and your joy shall none take from you (1 Pet. i. 8 ; John xvi. 22). It is enough, that the Lord hath promised you great things, only let the time of bestowing them be in His own carving. It is not for us to set an hour-glass to the Creator of time. Since He and we differ only in the term of payment ; since He hath promised payment, and we believe it, it is no great matter. We will put that in His ow^n will, as the frank buyer, who cometh near to what the seller seeketh, useth at last to refer the difference to his own will, and so cutteth off the course of mutual prigging. Madam, do not prigg with your frank-hearted and gracious Lord about the time of tlie fulfilling of your joys. It will be ; God hath said it ; bide His harvest, wait upon His whitsunday,^ His day is better than your day ; He putteth not the hook in the corn till it be ripe and full- eared. The great Angel of the covenant bear you company, till the trumpet shall sound, and the voice of the Archangel awaken the dead. Ye shall find it your only happiness, under whatever thing disturbeth and crosseth the peace of your mind, in this life, to love nothing for itself, but only God for Himself. It is the crooked love of some harlots, that they love bracelets, ear-rings, and rings better than the lover that sendeth them. God will not so be loved ; for that were to behave as harlots, and not as the chaste spouse, to abate from our love when these things are pulled away. Our love to Him should begin on earth, as it shall be in heaven ; for the bride taketh not, by a thousand degrees, so much delight in her wedding garment as she doth in her bridegroom ; so we, in the life to come, howbeit clothed with glory as with a robe, shall not be so much affected with the glory that goeth about us, as with the bridegroom's joyful face and presence. Madam, if ye can win to this here, the field is won ; and your mind, for anything ye want, or for anything your Lord can take from you, shall soon be calmed and quieted. Get Himself as a pawn, and keep Him, till your dear Lord come, and loose the pawn, and rue upon you, and give you all again that He took from you, even a thousand talents for one penny. It is not ill to lend God willingly, who otherwise both will and ^ His term-day. 74 LETTER XX 11. [1632. may take from you against your will. It is good to play the usurer with Him, and take in, instead of ten of the hundred, an hundred of ten, often an hundred of one. Madam, fearing to be tedious to you, I break off here, com- mending you (as I trust to do while I live), your person, ways, burdens, and all that concerneth you, to that Almighty who is able to bear you and your burdens. I still remember you to Him, who will cause you one day to laugh. I expect that, whatever ye can do, by word or deed, for the Lord's friendless Zion, ye will do it. She is your mother ; forget her not ; for the Lord intendeth to melt and try this land, and it is high time we were all upon our feet, and falling about to try what claim we have to Christ. It is like the bridegroom will be taken from us, and then we shall mourn. Dear Jesus, remove not, else take us with Thee. Grace, grace be with you for ever. Your Ladyship's, at all dutiful obedience, Anwoth, Jan. 14, 1632. S. E. Wk XXII.— 7\) John Kennedy. {Letter LXXV.) {DELIVERANCE FROM SHIPWRECK— RECOVERY FROM THREAT. ENED DEATH— USE OF TRIALS—REMEMBRANCE OF FRIENDS.) Y LOVING AND MOST AFFECTIONATE BEOTHER IN CHEIST, — I salute you with grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. I promised to write to you, and although late enough, yet I now make it good. I heard with grief of your great danger of pcrisliing by the sea, and of your merciful deliverance with joy. Sure I am, brother, that Satan will leave no stone unrolled, as the proverb is, to roll you off your Eock, or at least to shake and unsettle you : for at that same time the mouths of wicked men were opened in hard speeches against you, by land, and the prince of the power of the air was angry with you by sea. See then how much ye are obliged to that malicious murderer, who would beat you with two rods at one time ; but, blessed be God, his arm is short ; if the sea and wind would have obeyed him, ye had never come to land. Thank your God, who saith, " I have the keys of hell and of death" (Eev. i. 18); "I kill, and I make alive" (Deut. xxxii. 39); "The Lord bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up " (1 Sam. ii. 6). If Satan were 1632.] LETTER XXII. 75 jailor, and had the keys of death and of the grave, they should be stored with more prisoners. Ye were knocking at these black gates, and ye found the doors shut ; and we do all welcome you back again. I trust that ye know that it is not for nothing that ye are sent to us again. The Lord knew that ye had forgotten some- thing that was necessary for your journey ; that your armour was not as yet thick enough against the stroke of death. Now, in the strength of Jesus despatch your business ; that debt is not forgiven, but fristed : death hath not bidden you farewell, but hath only left you for a short season. End your journey ere the night come upon you. Have all in readiness against the time that ye must sail through that black and impetuous Jordan ; and Jesus, Jesus, who knoweth both those depths and the rocks, and all the coasts, be your pilot. The last tide will not wait you for one moment. If ye forget anything, when your sea is full, and your foot in that ship, there is no returning again to fetch it. What ye do amiss in your life to-day, ye may amend it to-morrow ; for as many suns as God maketh to arise upon you, ye have as many new lives ; but ye can die but once, and if ye mar or spill that business, ye cannot come back to mend that piece of work again. No man sinneth twice in dying ill ; as we die but once, so we die but ill or well once. You see how the number of your months is written in God's book ; and as one of the Lord's hirelings, ye must work till the shadow of the evening come upon you, and ye shall run out your glass even to the last pickle of sand. Fulfil your course with joy, for we take nothing to the grave with us, but a good or evil conscience. And, although the sky clear after this storm, yet clouds will engender another. Ye contracted with Christ, I hope, when first ye began to follow Him, that ye would bear His cross. Fulfil your part of the contract with patience, and break not to Jesus Christ. Be honest, brother, in your bargaining with Him ; for who knoweth better how to bring up children than our God ? For (to lay aside His knowledge, of the which there is no finding out) He hath been practised in bringing up His heirs these five thousand years ; and His bairns are all well brought up, and many of them are honest men now at home, up in their own house in heaven, and are entered heirs to their Father's inheritance. Now, the form of His bringing up was by chastisements, scourging, correct- ing, nurturing ; and see if He maketh exception of any of His 76 LETTER XXII. [1632. bairns : no, His eldest Sou and His Heir, Jesus, is not excepted (Eev. iii. 19; Heb. xii. 7, 8, and ii. 10). Suffer we must; ere we were born, God decreed it ; and it is easier to complain of His decree than to change it. It is true, terrors of conscience cast us down ; and yet without terrors of conscience we cannot be raised up again : fears and doubtings shake us ; and yet without fears and doubtings we would soon sleep, and lose our grips of Christ. Tribulation and temptations will almost loosen us to the root; and yet, without tribulations and temptations, we can now no more grow than herbs or corn without rain. Sin, and Satan, and the world will say, and cry in our ear, that we have a hard reckoning to make in judgment ; and yet none of these three, except they lie, dare say in our face that our sin can change the tenor of the new covenant. Forward, then, dear brother, and lose not your grips. Hold fast the truth : for the world, sell not one dram- weight of God's truth, especially now, when most men measure truth by time, like young seamen setting their compass by a cloud ; for now time is father and mother to truth, in the thoughts and practices of our evil time. The God of truth establish us ; for, alas ! now there are none to comfort the prisoners of hope, and the mourners in Zion, We can do little, except pray and mourn for Joseph in the stocks. And let their tongue cleave to the roof of their mouth who forget Jerusalem now in her day ; and the Lord remember Edom, and render to him as he hath done to us. Now, brother, I shall not weary you ; but I entreat you to remember my dearest love to Mr. David Dickson, with whom I have small acquaintance ; yet I bless the Lord, I know that he both prayeth and doeth for our dying kirk. Remember my dearest love to John Stuart, whom I love in Christ ; and show him from me that I do always remember him, and hope for a meeting. The Lord Jesus establish him more and more, though he be already a strong man in Christ. Ilemember my heartiest affection in Christ to William Eodger,^ whom I also remember to God. I wish that the first news I hear of him and you, and all that love our common Saviour in those bounds, may be, that they are so knit and linked, and kindly fastened in love with the Son of God, that ye may say, " Now if ye would ever so fain escape out of Christ's hands, yet love hath so bound us, that we cannot get our hands free again ; He hath so ravished our hearts, ^ Livingstone in his " Memor. Characteristics " meutions this godly man, a merchant iu Ayr. 1632.] LETTER XXIII. 77 that there is no loosening of His grips ; the chains of His soul- ravishing love are so strong, that neither the grave nor death will break them." I hope, brother, yea I doubt not of it, that ye lay me, and my first entry to the Lord's vineyard, and my flock, before Him who hath put me into His work. As the Lord knoweth, since first I saw you, I have been mindful of you. Marion M'Naught doth remember most heartily her love to you, and to John Stuart.^ Blessed be the Lord ! that in God's mercy I found in this country such a woman, to whom Jesus is dearer than her own heart, when there be so many that cast Christ over their shoulder. Good brother, call to mind the memory of your worthy father, now asleep in Christ ; and, as his custom was, pray continually, and wrestle, for the life of a dying, breathless kirk. And desire John Stuart not to forget poor Zion ; she hath few friends, and few to speak one good word for her. Now I commend you, your whole soul, and body, and spirit, to Jesus Christ and His keeping, hoping that ye will live and die, stand and fall, with the cause of our Master, Jesus. The Lord Jesus Himself be with your spirit. Your loving brother in our Lord Jesus, Anwoth, Fd>. 2, 1632. S. E. XXIII. — To my Lady Kenjiure. EXHORTING TO REMEMBER HER ESPOUSAL TO CHRIST— TRI- BULATION A PREPARATION FOR THE KINGDOM— GLORY IN THE END.) ADAM, — Your Ladyship will not (I know) weary nor offend, though I trouble you with many letters. The memory of what obligations I am under to your Ladyship, is the cause of it. I am possibly impertinent in what I write, because of my ignorance of your present estate ; but for all that is said, I have learned of Mr. W. D.^ that ye have not changed upon, nor wearied of your sweet Master, Christ, and His service ; neither were it your part to change upon Him who " resteth in His love." Ye are among honourable company, and such as affect grandeur and court. But, Madam, thinking upon your estate, I think I see an improvident wooer coming too late to seek a bride, because she is contracted already, and promised away to another ; ^ See Letter CLXI. a Mr. William Dalgleish, minister at Kirkmabreck. 78 LETTER XXIII. [1632. and so the wooer's busking and bravery (who cometh to you ^ as " who but he ? ") are in vain. The outward pomp of this busy wooer, a beguiling world, is now coming in to suit - your soul too late, when ye have promised away your soul to Christ many years ago. And I know, Madam, v.'hat answer ye may now justly make to the late suitor ; even this : " Ye are too long of coming ; my soul, the bride, is away already, and the contract with Christ subscribed, and I cannot choose, but I must be honest and faithful to Him." Honourable lady, keep your first love, and hold the first match with that soul-delighting, lovely Bridegroom, our sweet, sweet Jesus, fairer than all the children of men, "the Eose of Sharon," and the fairest and sweetest smelled rose in all His Father's garden. There is none like Him ; I would not exchange one smile of His lovely face with kingdoms. Madam, let others take their silly, feckless heaven in this life. Envy them not ; but let your soul, like a tarrowing and mislearned child, take the dorts (as we use to speak), or cast at all things and disdain them, except one only : either Christ or nothing. Your well-beloved, Jesus, will be content that ye be here devoutly proud, and ill to please, as one that contenmeth all husbands but Himself. Either the King's Son, or no husband at all ; this is humble, and worthy ambition. AYliat have ye to do to dally with a Vv^horish and foolish world ? Your jealous Husband will not be content that ye look by Him to another : He will be jealous indeed, and offended, if ye kiss another but Himself. What weights do burden you, Madam, I know not ; but think it great mercy that your Lord from your youth hath been hedging in your outstraying affections, that they may not go a-whoring from Himself. If ye were His bastard, He would not nurture you so. If ye were for the slaughter, ye would be fattened. But be content ; ye are His wheat, growing in our Lord's field (Matt. xiii. 25, 38); and if wheat, ye must go under our Lord's threshing-instrument, in His barn-floor, and through His sieve (Amos ix. 9), and through His mill to be bruised (as the Prince of your salvation, Jesus, was) (Isa. liii. 10), that ye may be found good bread in your Lord's house. Lord Jesus, bless the spiritual husbandry, and separate you fi'om the chaff, that dow not bide the wind. I am persuaded your glass is ^ A proverbial expression, as in Herbert's Pocin, 84 : " Then came brave Glory jiassini,' by, With silks that whistled, Who but be." * Z. Boyd's Last Battle, p. 185. 16.32.] LETTER XXIII. 79 spending itself by little and little ; and if ye knew who is before you, ye would rejoice in your tribulations. Think ye it a small honour to stand before the throne of God and the Lamb ? and to be clothed in white, and to be called to the marriage supper of the Lamb ? and to be led to the fountain of living waters, and to come to the Well-head, even God Himself, and get your fill of the clear, cold, sweet, refreshing water of life, the King's own well ? and to put up your own sinful hand to the tree of life and take down and eat the sweetest apple in all God's heavenly paradise, Jesus Christ, your life and your Lord ? Up your heart ! shout for joy ! Your King is coming to fetch you to His Father's house. Madam, I am in exceeding great heaviness, God thinking it best for my own soul thus to exercise me, thereby, it may be, to fit me to be His mouth to others. I see and hear, at home and abroad, nothing but matter of grief and discouragement, which indeed maketh my life bitter. And I hope in God never to get my will in this world. And I expect ere long a fiery trial upon the Church ; for as many men almost in England and Scotland, as many false friends to Christ, and as many pulling and drawing to pull the crown off His holy head ! and for fear that our Beloved stay amongst us (as if His room ^ were more desir- able than Himself), men are bidding Him go seek His lodging. Madam, if ye have a part in silly, friendless Zion (as I know ye have), speak a word on her behalf to God and man. If ye can do nothing else, speak for Jesus, and ye shall thereby be a witness against this declining age. Now, from my very soul, laying and leaving you on the Lord, and desiring a part in your prayers (as, my Lord knoweth, I remember you), I deliver over your body, spirit, and all your necessities, to the hands of our Lord, and remain for ever Your Ladyship's, in your sweet Lord Jesus and mine, Anwoth, Feb. 13, 1C32. £?• R- * His place. So LETTER XXIV. [1632. XXIV.— i^or Marion M'Naught. {CHRIST AND HIS GARDEN—PROVISION OF ORDINANCES IN THE CHURCH— OUR CHILDREN.) [eLOVED MISTKESS,— My dearest love in Christ remembered to you. Know that Mr. Abraham ^ showed me there is to be a meeting of the bishops at Edinburgh shortly. The causes are known to themselves. It is our part to hold up our hands for Ziou. Howbeit, it is reported, they came sad from court. It is our Lord's wisdom, that His kirk should ever hang by a thread ; and yet the thread breaketh not, being hanged upon Him who is the sure Nail in David's house (Isa. xxii. 23), upon whom all the vessels, great and small, do hang ; and the Nail (God be thanked) neither crooketh nor can be broken. Jesus, that Flower of Jesse set without hands, getteth many a blast, and yet withers not, because He is His Father's noble Eose, casting a sweet smell through heaven and earth, and must grow ; and in the same garden grow the saints, God's fair and beautiful lilies, under wind and rain, and all sun-burned, and yet life remaineth at the root. Keep within His garden, and you shall grow with them, till the Great Husbandman, our dear Master Gardener, come and transplant you from the lower part of His vineyard up to the higher, to the very heart of His garden, above the wrongs of the rain, sun, or wind. And then, wait upon ' the times of the blowing of the sweet south and north wind of His gracious Spirit, that may make you cast a sweet smell in your Beloved's nostrils ; and bid your Beloved come down to His garden, and eat of His pleasant fruits (Cant. iv. 16). And He will come. You will get no more but this until you come up to the Well-head, where you shall put up your hand and take down the apples of the tree of life, and eat under the shadow of that tree. These apples are sweeter up beside the tree than they are down here in this piece of a clay prison- house. I have no joy but in the thoughts of these times. Doubt not of your Lord's part and tlie spouse's part ; she shall be in good case. That word shall stand, " I shall be as the dew to Israel : he shall grow up as the lily, and cast out his roots ^ Possibly, Mr. Abraham Henderson ; a staunch defender of Presbytery, who, in 1605, ^lersisted, along with eight of his brethren, in convening at Aberdeen, in face of prohibition, in order to maintain a protest in behalf of the Church's inherent fight to meet in General Assembly. (See Forbes' " Apolog. Narration," p. 136.) 1632.] LETTER XXIV. 81 as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon " (Hosea xiv. 5, 6). Christ shall set up His colours, and His ensign for the nations, and sliall gather together the outcasts of Israel (Isa. xi. 12). " Then the Lord said to me. Son of man, these dead bones are the whole house of Israel : behold, they say, Our bones are dried, our hope is lost ; we are cut off for our parts. Therefore prophesy unto them, and say. Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, 0 my people, I will open your graves, and cause you come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel " (Ezek. xxxvii. 11, 12). These promises are not wind, but the breast of our beloved Christ, which we must suck and draw comfort out of. Ye have cause to pity those poor creatures that stand out against Christ, and the building of His house. Silly men ! they have but a feckless and silly heaven, nothing but meat and cloth, and laugh a day or two in the world, and then in a moment go down to the grave ; and they shall not be able to hinder Christ's building. He that is Master of work will lead stones to the wall over their belly. And for that present tumult that the children of this world raise anent the planting of your town with a pastor, believe and stay upon God, as you still shame us all in beUeviug. Go forward in the strength of the Lord ; and I say from my Lord, before whom I stand, have your eyes upon none but the Lord of armies, and the Lord shall either let you see what you long to see, or then else fulfil your joy more abundantly another way. You and yours, and the children of God whom you care for in this town, shall have as much of the Son of God's supper cut and laid upon your trenchers, be who he will that carveth, as shall feed you to eternal life. And be not cast down for all that is done : your reward is laid up with God. I hope to see you laugh and leap for joy. Will the temple be built without din and tumult ? No ; God's stones in His house in Germany are laid with blood ; and the Son of God no sooner begins to chop and hew stones with His hammer, but as soon the sword is drawn. If the work were of men, the world would set their shoulders to yours ; but, in Christ's work, two or three must fight against a Presbytery (though His own court) and a city. This proveth that it is Christ's errand, and therefore that it shall thrive. Let them lay iron chains cross over the door, — stay, and believe, and wait, whill the Lion of the tribe of Judah come. And He that comes from heaven clothed with the rain- F 8a LETTER XXIV. [1632. bow, and hatli the little book in His hand, when He taketh a grip of their chains, He will lay the door on the broadside, and come in, and go up to the pulpit, and take the man with Him whom He hath chosen for His work. Tlierefore, let me hear from you, whether you be in heaviness, or rejoicing under hope, that I may take part of your grief, and bear it with you, and get part of your joy, which is to me also as my own joy. And as to what are your fears anent the health or life of your dear children, lay it upon Christ's shoulders : let Him bear all. Loose your grips of them all ; and when your dear Lord pulleth, let them go with faith and joy. It is a tried faith to kiss a Lord that is taking from you. Let them be careful, during the short time that they are here, to run and get a grip of the prize. Christ is standing in the end of their way, holding up the garland of endless glory to their eyes, and is crying, "Kun fast, and come and receive." Happy are they (if their breath serve them) to run and not to weary, whill their Lord, with His own dear hand, puts the crown upon their head. It is not long days, but good days, that make life glorious and happy ; and our dear Lord is gracious to us, who shorteneth and hath made the way to glory shorter than it was ; so that the crown that Noah did fight for five hundred years, children may now obtain it in fifteen years. And heaven is in some sort better for us now than it was to Noah, for the man Christ is there now, who was not come in the liesh in Noah's days. You shall show this to your children, whom my soul in Christ blesse'th, and entreat them by the mercies of God, and the bowels of Jesus Christ, to covenant with Jesus Christ to be His, and to make up the bond of friendship betwixt their souls and their Christ, that they may have acquaintance in heaven, and a friend at God's right hand. Such a friend at court is much worth. Now I take my leave of you, praying my Christ and your Christ to fulfil your joy ; and more graces and blessings from our sweet Lord Jesus to your soul, your husband's and children, than ever I wrote of the letters of A, B, C, to you. Grace, grace be with you. Yours in my sweet Master, Jesus Christ, Anwoth, March 9, 1632. S. R. 1632.] LETTERS XXV., XXVI. 83 XXV. — To a Genthivoman at Kirkcudbright, excusing himself from visiting. [ISTKESS, — I beseech you to have me excused if the daily employments of my calling shall hinder me to see you according as I would wish ; for I dare not go abroad, since many of my people are sick, and the time of our Communion draweth near. But frequent the company of your worthy and honest-hearted pastor, Mr. Eobert (Glendinning), to whom the Lord hath given the tongue of the learned, to minister a word in season to the weary. Eemember me to him and to your husband. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Your affectionate friend, S. E. XXVI. — For Marion M'Naught, after her dangerous illness. {USE OF SICKNESS— REPROACHES— CHRIST OUR ETERNAL FEAST— FASTING. ) EAELY BELOVED MISTEESS,— My love in Christ remembered. You are not ignorant what our Lord in His love-visitation hath been doing with your soul, even letting you see a little sight of that dark trance you must go through ere you come to glory. Your life hath been near the grave, and you were at the door, and you found the door shut and fast : your dear Christ thinking it not time to open these gates to you till you have fought some longer in His camp. And therefore He willeth you to put on your armour again, and to take no truce with the devil or this present world. You are little obliged to any of the two ; but I rejoice in this, that when any of the two comes to suit your soul in marriage, you have an answer in readiness to tell them, — " You are too long a-coming ; I have many a year since promised my soul to another, even to my dearest Lord Jesus, to whom I must be true." And therefore you are come back to us again to help us to pray for Christ's fair bride, a marrow dear to Him. Be not cast down in heart to hear that the world barketh at Christ's strangers, both in Ireland and in this land ; they do it because their Lord hath chosen them out of this world. And this is one of our Lord's reproaches, to be hated and ill-entreated by men. The silly stranger, in an uncouth country, must take with a smoky inn and coarse cheer, a hard bed, and a barking, 84 LETTER XXVI. [1632. ill-tongued host. It is not long to the day, and he will to his journey upon the monow, and leave them all. Indeed, our fair morning is at hand, the day-star is near the rising, and we are not many miles from home. What matters ill entertain- ment in the smoky inns of this miserable life ? We are not to stay here, and we will be dearly welcome to Him whom we go to. And I hope, when I shall see you clothed in white raiment, washed in the blood of the Lamb, and shall see you even at the elbow of your dearest Lord and Eedeemer, and a crown upon your head, and following our Lamb and lovely Lord whithersoever He goeth, — you will think nothing of all these days ; and you shall then rejoice, and no man shall take your joy from you. It is certain there is not much sand to run in your Lord's sand-glass, and that day is at hand ; and till then your Lord in this life is giving you some little feasts. It is true, you see Him not now as you shall see Him then. Your well-beloved standeth now behind the wall looking out at the window (Cant. ii. 9), and you see but a little of His face. Then, you shall see all His face and all the Saviour, — a long, and high, and broad Lord Jesus, the loveliest person among the children of men. 0 joy of joys, that our souls know there is such a great supper preparing for us even ! Howbeit we be but half-hungered of Christ here, and many a time dine behind noon,^ yet the supper of the Lamb will come in time, and will be set before us before we famish and lose our stomachs. You have cause to hold up your heart in remembrance and hope of that fair, long summer day ; for in this night of your life, wherein you are in the body absent from the Lord, Christ's fair moonlight in His word and sacraments, in prayer, feeling, and holy conference, hath shined upon you, to let you see the way to the city. I confess our diet here is but sparing ; we get but tastings of our Lord's comforts ; but the cause of that is not because our Steward, Jesus, is a niggard, and narrow-hearted, but because our stomachs are weak, and we are narrow-hearted. But the great feast is coming, and the chambers of them made fair and wide to take in the great Lord Jesus. Come in, theu. Lord Jesus, to hungry souls gaping for thee ! In this journey take the Bridegroom as you may have Llim, and be greedy of His smallest crumbs ; but, dear Mistress, buy none of Christ's delicates-spiritual with sin, or fasting against your weak body. Remember you are in the body, and it is the lodging-house ; and ^ Noon, or a little before it, was then the usual hour for dinner. 1632.] LETTER XXVIL 85 you may not, without ofleuding the Loi'd, suffer the old walls of that house to fall down through want of necessary food. Your body is the dwelling-house of the Spirit ; and therefore, for the love you carry to the sweet Guest, give a due regard to His house of clay. V/hen He looseth the wall, why not ? Welcome Lord Jesus ! But it is a fearful sin in us, by hurting the body by fasting, to loose one stone or the least piece of timber in it, for the house is not our own. The Bridegroom is with you yet; so fast as that also you may feast and rejoice in Him. I think upon your magistrates ; but He that is clothed in linen, and hath the writer's inkhorn by His side, hath written up their names in heaven already. Pray and be content with His will ; God hath a council-house in heaven, and the end will be mercy unto you. For tlie planting of your town with a godly minister, have your eye upon the Lord of the harvest. I dare promise you, God in this life shall fill your soul with the fatness of His house, for your care to see Christ's bairns fed. And your posterity shall know it, to whom ^ I pray for mercy, and that they may get a name amongst the living in Jerusalem ; and if God portion them with His bairns, their rent is fair, and I hope it shall be so. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours ever in Christ, Anwoth, Sept. 19, 1632, S. E. XXVII. — To my Lady Kenmuhe, {LOVE TO CHRIST AND SUBMISSION TO HIS CROSS— BELIEVERS KEPT— THE HEAVENLY PARADISE.) ADAM, — Having saluted you with grace and mercy from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus ^ Christ, I long both to see your Ladyship, and to hear how it goeth with you. I do reinemljer you, and present you and your necessities to Him who is able to keep you, and present you blameless before His face w^ith joy ; and my prayer to our Lord is, that ye may be sick of love for Him, who died of love for you, — I mean your Saviour Jesus. And 0 sweet were that sickness to be soul-sick for Him ! And a living death it were, to die in the fire of the love of that soul-lover, Jesus ! And, Madam, if ye love Him, ye will keep His commandments ; and this is not one of the least, to lay your ' In regard to whom I pray for the mercy Paul sought for the house of Onesi- phorus " (2 Tim, i. 6), 86 LETTER XXVII. [1632. neck cheerfully and willingly under the yoke of Jesus Christ. For I trust your Ladyship did first contract and bargain with the Son of God to follow Him upon these terms, that by His grace ye sliould endure hardship, and suffer affliction, as the soldier of Christ. They are not worthy of Jesus who will not take a blow for their Master's sake. As for our glorious Peace-maker, when He came to make up the friendship betwixt God and us, God bruised Him, and struck Him ; the sinful world also did beat Him, and crucify Him, yet He took buffets of both parties, and (honour to our Lord Jesus !) He would not leave the field for all that, till He had made peace betwixt the parties. I persuade myself your sufferings are but like your Saviour's (yea, incom- parably less and lighter), which are called but a " bruising of His heel" (Gen. iii. 15); a wound far from the heart. Your life is hid with Christ in God (Col. iii. 3), and therefore ye cannot be robbed of it. Our Lord handleth us, as fathers do their young children ; they lay up jewels in a place, above the reach of the short arm of bairns, else bairns would put up their hands and take them down, and lose them soon. So hath our Lord done with our spiritual life. Jesus Christ is the high coffer in the which our Lord hath hid our life; we children are not able to reach up our arm so high as to take down that life and lose it ; it is in our Christ's hand. 0 long, long may Jesus be Lord Keeper of our life ! and happy are they that can, with the Apostle (2 Tim. i. 12), lay their soul in pawn in the hand of Jesus, for He is able to keep that which is committed in pawn to Him' against that day. Then, Madam, so long as this life is not hurt, all other troubles are but touches in the heel. I trust ye will soon be cured. Ye know, Madam, kings have some servants in their court that receive not present wages in their hand, but live upon their hopes : the King of kings also hath servants in His court that for the present get little or nothing but the heavy cross of Christ, troubles without and terrors within ; but they live upon hope ; and when it cometh to the parting of tlie inheritance, they remain in the house as heirs. It is better to be so than to get present payment, and a portion in this life, an inheritance in this world (God forgive me, that I should honour it with the name of an inheritance, it is rather a farm-room !), and then in the end to be casten out of God's house, with this word, " Ye have received your consolation, ye will get no more." Alas ! what get they? The rich glutton's heaven (Luke xvi. 25). O but our Lord maketh it a silly heaven ! " He fared well," saith 1633-] LETTER XXVIIl. 87 our Lord, " and delicately every day." 0 no more ? a silly heaven ! Truly no more, except that he was clothed in purple, and that is all. I persuade myself, Madam, ye have joy when ye think that your Lord hath dealt more graciously with your soul. Ye have gotten little in this life, it is true indeed : ye have then the more to crave, yea, ye have all to crave ; for, except some tastings of the first fruits, and some kisses of His mouth whom your soul loveth, ye get no more. But I cannot tell you what is to come. Yet I may speak as our Lord doth of it. The founda- tion of the city is pure gold, clear as crystal ; the twelve ports are set with precious stones ; if orchards and rivers commend a soil upon earth, there is a paradise there, wherein groweth the tree of life that beareth twelve manner of fruits every month, which is seven score and four harvests ia the year ; and there is there a pure river of v/ater of life, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb ; and the city hath no need of the light of the sun or moon, or of a candle, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb is the light thereof. Madam, believe and hope for this, till ye see and enjoy. Jesus is saying in the Gospel, Come and see ; and He is come down in the chariot of truth, wherein He rideth through the world, to conquer's men's souls (Ps. xlv. 4), and is now in the world saying, " Who will go with Me ? will ye go ? My Father will make you welcome, and give you house- room ; for in My Father's house are many dwelling-places." ^ Madam, consent to go with Him. Thus I rest, commending you to God's dearest mercy. Yours in the Lord Jesus, Anwoth. ^' -'-»'• XXVIIl. — To my Lady Kenmure, after the death of a child. {THE STATE OF THE CHURCH, CAUSE FOR GOD'S DISPLEASURE— HIS CARE OF HIS CHURCH— THE JEWS— AFFLICTED SAINTS. ADAM, — I am afraid now (as many others are) that, at the sitting down of our Parliament, our Lord Jesus and His spouse shall be roughly handled. And it must be so, since false and declining Scotland, whom our Lord took off the dunghill and out of hell, and made a fair bride to Himself, hath broken her faith to her sweet Husband, and hath put on the forehead of a whore. And therefore He 1 Wo^:U.i. 88 LETTER XXVJIl. [1633. saitli He will remove. Would God we could stir up ourselves to lay hold upon Him, who, being highly provoked with the handling He hath met with, is ready to depart ! Alas ! we do not importune Him by prayer and supplication to abide amongst us ! \i v/e could but weep upon Him, and in the holy pertinacity of faith wrestle with Him, and say, " We will not let Thee go," it may be that then, He, who is easy to be intreated, would yet, notwith- standing of our high provocations, condescend to stay and feed among the lilies, till that fair and desirable day break, and the shadows flee away. Ah ! what cause of mourning is there, when our gold is become dim, and the visage of our Nazarites, sometime whiter than snow, is now become blacker than a coal, and Levi's house, once comparable to fine gold, is now changed, and become like vessels in whom He hath no pleasure ! Madam, think upon this, that when our Lord, who hath His handkerchief to wipe the face of the mourners in Zion, shall come to wipe away all tears from their eyes, He may wipe yours also, in the passing, amongst others. I am confident. Madam, that our Lord will yet build a new house to Himself, of our rejected and scattered stones, for our Bridegroom cannot want a wife. Can He live a widower ? Nay, He will embrace both us, the little young sister, and tlie elder sister, the Clmrch of the Jews ; and there will yet be a day of it. And therefore we have cause to rejoice, yea, to sing and shout for joy. The Church hath been, since the world began, ever banging by a small thread, and all the hands of hell and of the wicked have been drawing at the thread. But, God be thanked, they only break their arms by pulling, but the thread is not broken ; for the sweet fingers of Christ our Lord have spun and twisted it. Lord, hold the thread whole ! Madam, stir up your husband to lay hold upon the covenant, and to do good. What hath he to do with the world ? It is not his inheritance. Desire him to make home-over, and put to his hand to lay one stone or two upon the wall of God's house before he go hence. I have heard also. Madam, that your child is re- moved ; but to have or want is best, as He pleaseth. Whether she be with you, or in God's keeping, think it all one ; nay, think it the better of the two by far that she is with Him. I trust in our Lord that there is something laid up and kept for you ; for our kind Lord, who hath wounded you, will not be so cruel as not to allay the pain of your green wound ; and, therefore, claim Christ still as your own, and own Him as your One thing. So resting, I recommend your Ladyship, your soul and spirit, in pawn 1633.] LETIER XXIX. 89 to Him wlio keepetli His Father's pawns, and will make an account of them faithfully, even to that fairest amongst the sons of men, our sweet Lord Jesus, the fairest, the sweetest, the most delicious Eose of all His Fatlier's great field. The smell of that Eose perfume your soul ! Your Ladyship's, in his sweetest Lord Jesus, Anwoth, A'pr'il 1, 1633. S. E. XXIX.— i^or Marion M'Naught. {CHRIST WITH HIS PEOPLE IN THE FURNACE OP AFFLICTION- PRAYER.) EAE SISTEE, — I longed much to have conferred with you at this time. I am grieved at anything in your house that grieveth you ; and shall, by my Lord's grace, suit my Lord to help you to bear your burden, and to come in behind you, and give you and your burdens a put up the mountain. Know you not that Christ wooeth His wife in the furnace ? " Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver ; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction" (Isa. xlviii. 10). He casteth His love on you when you are in the furnace of afflic- tion. You might indeed be casten down if He brought you in and left you there ; but when He leadeth you through the waters, think ye not that He has a sweet, soft hand ? You know His love-grip already ; you shall be delivered, wait on. Jesus will make a road, and come and fetch home the captive. You shall not die in prison ; but your strokes are such as were your Husband's, who was wounded in tlie house of His friends. Strokes are not newings to Him, and neither are they to you. But your winter night is near spent ; it is near-hand the dawn- ing. I will see you leap for joy. The kirk shall be delivered. This wilderness shall bud and grow up like a rose. Christ got a charter of Scotland from His Father ; and who will bereave Him of His heritage, or put our Eedeemer out of His mailing, until His tack be run out ? I must have you praying for me : I am black shamed for evermore now with Christ's goodness ; and in private, on the I7th and 18th of August, I got a full answer of my Lord to be a graced minister, and a chosen arrow hidden in His own quiver. But know this, assurance is not keepcd but by watching and prayer; and, therefore, dear mistress, help me. I have gotten now (honour to my Lord !) tlie gate to open the slote, and 90 LETTER XXX. [1633 shut the bar of His door ; and I think it easy to get anything from the King by prayer, and to use holy violence with Him. Christ was in Carsphairne ^ kirk, and opened the people's hearts wonderfully. Jesus is looking up that water; and minting to dwell amongst them. I would we could give Him His welcome home to the moors. Now peace and grace be upon you and all yours. Yours in Christ, Anavoth, Aug. 20, 1633. S- K- XXX. — To my Lady Kenmure. {.RANK AND PROSPERITY HINDER PROGRESS— WATCHFULNESS —CASE OF RELATIVES.) ADAM, — I determined, and was desirous also, to have seen your ladyship, but because of a pain in my arm I could not. I know ye will not impute it to any unsuitable f orgetfulness of your Ladyship, from whom , at my first entry to my calling in this country (and since also), I received such comfort in my affliction as I trust in God never to forget, and shall labour by His grace to recompense in the only way possible to me ; and that is, my presenting your soul, person, house, and all your necessities, in prayer to Him, whose I hope you are, and who is able to keep you till that Day of Appearance, and to present you before His face with joy. I am confident your Ladyship is going forward in the begun journey to your Lord and Father's home and kingdom. Howbeit ye want not temptations within and without. And who among the saints hath ever taken that castle without stroke of sword ? the Chief of the house, our Elder Brother, our Lord Jesus, not being excepted, who won His own house and home, due to Him by birth, with much blood and many blows. Your Ladyship hath the more need to look to yourself, because our Lord hath placed you higher than the rest, and your way to heaven lieth through a more wild and waste wilderness than the way of many of your fellow-travellers, — not only through the midst of this wood of thorns, the cumbersome world, but also through these dangerous ^ Thfi villaf^c and dmn-h of CarspUairn stood not far froir. Kenmure Castle, and very near Earlston and Knockgi'ay. Tho road from Dalmellington is bare, with steep, rocky hills on either side of the glen. The " Ken " may be meant by " that water " in the next sentence. 1 633-] LETTER XXX. 91 paths, the vain-glory of it ; the consideration whereof hath often moved me to pity your soul, and the soul of your worthy and noble husband. And it is more to you to win heaven, being ships of greater burden, and in the main sea, than for little vessels, that are not so much in the mercy and reverence of the storms, because they may come quietly to their port by launching alongst the coast. For the which cause ye do much, if in the midst of such a tumult of business, and crowd of temptations, ye shall give Christ Jesus His own court and His own due place in your soul. I know and am persuaded, that that lovely One, Jesus, is dearer to you than many kingdoms ; and that ye esteem Him your Well- beloved, and the Standard-bearer among ten thousand (Cant. v. 10). And it becometh Him full well to take the place and the board-head in your soul before all the world. I knew and saw Him with you in the furnace of affliction ; for there he wooed you to Himself, and chose you to be His ; and now He craveth no other hire of you but your love, and that He get no cause to be jealous of you. And, therefore, dear and worthy lady, be like to the fresh river, that keepeth its own fresh taste in the salt sea. This world is not worthy of your soul. Give it not a good-day when Christ cometh in competition with it. Be like one of another country. Home ! and stay not ; for the sun is fallen low, and nigh the tops of the mountains, and the shadows are stretched out in great length. Linger not by the way. The world and sin would train you on, and make you turn aside. Leave not the way for them ; and the Lord Jesus be at the voyage ! Madam, many eyes are upon you, and many would be glad your Ladyship should spill a Christian, and mar a good professor. Lord Jesus, mar their godless desires, and keep the conscience whole without a crack ! If there be a hole in it, so that it take I in water at a leak, it will with difficulty mend again. It is a dainty, delicate creature, and a rare piece of the workmanship of your Maker ; and therefore deal gently with it, and keep it entire, that amidst this world's glory your Ladyship may learn to enter- tain Christ. And whatsoever creature your Ladyship findeth not to smell of Him, may it have no better relish to you than the white of an egg. Madam, it is a part of the truth of your profession to drop words in the ears of your noble husband continually of eternity, judgment, death, hell, heaven, the honourable profession, the sins of his father's house. He must reckon with God for his father's debt : forgetting of accounts payeth no debt. Nay, the interest 9« LETTER XXXI. [1634. of a forgotten bond nninet]! up with God to interest upon interest. 1 knoweth ho lookcth homeward, and lovetli the truth; but I pity him with my soul because of his many temptations. Satan layeth upon men a burden of cares above a load/ and maketh a pack-horse of men's souls when they are wholly set upon this world. We owe the devil no such service. It were wisdom to throw off that load into a mire, and cast all our cares over upon God. Madam, think ye have no child. Subscribe a bond to your Lord that she shall be His if He take her ; and thanks, and praise, and glory to His holy name shall be the interest for a year's loan of her. Look for crosses, and while it is fair weather mend the sails of the ship. Now hoping your Ladyship will pardon my tediousness, I re- commend your soul and person to the grace and mercy of our sweet Lord Jesus, in whom I am. Your Ladyship's, at all dutiful obedience in Christ, An'.voth, Nov. 15, 1633. S. R XXXI. — To my Lady Kenmure. (A UNION FOR PRAYER RECOMMENDED.) i\l)AM, — Having received a letter from some of the wortliiest of the ministry in this kingdom, tlie contents whereof I am desired to communicate to such profes- sors in these parts as I know love the beauty of Zion, and are afllicted to see the Lord's vineyard trodden under foot by the wild boars out of the wood, who lay it waste, I could not but also desire your Ladyship's help to join with the rest, desir- ing you to impart it to my Lord your husband, and if ye think it needful, I sliall write to his Lordsliip, as Mr. G. G.^ shall advertise me. Know, therefore, that the best affected of the ministry have thought it convenient and necessary, at such a time as this, that all v.'ho love the truth should join their prayers together, and cry to God with humiliation and fasting. The times, which are agreed upon, are the two first Sabbaths of February next, and the six days intervening betwixt these Sabbaths, as they may. ' A burden above a load, or a load abovo a lur bn, is a jilirase for a very heavy weight. - Mr. George Gillespie ; sec Letter cxiiv. 1634.] LETTER XXXI. 93 conveniently be had, and the first Sabbath of every quarter. And the causes, as they are written to me, are these : 1. Besides the distresses of the Keformed churches abroad, the many reigning sins of uncleanness, ungodliness, and unrighteous- ness in this land, the present judgments on the land, and many more hanging over us, whereof few are sensible, or yet know the right and true cause of them. 2. The lamentable and pitiful estate of a glorious church (in so short a time, against so many bonds), in doctrine, sacrament, and discipline, so sore persecuted, in the persons of faithful pastors and professors, and the door of God's house kept so straight by bastard porters, insomuch that worthy instruments, able for the work, are held at the door, the rulers having turned over religion into policy, and the multitude ready to receive any religion that shall be enjoined by authority. 3. In our humiliation, besides that we are under a necessity of deprecating God's wrath, and vowing to God sincerely new obedience, the weakness, coldness, silence, and lukewarmness of some of the best of the ministry, and the deadness of professors, who have suffered the truth both secretly to be stolen away, and openly to be plucked from us, would be confessed. 4. Atheism, idolatry, profanity, and vanity, should be con- fessed ; our king's heart recommended to God ; and God intreated, that He would stir up the nobles and the people to turn from tlieir evil ways. Thus, Madam, hoping that your Ladyship will join with others, that such a work be not slighted, at such a necessary time, when our kirk is at the overturning, I will promise to myself your help, as the Lord in secrecy and prudence shall enable you, that your Ladyship may rejoice with the Lord's people, when deliverance shall come ; for true and sincere humilia- tion come always speed with God. And when authority, king, court, and churchmen oppose the truth, what other armour have we but prayer and faith ? whereby, if we wrestle with Him, there is ground to hope that those who would remove the burden- some stone (Zech. xii. 3) out of its place, shall but hurt their back, and the stone shall not be moved, at least not removed. Grace, grace be with you, from II im who hath called you to the inheritance of the saints in light. Your Ladyship's at all submissive obedience in his sweet Lord Jesus. S. E. Anwoth, Jan. 23, 1634. 94 LETTER XX XII. [1634 XXXIL— -For Marion M 'Naught. {STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH— SATAN.) ISTEESS, — My love in Christ remembered. I am in care and fear for this work of our Lord's, now near approaching, because of the danger of the time ; and I dare not for my soul be silent, to see my Lord's house burning, and not cry " Fire, fire ! " Therefore, seek from our Lord wisdom spiritual, and not black policy, to speak with liberty our Lord's truth. — I am cast down, and would fain have access and presence to The King that day, even howbeit I should break up iron doors. I believe you will not forget me ; and you will desire Jean Brown, Thomas Carson, and Marion Carson, to help me. Pray for well-cooked meat and a heartsome Saviour, with joy crying, " Welcome in My Father's name." I am confident Zion shall be well ; the Bush shall burn and not consume, for the good will of Him that dwelt in the bush. But the Lord is making on a fire in Jerusalem, and purposeth to blow the bellows, and to melt the tin and brass, and bring out a fair beautiful bride out of the furnace, that will be married over again upon the new Husband, and sing as in the days of her youth, when the contract of marriage is written over again. But I fear the bride be hidden for a time from the dragon that pursueth the woman with child. But what, howbeit we go and lurk in the wilderness for a time ? for the Lord will take His kirk to the wilderness and speak to her heart. Nothing casteth me down, but only I fear the Lord will cast down the shepherd's tents, and feed his own in a secret place. But let us, however matters frame, cast over the affairs of the bride upon the Bridegroom; the government is upon His shoulders, and He dow bear us all well enough. That fallen star, the prince of the bottomless pit, knoweth it is near the time when he shall be tormented ; and now in his evening he has gathered his armies, to win one battle or two, in the edge of the evening, at the sun going down. And when our Lord has been watering His vineyards in France, and Germany, and Bohemia, how can we think ourselves Christ's sister, if we be not like Him, and our other great sisters ? I cannot but think, seeing the ends of the earth are given to Christ (Psa. ii. 8), and Scotland is the end of the earth, and so we are in Christ's charter- tailzie, but our Lord will keep His possession. We fall by promise and law to Christ. 1634] LETTER XXXIII. 95 He won us with the sweat of His brow, if I may say so ; His Father promised Him His liferent of Scotland. Glory, glory to our King ! long may He wear His crown. 0 Lord, let us never see another King ! 0 let Him come down like rain upon the new-mown grass ! I had you in remembrance on Saturday in the morning last, in a great measure, and was brought, thrice on end, in remem- brance of you in my prayer to God. Grace, gTace be your portion. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Anwoth, March 2, 1634. S. R. XXXIII.— ^or Marion M'Naught. {IN PROSPECT OF A COMMUNION SEASON.) ISTEESS, — My love in Christ remembered. Pleasa you understand, to my grief, our Communion is delayed till Sabbath come eight days ; the laird and lady hath earnestly desired me to delay it, because the laird is sick, and he fears he be not able to travel, because he has lately taken physic. The Lord bless that work. Commend it to God as you love me, for I love not Satan's thorns cast in the Lord's way. The Lord rebuke him. I trust in God's mercy, Satan has gotten but a delay, but no free dis- charge that his kingdom shall not be hurt. Commend the laird to your God. I pray you advertise your people, that they be not disappointed in coming here. Show such of them as you love in Christ, from me, that Jesus Christ will be welcome, when He comes, in that He has sharpened their desires for eight days space. Your daughter is well, I hope, every way. Forget not God's kirk ; they are but bastards, and not sons and daughters, that mourn not for Zion. Lord hear us ! No further. Jesus Christ be with your spirit. I shall remember you and your new house. Lord Jesus go from the one house to the other. Yours at all power in the Lord, Anwoth. fe- -K- 96 LETTER XXXIV. [1634. XXXIV.— i^or Marion M'Naught. {^PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH— CHRIST'S CARE FOR THE CHILDREN OF BELIEVERS.) ELL-BELOVED SISTEU,— My old and dearest love ill Christ remembered. Know that I have been visiting my Lady Kenmure. Her child is with the Lord. I entreat you, visit her, and desire the good- wife^ of Barcapple to visit her, and Ivnockbrecks (Mr. Gordon), if you see him in the town. My Lord her husband is absent, and I think she will be heavy. You know what Mr. W. Dalgleish and I desired you to deal for, at my Lord Kirkcud- bright's hand. Send me word if you obtained anything at my Lord's hands, anent the giving up of our names to the High Commission ; for I hear it is not for nothing that the Bishop hath taken that course. Our Lord knows best what is good for an old kirk that has fallen from her first love, and hath forgotten her Husband days without number. A trial is like to come on ; but I am sure our Husbandman Christ shall lose chaff, but no corn at all. Yet there is a dry wind coming, but neither to fan nor to purge. Happy are they who are not blown away with the chaff, for we will but suffer temptation for ten days ; but those who are faithful to the death shall receive the crown of life. I hear daily what hath been spoken of myself, most unjustly and falsely ; and no marvel, the dragon, with the swing of his tail, hath made the third part of the stars to fall from heaven, and the fallen stars would have many to fall with them. If ever Satan was busy, now, when he knoweth his time is short, he is busy. " Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry. " I know, ere it be long, the Lord shall come and redd all pleas betwixt us and our enemies. Now welcome, Lord Jesus, go fast. Send me word about Grizel, your daughter, whom I re- member in Christ ; and desire her to cast herself in His arms who was born of a woman, and, being tlie Ancient of days, was made a young weeping child. It was not for nothing that our brother Jesus was an infant. It was that He might pity infants of believers, who were to come out of the womb into the world. I believe our Lord Jesus shall be waiting on, with mercy, mercy, mercy, to the end of that battle, and bring her through with life ' Barcaple is in the stfiwaitry of Kiikcudbiiglit, in tlir parish of Ton_i;Tuland. 1634. J LETTER XXXV. 97 and peace, and a. sign of God's favour. I will expect advertise- ment from you, and especially if you fear her. Mistress, you remember that I said to you anent your love to me and my brother, begun in Christ ; you know we are here but strangers, and you have not yet found us a dry well, as others have been. Be not overcome of any suspicion. I trust in God that the Lord, who knit us together, shall keep us together. It is time now that the lambs of Jesus should all run together, when the wolf is barking at them ; yet I know, ere God's bairns want a cross, their love among themselves shall be a cross ; but our Lord giveth love for another end. I know you will, with love, cover infirmities ; and our Lord give you wisdom in all things. I think love hath broad shoulders, and will bear many things, and yet neither faint nor sweat, nor fall under the burden. Commend me to your husband and dear Grizel. I think on her. Lord Jesus be in the furnace with her, and then she will but smoke and not burn. Desire Mr. Kobert ^ to excuse my not seeing of him at his house. I have my own reasons therefor.^ Grace, mercy, and peace be with you. Yours in his svv'cet Lord Jesus, Anwoxh, April 25, 1634. S. E. XXXV. — To my Lady Kenmure, on the death of a child. {GOD MEASURES OUR DA YS—BEREA VEMENTS RIPEN US FOR THE HARVEST.) ADAM, — All submissive and dutiful obedience in our Lord Jesus remembered. I trust I need not much entreat your Ladyship to look to Him who hath stricken you at this time ; but my duty, in the memory of that comfort I found in your Ladyship's kindness, when I was no less heavy (in a case not unlike that), speaketh to me to say something now. And I wish I could ease your Lady- ship, at least with words. I am persuaded your Physician will not slay you, but purge you, seeing He calleth Himself the Chirurgeon, who maketh the wound and bindeth it up again ; for to lance a wound is not to kill, but to cure the patient (Deut. xxxii. 39). I believe faith will teach you to kiss a striking Lord ; and so acknowledge the sovereignty of God (in the death ^ Mr. Robert Glendiniiing, the minister. ^ "For lliia ;" ati iu our metre version, Ps. cvi. 40, etc. G 98 LETTER XXXV. [1634. of a child) to be above the power of us mortal men, who may pluck up a flower in the bud and not be blamed for it. If our dear Lord pluck up one of His roses, and pull down sour and green fruit before harvest, who can challenge Him ? For He sendeth us to His world, as men to a market, wherein some stay many hours, and eat and drink, and buy and sell, and pass through the fair, till they be weary ; and such are those who live long, and get a heavy fill of this life. And others again come slipping in to the morning market, and do neither sit nor stand, nor buy nor sell, but look about them a little, and pass presently home again ; and these are infants and young ones, who end their short market in the morning, and get but a short view of the Fair. Our Lord, who hath numbered man's months, and set him bounds that he cannot pass (Job xiv. 5), hath written the length of our market, and it is easier to complain of the decree than to change it. I verily believe, when I write this, your Lord hath taught your Ladyship to lay your hand on your mouth. But I shall be far from desiring your Ladyship, or any others, to cast by a cross, like an old useless bill that is only for the fire ; but rather would wish each cross were looked in the face seven times, and were read over and over again. It is the messenger of the Lord, and speaks something ; and the man of understanding will hear the rod, and Him that hath appointed it. Try what is the taste of the Lord's cup, and drink with God's blessing, that ye may grow thereby. 1 trust in God, whatever speech it utter to your soul, this is one word in it, — " Behold, blessed is the man whom God correcteth " (Job v. 1 7) ; and that it saith to you, " Ye are from home while here ; ye are not of this world, as your Kedeemer, Christ, was not of this world." There is something keeping for you, which is worth the having. All that is here is condemned to die, to pass away like a snowball before a summer sun ; and since death took first possession of something of yours, it hath been and daily is creeping nearer and nearer to yourself, howbeit with no noise of feet. Your Husbandman and Lord hath lopped off some branches already ; the tree itself is to be transplanted to the high garden. In a good time be it. Our Lord ripen your Ladyship, All these crosses (and indeed, when I reoiember them, they arc heavy and many, — peace, peace be the end of them !) are to make you white and ripe for the Lord's harvest-hook. I have seen the Lord weaning you from the breasts of this world. It was never His mind it should be your 1634.] LETTER XXXVI. 99 patrimony ; and God be thanked for that. Ye look the liker one of the heirs. Let the movables go ; why not ? They are not yours. Fasten your grips upon the heritage ; and our Lord Jesus make the charters sure, and give your Ladyship to grow as a palm-tree on God's mount Zion ; howbeit shaken with winds, yet the root is fast. This is all I can do, to recommend your case to your Lord, who hath you written upon the palms of His hand. If I were able to do more, your Ladyship may believe me that gladly I would. I trust shortly to see your Ladyship. Now He who hath called you confirm and stablish your heart in grace, unto the Day of the Liberty of the Sons of God. Your Ladyship's at all submissive obedience in his sweet Lord Jesus, Anwoth, April 29, 1634. S. E. XXXVI.— i^or Marion M'Naught. {CHOICE OF A COMMISSIONER FOR PARLIAMENT.) ELL-BELOVED MISTRESS,— My love in Christ re- membered. I hear this day your town is to choose a commissioner for the Parliament ; and I was written to from Edinburgh, to see that good men should be chosen in your bounds. And I have h^ard this day that Eobert Glendouing or John Ewart look to be chosen. I beseech you see this be not. The Lord's cause craveth other witnesses to speak for Him than such men ; and, therefore, let it not be said that Kirkcudbright, which is spoken of in this kingdom for their religion, hath sent a man to be their mouth that will speak against Christ. Such a time as this will not fall out once in half an age, I would intreat your husband to take it upon him. It is an honourable and necessary service for Christ ; and shew him that I wrote unto you for that effect. I fear William Glendoning hath not skill and authority. I am in great heavi- ness. Pray for me, for we must take our life in our hand in this ill time. Let us stir up ourselves, to lay our Lord's bride and her wrongs before our Husband and Lord. Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Anwoth, Uay 20. S. K. LETTER XXXVIL [1634- XXXVII. — To my Lady Kenmuee. {ON THE DEATH OF LORD KENMURE— DESIGNS OF AND DUTIES OF AFFLICTION.) VERY NOBLE AND WOKTHY LADY,— So oft as I call to niiud the comforts that I myself, a poor friendless stranger, received from your Ladyship here iu a strange part of the country, when my Lord took from me the delight of mine eyes (Ezek. xxiv. 16), as the Word speaketh (which wound is not yet fully healed and cured), I trust your Lord shall remember that, and give you comfort now at such a time as this, wherein your dearest Lord hath made you a widow, that ye may be a free woman for Christ, who is now suiting for marriage-love of you. And therefore, since you lie alone in your bed, let Christ be as a bundle of myrrh, to sleep and lie all the night betwixt your breasts (Cant. i. 13), and then your bed is better filled than before. And seeing, amongst all crosses spoken of in our Lord's Word, this giveth you a particular right to make God your Husband (which was not so yours while your husband was alive), read God's mercy out of this visitation ; albeit I must out of some experience say, the mourning for the husband of your youth be, by God's own mouth, the heaviest worldly sorrow (Joel i. 8). And though this be the weightiest burden that ever lay upon your back ; yet ye know (when the fields are emptied and your husband now asleep in the Lord), if ye shall wait upon Him who hideth His face for a while, that it lieth upon God's honour and truth to fill the field, and to be a Husband to the widow. See and consider then what ye have lost, and how little it is. Therefore, Madam, let me intreat you, in the bowels of Christ Jesus, and by the comforts of His Spirit, and your appearance before Him, let God, and men, and angels I now see what is in you. The Lord hath pierced the vessel ; it will be known whether there be in it wine or water. Let your faith and patience be seen, that it may be known your only beloved first and last hath been Christ. And, therefore, now ware your whole love upon Him ; He alone is a suitable object for your love and all the alfections of your soul. God hath dried up one channel of your love by the removal of your husband. Let now that speat run upon Christ. Your Lord and lover hath graciously taken out your husband's name and your name out of the summonses that are raised at the iiKsUmce of the terrible sin- 1634.] LETTER XXXVII. 101 revenging Jndge of the world against the house of the Kenraures. And I dare say that God's hammering of you from your youth is only to make you a fair carved stone in the high upper temple \ of the New Jerusalem, Your Lord never thought this world's vain painted glory a gift worthy of you ; and therefore would not bestow it on you, because He is to propine you with a better portion. Let the movables go ; the inheritance is yours. Ye are a child of the house, and joy is laid up for you ; it is long in coming, but not the worse for that. I am now expecting to see, and that with joy and comfort, that which T hoped of you since I knew you fully, even that ye have laid such strength upon the Holy One of Israel, that ye defy troubles, and that your soul is a castle that may be besieged, but cannot be taken. What have ye to do here ? This world never looked like a friend upon you. Ye owe it little love. It looked ever sour-like upon you. Howbeit ye should woo it, it will not match with you ; and therefore never seek warm fire under cold ice. This is not a field where your happiness groweth ; it is up above, where there are a great multitude, which no man can number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands (Kev. vii. 9). What ye could never get here ye shall find there. And withal consider how in all these trials (and truly they have been many) your Lord hath been loosing you at the root from perishing things, and hunting after you to grip your soul. Madam, for the Son of God's sake, let Him not miss His grip, but stay and abide in the love of God, as Jude saith (Jude 21). Now, Madam, I hope your Ladyship will take these lines in good part; and wherein I have fallen short and failed to your Ladyship, in not evidencing what I was obliged to your more- than-un deserved love and respect, I request for a full pardon for it. Again, my dear and noble lady, let me beseech you to lift up your head, for the day of your redemption draweth near. And remember, that star that shined in Galloway is now shining in another world. Now I pray that God may answer, in His own style, to your soul, and that He may be to you the God of all consolations. Thus I remain. Your Ladyship's at all dutiful obedience in the Lord, Anwoth, Bex>t. 14, 1634. S. R, loa LETTER XXXVIII. [1634. XXXVilL- To Marion M'Naught. {CHRISrS CARE OF HIS CHURCH, AND HIS JUDGMENTS ON HER ENEMIES.) ISTRESS, — My dearest love in Christ remembered. I entreat you charge your soul to return to rest, and to glorify your dearest Lord in believing ; and know that for the good-will of Him that dwelleth in the bush, the burning kirk shall not be consumed to ashes ; but " Blessing shall come on the head of Joseph, and upon the top of the head of him that was separate from liis brethren" (Deut. xxxiii. 16). And are not the saints separate from their brethren, and sold and hated ? " For the archers have sorely grieved Joseph, and shot at him and hated him ; but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob" (Gen. xlix. 23, 24). From Him is the Shepherd and the Stone of Israel. The Stone of Israel shall not be broken in pieces ; it is hammered upon by the children of this world, and we shall live and not die. Our Lord hath done all this, to see if we will believe, and not give over ; and I am persuaded you must of necessity stick by your work. The eye of Christ hath been upon all this business ; and He taketh good heed to who is for Him, and who is against Him. Let us do our part, as we would be approved of Christ. The Sou of God is near to His enemies. If tliey were not deaf, they may hear the dinn of His feet; and He will come with a start upon His weeping bairns, and take them on His knee, and lay their head in His bosom, and dry their watery eyes. And this day is fast coming. " Yet a little time, and the vision will speak, it will not tarry " (Hab. ii. 3). These questions betwixt us and our adversaries will all be decided in yonder day, when the Son of God sliall come, and redd all pleas ; and it will be seen whether we or they have been for Christ, and who have been pleading for Baal. It is not known what we are now ; but when our life shall appear in glory, then we shall see who laughs fastest that day. There- fore, we must possess our souls in patience, and go into our chamber and rest, whill the indignation be past. We shall not weep long when our Lord shall take us up, in the day that He gathcreth His jewels. " They that feared the Lord spoke often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him, for them that feared 1 634-] LETTER XXXIX. 103 the Lord, and thought upon His name" (Mai. iii. 16). I shall never be of another faith, but that our Lord is heating a furnace for the enemies of His kirk in Scotland. It is true the spouse of Christ hath played the harlot, and hath left her first Husband, and the enemies think they offend not, for we have sinned against the Lord ; but they shall get the devil to their thanks. The rod shall be cast into the fire, that we may sing as in the days of our youth. My dear friend, therefore, lay down your head upon Christ's breast. Weep not ; the Lion of the tribe of Judah will arise. The sun is gone down upon the prophets, and our gold is become dim, and the Lord feedeth His people with waters of gall and wormwood ; yet Christ standeth but behind the wall, His bowels are moved for Scotland. He waiteth, as Isaiah saith, that He may show mercy. If we could go home, and take our brethren with us, weeping with our face towards Zion, asking the way thitherward. He would bring back our captivity. We may not think that God has no care of His honour, while men tread it under their feet ; He will clothe Himself with vengeance, as with a cloak, and appear against our enemies for our deliverance. Ye were never yet beguiled, and God will not now begin with you. Wrestle still with the angel of the covenant, and you shall get the blessing. Fight ! He delighteth to be overcome by wrestling. Commend me to Grizel. Desire her to learn to know the adversaries of the Lord, and to take them as her adversaries, and to learn to know the right gate into the Son of God. 0 but acquaintance with the Son of God, to say, " My Well-beloved is mine, and I am His," is a sweet and glorious course of life, that none know but those who are sealed and marked in the forehead with Christ's mark, and the new name, that Christ writeth upon His own. Grace, grace, and mercy be with you. Yours in Christ, Anwuih, StiJt. 25, 1G34. S. R. XXXIX. — To my Lady Ksnmure. {^PREPARATION FOR DEATH AND ETERNITY.) IJADAM, — All dutiful obedience in our Lord remembered. I know ye are now near one of those straits in which ye have been before. But because your outward comforts are fewer, I pray Him whose ye are to supply what ye want a,nother way, Tor howbeit we cannot win 104 LETTER XXXIX, [1634. to the bottom of His wise providence, who ruleth all ; yet it is certain this is not only good which the Almighty hath done, but it is hest. He hath reckoned all your steps to heaven ; and if your Ladyship were through this water, there are the fewer behind ; and if tliis were the last, I hope your Ladyship hath learned by on-waiting to make your acquaintance with death, which being to the Lord, the woman's seed, Jesus, only a bloody heel and not a broken head (Gen. iil 15), cannot be ill to His fiiends, who get far less of death than Himself. Therefore, Madam, seeing ye know not but the journey is ended, and ye are come to the water-side, in God's wisdom look all your papers and your counts, and whether ye be ready to receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child, in whom there is little haughtiness and much humility. I would be far from discouraging your Ladyship ; but there is an absolute necessity that, near eternity, we look ere we leap, seeing no man winneth back again to mend his leap. I am confident your Ladyship thinketh often upon it, and that your old Guide shall go before you and take your hand. His love to you will not grow sour, nor wear out of date, as the love of men, which groweth old and grey-haired often before them- selves. Ye have so much the more reason to love a better life than this, because this world hath been to you a cold fire, with little heat to the body, and as little light, and much smoke to hurt the eyes. But, Madam, your Lord would have you thinking it but dry breasts, full of wind and empty of food. In this late visitation that hath befallen your Ladyship, ye have seen God's love and care, in such a measure that I thought our Lord brake the sharp point off the cross, and made us and your Ladyship see Christ take possession and infeftment upon earth, of him who is now reigning and triumphing with the hundred forty and four thousand who stand with the Lamb on Mount Zion. I know the sweetest of it is bitter to you ; but your Lord will not give you painted crosses. He pareth not all the bitterness from the cross, neither taketh He the sharp edge quite from it ; then it should be of your waling and not of His, which should have as little reason in it as it should have profit for us. Only, Madam, God commandeth you now to believe and cast anrhor in the dark night, and climb up the mountain. He who hath called you, establish you and confirm you to the end. I had a purpose to have visited your Ladyship ; but when I thought better upon it, the truth is, I cannot see what my company would profit you ; and this hath broken off my purpose, 1 634] LETTER XL, 105 and no other thing. I know many honourable friends and worthy professors will see your Ladyship, and that the Son of God is with you, to whose love and mercy, from my soul, I recommend your Ladyship, and remain, Your Ladyship's at all dutiful obedience, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Anwoth, Nov. 29, 1634. S. K. XL. — To my Lady Kenmurt?. {WHEN MR. RUTHERFORD HAD THE PROSPECT OF BEING REMOVED FROM ANWOTH.) ADAM, — My humble obedience in the Lord remembered. Know it hath pleased the Lord to let me see, by all appearance, that my labours in God's house here are at an end ; and I must now learn to suffer, in the which I am a dull scholar. By a strange providence, some of my papers, anent the corruptions of this time, are come to the King's hand. I know, by the wise and well-affected I shall be censured as not wise nor circumspect enough ; but it is ordinary, that that should be a part of the cross of those who suffer for Him. Yet I love and pardon the instrument ; I would commit my life to him, howbeit by him this hath befallen me. But I look higher than to him. I make no question of your Ladyship's love and care to do what ye can for my help, and am persuaded that, in my adversities, your Ladyship will wish me well. I seek no other thing but that my Lord may be honoured by me in giving a testimony. I was willing to do Him more service ; but seeing He will have no more of my labours, and this land will thrust me out, I pray for grace to learn to be acquaint with misery, if I may give so rough a name to such a mark of those who shall be crowned with Christ. And howbeit I will possibly prove a faint-hearted, unwise man in that, yet I dare say I intend otherwise ; and I desire not to go on the lee-side or sunny side of religion, or to put truth betwixt me and a storm : my Saviour did not so for me, who in His suflering took the windy side of the hill. No farther; but the Son of God be with you. Your Ladyship's in the Lord Jesus, Anwoth, Dec, 5, 1634. S. R. io6 LETTER XLI. [1G34. XLL— ii'or Marion M'Nauqht. {THE CHURCH'S TRIALS— COMFORT UNDER TEMPTATIONS- DELIVERANCE— A MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG.) ELL-BELOVED SISTER,— My love in Christ re- membered. I hear of good news anent our kirk ; but I fear that our King will not be resisted, and there- fore let us not be secure and careless. I do wonder if this kirk come not through our Lord's fan, since there is so much chaff in it ; howbeit I persuade myself, the Son of God's wheat will not be blown away. Let us be putting on God's armour, and be strong in the Lord. If the devil and Zion's enemies strike a hole in that armour, let our Lord see to that ; — let us put it on, and stand. We have Jesus on our side ; and they are not worthy such a Captain, who would not take a blow at His back. We are in sight of His colours ; His banner ovei us is love ; look up to that white banner, and stand, I persuade you, in the Lord of victory. •My brother writeth to me of your heaviness, and of tempta- tions that press you sore. I am content it be so: you bear about with you the mark of the Lord Jesus. So it was with the Lord's apostle, when he was to come with the Gospel to Macedonia (2 Cor. vii. 5) : his flesh had no rest ; he was troubled on every side, and knew not what side to turn him unto ; with- out were fightings, and within were fears. In the great work of our 'redemption, your lovely, beautiful, and glorious Friend and Well-beloved Jesus, was brought to tears and strong cries ; so as His face was wet with tears and blood, arising from a holy fear and the weight of the curse. Take a drink of the Son of God's cup, and love it the better that He drank of it before you. There is no poison in it. I wonder many times that ever a child of God should have a sad heart, considering what their Lord is preparing for them. Is your mind troubled anent that business that we have now in hand in Edinburgh.^ I trust in my Lord, the Lord shall in the end give to you your heart's desue; even howbeit the business frame not, the Lord shall feed your soul, and all the hungry souls in that town. Therefore I request you in the Lord, pray for a submissive will, and pray as your Lord Jesus bids you, " Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." And let it » EUoiis to oLtaiu redress from gvievaiices inflicted by the proiatic party. 1634] LETTER XLI. 107 be that your faith be brangled with temptations, believe ye that there is a tree in our Lord's garden that is not often shaken with wind from all the four airts ? Surely there is none, Eebuke your soul, as the Lord's prophet doth : " Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul ? why art thou disquieted within me ? " (Psalm xliii. 11). That was the word of a man who was at the very over- going of the brae and mountain ; but God held a grip of him. Swim through your temptations and troubles to be at that lovely, amiable person, Jesus, to whom your soul is dear. In your temptations run to the promises : they be our Lord's branches hanging over the water, that our Lord's silly, half-drowned children may take a grip of them ; if you let that grip go, you will fall to the ground. Are you troubled with the case of God's kirk ? Our Lord will evermore have her betwixt the sinking and the swimming. He will have her going through a thousand deaths, and through hell, as a cripple woman, halting, and want- ing the power of her one side (Micah iv. 6, 7), that God may be her staff. That broken ship will come to land, because Jesus is the pilot. Faint not ; you shall see the salvation of God,-— else say, that God never spake His word by my mouth ; and I had rather never have been born, ere it were so with me. But my Lord hath sealed me. I dare not deny I liave also been in heaviness since I came from you, fearing for my unthankfulness that I be deserted. But the Lord will be kind to me, whether I will or not. I repose that much in His rich grace, that He will be loath to change upon me. As you love me, pray for me in this particular. After advising with Carletoun, I have written to Mr. David Dickson anent Mr. Hugh M'KaiV and desired him to write his mind to Carletoun, and Carletoun to Edinburgh, that they may particularly remember Mr. Hugh to the Lord ; and I happened upon a convenient trusty bearer by God's wonderful providence. No further. I recommend you to the Lord's grace, and your husband and children. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours in the Lord, Edinburgh, 1634. S. R. P./X — MiSTEESS, — I had not time to give my advice to your daughter Grizel ; you shall carry my vv^ords therefore to her. Show her now, that in respect of her tender age, she is in a manner as clean paper, ready to receive either good or ill ; and 1 See Letter LXXI. io8 LETTER XLIL [1634. that it were a sweet and glorious thing for her to give herself up to Christ, that He may write upon her His Father's name, and His own new name. And desire her to acquaint herself with tlie Book of God ; the promises that our Lord writes upon His own, and performeth in them and for them, are contained there. I persuade you, when I think that she is in the company of such parents, and hath occasion to learn Christ, I think Christ is wooing her soul ; and I pray God she may not refuse such a husband. And therefore I charge her, and beseech her by the mercies of God, by the wounds and blood of Him who died for her, by the word of truth, which she heareth, and can read, by the coming of the Son of God to judge the world, that she would fulfil your joy, and learn Christ, and walk in Christ. She shall think this the truth of God many years after this ; and I will promise to myself, in respect of the beginnings that I have seen, that she shall give herself to Him that gave Himself for her. Let her begin at prayer ; for if she remember her Creator in the days of her youth. He will claim kindness to her in her old age. It shall be a part of my prayers, that this may be effectual in her, by Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly, to whose grace again I recommend you, and her, and all yours. XLTT. — To my Lady Kenmurk. {T^/E WORLD PASSETH AWAY—SPECIAL PORTIONS OF THE WQRB FOR THE AFFLICTED— CALL TO KIRKCUDBRIGHT.) ADAM, — The cause of my not writing to your Lady- ship was not my forgetfulness of you, but the want of the opportunity of a convenient bearer ; for I am under more than a simple obligation to be kind (on paper, at least) to your Ladyship. I bless our Lord, through Christ, who hath brought you home again to your own country from that place,^ where ye have seen with your eyes that which our Lord's truth taugiit you before, to wit, that worldly glory is nothing but a vapour, a shadow, the foam of the water, or some- thing less and lighter, even nothing ; and tliat our Lord hath not without cause said in His Word, " The countenance," or fashion, "of this world passeth away" (1 Cor. vii. 31) — in which place our Lord compareth it to an image in a looking-glass, for it is the looking-glass of Adam's sons. Some come to the glass, and ' Eflinhurgh. 1634-1 LETTER XLIl. 109 see in it the picture of honour, — and but a picture indeed, for true honour is to be gi'eat in the sight of God ; and others see in it the shadow of riches, — and but a shadow indeed, for durable riches stand as one of the maids of Wisdom upon her left hand (Prov, iii. 1 6) ; and a third sort see in it the face of painted 'pleasures, and the beholders will not believe but the image they see in this glass is a living man, till the Lord come and break the glass in pieces and remove the face, and then, like Pharaoh awakened, they say, " And behold it was a dream." I know your Ladyship thinketh yourself little in the common of this world, for the favourable aspect of any of these three painted faces ; and blessed be our Lord that it is so. The better for you. Madam ; they are not worthy to be wooers, to suit in marriage your soul, that look to no higher match than to be married upon painted clay. Know, therefore. Madam, the place whither our Lord Jesus cometh to woo a bride, it is even in the furnace : for if ye be one of Zion's daughters (which I ever put beyond all question, since I first had occasion to see in your Ladyship such pregnant evidences of the grace of God), the Lord, who hath His fire in Zion, and His furnace in Jerusalem (Isa. xxxi. 9), is purifying you in the furnace. And therefore be content to live in it, and every day to be adding and sewing-to a pasment to your wedding garment, that ye may be at last decored and trimmed as a bride for Christ, a bride of His own busking, beautified in the hidden man of the heart. " Forgetting your father's house, so shall the King greatly desire your beauty " (Psalm xlv. 11). If your Lady- ship be not changed (as I hope ye are not), I believe ye esteem yourself to be of those whom God hath tried these many years, and refined as silver. But, Madam, I will show your Ladyship a privilege that others want, and ye have, in this case. Such as are in prosperity, and are fatted with earthly joys, and increased with children and friends, though the Word of God is indeed written to such for their instruction, yet to you, who are in trouble (spare me. Madam, to say this), from whom the Lord hath taken many children, and whom He hath exercised other- wise, there are some chapters, some particular promises in the Word of God, made in a most special manner, which should never have been yours, so as they now are, if you had your portion in this life, as others. And, therefore, all the comforts, promises, and mercies God olTereth to the afflicted, they are as so many love-letters written to you. Take them to you. Madam, and claim your right, and be not robbed. It is no small cumfortj tto LETTER XL/I. [1634. that God hath written some scriptures to yon, which He hath not written to others. Ye seem rather in this to be envied than pitied ; and ye are indeed in this, like people of another world, and those that are above the ordinary rank of mankind, whom our King and Lord, our Bridegroom Jesus, in His love-letter tc His well-beloved spouse, hath named beside all the rest. He hath written comforts and His hearty commendations in the 54 th of Isaiah, 4, 5 ; Psalm cxlvii. 2, 3, to you. Eead these and the like, and think your God is like a friend that sendeth a letter to a whole house and family, but speaketh in His letter to some by name, that are dearest to Him in the housa Ye are, then, Madam, of the dearest friends of the Bridegroom. If it were lawful, I would envy you, that God honoured you so above many of His dear children. Therefore, Madam, your part is, in this case (seeing God taketh nothing from you but that which He is to supply with His own presence), to desire your Lord to know His own room, and take it even upon Him to come in, in the room of dead children. " Jehovah, know Thy own place, and take it to Thee," is all ye have to say. Madam, I persuade myself that this world is to you an unco inn ; and that ye are like a traveller, who hath his bundle upon his back, and his staff in his hand, and his feet upon the door- thrcsliold. Go forward, honourable and elect lady, in the strength of your Lord (let the world bide at home and keep the house), with your face toward Him, who longeth more for a sight of you than- ye can do for Him, Ere it be long. He will see us. I hope to see you laugh as cheerfully after noon, as ye have mourned before noon. The hand of the Lord, the hand of the Lord be with you in your journey. What have ye to do here ? This is not your mountain of rest. Arise, then, and set your foot up the mountain ; go up out of the wilderness, leaning upon the shoulder of your Beloved (Song viii, 5). If ye knew the welcome that abideth you when ye come home, ye would hasten your pace ; for ye shall see your Lord put up His own holy hand to your face, and wipe all tears from your eyes ; and I trow, then ye shall have some joy of licart. Madam, paper willeth me to end before affection. Kemember the estate of Zion ; pray that Jerusalem may be as Zechariah prophesied, "a burdensome stone for all" (Zech, xii. 3), that who- soever boweth down to roll the stone out of the way, may hurt and break the joints of their back, and strain their arms, and disjoint their shoulder-blades. And pray Jehovah that the stone 1634] LETTER XLIIl. tit may lie still in its own place, and keep band with the corner- stone, I hope it shall be so ; He is a skilled Master-builder who laid it. I would, Madam, under great heaviness be refreshed with two lines from your Ladyship, which I refer to your own wisdom. Madam, I would seem undutiful not to show you, that great solicitation is made by the town of Kirkcudbright for to have the use of my poor labours amongst them. If the Lord shall call, and His people cry, who am I to resist ? But without His seen calling, and till the flock whom I now oversee be planted with one to whom I dare intrust Christ's spouse, gold nor silver nor favour of men, I hope, shall not loose me. I leave your Lady- ship, praying more earnestly for grace and mercy to be with you, and multiplied upon you, here and hereafter, than my pen can express. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Your Ladyship's at all obedience in the Lord. KlEKCUDBRIGHT. i s 1 XLIII. — For Marion M'Naught. {WHEN MR. RUTHERFORD WAS IN DIFFICULTY AS TO ACCEPT- ING A CALL TO KIRKCUDBRIGHT, AND CRAMOND.) UCH HONOUEED AND DEAR MISTEESS,— My love in Christ remembered. I am grieved at the heart to write anything to you to breed heaviness to you ; and what I have written, I wrote with much heaviness. But I entreat you in Christ's name, when my soul is under wrestlings, and seeking direction from our Lord (to whom His vineyard belongeth) v/hither I shall go, give me liberty to advise, and try all airts and paths, to see whether He goeth before me and leadeth me. For if I were assured of God's call to your town, let my arm fall from my shoulder-blade and lose power, and my right eye be dried up (which is the judgment of the idol shepherd) (Zecli. xi. 1 7), if I would not swim through the J water without a boat ere I sat His bidding. But if ye knew my doubtings and fears in that, ye would suffer with me. Whether they be temptations or impediments cast in by my God, I know not. But you have now cause to thank God ; for seeing the Bishop hath given you sucn a promise, he will give you an honest man more willingly than he will permit me to come to you. And, as I ever entreated you, put the business out of your xia LETTER XLIIL [1634. hand in the Lord's levereuce ; ^ and try of Him, if ye have warrant of Him to seek uo man in the world but one only, when there are choice of good men to be had. Howbeit they be too scarce, yet they are. And what God saith to me in the business, I resolve by His grace to do ; for I know not what He will do with me. But God shall fill you with joy ere this business be ended ; for I persuade myself our Lord Jesus hath stirred you up already to do good in the business, and ye shall not lose your reward. I have heard your husband and Samuel have been sick. The man who is called the, Brarich and God's fellow, who standeth before His Father, will be your stay and help (Zech. xiii. 7). I would I were able to comfort your soul. But have patience, and stand still ; he that belicveth maketh not haste. This matter of Cramond, cast in at this time, is cither a temptation, having fallen out at this time ; or then it will clear all my doubts, and let you see the Lord's will. But I never knew my own part in the business till now. I thought I was more wilUng to have embraced the charge in your town, than I am, or am able to win to. I know ye pray that God would resolve me what to do ; and will interpret me, as love biddeth you, which " thinketh not ill, and believeth all things, and hopeth all things." "Would ye have more than the Son of God ? and ye have Him already. And ye shall be fed by the carver of the meat, be he who he will ; and those who are hungry look more to the meat than, to the carver. 1 cannot see you the next week. If my lady come home, I must visit her. The week thereafter will be a Presbytery at Girthon. God will dispose of the meeting. Grace upon you, and your seed, and husband. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours in Christ, Anwoth. S. R. ^ Referring to a promiso made to the peojile of Kirkcudbright by the Bishop of Galloway, to give them a mau according to their own miud, provided they would aot choose Mx. Rutherford. 1634.] LETTERS XLIV., XLV. 113 XLIV. — For Marion M 'Naught. (TROUBLES THREATENING THE CHURCH.) ELL-BELOVED SISTER,— My love in Jesus Christ remembered. Your daughter is well, thanks be to God. I trust in Him ye shall have joy of her ; the Lord bless her. I am now presently going about catechising. The bearer is in haste. Eorget not poor Zion ; and the Lord remember you, for we shall be shortly winnovfed. Jesus, pray for us, that our faith fail not ! I would wish to see you a Sabbath with us, and we shall stir up one another, God willing, to seek the Lord ; for it may be He hide Himself from us ere it be long. Keep that which you have : ye will get more in heaven. The Lord send us to the shore out of all the storms, with our silly souls sound and whole with us ; for if liberty of conscience come, as is rumoured, the best of us will be put to our wits to seek how to be freed. But we shall be like those who have their chamber to go in unto, spoken of in Isaiah (Isa. xxvi. 20). Bead the place yourself, and keep you within your house while the storm be passed. If you can learn a ditty against C, try, and cause try, that ye may see the Lord's righteous judgment upon the devil's instruments. We are not much obliged to his kindness. I wish all such wicked doers were cut off. These in haste. I bless you in God's name, and all yours. Your daughter desires a Bible and a gown. I hope she shall use the Bible well, which if she do, the gown is the better bestowed. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours for ever in Christ, Anwoth. S. E. XLV. — For Marion M'Nauqht. {IN THE PROSPECT OF THE COMMUNION, AND OF TRIALS TO THE CHURCH.) ELL -BELOVED SISTER IN CHRIST,— You shall understand I have received a letter from Edinburgh, that it is suspected that there will be a General Assembly, or then some meeting of the bishops ; and that at this synod there will be some commissioners chosen by the Bishop ; which news have so taken up my mind that I am not H 114 LETTER XLVL [1634. so settled for studies as I have been before, and therefore was never in such fear for the work. But because it is written to me as a secret, I dare not reveal it to any but to yourself, whom I know. And therefore, I entreat you not for any comfort of mine, who am but one man, but for the glory and honour of Jesus Christ, the Master of the banquet, be more earnest with God ; and, in general, show others of your Christian acquaintance my fears for myself. I can be content of shame in that work, if my Lord and Master be honoured ; and therefore petition our Lord especially to see to His own glory, and to give bread to His hungry bairns, howbeit I go hungry away from the feast. Eequest Mr. Eobert ^ from me, if he come not, to remember us to our Lord. I have neither time, nor a free disposed mind, to write to you anent your own case. Send me word if all your children and your husband be well. Seeing they are not yours, but your dear Lord's, esteem them but as borrowed, and lay them down at God's feet. Your Christ to you is better than they all. You will pardon my unaccustomed short letter; and remember me and that honourable feast to our Lord Jesus. He was with us before. I hope He will not change upon us ; but I fear I have changed upon Him. But, Lord, let old kindness stand. Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Anwoth. S. 11. XLVL— To Marion M'Naught. {TOSSINGS OF SPIRIT— HER CHILDREN AND HUSBAND.) ELL-BELOVED AND DEAE SISTEE,— My tender affection in Christ remembered. I left you in as great heaviness as I was in since I came to this country ; Ijut I know you doubt not but that (as the truth is in Christ) my soul is knit to your soul, and to the soul of all yours ; and I would, if I could, send you the largest part of my heart inclosed in this letter. But by fervent calling upon my Lord, I have attained some victory over my heart, which runneth often not knowing whither, and over my beguiling hopes, which I know now better than I did. I trust in my Lord to hold aloof from the enticings of a seducing heart, by which I am ' Sir. Robert Glendinning. 1634] LETTER XL VI. 115 daily coseued ; and I mind not (by His grace who hath called me according to His eternal purpose) to come so far within the grips of my foolish mind, gripping about any folly coming its way as the woodbine or ivy goeth about the tree. I adore and kiss the providence of my Lord, who knoweth well what is most expedient for me, and for you and your children ; and I think of you as of myself, that the Lord, who in His deep wisdom turneth about all the wheels and turning of such changes, shall also dispose of that for the best to you and yours. In the presence of my Lord, I am not able, howbeit I would, to conceive amiss of you in that matter. Grace, grace for ever be upon you and your seed, and it shall be your portion, in despite of all the powers of darkness. Do not make more question of this. But the Lord saw a nail in my heart loose, and He hath now fastened it. Honour be to His Majesty. I hear your son is entered to the school. If I had known of the day, I would have begged from our Lord that He would have put the book in his hand with His own hand. I trust in my Lord it is so ; and I conceive a hope to see him a star, to give light in some room of our Lord's house ; and purpose, by the Lord's grace, as I am able (if our Lord call you to rest before me), when you are at your home, to do to the uttermost of my power to help him every way in grace and learning, and his brothers, and all your children. And I hope you would expect that of me. Further, you shall know that Mr. W. D.^ is come home, who saith it is a miracle that your husband, in this process before the Council, escaped both discredit and damage. Let it not be for- gotten he was, in our apprehension, to our grief, cast down and humbled in the Lord's work, in that matter betwixt him and the bailie : now the Lord hath honoured him, and made him famous for virtue, honesty, and integrity, two several times, before the nobles of this kingdom. Your Lord liveth. We will go to His throne of grace again ; His arm is not shortened. The King is certainly expected. Ill is feared ; we have cause for our sins to fear that the Bridegroom shall be taken from us. By our sins we have rent His fair garments, and we have stirred up and awakened our Beloved. Pray Him to tarry, or then to take us with Him. It were good that we should knock and rap at our Lord's door. We may not tire to knock oftener than twice or thrice. He knoweth the knock of His friends. ^ "William Dalgleish, minister of Kirkdale and Kirkmabreck. See Letter CXVII. ii6 LETTER XLVIl. [1634. I am still what I was ever to your dear children, tendering their soul's happiness, and praying that grace, grace, grace, mercy, and peace from God, even God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus, may be their portion ; and that now, while they are green and young, their hearts may take band with Jesus, the Corner- stone : and win once in, in our Lord and Saviour's house, and then they will not get leave to flit. Pray for me, and especially for humility and thankfulness. I have always remembrance of you, and your husband, and dear children. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours evermore in my dear Lord Jesus and yours, Anwoth. ^' ■**• XLVII.— jp'or Marion M'Nauqht. {SUBMISSION TO GOD'S ARRANGEMENTS.) ORTHY AND BELOVED MISTRESS,— My love in Christ remembered. I have sent you a letter from Mr. David Dick ^ concerning the placing of Mr. Hugh M'Kail with themselves ; therefore I write to you now only to entreat you in Christ not to be discouraged thereat. Be submissive to the will of your dear Lord, who knoweth best what is good for your soul and your town both ; for God can come over greater mountains than these, we believe ; for He worketh His greatest works contrary to carnal reason and means. " My ways are not," saith our Lord, " as your ways ; neither are my thoughts as your thoughts " (Isa. Iv. 8). I am no whit put from my belief for all that. Believe, pray, and use means. We shall cause Mr. John Kerr, who conveyed myself to Lochinvar,' to use means to seek a man, if Mr. Hugh fail us. Our Lord has a little bride among you, and I trust He will send one to woo her to our sweet Lord Jesus. He will not want His wife for the suiting, and He has means in abundance in His hand to open all the slots and bars that Satan draws over the door. He cometh to His bride leaping over the mountains, and skipping over the hills. His way to His spouse is full of stones, mountains, and waters, yet He putteth in His foot and wadeth through. He will not want ^ David Dickson. * About four miles east from Earlston. It has a small loch, where are ruius of an old caBtle. 1634] LETTER XLVIII, 117 her ; and therefore refresh me with two words concerning your confidence and courage in our Lord, both about that, and about His own Zion ; for He wooeth His wife in the Burning Bush ; and for " the good-will of Him that dwelleth in the Bush," the bush is not consumed. It is better to weep with Jerusalem in the forenoon, than to weep with Babel after noon, in the end of the day. Our day of laughter and rejoicing is coming. Yet a little while, and ye shall see the salvation of God. I long to see you, and to hear how your children are, especially Samuel. Grace be their heritage and portion from the Lord, and the Lord be their lot, and then their inheritance shall please them well. Remember my love to your husband. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours in his sweetest Lord Jesus, Anwoth. S. E. XLVIII. — For Marion M'Naught. {TROUBLES FROM FALSE BRETHREN— OCCURRENCES- CHRIS T S COMING— IN TERCESSION. ) ELL-BELOVED SISTEE,— I know you have heard of the success of our business in Edinburgh. I do every Presbytery day see the faces of my brethren smiling upon me, but their tongues convey reproaches and lies of me a hundred miles off, and have made me odious to the Bishop of St. Andrews, who said to Mr. W. Dalgleish that ministers in Galloway were his informers. Whereupon no letter of favour could be procured from him for effectuating of our business ; only I am brought in the mouths of men, who other- wise knew me not, and have power (if God shall permit) to harm me. Yet I entreat you, in the bowels of Christ Jesus, be not east down. I fear your sorrow exceed because of this ; and I am not so careful for myself in the matter as for you. Take courage ; — your dearest Lord will light your candle, which the wicked would fain blow out ; and, as sure as our Lord liveth, your soul shall find joy and comfort in this business. Howbeit you see all the hounds in hell let loose to mar it, their iron chains to our dear and mighty Lord are but straws, which He can easily break. Let not this temptation stick in your throat ; swallow it, and let it go down ; our Lord give you a drink of the consolations of His Spirit, that it may digest. You never knew ii8 LETTER XL V ITT. [1634. one in God's book who put to their hand to the Lord's work for His kirk, but the world and Satan did bark against them, and bite also where they had power. You will not lay one stone on Zion's walls but they will labour to cast it down again. For myself, the Lord letteth me see now greater evidence of a calling to Kirkcudbright than ever He did before ; and therefore pray, and possess your soul in patience. Those that were doers in the business have good hopes that it will yet go forward and prosper. As for the death of the King of Sweden (which is thought to be too true), we can do nothing else but reverence our Lord, who doth not ordinarily hold Zion on her rock by the sword, and arm of flesh and blood, but by His own mighty and outstretched arm. Her King that reigneth in Zion yet liveth, and they are plucking Him round about to pull Him off His throne ; but His Father hath crowned him, and who dare say, " It is ill done " ? The Lord's bride will be up and down, above the water swimming and under the water sinking, until her lovely and mighty Eedeemer and Husband set His head through the skies, and come with His fair court to red all their pleas, and give them the hoped-for inheritance : and then we shall lay down our swords and triumph, and fight no more. But do not think, for all this, that our Lord and Chief Shepherd will want one weak sheep, or the silliest dying lamb, that He hath re- deemed. He will tell His jElock, and gather them all together, and make a faithful account of them to the Father who gave them to Him. Let us learn to turn our eyes off men, that our whorish hearts doat not on them, and woo our old Husband, and make Him our darling. For, "thus saith the Lord to the enemies of Zion, Drink ye, and be drunk, and spue, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword that I send amongst you. And it shall be, if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say to them, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, Ye shall certainly drink " (Jer. xxv. 27, 28). You see our Lord brewing a cup of poison for His enemies, which they must drink, and because of this have sore bowels and sick stomachs, yea, burst. But when Zion's captivity is at an end, " the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping : they sliall go, and seek the Lord their God. They shall ask the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward, saying. Come, and let us join ourselves to the Lord in an ever- lasting covenant that shall not be forgotten" (Jer. i. 45). This is spoken to us, and for us, who with woe hearts ask, " What is 1635-1 LETTER XLIX. 119 the way to Zion ? " It is our part who know how to go to our Lord's door, and to knock by prayer, and how to lift Christ's slot, and shut the bar of His chamber door, to complain and tell Him how the Lord handleth us, and how our King's business goeth, that He may get up and lend them a blow, who are tigging and playing with Christ and His spouse. You have also, dear Mistress, house troubles, in sickness of your husband and bairns, and in spoiling of your house by thieves ; take these rods in patience from your Lord. He must still move you from vessel to vessel, and grind you as our Lord's wheat, to be bread in His house. But when all these strokes are over your head, what will ye say to see your well-beloved Christ's white and ruddy face, even His face who is worthy to bear the colours among ten thousand? (Cant. v. 10). Hope and believe to the end. Grace for ever be multiplied upon you, your husband, and children. Your own in his dearest Lord Jesus, Edinbukgh, Dec. 1634. S. E. XLIX.— To Marion M'Nauqht. {SPOILING OF GOODS— CALL TO KIRKCUDBRIGHT— THE LORD REIGNETH.) ELL-BELOVED AND DEAR SISTEE,— My love in Christ remembered. God hath brought me home from a place where I have been exercised with great heaviness, and I have found at home new matter of great heaviness, yet dare not but in all things give thanks. In my business in Edinburgh,^ I have not sinned nor wronged my party, — by his own confession, and by the con- fession of his friends, I have given of my goods for peace and the saving of my Lord's truth from reproaches, which is dearer to me than all I have. My mother is weak, and I think shall leave me alone ; but I am not alone, because Christ's Father is with me. For your business anent your town I see great evidence ; but Satan and his instruments are against it, and few set their shoulders to Christ's shoulder to help Him. But He will do all His lone ; and I dare not but exhort you to believe, and persuade you, that the hungry in your city shall be fed ; and as for the rest that want a stomach, the parings of God's loaf ^ See note, Letter XI L 120 LETTER XLIX. [1635. will suflSce them ; and, therefore, believe it shall be well. I may not leave my mother to come and confer with you of all particulars. I have given such directions to our dear friend as I can ; but the event is in our dear Lord's hands. God's Zion abroad flourisheth, and His arm is not shortened with us, if we could believe. There is scarcity and a famine of the word of God in Edinburgh. Your sister Jane laboureth mightily in our business ; but hath not as yet gotten an answer from I. P. Mr. A. C.-^ will work what he can. My Lady saith she can do little, and that it suiteth not her nor her husband well to speak in such an affair. I told her my mind plainly. I long to know of your estate. Eemember me heartily to your dear husband. Grace be the portion of your bairns. I know you are mindful of the green wound of our sister kirk in Ireland. Bid our Lord lay a plaister to it (He hath good skill to do so), and set others to work. Grace, grace upon your soul, and body, and all yours. Yours in Christ, Anwoth. S. R. [The following brief note, addressed to Marion M 'Naught, may be read as a sort of postscript to the foregoing, though generally printed as a separate Letter.] |^|iEAE MISTRESS, — I have not time this day to write to you ; but God, knowing my present state and necessities of my calling, will, I hope, spare my mother's life for a time, for the which I have cause to thank the Lord. I entreat you, be not cast down for that which I wrote before to you anent the planting of a minister in your town. Believe, and you shall see the salvation of God. I write this, because when you suffer, my heart suffereth with you. I do believe your soul shall have joy in your labours and holy desires for that work. Grace upon you, and your husband, and children. Yours ever in Christ, Anwoth. * Probably Mr. Alexander Colville, mentioned Letter XI, 1635.] LETTER JL 121 lA.—For Marion M'Naught. (CHRIST COMING AS CAPTAIN OF SALVATION— HIS CHURCH S CONFLICT AND COVENANT — THE JEWS — LAST DAYS APOSTASY.) ELL-BELOVED AND DEAE SISTER,— I know your heart is cast down for the desolation like to come upon this kirk and the appearance that an hireling shall be thrust in upon Christ's flock in that town ; but send a heavy heart up to Christ, it shall be welcome. Those who are with the beast and the dragon, must make war with the Lamb ; " but the Lamb shall overcome them : for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings ; and they who are with Him are called and chosen, and faithful " (Rev. xvii. 14). Our ten days shall have an end ; all the former things shall be forgotten when we shall be up before the throne. Christ hath been ever thus in the world ; He hath always the defender's part, and hath been still in the camp, fighting the Church's battles. The enemies of the Son of God will be fed with their own flesh, and shall drink their own blood ; and therefore, their part of it shall at last be found hard enough : so that we may look forward and pity them. Until the number of the elect be fulfilled, Christ's garments must be rolled in blood. He cometh from Edom, from the slaughter of His enemies, " clothed with dyed garments, glorious in His apparel, travelling in the greatness of His strength." Who is this (saith he) that appears in this glorious posture ? Our great He ! that He who is mighty to save, whose glory shineth while He sprinkleth the blood of His adversaries, and staineth all His raiment. The glory of His righteous revenges shineth forth in these stains (Isa. Ixiii. 1). But seeing our world is not here- away, we poor children, far from home, must steal through many waters, weeping as we go, and withal believing that we do the Lord's faithfulness no wrong, seeing He hath said, " I, even I, am He that comforteth you : who art thou, that shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man that shall be made as grass?" (Isa. li. 12). "When thou passest through the waters, I wiU be with thee ; and through the rivers, they shaU not overflow thee. When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt ; neither shall the flames kindle upon thee " (Isa. xliii. 2). There is a cloud gathering and a storm coming. This land 122 LETTER L. [1635. shall be turned upside down ; and if ever the Lord spake to me (think on it), Christ's bride will be glad of a hole to hide her head in, and the dragon may so prevail as to chase the woman and her man-child over sea. But there shall be a gleaning, two or three berries left in the top of the olive-tree, of whom God shall say, " Destroy them not, for there is a blessing in them." Thereafter there shall be a fair sun-blink on Christ's old spouse, and a clear sky, and she shall sing as in the days of her youth. The Antichrist and the great red dragon will lop Christ's branches, and bring His vine to a low stump, under the feet of those who carry the mark of the beast; but the Plant of Eenown, the Man whose name is the Branch, will bud forth aiiain and blossom as the rose, and there shall be fair white flourishes again, with most pleasant fruits, upon that tree of life. A fair season may He have ! Grace, grace be upon that blessed and beautiful tree ! under whose shadow we shall sit, and His fruit shall be sweet to our taste. But Christ shall woo His handful in the fire, and choose His own in the furnace of affliction. But be it so; He dow not. He will not slay His children. Love will not let Him make a full end. The covenant will cause Him hold His hand. Fear not, then, saith the First and the Last, He who was dead and is alive. We see not Christ sharpening and furbishing His sword for His enemies ; and therefore our faithless hearts say, as Zion did, " The Lord hath forsaken me." But God reproveth her, and saith, " Well, well, Zion, is that well said ? Think again on it, you are in the wrong' to Me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the fruit of her womb ? Yea, she may ; yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have engraven thee upon the palms of My hands" (Isa. xlix. 15, 16). You brealv your heart and grow heavy, and forget that Christ hath your name engraven on the palms of His hand in great letters. In the name of the Son of God, believe that buried Scotland, dead and buried with her dear Bridegroom, shall rise the third day again, and there shall be a new growth after the old timber is cut down. I recommend you, and your burdens and heavy heart, to the supporting of His grace and good-will who dwelt in the Bush, to Him who was separated from His brethren. Try your husband afar off, to see if he can be induced to think upon going to America. 0 to see the sight, next to Christ's Coming in the clouds, the i635] LETTER LL 123 most joyful ! our elder brethren the Jews and Christ fall upon one another's necks and kiss each other ! They have been long asunder ; they will be kind to one another when they meet. 0 day ! 0 longed-for and lovely day-dawn ! 0 sweet Jesus, let me see that sight which will be as life from the dead, Thee and Thy ancient people in mutual embraces.^ Desire your daughter to close with Christ upon terms of suffering for Him ; for the cross is an old mealing and plot of ground that lyeth to Christ's house. Our dear Chief had aye that rent lying to His inheritance. But tell her the day is near the dawning, the sky is riving ; our Beloved will be on us, ere ever we be aware. The Antichrist, and death and hell, and Christ's enemies and ours, will be bound and cast into the bottomless pit. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Anwoth, A-pril 22, 1635. S. K. LI. — To Marion M'NAuaHT. {PUBLIC TEMPTATIONS — THE SECURITY OF EVERY SAINT — OCCURRENCES IN THE COUNTRY-SIDE.) \% OVING AND DEAE SISTEE,— For Zion's sake hold not your peace, neither be discouraged, for the on- i. going of this persecution. Jehovah is in this burning Bush. The floods may swell and roar, but our ark shall swim above the waters ; it cannot sink, because a Saviour is in it. Because our Beloved was not let in by His spouse when He stood at the door, with His wet and frozen head, there- fore He will have us to seek Him awhile ; and while we are seeking, the watchmen who go about the walls have stricken the poor woman, and have taken away her veil from her. But yet . a little while and our Lord will come again. Scotland's sky will clear again ; her moment must go over. I dare in faith say and write (I am not dreaming), Christ is but seeking (what He will have and make) a clean glistering bride out of the fire. God send Him His errand, but He cannot want what He seeks. In the meantime, one way or other. He shall find, or make a nest for His mourning dove. What is this we are doing, breaking ^ lu the Preface to his "Peaccaljle Plea," he expresses the same yearnings towards the Jews. And also in "Trial of Faith," sermon xiii. t24 LETTER LI. [1635. the neck of our faith ? We are not come as yet to the mouth of the Eed Sea ; and howbeit we were, for His honour's sake, He must dry it up. It is our part to die gripping and holding fast His faithful promise. If the Beast should get leave to ride through the land, to seal such as are his, he will not get one lamb with him, for these are secured and sealed as the servants of God. In God's name, let Christ take His barn-floor, and all that is in it, to a hill, and winnow it. Let Him sift His corn, and sweep His house, and seek His lost gold. The Lord shall cog the rumbling wheels, or turn them ; for the remainder of wrath doth He restrain. He can loose the belt of kings ; to God, their belt, wherewith they are girt, is knit with a single draw-knot. As for a pastor to your town, your conscience can bear you witness you have done your part. Let the Master of the vine- yard now see to His garden, seeing you have gone on, till He hath said, " Stand still." The will of the Lord be done. But a trial is not, to give up with God and believe no more. I thank my God in Christ, I find the force of my temptation abated, and its edge blunted, since I spoke to you last. I know not if the tempter be hovering, until he find the dam gather again, and me more secure ; but it hath been my burden, and I am yet more confident the Lord will succour and deliver. I intend, God willing, that our Communion shall be celebrated the first Sabbath after Pasch. Our Lord, that great Master of the feast, send us one hearty and heartsome supper, for I look it shall be the last. But we expect, when the shadows shall flee away, and our Lord shall come to His garden, that He shall feed us in green pastures without fear. The dogs shall not then be hounded out amongst the sheep. I earnestly desire your prayers for assistance at our work, and put others with you to do the same. Remember me to your husband, and desire your daughter to be kind to Christ, and seek to win near Him ; He will give her a welcome unto His house of wine, and bring her into the King's chamber. 0 how will the sight of His face, and the smell of His garments, allure and ravish the heart 1 Now, the love of the lovely Son of God be with you. Yours in his sweet Jesus, Anwotii, 1635. S. K. [635'] LETTER LII. 125 hll.—For Marion M'Naught. {IN THE PROSPECT OF HER HUSBAND BEING COMPELLED TO RECEIVE THE COMMAND OF THE PRELATES— SAINTS ARE YET TO JUDGE.) JELL-BELOVED MISTEESS,— I charge you in the name of the Son of God, to rest upon your Eock, that is higher than yourself. Be not afraid of a man, who is a worm, nor of the son of man, who shall die. God be your fear. Encourage your husband. I would counsel you to write to Edinburgh to some advised lawyers, to under- stand what your husband, as the head magistrate, may do in opposing any intruded minister, and lq his carriage toward the new prelate,^ if be command him to imprison or lay hands upon any, and, in a word, how far he may in his office disobey a prelate, without danger of law. For if the Bishop come to your town, and find not obedience to his heart, it is like he will command the Provost to assist him against God and the truth. Ye will have more courage under the persecution. Eear not ; take Christ caution,^ who said, " There shall not one hair of your head perish " (Luke xxi. 1 8). Christ will not be in your common to have you giving out anything for Him, and not give you all incomes with advantage. It is His honour His servants should not be berried and undone in His service. You were never honoured till now. And if your husband be the first magistrate who shall suffer for Christ's name in this persecution, he may rejoice that Christ hath put the first garland on his head and upon yours. Truth will yet keep the crown of the causey in Scotland. Christ and truth are strong enough. They judge us now ; we shall one day judge them, and sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes. Believe, believe ; for they dare not pray ; they dare not look Christ in the face. They have been false to Christ, and He will not sit with the wrong. Ye know it is not our cause ; for if we would quit our Lord, we might sleep for the present in a sound skin, and keep our place, means, and honour, and be dear to them also ; but let us once put all we have over in Christ's hand. Eear not for my papers ; I shall ^ Bishop Sydserff wished to force a minister upon the people of Kirkcudbright, in room of Mr. Glendinning, whom he ordered to be imprisoned, because he would not conform to Episcopacy. Provost Fullarton (husband of M. M'Naught), along with other magistrates, refiised to imprison Mr. Glendinning. See note at Letter LXVII, ' Surety. 126 LETTERS LIIL, LTV. [1636. despatch them, but ye will be examined for them. The Spirit of Jesus give you inward peace. Desire your husband from me to prove honest to Christ ; he shall not be a loser at Christ's hand. Yours ever in his sweet Lord Jesus, Anwoth, July 8, 1635. S. K. nil.— For Marion M 'Naught. {ENCOURAGEMENT UNDER TRIAL BY PROSPECT OF BRIGHTER DAYS.) ISTEESS, — My love in Christ remembered. Having appointed a meeting with Mr. David Dickson, and knowing that B. will not keep the Presbytery, I cannot see you now. Commend my journey to God. My soul blesseth you for your last letter. Be not discouraged ; Christ will not want the Isles-men. " The Isles shall wait for His law." We are His inheritance, and He will sell no part of His inheritance. For the sins of this land, and our breach of the covenant, contempt of the Gospel, and our defection from the truth. He hath set up a burning furnace in our Mount Zion ; but I say it, and will bide by it, the grass shall yet grow green on our Mount Zion. There shall be dew all the night upon the lilies, amongst which Christ feedeth, until the day break, and the shadows flee away. And the moth shall eat up the enemies of Christ. Let them make a fire of their own, and walk in the light thereof, it shall not let them see to go to their bed ; but they shall lie down in sorrow (Isa. 1. 11). Therefore, rejoice and believe. This in haste. Grace, grace be with you and yours. Yours in Christ, Anwoth. S. R. LTV. — For Marion M'Naught. {PUBLIC WRONGS— WORDS OF COMFORT.) OVING AND DEAR SISTER,— I fear that you be moved and cast down, because of the late wrong that your husband received in your Town Council. But I pray you comfort yourself in the Lord ; for a just cause bides under the water only as long as wicked men hold 1636.] LETTER LIV. 127 their hand above it ; their arm will weary, and then the just cause shall swim above, and the light that is sown for the righteous shall spring and grow up. If ye were not strangers here, the dogs of the world would not bark at you. You may see all windings and turnings that are in your way to heaven out of God's Word ; for He will not lead you to the kingdom at the nearest, but you must go through " honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report ; as deceivers, and yet true ; as unknown, and yet well known ; as dying, and, behold, we live ; as chastened, and not killed ; as sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing" (2 Cor. vi. 8, 10). The world is one of the enemies that we have to fight with, but a vanquished and overcome enemy, and like a beaten and forlorn soldier ; for our Jesus hath taken the armour from it. Let me then speak to you in His words : " Be of good courage," saith the Captain of our salva- tion, " for I have overcome the world." You shall neither be free of the scourge of the tongue, nor of disgraces (even if it were buffetings and spittings upon the face, as was our Saviour's case), if you follow Jesus Christ. I beseech you in the bowels of our Lord Jesus, keep a good conscience, as I trust you do. You live not upon men's opinion ; gold may be gold, and have the king's stamp upon it, when it is trampled upon by men. Happy are you, if, when the world trampleth upon you in your credit and good name, yet you are the Lord's gold, stamped with the King of heaven's image, and sealed by the Spirit unto the day of your redemption. Pray for the spirit of love ; for " love beareth all things ; it believeth all things, hopeth all things, and endureth all things" (1 Cor. xiii. 7). And I pray you and your husband, yea, I charge you before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, pray for these your adversaries, and read this to your husband from me, and let both of you put on, as the elect of God, bowels of mercies. And, sister, remember how many thousands of talents of sins your Master hath forgiven you. Forgive ye therefore your fellow-servants one talent. Follow God's command in this, and " seek not after your own heart, and after your own eyes," in this matter, as the Spirit speaks (Numb. xv. 39). Ask never the counsel of your own heart here ; tlie world will blow up your heart now, and cause it swell, except the grace of God cause it fall. Jesus, even Jesus, the Eternal Wisdom of the Father, give you wisdom. I trust God shall be glorified in you. And a door shall be opened unto you, as to the Lord's " prisoners 128 LETTER LV. [1636. of hope," as Zechariah speaks. It is a benefit to you, that the wicked are God's fan to purge you. And I hope they shall blow away no corn, or spiritual graces, but only your chaff. I pray you, in your pursuit, have so recourse to the law of men, that you wander not from the law of God. Be not cast down : if you saw Him who is standing on the shore, holding out His arms to welcome you on land, you would not only wade through a sea of wrongs, but through hell itself to be at Him. And I trust in God you see Him sometimes. The Lord Jesus be wdth your spirit, and all yours. Your brother in the Lord, Anwoth. S. R. LV. — To Marion M'Nauqht. {WHEN HE HAD BEEN THREATENED WITH PERSECUTION FOR PREACHING THE GOSPEL— THE SAINTS SHALL YET WIN THE DAY.) OKTHY AND WELL -BELOVED MISTRESS,— My love in Christ remembered. I know ye have heard of the purpose of my adversaries, to try what they can do against me at this Synod for the work of God in your town when I was at your Communion. They intend to call me in question at the Synod for treasonable doctrine. Therefore help me with your prayers, and desire your acquaint- ance to help me also. Your ears heard how Christ was there. If He -suffer His servant to get a broken head in His own kingly service, and not either help or revenge the wrong, I never saw the like of it. There is not a night drunkard, time-serving, idle, idol shepherd to be spoken against : I am the only man ; and because it is so, and I know God will not help them lest they be proud, I am confident their process shall fall asunder. Only be ye earnest with God for hearing, for an open ear, and reading of the bill, that He may in heaven hear both parties, and judge accordingly. And doubt not, fear not ; they shall not, who now ride highest, put Christ out of His kingly possession in Scotland. The pride of man and his rage shall turn to the praise of our Lord. It is an old feud, that the rulers of the earth, the dragon and his angels, have carried to the Lamb and His followers ; but the followers of the Lamb shall overcome by the Word of God. And believe this, and wait on a little, till they have got their womb full of clay and gravel, and they shall know (liowbeit 1636.] LETTER LVI. 129 stolen waters be sweet) Esau's portion is not worth his hunting. Commend me to your husband, and send me word how Grizel is. The Son of God lead her through the water. The Lord Jesus bewith your spirit. Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus, Anwoth. S. R LVI. — To my Lady Kenmure. {REASONS FOR RESIGNATION— SECURITY OF SAINTS— THE END OF TIME.) ADAM, — I received your Ladyship's letter from J. G.^ I thank our Lord ye are as well at least as one may be who is not come home. It is a mercy in this stormy sea to get a second wind ; for none of the saints get a first, but they must take the winds as the Lord of the seas causeth them to blow, and the inn as the Lord and Master of the inns hath ordered it. If contentment were here, heaven were not heaven. Whoever seek the world to be their bed, shall at best find it short and ill-made, and a stone under their side to hold them waking, rather than a soft pillov/ to sleep upon. Ye ought to bless your Lord that it is not worse. We live in a sea where many have suffered shipwreck, and have need that Christ sit at the helm of the ship. It is a mercy to win to heaven, though with much hard toil and heavy labour, and to take it by violence ill and well as it may be. Better go swimming and wet through our waters than drown by the way ; especially now when truth suffereth, and great men bid Christ sit lower and contract Himself in less bounds, as if He took too much room. I expect our new prelate - shall try my sitting. I hang by a thread, but it is (if I may speak so) of Christ's spinning. There is no quarrel more honest or honourable than to suffer for truth. But the worst is, that this kirk is like to sink, and all her lovers and friends stand afar off; none mourn with her, and none mourn for her. But the Lord Jesus will not be put out of His conquest so soon in Scotland. It will be seen that the kirk and truth will rise again within three days, and Christ again shall ride upon His white horse ; howbeit His horse seem now to stumble, yet he cannot fall. The fulness of Christ's harvest in ' J. Gordon. * vSydserff, I30 LETTER LVL [1636 the end of the earth is not yet come in. I speak not this because I would have it so, but upon better grounds than my naked liking. But enough of this sad subject. I long to be fully assured of your Ladyship's welfare, and that your soul prospereth, especially now in your solitary life, when your comforts outward are few, and when Christ hath you for the very uptakiug. I know His love to you is still running over, and His love hath not so bad a memory as to forget you and your dear child, who hath two fathers in heaven, the one the Ancient of Days. I trust in His mercy He hath something laid up for him above, however it may go with him here. I know it is long since your Ladyship saw that this world had turned your stepmother and did forsake you. Madam, you have reason to take in good part a lean dinner and spare diet in this life, seeing your large supper of the Lamb's preparing will recompense all. Let it go, which was never yours but only in sight, not in property. The time of your loan will wear shorter and shorter, and time is measured to you by ounce weights ; and then I know your hope shall be a full ear of corn and not blasted with wind. It may be your joy that your anchor is up within the veil, and that the ground it is cast upon is not false but firm. God hath done His part : I hope ye will not deny to fish and fetch home all your love to Himself ; and it is but too narrow and short for Him if it were more. If ye were before pouring all your love (if it had been many gallons more) in upon your Lord; if drops fell by in the in-pouring, He forgiveth you. He hath done now all that can be done to win beyond it all, and hath left little to woo your love from Himself, except one only child. What is His purpose herein He knoweth best, wlio hath taken your soul in tutoring. Your faith may be boldly charit- able of Christ, that however matters go, the worst shall be a tired traveller, and a joyful and sweet welcome home. The back of your winter night is broken. Look to the east, the day sky is breaking. Think not that Christ loseth time, or lingereth unsuitably. 0 fair, fair, and sweet morning ! We are but as sea passengers. If we look right, we are upon our country coast : our Eedeemer is fast coming, to take this old worm-eaten world, like an old moth-eaten garment, in His two hands, and to roll it up and lay it by Him. These are the last days, and an oath is given, by God Himself, that time shall be no more (llev. X. 6) ; and when time itself is old and grey-haired, it were good we were away. Thus, Madam, ye see I am, as my custom is, 1636.] LETTERS LVIL, LVIII. 131 tedious in my lines. Your Ladyship will pardon it. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Your Ladyship's at all obedience in Christ, Anwoth, Jan. 18, 1636. S. R. m LVII. — Fc^ Marion M'Naught. {IN THE PROSPECT OF REMOVAL TO ABERDEEN.) ONOUEED AND DEAREST IN THE LORD,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am well, and my soul prospereth. I find Christ with me. I burden no man ; I want nothing ; no face looketh on me but it laugheth on me. Sweet, sweet is the Lord's cross. I overcome my heaviness. My Bridegroom's love- blinks fatten my weary soul. I soon go to my King's palace at Aberdeen. Tongue, and pen, and wit, cannot express my joy. Remember my love to Jean Gordon, to my sister, Jean Brown, to Grizel, to your husband. Thus in haste. Grace be with you. Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus, Edinbitegh, A-pril 5, 1636. S. R. P.S. — My charge is to you to believe, rejoice, sing, and triumph. Christ has said to me, Mercy, mercy, grace and peace for Marion M'Naueht. LVIII.— To ?)ij/ Lady Kenmure. {ON OCCASION OF EFFORTS TO INTRODUCE EPISCOPACY.) IGHT HONOURABLE,— I cannot find a time for writing some things I intended on Job, I have been so taken up with the broils that we are encumbered with in our calling. For our prelate will have us either to swallow our light over, and digest it contrary to our stomachs (howbeit we should vomit our conscience and all, in this troublesome conformity), or then he will try if deprivation can convert us to the ceremonial faith.^ I write to your Ladyship, Madam, not as distrusting your affection or willingness to help me, as your Ladyship is able by ^ Conformity to episcopal forma, 132 LETTER LIX. [1636. yourself or others, but to advertise you that I hang by a small thread. For our learned prelate, because we cannot see with his eyes so far in a mill-stone as liis light doeth, will not follow his Master, meek Jesus, who waited upon the wearied and short- breathed in the way to heaven.^ Where all see not alike, and some are weaker, He carrieth the lambs in His bosom, and leadeth gently those that are with young. But we must either see all the evil of ceremonies to be but as indifferent straws, or suffer no less tlian to be casten out of the Lord's inheritance ! Madam, if I had time I would write more at length, but your Ladyship will pardon me till a fitter occasion. Grace be with you and your child, and bear you company to your best home. Your Ladyship's in his sweet Lord Jesus, AiiWOTH, June 8, 1636. S. E. LTX. — To Earlston, Elder. [Alexander Gordon of Earlston was descended from the house of Gordon of Lochinvar, and the residence of his family at first was Gordon of Airds (about a mile from tlie New Galloway Railway Station, on a wooded height, in the parish of Kells). His great-grandfather, Alexander Gordon of Airds, having married Margaret, eldest daughter of John Sinclair of Earlston, the issue of that union came to possess the lands of Earlston. (Nisbet's "Heraldry.") It is a tradition that old Gordon of Airds imbibed WicklifEte views, when he was on a sort of embassy to the English Borderers, and that he propagated the truth liy bringing home an English Wickliffite to be tutor to his eldest son. Having obtained a New Testament in the vulgar tongue, he read it at meetings which were held in the woods of Airds, in a secluded spot, at the junction of the Ken and the Dee, where the loch begins.^ Tlie truth circulated rapidly through the whole province of Galloway. There are some interesting traditions about old Gordon of Airds. He was compelled, when a youth, to sign the sentence that doomed Patrick Hamilton to death, 1 528 ; and this very circumstance led him to inquire more fully into the truth. He lived to the age of one hundred and one, dying in 1586. A traveller, coming to crave the hospitality of Airds one evening, M'as courteously received by a youth, who, however, referred him to his father. His father in turn referred him to an older man, the grandfather of the boy ; and then this grey-haired grand- sire said, "Sir, you must ask my father," — the patriarch who sat in the arm-chair and conducted worship that evening. (Agnew's " Sheriffs of Galloway.") Earlston, or Erliston, or Earleston, is not far from Carsjihairn. As yon come from Dairy, in Glcnkons, you see the roof of the ancient residcnre appearing from among the trees that grow up the sloping ridge at the toot of which it stands. In liont of the grim old tower there is a fine lawn, a remnant of better days, and a linn not far off. Tlieie is another EarlMon, in the parish of Borgue, a quite modern mansion, built by a descendant of this ancient family, and called after the name of the original pro[ierty. The grace of God, which had early chosen this family, continued to favour it for many generations. Alexander Gordon, Rutherford's friend, was wortliy of his ancestors. Livingstone, in his " Characteristics," speaks of him as " a man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise. For wisdom, courage, and righteous- ^ Alluding to Gen. xxxii. 14, and Isa. xl. 11. ' Tt is probably the little mound in the wood called " Low's Scat," from its being the favourite resort of a local poet of that name. 1636.] LETTER LIX. 133 ness, he miglit have been a magistrate in any part of the earth." He warmly espoused the side of the Presbyterians. In the end of July 1635, he was sum- moned by the Bishop of Glasgow to appear before the High Commission, for preventing the intrusion of an unpopular nominee of the bishop into a vacant parish. But Lord Lorn, afterwards the martyred Marquis of Argyle, having appeared ^vith him before that court, and affirmed that Earlston had done tliis by his direction as patron of the parish, the matter was deferred to a future day. This letter of Eutherford probably refers to the vexatious proceedings instituted against him in regard to this matter. He was afterwards summoned by Sydserff, Bishop of Galloway, fined five hundred merks, and banished to Montrose. The Privy Council, however, afterwards dispensed with his banishment upon the payment of his fine. Earlston was a member of the Assembly which met at Glasgow, in 1638, as conimis sioner from the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright. His name appears among the members of Parliament in 1641, as member for the shire of Galloway. He was married to Elizabeth, daughter of John Gordon of Muirfad, by whom he had several children. His eldest son, William, who succeeded him, is retoured heir of his father on the 23rd of January 1655. In the avenue leading to Earlston, there is a very large old oak, still sho\vn as that in the thick foliage of which this William Gordon hid, and so escaped his pursuers, in the days of the persecution. But in 1679, on his way to join the rising at Bothwell, he was shot by a troop of di'agoons, and lies buried in Glassford Churchyard, where is a monument to his memory.] {NO SUFFERING FOR CHRIST UNREWARDED— LOSS OF CHILDREN— CHRIST IN PROVIDENCE.) UCH HONOUEED SIR,— I have heard of the mind and malice of your adversaries against you. It is like they will extend the law they have, in length and breadth, answerable to their heat of mind. But it is a great part of your glory that the cause is not yours, but your Lord's whom you serve. And I doubt not but Christ will count it His honour to back His weak servant ; and it were a shame for Him (with reverence to His holy name) that He should suffer Himself to be in the common of such a poor man as ye are, and that ye should give out for Him and not get in again. Write up your depursments for your Master Christ, and keep the account of what ye give out, whether name, credit, goods, or life, and suspend your reckoning till nigh the evening ; and remember that a poor weak servant of Christ wrote it to you, that ye shall have Christ, a King, caution for your incomes and all your losses. Eeckon not from the foreuoou. Take the AVord of God for your warrant; and for Christ's act of cautionary, howbeit body, life, and goods go for Christ your Lord, and though ye should lose the head for Him, yet " there shall not one hair of your head perish ; in patience, therefore, possess your soul." ^ And because ye are the first man in Galloway called out and questioned for the name of Jesus, His eye hath been upon you, as upon one whom He designed to be 1 Luke xxi. 18, 19. 134 LETTER LIX. [1636. among His witnesses. Christ hath said, " Alexander Gordon shall lead the ring in witnessing a good confession," and there- fore He hath put the garland of suffering for Himself first upon your head. Think yourself so much the more obliged to Him, and fear not ; for He layeth His right hand on your head. He who was dead and is alive will plead your cause, and will look attentively upon the process from the beginning to the end, and the Spirit of glory shall rest upon you. " Fear none of these things which thou shalt suffer : behold, the devil shall cast some. of you into prison, that ye may be tried ; and ye shall have tribulation ten days : be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life " ^ (Eev. ii. 1 0). This lovely One, Jesus, who also became the Son of man, that He might take strokes for you, write the cross-sweetening and soul-supporting sense of these words in your heart ! These rumbling wheels of Scotland's ten days' tribulation are under His look who hath seven eyes. Take a house on your head, and slip yourself by faith in under Christ's wings till the storm be over. And remember, when they have drunken us down, Jerusalem will be a cup of trembling and of poison.^ They shall be fain to vomit out the saints ; for Judah " shall be a hearth of fire in a sheaf, and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left." Woe to Zion's enemies ! they have the worst of it ; for we have writ for the victory. Sir, ye were never honourable till now. This is your glory, that Christ hath put you in the roll with Himself and with 'the rest of the witnesses who are come out of great tribula- tion, and have washen their garments and made tliem white in the blood of the Lamb. Be not cast down for what the servants of Antichrist cast in your teeth, that ye are a head to and favourer of the Puritans, and leader to that sect. If your conscience say, " Alas ! here is much din and little done " (as the proverb is), because ye have not done so much service to Christ that way as ye might and should, take courage from that same temptation. For your Lord Christ looketh upon that very challenge as an lumgering desire in you to have done more than ye did ; and tliat lilleth up the blank, and He will accept of what ye have done in that kind. If great men be kind to you, I pray you overlook them ; if they smile on you, Christ but. borroweth their face to smile through them upon His afflicted servant. Know the well-head ; and for all that, learn the way 1 ZecL. xii. 2, 6. 1636.] LETTER LX, 135 to the well itself. Thank God that Christ came to your house in your absence and took with Him some of your children. He presumed that much on your love, that ye would not offend ; ^ and howbeit He should take the rest, He cannot come upon your wrong side. I question not, if they were children of gold, but ye think them well bestowed upon Him. Expound well these two rods on you, one in your house at home, another on your own person abroad. Love thinketh no evil. If ye were not Christ's wheat, appointed to be bread in His house, He would not grind you. But keep the middle line, neither despise nor faint (Heb. xii. 5). Ye see your Father is homely with you. Strokes of a father evidence kindness and care ; take them so. I hope your Lord hath manifested Himself to you, and suggested these, or more choice thoughts about His dealing with you. We are using our weak moyen and credit for you up at our own court, as we dow. We pray the King to hear us, and the Son of Man to go side for side with you, and hand in hand in the fiery oven, and to quicken and encourage your unbelieving heart when ye droop and despond. Sir, to the honour of Christ be it said, my faith goeth with my pen now. I am presently believing Christ shall bring you out. Truth in Scotland shall keep the crown of the causeway yet. The saints shall see religion go naked at noon- day, free from shame and fear of men. We shall divide Shechem, and ride upon the high places of Jacob. Eemember my obliged respects and love to Lady Kenmure and her sweet child. Yours ever in his sweet Lord Jesus, Anwoth, July 6, 1636. S. E. LX. — To Marion M'Naught. {WHEN HE WAS UNDER TRIAL BY THE HIGH COMMISSION.) Y DEAR AND WELL-BELOVED IN CHRIST,— I am yet under trial, and have appeared before Christ's forbidden lords,^ for a testimony against them. The Chancellor and the rest tempted me with questions, nothing belonging to my summons, which I wholly declined, notwithstanding of his threats. My newly printed book against Arminians ^ was one challenge ; not lording the prelates * was ^ stumble ; be offended. 2 'Yih.Q prelates ; alluding to 1 Pet. v. 3. ^ Exercitat. Apol. pro DivincL Oratid, published this year (1636) at Amsterdam. * Calling them "Lords." 136 LETTER LXI. [1636. another. The most part of the bishops, when I came in, looked more astonished than I, and heard me with silence. Some spoke for me ; but my Lord ruled it so as I am filled with joy in my sufferings, and I find Christ's cross sweet. What they intend against the next day I know not. Be not secure, but pray. Our Bishop of Galloway said, If the Commission should not give him his will of me (with an oath he said), he would write to the King. The Chancellor summoned me in judgment to appear that day eight days. My Lord has brought me a friend from the Highlands of Argyle, my Lord of Lorn,^ who hath done as much as was within the compass of his power. God gave me favour in his eyes. Mr. Eobert Glendinning is silenced, till he accepts a colleague. We hope to deal yet for him. Christ is worthy to be entrusted. Your husband will get an easy and good way of his business. Ye and I both shall see the salvation of God upon Joseph separate from his brethren. Grace be with you. Edinburgh, 1636. ^^ S. E. LXI. — To the truly Noble and Elect Lady, my Lady Viscountess of Kenmure, on the evening of his banishment to Aberdeen. {HIS ONLY REGRETS— THE CROSS UNSPEAKABLY SWEET— RETROSPECT OF HIS MINISTRY.) OBLE AND ELECT LADY,— That honour that I have prayed for these sixteen years, with submission to my Lord's will, my kind Lord hath now bestowed upon me, even to suffer for my royal and princely King Jesus, and for His kingly crown, and the freedom of His kingdom that His Eather hath given Him. The forbidden lords have sentenced me with deprivation, and confinement within the town of Aberdeen. I am charged in the King's name to enter against the 20th day of August next, and there to remain during the King's pleasure, as they have given it out. Howbeit Christ's green cross, newly laid upon me, be somewhat heavy, while I call to mind the many fair days sweet and comfortable to my soul and to the souls of many others, and how young ones in Christ are plucked from the breast, and the inheritance of God laid waste ; yet that sweet smelled and perfumed cross of Christ is accompanied with sweet refreshments, with the kisses ' Brother to Lady KenmiTre, and afterwards the celebrated Marqnis of Argyle, See Letter LXI. also. 1C36.] LETTER LXL 137 of a King, with the joy of the Holy Ghost, with faith that the Lord hears the sighing of a prisoner, with undoubted hope (as sure as my Lord liveth) after this night to see daylight, and Christ's sky to clear up again upon me, and His poor kirk ; and that in a strange land, among strange faces. He will give favour in the eyes of men to His poor oppressed servant, who dow not but love that lovely One, that princely One, Jesus, the Comforter of his soul. All would be well, if I were free of old challenges for guiltiness, and for neglect in my calling, and for speaking too little for my Well-beloved's crown, honour, and kingdom. O for a day in the assembly of the saints to advocate for King Jesus ! If my Lord also go on now to quarrels I die, I cannot endure it. But I look for peace from Him, because He knoweth I dow bear men's feud, but I dow not bear His feud. This is my only exercise, that I fear I have done little good in my ministry ; but I dare not but say, I loved the bairns of the wedding-chamber, and prayed for and desired the thriving of the marriage, and coming of His kingdom. I apprehend no less than a judgment upon Galloway, and that the Lord shall visit this whole nation for the quarrel of the Cove- nant. But what can be laid upon me, or any the like of me, is too light for Christ. Christ dow bear more, and would bear death and burning quick, in His quick servants, even for this honourable cause that I now suffer for. Yet for all my com- plaints (and He knoweth that I dare not now dissemble). He was never sweeter and kinder than He is novr. One kiss now is sweeter than ten long since ; sweet, sweet is His cross ; light, light and easy is His yoke. 0 what a sweet step were it up to my Father's house through ten deaths, for the truth and cause of that unknown, and so not half well loved. Plant of Eenown, the Man called the Branch, the Chief among ten thousands, the fairest among the sous of men ! 0 what unseen joys, how many hidden heart-burnings of love, are in the " remnants of the sufferings of Christ ! " (Col. i. 24.) My dear worthy Lady, I give it to your Ladyship, under my own hand, my heart writing as well as my hand, — welcome, welcome, sweet, sweet and glorious cross of Christ ; welcome, sweet Jesus, with Thy light cross. Thou hast now gained and gotten all my love from me ; keep what Thou hast gotten ! Only woe, woe is me, for my bereft flock, for the lambs of Jesus, that I fear shall be fed with dry breasts. But I spare now. Madam, I dare not promise to see your Ladyship, because of the little time I have allotted me ; 138 LETTER LXII. l\(^i^. and I purpose to obey the King, who hath power of my body ; and rebellion to kings is unbeseeming Christ's ministers. Be pleased to acquaint my Lady Mar ^ with my case. I will look that your Ladyship and that good lady will be mindful to God of the Lord's prisoner, not for my cause, but for the Gospel's sake. Madam, bind me more, if more can be, to your Ladyship, and write thanks to your brother, my Lord of Lorn, for what he hath done for me, a poor unknown stranger to his Lordship. I shall pray for him and his house, while I live. It is his honour to open his mouth in the streets, for his wronged and oppressed Master Christ Jesus. Now, Madam, commending your Ladyship and the sweet child to the tender mercies of mine own Lord Jesus, and His good-will who dwelt in the Bush, I am yours in his own sweetest Lord Jesus, Edinbuegh, July 28, 1636. S. E. LXII. — To the Lady Culross, on occasion of his banishment to Aberdeen. [Elizabeth Melville, wife of James Colvill, the eldest son of Alexander, Com- niendator of Culross, was tlio daughter of Sir James Melville of Halhill, in Fife. Her father was ambassador from Queen Mary to Queen Elizabeth, and a privy councillor to King James VI. He was also a man of piety, who (says Livingstone), "professed he had got assurance from the Lord, that himself, wife, and all his children, should meet in heaven." Lady Culross held a high place among the eminent Christians of her day. Livingstone says : "She was famous for her piety, and for her dream concerning her spiritual condition, which she put in verse, which was published by others. Of all that ever I saw, she was most unwearied in religious exercises ; and the more she enjoyed access to God therein she hungered the more." She was present at the famous Communion at Shotts in June 1C36, when the sermon preached by Livingstone, on the Monday after, was the means, it is believed, of the conversion of not less than five hundred individuals. The night before had been spent in prayer by a great number of Christians in a large room of the inn where she slept ; and the minister who should have preached on Monday having fallen sick, it \vas at her suggestion that the other ministers assisting on that occasion, to whom Livingstone was a stranger, laid upon him the work of addressing the people. There is a poem written by her, entitled " Ane Godlie Dream ;" and there is still preserved a sonnet of her composition, which she sent to Mr. John Welsh when he was imprisoned in Blackness, 1605 : — " My dear brother, with courage bear the cross, Joy shall be joined with all thy sorrow here. High is thy hope, disdain this earthly dross, Once shall you see the wished day appear. "Now it is dark, thy sky cannot be clear; After the clouds it shall be calm anon ; Wait on His will whose blood hath bought thee dear: Extol His name, though outward joys be gone. " Look to the Lord, thou art not left alone, Since He is thine, what pleasure canst thou take ! He is at hand, and hears thy every groan : End out thy light, and suffer for His sake. "A sight most bright thy soul shall shortly see. When store of gloro thy rich reward shall be." — Wodroio MSS. Adv. Lib. Edin. vol. xxix.] 1 See Letter OXL. 1636.] LETTER LXIL 139 {CHALLENGES OF CONSCIENCE— THE CROSS NO BURDEN.) ADAM, — Your letter came in due time to me, now a prisoner of Christ, and in bonds for the Gospel. I am sentenced with deprivation and confinement within the town of Aberdeen. But 0 my guiltiness, the follies of my youth, the neglects in my calling, and especially in not speaking more for the kingdom, crown, and sceptre of my royal and princely King Jesus, do so stare me in the face, that I apprehend anger in that which is a crown of rejoicing to the dear saints of God. This, before my compearance, which was three several days, did trouble me, and burdeneth me more now; howbeit Christ, and in Him God reconciled, met me with open arms, and trysted me precisely at the entry of the door of the Chancellor's hall, and assisted me so to answer, as that the ad- vantage is not theirs but Christ's. Alas ! that is no cause of wondering that I am thus borne down with challenges ; for the world hath mistaken me, and no man knoweth what guiltiness is in me so well as these two, who keep my eyes now waking and my heart heavy, I mean (1) my heart and conscience, and (2) my Lord, who is greater than my heart. Shew your brother that I desire him, while he is on the watch-tower, to plead with his mother, and to plead with this land, and spare not to cry for my sweet Lord Jesus His fair crown, that the interdicted and forbidden lords are plucking off His royal head. If I were free of challenges, and a High Commission within my soul, I would not give a straw to go to my Father's house through ten deaths, for the truth and cause of my lovely, lovely One, Jesus. But I walk in heaviness now. If ye love me, and Christ in me, my dear Lady, pray, pray for this only, that bygones betwixt my Lord and me may be bygones, and that He would pass from the summons of His High Commis- sion, and seek nothing from me, but what He will do for me and work in me. If your ladyship knew me as I do myself, ye would say, " Poor soul, no marvel." It is not my apprehension that createth this cross to me ; it is too real, and hath sad and certain grounds. But I will not believe that God will take this advantage of me, when my back is at the wall. He who for- biddeth to add affliction to affliction, will He do it Himself ? Why should He pursue a dry leaf and stubble ? Desire Him to spare me now. Also the memory of the fair feast-days, that Christ and I had in His banqueting-house of wine, and of the scattered flock 140 LETTER LXIII. [1636. once committed to me, and now taken off my hand by Himself, because I was not so faithful in the end as I was in the two first years of my entry, when sleep departed from my eyes, because my soul was taken up with a care for Christ's lambs, — even these add sorrow to my sorrow. Now my Lord hath only given me this to say, and I write it under mine own hand (be ye the Lord's servant's witness), welcome, welcome, sweet, sweet cross of Christ; welcome, fair, fair, lovely, royal King with Thine own cross. Let us all three go to heaven together. Neither care I much to go from the south of Scotland to the north, and to be Christ's prisoner amongst unco faces, in a place of this kingdom, which I have little reason to be in love with. I know Christ shall make Aberdeen my garden of delights. I am fully persuaded that Scotland shall eat Ezekiel's book, that is written within and without, "lamentation, and mourning, and woe" (Ezek. ii. 10). But the saints shall get a drink of the well that goeth through the streets of the New Jerusalem, to put it down. Thus hoping that ye will think upon the poor prisoner of Christ, I pray, grace, grace be with you. Your Ladyship's in his sweet Lord Jesus, Edinbukgh, Jvly 30, 1636. S* K- LXIII. — To Mr. Robert CuNNiNQHASf, Minister of the Gospel at Holywood, in Ireland. [Mr. Robert Cunningham was for some time employed as chaplain to the Earl of Buccleuch's regiment in Holland. On the return of the troops to Scotland, he removed to the north of Ireland, where he was admitted minister of Holywood in 1615. "He was the one man to my discerning," says Livingstone, "of all that ever I saw, who resembled most the meekness of Jesus Christ in his whole carriage, and was so far reverenced by all, even the most wicked, that he was oft troubled with that Scripture, 'Woe to you wlien all men speak well of you.'" He continued to labour in his charge, and in the surrounding district, with great success, until the Presbyterian ministers began to be molested for their nonconformity. Owing to the singular gentleness of Cunningham's disposition, he was for some time less subjected to trouble than his brethren ; but at length, on the 12th of August 1636, he and four other ministers (among whom was Mr. Hamilton mentioned in the close of this letter) were formally deposed for refusing to subscribe certain canons, one of whicli was kneeling at the Lord's Supper. Not long alter, he, with some of his deposed brethren, came over to Scotland ; but he did not long survive his arrival. He died at Irvine, on the 29th of March 1637, scarcely eight months after this letter was written. A little before he expired, his wife sitting on the front of his bed with her hand clasiied in his, after connnitting to God his flock at Holywood, liis friends and liis children, he added, " And last of all, I recommend to Thee this gentlewoman, who is no more my wife." His alfectionate wife bursting into tears, he sought by comfortable words to allay her giiof ; but in the act of so doing, fell asleep iu Jesus. ] 1636.1 LETTER LXIIt. i4t {CONSOLATION TO A BROTHER IN TRIBULATION— HIS OWN DEPRIVATION OF MINISTRY— CHRIST WORTH SUFFERING FOR.) ''^^^ELL-BELOVED AND EEVEEEND BEOTHER,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. Upon acquaint- ance in Christ, I thought good to take the opportunity of writing to you. Seeing it hath seemed good to the Lord of the harvest to take the hooks out of our hands for a time, and to lay upon us a more honourable service, even to suffer for His name, it were good to comfort one another in writing. I have had a desire to see you in the face ; yet now being the prisoner of Christ, it is taken away. I am greatly comforted to hear of your soldier's stately ^ spirit, for your princely and royal Captain Jesus our Lord, and for the grace of God in the rest of our dear brethren with you. You have heard of my trouble, I suppose. It hath pleased our sweet Lord Jesus to let loose the malice of these interdicted lords in His house to deprive me of my ministry at Anwoth, and to confine me, eight score miles from thence, to Aberdeen ; and also (which was not done to any before) to inhibit me to speak at all in Jesus' name, within this kingdom, under the pain of rebellion. The cause that ripened their hatred was my book against the Arminians, whereof they accused me, on those three days I appeared before them. But, let our crowned King in Zion reign ! By His grace the loss is tlieirs, the advantage is Christ's and truth's. Albeit this honest cross gained some ground on me, and my heaviness and my inward challenges of conscience for a time were sharp, yet now, for the encouragement of you all, I dare say it, and write it under my hand, " Welcome, welcome, sweet, sweet cross of Christ." I verily think the chains of my Lord Jesus are all overlaid with pure gold, and that His cross is perfumed, and that it smelleth of Christ, and that the victory shall be by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of His truth, and that Christ, lying on His back, in His weak servants, and oppressed truth, shall ride over His enemies' bellies, and shall " strike through kings in the day of His wrath " (Psa. ex. 4). It is time we laugh when He laugheth ; and seeing He is now pleased to sit ^ with wrongs for a time, it becometh us to be silent until the Lord hath let the enemies enjoy their hungry, lean, and feckless paradise. Blessed are they who are content to take strokes with weeping Christ. Faith will trust the Lord, and is ^ See Glossary. ^ Eudurc. 142 LETTER LXIII. [1636. not hasty, nor headstrong ; neither is faith so timorous as to flatter a temptation, or to bud and bribe the cross. It is little up or little down^ that the Lamb and His followers can get no law-surety, nor truce with crocses ; it must be so, till we be up in our Father's house. My heart is woe indeed for my mother Church, that hath played the harlot with many lovers. Her Husband hath a mind to sell her for her horrible transgressions ; and heavy will the hand of the Lord be upon this backsliding nation. The ways of our Zion mourn ; her gold has become dim, her white Nazarites are black like a coal. How shall not the children weep, when the Husband and the mother cannot agree ! Yet I believe Scotland's sky shall clear again ; that Christ shall build again the old waste places of Jacob ; that our dead and dry bones shall become one army of living men, and that our "Well- beloved may yet feed among the lilies, until the day break and the shadows flee away (Song iv. 5, 6). My dear brother, let us help one another with our prayers. Our King shall mow down His enemies, and shall come from Bozrah with His garments all dyed in blood. And for our consolation shall He appear, and call His wife Hephzibah, and His land Beulah (Isa. Ixii. 4); for He will rejoice over us and marry us, and Scotland shall say, " What have I to do any more with idols ? " Only let us be faithful to Him that can ride through hell and death upon a windlestrae, and His horse never stumble ; and let Him make of me a bridge over a water, so that His high and holy name may be glorified in me. Strokes with the sweet Mediator's hand are very sweet. He was always sweet to my soul ; but since I suffered for Him, His breath hath a sweeter smell than before. Oh that every hair of my head, and every member and every bone in my body, were a man to witness a fair confession for Him ! I would think all too little for Him. "When I look over beyond the line, and beyond death, to the laughing side of the world, I triumph, and ride upon the high places of Jacob ; howbeit otherwise I am a faint, dead-hearted, cowardly man, oft borne down, and hungry in waiting for the marriage supper of the L-amb. Nevertheless, I think it the Lord's wise love that feeds us with hunger, and makes us fat with wants and desertions. I know not, my dear brother, if our worthy brethren be gone to sea or not. They are on my heart and in my prayers. If they be yet with you, salute my dear friend, John Stuart, my well-beloved brethren in the Lord, Mr. Blair, Mr. Hamilton, Mr ^ Of little inomuut. 1636.] LETTER LXIV. 143 Livingston, and Mr M'Clelland,^ and acquaint them with my troubles, and entreat them to pray for the poor afflicted prisoner of Christ. They are dear to my soul. I seek your prayers and theirs for my flock : their remembrance breaketh my heart. I desire to love that people, and others my dear acquaintance in Christ, with love in God, and as God loveth them. I know that He who sent me to the west and south, sends me also to the north. I will charge my soul to believe and to wait for Him, and will follow His providence, and not go before it, nor stay behind it. Now, my dear brother, taking farewell in paper, I commend you all to the word of His grace, and to the work of His Spirit, to Him who holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, that you may be kept spotless till the day of Jesus our Lord. I am your brother in affliction in our sweet Lord Jesus, From Irvine, being on ray journey to Christ's c p Palace in Aberdeen, August 4, 1636. • LXIV. — To Alexander Gordon of Earlston. {HIS FEELINGS UPON LEAVING ANWOTH.) UCH HONOURED SIR,— I find small hopes of Q.'s business.^ I intend, after the council-day, to go on to Aberdeen. The Lord is with me : I care not what man can do. I burden no man, and I want nothing. No king is better provided than I am. Sweet, sweet, and easy is the cross of my Lord. All men I look in the face (of whatsoever denomination, nobles and poor, acquaintance and strangers) are friendly to me. My Well-beloved is some kinder and more warmly than ordinary, and cometh and visiteth my soul. My' chains are overgilded with gold. Only the remembrance of my fair days with Christ in Anwoth, and of my dear flock (whose case is my heart's sorrow), is vinegar to my sugared wine. Yet both sweet and sour feed my soul. No pen, no words, no ingine can express to you the loveliness of my only, only Lord Jesus. Thus, in haste, making for my palace at Aberdeen, I bless you, your wife, your eldest son, and other children. Grace, grace be with you. Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus, Edinburgh, Sept. 5, 1636. S. R. ^ Correspondents who, because of the oppressive measures of the prelates, intended to proceed to New England. There was a M 'Lelland of Balmagachan, near Roberton, in the parish of Borgue ; but this is not he. This was John M 'Lelland, sometime minister of Kirkcudbright, a friend of E. Blair's. * Probably " Queeusberry." 144 LETTERS LXV., LXVI. [^6^6. LXV. — To Egbert Gordon of Knockhreclt; on his way to Ahenhen. [Robert Gordon of Knockbrex, in the parish of Borgue, which adjoins Anwoth, is, by Livingstone in his ' ' Characteristics," described as " a single-hearted and painful Christian, much employed at parliaments and public meetings after the year 1638." He was a member of the famous Assembly which met at Glasgow in 1638, as com- missioner from the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright. The precise date of his death is uncertain ; but we lind, in 1657, John Gordon in Garloch, five miles from Dairy, is retoured "heir of Robert Gordon of Knockbreck, his granduncle, in the lands of Knockbreck." {Inq. Retor. Abbrcv. Kirkcudbright, No. 274.) This John Gordon, and Robert, his brother, were executed together at Edinburgh on the 7th of December 1666, for having been engaged in the rising at Pcntland. (See Letter CCXVn. They inherited, and suffered for, the principles of Robert Gordon of Knock- breck, their gi-anduncle, to wliom this letter was written. Knockbrex stands near the sea-shore, amid thick woods, looking down on the opening of Wigtown Bay, But a modern mansion has taken the place of Gordon's residence.] {HOW UPHELD ON THE WAY.) Y DEAEEST BROTHEE, — I see Christ thinketh shame (if I may speak so) to be in such a poor man's common as mine. I burden no man ; I want nothing; no face hath gloomed upon me since I left you. God's sun and fair weather conveyeth me to my time- paradise in Aberdeen. Christ hath so handsomely fitted for my shoulders this rough tree of the cross, as that it hurteth me no ways. My treasure is up in Christ's coffers ; my comforts are greater than ye can believe ; my pen shall lie for penury of words to write of them. God knoweth I am filled with the joy of the Holy Ghost. Only my memory of you, my dearest in the Lord, my flock and others, keepeth me under, and from being exalted above measure. Christ's sweet sauce hath this sour mixed with it ; but 0 such a sweet and pleasant taste ! I find small hopes of Q.'s matter. Thus in haste. Eemember me to your wife, and to William Gordon. Grace be with you, Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus, EuiNBUKGii, Sept. 5, 1636. ^- ^• LXVI.— To BOBERT Gordon of Knockh-eck, after arriving at Aberdce7i. {CHALLENGES OF CONSCIENCE— EASE IN ZION.) EAE BEOTHEE, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am, by God's mercy, come now to Aberdeen, the place of my confinement, and settled in an honest man's house. I find the town's-men cold, general, and dry in their kindness ; yet I find a lodging in the heart of 1636.] LETTER LXVIL 145 many strangers. My challenges are revived again, and I find old sores bleeding of new ; dangerous and painful is an under- cotfced conscience ; yet I have an eye to the blood that is physic for such sores. But, verily, I see Christianity is conceived to be more easy and lighter than it is ; so that I sometimes think I never knew anything but the letters of that name ; for our nature contenteth itself with little in godliness. Our "Lord, Lord," seemeth to us ten " Lord-Lords." Little holiness in our balance is much, because it is our own holiness ; and we love to lay small burdens upon our soft natures, and to make a fair court-way to heaven. And I know it were necessary to take more pains than we do, and not to make heaven a city more easily taken than God hath made it. I persuade myself that many runners shall come short, and get a disappointment. Oh ! how easy is it to deceive ourselves, and to sleep, and wish that heaven may fall down in our laps ! Yet for all my Lord's glooms, I find Him sweet, gracious, loving, kind ; and I want both pen and words to set forth the fairness, beauty, and sweet- ness of Christ's love, and the honour of this cross of Christ, which is glorious to me, though the world thinketh shame thereof. I verily think that the cross of Christ would blush and think shame of these thin-skinned worldings, who are so married to their credit that they are ashamed of the suffer- ings of Christ. 0 the honour to be scourged and stoned with Christ, and to go through a furious-faced death to life eternal ! But men would have law-borrows against Christ's cross. Now, my dear brother, forget not the prisoner of Christ, for I see very few here who kindly fear God. Grace be with you. Let my love in Christ and hearty affection be remembered to your kind wife, to your brother John, and to all friends. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Sept. 20, 1636. S. R LXVII. — For William Fullartok, Provost of Kirlccudbright. [W[LLiAM FuLLARTON, as has bcen formerly noticed, was tlie husband of Marion M 'Naught. His religious principles were the same with those of iiis excellent wife, and he was a man of virtue, integrity, and piety. He proved himself the patron of the oppressed in the case of Mr. Robert Glendinning, the aged minister of Kirkcudbright ; to which case there is evident allusion in this letter. Mr. Glendinning having refused to conform to Prelacy, and to receive, aa his assistant and successor, a man whom Bishop Sydserif intruded upon him and "■iie people of Kirkcudbright, the bishop suspended him from his office, and K. 146 LETTER LXVII. [1636. sentenced him to be imprisoned. Provost FuUartou, and the other magistrates of the burgh (one of whom was Mr. William Glendinniug, son of the ]ninister), indignant at such tyrannical proceedings, refused to incarcerate their own pastor, then nearly eighty years of age, and wore determined, with the great body of the inhabitants of the town, to attend upon his ministry. Sydserff, too proud and violent to allow his authority to be thus despised, caused Bailie Glendinning to be imprisoned in Kirkcudbright, and the otlier magistrates to be confined within the town of Wigtown, while he sentenced the aged minister to remain within the bounds of his parish, and forbade him to exercise any part of his ministerial functions. But he found it impossible, by all the means he could employ, to reduce these refractory magistrates to obedience. The firmness which Fullarton manifested on this occasion is warmly commended by Rutherford.] {ENCOURAGEMENT TO SUFFER FOR CHRIST.) UCH HONOUEED AND VERY DEAR FRIEND,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I am in good case, blessed be the Lord, remaining here in this unco town a prisoner for Christ and His truth. And I am not ashamed of His cross. My soul is comforted with the consolations of His sweet presence, for whom I suffer. I earnestly entreat you to give your honour and authority to Christ, and for Christ ; and be not dismayed for flesh and blood, while you are for the Lord, and for His truth and cause. And howbeit we see truth put to the worse for the time, yet Christ will be a frieud to truth, and will do for those who dare hazard all that they have for Him and for His glory. Sir, our fair day is coming, and the court will change, and wicked men will weep after noon, and sorer than the sons of God, who weep in the morning. Let us believe and hope for God's salvation. Sir, I hope I need not write to you for your kindness and love to my brother,^ who is now to be distressed for the truth of God as well as I am. I think myself obliged to pray for you, and your worthy and kind bed-fellow and children, for your love to him and me also. I hope your pains for us in Christ shall not be lost. Thus recommending you to the tender mercy and loving-kindness of God, I rest. Your very loving and affectionate brother, Aberdeen, Sept. 21, 1636. S. R. ^ His brother was a teacher in Kirkcudbright, and between him and Samuel there was a warm attachment, and strong sympathies. He, too, suffered persecu- tion for his adherence to the cause of Presbytery. For this, and his zealous i^upport of Mr. Glendinning, whom the Bishop of Galloway treated with such cruelty, he was in November 1636 condemned to resign his charge, and remove from Kirk- cudbright before the ensuing term of Wliitsunday. 1636.] LETTER LXVIII. 147 LXVIII. — To John Fleming, Bailiffs (Bailie) of Leith. [Of Mr. Fleming nothing can be ascertained, unless it is he who is mentioned by Livingston as being a merchant in Edinburgh, a man of note among the godly.] (TffJS SWEETNESS AND FAITHFULNESS OF CHRIST S LOVE.) Y VERY WORTHY FRIEND, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I received your letter. I bless the Lord through Jesus Christ, I find His word good, " I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction " (Isa. xlviii. 10). "I will be with him in trouble" (Ps. xci. 15). I never expected other at Christ's hand but much good and comfort ; and I am not disappointed. I find my Lord's cross overgilded and oiled with comforts. My Lord hath now shown me the white side of His cross. I would not exchange my weeping in prison with the Fourteen Prelates'^ laughter, amidst their hungry and lean joys. This world knoweth not the sweetness of Christ's love ; it is a mystery to them. At my first coming here, I found great heaviness, especially because it had pleased the prelates to add this gentle cruelty to my former sufferings (for it is gentle to them), to inhibit the ministers of the town to give me the liberty of a pulpit. I said, What aileth Christ at my service ? But I was a fool ; He hath chid Himself friends with me. If ye and others of God's children shall praise His great name, who maketh worthless men witnesses for Him, my silence and sufferings shall preach more than my tongue could do. If His glory be seen in me, I am satisfied ; for I want for no kindness from Christ. And, sir, I dare not smother His liberality. I v/rite it to you, that ye may praise, and desire your brother and others to join with me in this work. This land shall be made desolate. Our iniquities are full ; the Lord saith, we shall drink, and spue, and fall. Remember my love to your good kind wife. Grace be v/ith you. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Nov. 13, 1636. S. R. ^ Referring probably to the number of prelates (consisting of two archbishops and twelve bishops) who were members of the High Commission by whom he wag sentenced to imprisonment. 148 LETTER LXIX. [1636. LXIX. — To the, Noble and Christian Lady the Viscountess of Kenmure, {J//S ENJOYMENT OF CHRIST IN ABERDEEN— A SIGHT OF CHRIST EXCEEDS ALL REPORTS— SOME ASHAMED OF HIM AND HIS.) Y VEEY HONOUEABLE AND DEAR LADY,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I cannot forget your Ladyship, and that sweet child. I desire to hear what the Lord is doing to you and him. To write to me were charity. I cannot but write to my friends, that Christ hath trysted me in Aberdeen ; and my adversaries have sent me here to be feasted with love banquets with my royal, high, high, and princely King Jesus. Madam, why should I smother Christ's honesty ? I dare not conceal His goodness to my soul ; He looked fremed and unco-like upon me when I came first here; but I believe Himself better than His looks. I shall not again quarrel Christ for a gloom, now He hath taken the mask off His face, and saith, " Kiss thy fill ; " and what can I have more when I get great heaven in my little arms ? Oh, how sweet are the sufferings of Christ for Christ ! God forgive them that raise an ill report upon the sweet cross of Christ. It is but our weak and dim eyes, and our looking only to the black side that makes us mistake. Those who can take that crabbed tree handsomely upon their back, and fasten it on cannily, shall find it such a burden as wings unto a bird, or sails to a ship. Madam, rue not of your having chosen the better part. Upon my salvation, this is Christ's truth I now suJBfer for. If I found but cold comfort in my sufierings, I would not beguile others ; I would have told you plainly. But the truth is, Christ's crown, His sceptre, and the freedom of His kingdom, is that which is now caUed in question ; because we will not allow that Christ should pay tribute and be a vassal to the shields of the earth, therefore the sons of our mother are angry at us. But it becometh not Christ to hold any man's stirrup. It were a sweet and honourable death to die for the honour of that royal and princely King Jesus. His love is a mystery to the world. I v/ould not have believed that there was so much in Clirist as there is. " Come and see " maketh Christ to be known in His excellency and glory. I wish all this nation knew how sweet His breath is. It is little to see Christ in a book, as men do the world in a card. They talk of Christ by the book and the tongue, and no more ; but to come nigh Christ, 1636.] LETTER LXIX. 149 and lianse Him, and embrace Him, is another thing, Madam, I write to your honour, for your encouragement in that honourable profession Christ hath honoured you with. Ye have gotten the sunny side of the brae, and the best of Christ's good things. He hath not given you the bastard's portion ; and howbeit ye get strokes and sour looks from your Lord, yet believe His love more than your own feeling, for this world can take nothing from you that is truly yours, and death can do you no wrong. Your rock doth not ebb and flow, but your sea. That which Christ hath said. He will bide by it. He will be your tutor. You shall not get you charters of heaven to play you with. It is good that ye have lost your credit with Christ, and that Lord Free-will shall not be your tutor. Christ will lippen the taking you to heaven, neither to yourself, nor any deputy, but only to Himself. Blessed be your tutor. When your Head shall appear, your Bridegroom and Lord, your day shall then dawn, and it shall never have an afternoon, nor an evening shadow. Let your child be Christ's ; let him stay beside you as thy Lord's pledge that you shall willingly render again, if God will. Madam, I find folks here kind to me ; but in the night, and under their breath. My Master's cause may not come to the crown of the causeway. Others are kind according to their fashion. Many think me a strange man, and my cause not good ; but I care not much for man's tlioughts or approbation. I think no shame of the cross. The preachers of the town pretend great love, but the prelates have added to the rest this gentle cruelty (for so they think of it), to discharge me of the pulpits of this town. The people murmur and cry out against it ; and to speak truly (howbeit Christ is most indulgent to me otherwise), my silence on the Lord's day keeps me from being exalted above measure, and from startling in the heat of my Lord's love. Some people affect me, for the which cause, I hear the preachers here purpose to have my confinement changed to another place ; so cold is northern love ; but Christ and I will bear it. I have wrestled long with this sad silence. I said, what aileth Christ at my service ? and my soul hath been at a pleading with Christ, and at yea and nay. But I will yield to Him, providing my suffering may preach more than my tongue did ; for I give not Clirist an inch but for twice as good again. In a word, I am a fool, and He is God. I will hold my peace hereafter. Let me hear from your Ladyship, and your dear child. Pray for the prisoner of Christ, who is mindful of your Lady- 15© LETTER LXX. [1636. ship. Remember my obliged obedience to my good Lady Man. Grace, grace be with you. I write and pray blessings to your sweet child. Yours in all dutiful obedience in his only Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Nov. 22, 1636. ^- ^• LXX. — To the Right Honourable and Christian Lady, my Lady Viscountess of Kenmure. EXERCISE UNDER RESTRAINT FROM PREACHING— THE DEVIL —CHRISTS LOVING KINDNESS-PROGRESS.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I received your Ladyship's letter. It refreshed me in my heavi- ness. The blessing and prayer of a prisoner of Christ come upon you. Since my coming hither, Galloway sent me not a line, except what my brother, Earlston, and his son, did write. I cannot get my papers transported ; but. Madam, I want not kindness of one who hath the gate of it. Christ (if He had never done more for me since I was born) hath. engaged my heart, and gained my blessing in this house of my pilgrimage. It pleaseth my Well-beloved to dine with a poor prisoner, and the King's spikenard casteth a fragrant smell. Nothing grieveth me, but that I eat my feasts my lone, and that I cannot edify His saints. 0 that this nation knew what is betwixt Him and me ; none would scar at the cross of Christ ! My silence eats me up, but He hath told me He thanketh me no less, than if I were preaching daily. He sees how gladly I would be at it ; and therefore my wages are going to the fore, up in heaven, as if I were still preaching Christ. Captains pay duly bedfast soldiers, howbeit they do ^ nor march, nor carry armour. " Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength" (Isa. xlix. 5). My garland, " the banished minister " (the term of Aberdeen), ashameth me not. I have seen the white side of Christ's cross ; how lovely hath He been to His oppressed servant ! " The Lord executeth judgment for the oppressed. He giveth food to the hungry : the Lord looseth the prisoner ; the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down : the Lord preserveth the stranger" (Ps. cxlvi. 7, 9). If it were come to exchanging of crosses, I would not exchange my cross with any. I am well » Some editions read "dow," — are not able. £636.3 LETTER LXX. 151 pleased with Christ, and He with me ; I hope none shall hear v&y It is true for all this, I get my meat with many strokes, and am seven times a-day up and down, and am often anxious and cast down for the case of my oppressed brother ; yet I hope the Lord will be surety for His servant. But now upon some weak, very weak experience, I am come to love a rumbling and raging devil best. Seeing we must have a devil to hold the saints waking, I wish a cumbersome devil, rather than a secure and sleeping one.^ At my first coming hither, I took the dorts at Christ, and took up a stomach against Him ; I said, He had cast me over the dike of the vineyard, like a dry tree. But it was His mercy, I see, that the fire did not burn the dry tree; and now, as if my Lord Jesus had done that fault, and not I (who belied my Lord), He hath made the first mends, and He spake not one word against me, but hath come again and quickened my soul v/ith His presence. Nay, now I think the very annuity and casualties of the cross of Christ Jesus my Lord, and these comforts that accompany it, better than the world's set-rent. 0 how many rich off-fallings are in my King's house ! I am persuaded, and dare pawn my salvation on it, that it is Christ's truth I now suffer for. I know His comforts are no dreams ; He would not put His seal on blank paper, nor deceive His afflicted ones that trust in Him. Your Ladyship wrote to me that ye are yet an ill scholar. Madam, ye must go in at heaven's gates, and your book in your hand, still learning. You have had your own large share of troubles, and a double portion ; but it saith your Father counteth you not a bastard ; full - begotten bairns are nurtured (Heb. xii. 8). I long to hear of the child. I write the blessings of Christ's prisoner and the mercies of God to him. Let him be Christ's and yours betwixt you, but let Christ be whole play- maker. Let Him be the leader ; and you the borrower, not an owner. Madam, it is not long since I did write to your Ladyship that Christ is keeping mercy for you ; and I bide by it still, and now I write it under my hand. Love Him dearly. Win in to see Him ; there is in Him that which you never saw. He is aye nigh ; He is a tree of life, green and blossoming, both summer and winter. There is a nick in Christianity, to the which who- soever Cometh, they see and feel more than others can do. I ^ In Thomson's edition this is explained by referring to Proverbs xiv. 10. ^ " Trial of Faith," p. 462, 1655, uses the same words. 152 LETTER LXXI [1636. invite you of new to coine to Him. " Come and see," will speak better things of Him than I can do. " Come nearer " will say much. God never thought this world a portion worthy of you. He would not even you to a gift of dirt and clay ; nay, He will not give you Esau's portion, but reserves the inheritance of Jacob for you. Are ye not well married now ? Have you not a good husband now ? My heart cannot express what sad nights I have had for the virgin daughter of my people. Woe is me, for my time is coming. " Behold, the day, behold, the day is come ; the morning hath gone forth, the rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded, violence is risen up in a rod of wickedness, the sun is gone down upon our prophets." A dry wind upon Scotland, but neither to fan nor to cleanse ; but out of all question, when the Lord hath cut down the forest, the aftergrowth of Lebanon shall flourish ; they shall plant vines in our mountains, and a cloud shall yet fill the temple. Now the blessing of our dearest Lord Jesus, and the blessing of him that is " separate from his brethren," come upon you. Yours, at Aberdeen, the prisoner of Christ, Abekdeen. ^- -'^• LXXI.— To Mr. Hugh M'Kail. [Mr. Hugh M'Kail was at tins time minister of Irvine. Previous to his settlement in that parish, Rutherford was very desirous of seeing liim settled assistant and successor to Mr. Robert Glendinning, the aged minister of Kirkcudbright ; the people too had an eye to him, but were disappointed, having been anticipated by the parish of which he was now pastor. He and Mr. William Cockburn were appointed by the General Assembly of 1644 to visit the north of Ireland for throe months, with the view of promoting the interests of the Presbyterian Church in that countiy. He was ultimately translated to Edinburgh. In the unhappy contro- versy between the Resolutioncrs and Protesters, M'Kail took the side of the former; but was among the more moderate of the party. Uaillie often refers to him in liis letters. He died in the beginning of the year 1660, and was buried in the Grey- friars' churchyard, Edinburgh. (Lament's " Dinry," p. 121.) He was the brother of Mr. Matthew M'Kail of Bothwell, who was the father of the youthful Hugh M'Kail, and young Hugh, who nobly suffered in 1666, was educated in Edinburgh, under the superintendence of this uncle.] {CHRIST TO BE TRUSTED AMID TRIAL.) EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,— I thank you for your letter. I cannot but show you, that as I never expected auytliing from Christ, but much good and kindness, so He hatli made me to find it in the house of my pilgrimage. And believe me, brother, I give it to you under mine own hand-writ, that whoso looketh to the white side of Christ's cross, and can take it up handsomely with faith 1636.] LETTER LXXII. 153 and courage, shall find it such a burden as sails are to a ship, or wings to a bird. I find that my Lord hath overgilded that black tree, and hath perfumed it, and oiled it with joy and consolation. Like a fool, once I would chide and plead with Christ, and slander Him to others, of unkindness.^ But I trust in God, not to call His glooms unkind again ; for He hath taken from me my sackcloth ; and I verily cannot tell you what a poor Joseph and prisoner (with whom my mother's children were angry) doth now think of kind Christ. I will chide no more, providing He will quit me all by-gones ; for I am poor. I am taught in this ill weather to go on the lee-side of Christ, and to put Him in be- tween me and the storm; and (I thank God) I walk on the sunny side of the brae. I write it that ye may speak in my behalf the praises of my Lord to others, that my bonds may preach. 0 if all Scotland knew the feasts, and love-blinks, and visits that the prelates have sent unto me ! I will verily give my Lord Jesus a free discharge of all that I, like a fool, laid to His charge, and beg Him pardon, to the mends. God grant that in my temptations I come not on His wrong side again, and never again fall a raving against my Physician in my fever. Brother, plead with your mother while ye have time. A pulpit would be a high feast to me ; but I dare not say one word against Him who hath done it. I am not out of the house as yet. My sweet Master saith, I shall have house-room at His own elbow ; albeit their synagogue will need force to cast me out. A letter were a work of charity to me. Grace be with you. Pray for me. Your brother and Christ's prisoner, Aberdeen, Nov. 22, 1636. S. E. LXXII. — To William Gordon of Roherton. [William Gordon of Roberton, in the parish of Borgue in Galloway, close to Knockbrex, was the father of William Gordon of Roberton, who joined with the Covenanters in the rising at Pentland in 1666, and was killed, " to the great loss of the country where he lived," says Wodrow, "and his own family, his aged father having no more sons." Mary, a daughter of this venerable old man, to whom this letter is addressed, suffered much for nonconformity at the hands of Claverhouse and his friends. She was married to John Gordon of Largmore (which is in Kells, near Kenmure Castle), who, in the battle at Pentland, was severely wounded, and, returning to his oisnr house, died in the course of a few days. The old man did not long survive the death of his son and son-in-law ; for, on the 8th of September 1668, Mary Gordon is retoured heir of William Gordon of Roberton, her father. In Kells churchyard, near the gate, there is a short epitaph : " Here lyes the corpse of Roger Gordon of Largmore, who dyed March 2, 1662, aged 72 years ; and of John Gordon of Largmore his grandchild, who dyed January 6, 1667, of his wounds got at Pentland in defence of the Covenanted Reformation."] ^ At one time I would have falsely charged Him with unkindness. 154 LETTER LXXIJ. [1636. {HOW TRIALS ARE MISIMPROVED~THE INFINITE VALUE OF CHRIS T— DESPISED WA RNINGS. ) I EAR BROTHER, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. So often as I think on our case, in our soldier's night- watch, and of our fighting life in the fields, while we are here, I am forced to say, prisoners in a dungeon, condemned by a judge to want the light of the sun, and moon, and candle, till their dying day, are no more, nay, not so much, to be pitied as we are. For they are weary of their life, they hate their prison ; but we fall to, in our prison, where we see little, to drink ourselves drunk with the night-pleasures of our weak dreams ; and we long for no better life than this. But at the blast of the last trumpet, and the shout of the archangel, when God shall take down the shepherd's tent of this fading world, we shall not have so much as a drink of water, of all the dreams that we now build on. Alas ! that the sharp and bitter blasts on face and sides, which meet us in this life, have not learned us mortification, and made us dead to this world ! We buy our own sorrow, and we pay dear for it, when we spend out our love, our joy, our desires, our confidence, upon an handful of snow and ice, that time will melt away to nothing, and go thirsty out of the drunken inn when all is done. Alas ! that we inquire not for the clear fountain, but are so foolish as to drink foul, muddy, and rotten waters, even till our bed-time. And then in the Resurrection, when we shall be awakened, our yesternight's sour drink and swinish dregs shall rift up upon us ; and sick, sick, shall many a soul be then. I know no wholesome fountain but one. I know not a thing worth the buying but heaven ; and my own mind is, if comparison were made betwixt Christ and heaven, I would sell heaven with my blessing, and buy Christ. 0 if I could raise the market for Ohrist, and heighten the market a pound for a penny, and cry up Christ in men's estimation ten thousand talents more than men think of Him ! But they are cheapening Him,^ and crying Him down, and valuing Him at their unworthy halfpenny ; or else exchanging and bartering Christ with the miserable old fallen house of this vain world. Or then they lend Him out upon interest, and play the usurers with Christ : because they profess Him, and give out before men that Christ is their treasure and stock ; and in the mean time, praise of men, and a l Briuging down the price, perhaps alluding to Zech. xi. 31. 1636.] LETTER LXXIJ. 155 name, and ease, and the summer sun of the Gospel, is the usury they would be at. So, when the trial cometh, they quit the stock for the interest, and lose all. Happy are they who can keep Christ by Himself alone, and keep Him clean and whole till God come and count with them. I know that in your hard and heavy trials long since, ye thought well and highly of Christ ; but, truly, no cross should be old to us. We should not forget them because years are come betwixt us and them, and cast them byhand as we do old clothes. We may make a cross old in time, new in use, and as fruitful as in the beginning of it. God is where and what He was seven years ago, whatever change may be in us. I speak not this as if I thought ye had forgotten what God did, to have your love long since, but that ye may awake yourself in this sleepy age, and remember fruitfully of Christ's first wooing and suiting of your love, both with fire and water, and try if He got His answer, or if ye be yet to give Him it. For I find in myself, that water runneth not faster through a sieve than our warnings slip from us ; I have lost and casten byhand many summons the Lord sent to me ; and there- fore the Lord hath given me double charges, that I trust in God shall not rive me. I bless His great name, who is no niggard in holding-in crosses upon me, but spendeth largely His rods, that He may save me from this perishing world. How plentiful God is in means of this kind is esteemed by many one of God's unkind mercies ; but Christ's cross is neither a cruel nor unkind mercy, but the love-token of a father. I am sure, a lover chasing us for our weal, and to have our love, should not be run away from, or fled from. God send me no worse mercy than the sanctified cross of Christ portendeth, and I am sure I should be happy and blessed. Pray for me, that I may find house-room in the Lord's house to speak in His name. Eemember my dearest love in Christ to your wife. Grace, grace be unto you. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abebdeen, 1636. S. R. 156 LETTER LXXIII. [1636. LXXIIL— To Earlkton, ¥.lie,r. "And they overcame the dragon by the blood of the Lamb, and by the •word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death." — Rev, xii. 11. {CHRIST S LIBERALITY— HIS OWN MISAPPREHENSIONS OF CHRIST.) UCH-HONOUEED SIE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to see you in paper, and to be refreshed by you. I cannot but desire you, and charge you to help me to praise Him who feedeth a poor prisoner with the fatness of His house. 0 how weighty is His love ! 0 but there is much telling in Christ's kindness ! The Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, hath paid me my hundred- fold, well told, and one to the hundred. I complained of Him, but He is owing me nothing now. Sir, I charge you to help me to praise His goodness, and to proclaim to otliers my Bridegroom's kindness, whose love is better than wine. I took up an action against Christ, and brought a plea against His love, and libelled unkindness' against Christ my Lord, and I said, "This is my death ; He hath forgotten me." But my meek Lord held His peace, and beheld me, and would not contend for the last word of flyting. And now He hath chided Himself friends with me. And now I see He must be God, and I must be flesh. I pass from my summons ; I acknowledge He might have given me my fill of it, and never troubled Himself. But now He hath taken away the mask ; I have been comforted ; He could not smotlier His love any longer to a prisoner and a stranger. God grant that I may never buy a plea against Christ again, but may keep good quarters with Him. I want here no kindness,^ no love- tokens ; but 0 wise is His love ! for, notwithstanding of this hot summer- blink, I am kept low with tlie grief of my silence. For His word is in me as a fire in my bov>'els ; and I see the Lord's vineyard laid waste, and tlie heatlien entered into the sanctuary : and my belly is pained, and my soul in heaviness, because the Lord's people are gone into captivity, and because of the fury of the Lord, and that wind (but neither to fan nor purge) whicli is coming upon apostate Scotland. Also I am kept awake with the late wrong done to my brother ; but I trust you will counsel and comfort him. Yet, in this mist, I see and believe tlie Lord will heal this halting kirk, "and will lay her stones with fair colours, and her foundations with sapphires, and will make her 1 I have no want of. 1636.] LETTER LXXIV. 157 windows of agates, and her gates carbuncles" (Isa. liv. 11, 12). " And for brass He will bring gold." He hath created the smith that formed the sword : no weapon in war shall prosper against us. Let us be glad and rejoice in the Lord, for His salvation is near to come. Eemember me to your wife and your son John. And I entreat you to write to me. Grace, grace be with you. Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Dec. 30, 1636, S. R. LXXIV. — To the Lady Culross. 'These are they which came out of gi-eat tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."— Eet. vii. 14. {HJS OWN. MISCONCEPTION OF CHRIST'S WAYS— CHRIST'S KINDNESS.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied upon you. I greatly long to be refreshed with your letter. I am now (all honour and glory to the King eternal, immortal, and invisible!) in better terms with Christ than I was. I, like a fool, summoned my Husband and Lord, and libelled unkindness against Him ; but now I pass from that foolish pursuit ; I give over the plea. He is God, and I am man. I was loosing a fast stone, and digging at the ground-stone, the love of my Lord, to shake and unsettle it. But, God be thanked, it is fast ; all is sure. In my prison He hath shown me daylight ; He dought not hide His love any longer. Christ was disguised and masked, and I apprehended it was not He ; but He hath said, " It is I, be not afraid ; " and now His love is better than wine. 0 that all the virgins had part of the Bridegroom's love whereupon He maketh me to feed. Help me to praise. I charge you. Madam, help me to pay praises ; and tell others, the daughters of Jerusalem, how kind Christ is to a poor prisoner. He hath paid me my hundred-fold ; it is well told me, and one to the hundred. I am nothing behind with Christ. Let not fools, because of their lazy and soft flesh, raise a slander and an ill report upon the cross of Christ. It is sweeter than fair. I see grace groweth best in winter. This poor persecuted kirk, this lily amongst the thorns, shall blossom, and laugh upon the gardener ; the husbandman's blessing shall light upon It. 0 if T could be free of jealousies of Christ, after this, and iS8 LETTER LXXV. [1636. believe, and keep good quarters with my dearest Husband ! for He hath been kind to the stranger. And yet in all this fair hot summer weather, I am kept from saying, " It is good to be here," ^ with my silence, and with grief to see my mother wounded and her veil taken from her, and the fair temple casten down. My belly is pained, my soul is heavy for the captivity of the daughter of my people, and because of the fury of the Lord, and His tierce indignation against apostate Scotland. I pray you, Madam, let me have that which is my prayer here, that my sufferings may preach to the four quarters of this land ; and, therefore, tell others how open-handed Christ had been to the prisoner and the oppressed stranger. Why should I conceal it ? I know no other way how to glorify Christ, but to make an open proclamation of His love, and of His soft and sweet kisses to me in the furnace, and of His fidelity to such as suffer for Him. Give it me under your hand, that ye will help me to pray and praise ; but rather to praise and rejoice in the salvation of God. Grace, grace be with you. Yours in his dearest and only, only Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Dec, 30, 1636. ^- ■^• LXXV.— To John Kennedy, BaiUffe (i.e. Bailie) of Ayr. [John Kknnedy was the son of Hugli Kennedy, Provost of Ayr. Hiigli was an eminent Christian, and did murli to pronuite the canse of religion in tlie plaee where ho lived. John Welsh, minister of Ayr, bore this high testinion}' to him in a letter written to him in France : " Happy is that city, yea, happy is that nation ^ My being silenced as to preafhing, and my grief, keej) me from saying. 1636.] LETTER LXXV. 159 that has a Hugh Kennedy in it. I have myself certainly found the answer of his prayers from the Lord in my behalf." On his death-bed, he was filled "with inexpressible joy in the Holy Ghost, beyond what it was possible to comprehend." ( Wodrow, in his life of Boyd of Trochrig. ) John, his son, possessed much of the spirit and character of his father. "Ho was," says Fleming ("Fulfilling of the Scriptures"), "as choice a Christian as was at that time." The same writer records a remarkable escape from imminent peril at sea which Kennedy experienced ; which may be the deliverance to which Rutherford refers in a subsequent letter. It happened thus : John Stewart, Provost of Ayr, another of Rutherford's corre- spondents, who had gone to France, having loaded a ship at Rochelle with various commodities for Scotland, proceeded to England by the nearest way, and thence to Ayr. After waiting a considerable time for the arrival of his vessel, he was told that it was captured by the Turks. This information, however, proved to be incorrect, for it at length an'ived in the roads ; upon hearing of which, Kennedy, an intimate friend of Stewart, was so overjoyed, that he went out to it in a small boat. But a storm suddenly arising, he was driven past the vessel, and the general belief of the onlookers from the shore was that he and his boat were swallowed up ; indeed, the storm increased to such a degi'ee of violence as to threaten even the shipwreck of the vessel. Deeply affected at the apprehended loss of his friend, Stewart shut himself up in entire seclusion for three days ; but at the very time he had gone to visit Kennedy's wife under her supposed bereavement, Kennedy, who had been driven to another part of the coast, but had reached the land in safety, made his appearance, to the gi-eat joy of all. Kennedy was a member of the Scottish Parliament in the years 1644-5-6, for the burgh of Ayr, and is styled in the roll, "John Kennedy, Provost of Ayr." He was also a member of the General Assem- blies of 1642-3-4-6 and 7, and his name appears among the ruling elders in the commission for the public afifairs of the kirk in all these years. His brother Hugh (also an elder of the Church) was frequently a member of the General Assembly, and, as we learn from "Baillie's Letters," had an active share in the proceedings of the Covenanters during the reign of Charles L There are lineal descendants of this family in Ayr at this day ; one of them, like his ancestor, was lately Provost of the town.] {.LONGING AFTER CLEARER VIEWS OF CHRIST— HIS LONG- SUFFERING— TR YING CIRC UMSTANCES. ) ORTHY AND DEAR BROTHER,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to see you in this northern world on paper ; I know it is not forgetful- ness that ye write not. I am every way in good case, both in soul and body ; all honour and glory be to my Lord. I want nothing but a further revelation of the beauty of the unknown Son of God. Either I know not what Christianity is, or we have stinted a measure of so many ounce weights, and no more, upon holiness ; and there we are at a stand, drawing our breath all our life. A moderation in God's way is now much in request. I profess that I have never taken pains to find out Him whom my soul loveth ; there is a gate yet of finding out Christ that I have never lighted upon. Oh, if I could find it out ! Alas, how soon are we pleased with our own shadow in a glass ! It were good to be beginning in sad earnest to find out God, and to seek the right tread of Christ. Time, custom, and a good opinion of ourselves, our good meaning, and our lazy desires, our fair shows, and the world's glistering i6o LETTER LXXV. [1636. lustres, and these broad passments and buskings of religion, that bear bulk in the kirk, is that wherewith most satisfy themselves. But a bed watered with tears, a throat dry with praying, eyes as a fountain of tears for the sins of the land, are rare to be found among us. Oh if we could know the power of godliness ! This is one part of my case ; and another is, that I, like a fool, once summoned Christ for unkindness, and complained of His fickleness and inconstancy, because He would have no more of my service nor preaching, and had casten me out of the inheritance of the Lord. And now I confess that this was but a bought plea, and I was a fool. Yet He hath l)orne with me. I gave Him a fair advantage against me, but love and mercy would not let Him take it ; and the truth is, now He hath chided Himself friends with me, and hath taken away the mask, and hath renewed His wonted favour in such a manner that He hath paid me my hundred-fold in this life, and one to the hundred. This prison is my banqueting-house ; I am handled as softly and delicately as a dawted child. I am nothing behind (I see) with Christ ; He can, in a month, make up a year's losses. And I write this to you, that I may entreat, nay, adjure and charge you, by the love of our Well-beloved, to help me to praise; and to tell all your Christian acquaintance to help me, for I am as deeply drowned in His debt as any dyvour can be. And yet in this fair sun-blink I have something to keep me from startling, or being exalted above measure ; His word is as fire shut up in my bowels, and I am weary with forbearing. The ministers in this town are saying that they will have my prison changed into less bounds, because they see God with me. My mother hath borne me a man of contention, one that striveth with the whole earth. The late wrongs and oppressions done to my brother keep my sails low ; yet I defy crosses to embark me in such a plea against Christ as I was troubled with of late. I hope to over-hope and over-believe my troubles. I have cause now to trust Christ's promise more than His gloom. Eemember my hearty affection to your wife. My soul is grieved for the success of our brethren's journey to New England; but God liath somewhat to reveal that we see not. Grace be with you. Tray for tlie prisoner. Yoiirs, in his only Lord Jesus, A.BERDEKN, -fan. 1, 1*'.;57. *"■ 1636.] LETTER LXXV2. 161 LXXVI. — To KoBERT Gordon of Knockbrex. (BENEFIT OF AFFLICTION.) \Y DEAE brother, — Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied upon you. — I am almost wearying, yea, wondering, that ye write not to me : though I know it is not forgetfulness. As for myself, I am every way well, all glory to God. I was before at a plea with Christ (but it was bought by me, and unlawful), because His whole providence was not yea and nay to my yea and nay, and because I believed Christ's outward look better than His faithful promise. Yet He hath in patience waited on, whill I be come to myself, and hath not taken advantage of my weak apprehensions of His goodness. Great and holy is His name ! He looketh to what I desire to be, and not to what I am. One thing I have learned. If I had been in Christ, by way of adhesion only, as many branches are, I should have been burnt to ashes, and this world would have seen a suffering minister of Christ (of something once in show) turned into unsavoury salt. But my Lord Jesus had a good eye that the tempter should not play foul play, and blow out Christ's candle. He took no thought of my stomach, and fretting and grudging humour, but of His own grace. When He burnt the house. He saved His own goods. And I believe that the devil and the persecuting world shall reap no fruit of me, but burnt ashes : for He will see to His own gold, and save that from being consumed with the fire. Oh, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus ! who hath now let me see how good the wheat of Christ is, that goeth through His mill, and His oven, to be made bread for His own table. Grace tried is better than grace, and it is more than grace ; it is glory in its infancy. I now see that godliness is more than the outside, and this world's pass- ments and their buskings. Who knoweth the truth of grace without a trial ? Oh, how little getteth Christ of us, but that which He winneth (to speak so) with much toil and pains ! And how soon would faith freeze witliout a cross ! How many dumb crosses have been laid upon my back, that had never a tongue to speak tlie sweetness of Christ, as this hath ! When Christ blesseth His own crosses with a tongue, they breathe out Christ's love, wisdom, kindness, and care of us. Why should 1 1 62 LETTER LXXVl. [1637. start at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows od my soul ? I know that He is no idle Husbandman, He piir- poseth a crop. 0 that this white, withered lea-ground were made fertile to bear a crop for Him, by whom it is so painfully dressed ; and tliat this fallow-ground were broken up ! "Why was I (a fool !) grieved that He put His garland and His rose upon my head — the glory and honour of His faithful witnesses ? I desire now to make no more pleas with Christ. Verily He hath not put me to a loss by what I suffer ; He oweth me nothing ; for in my bonds how sweet and comfortable have the thoughts of Him been to me, wherein I find a sufficient recompense of reward ! How blind are my adversaries, who sent me to a banqueting- house, to a house of wine, to the lovely feasts of my lovely Lord Jesus, and not to a prison, or place of exile ! Why should I smother my Husband's honesty, or sin against His love, or be a niggard in giving out to others what I get for nothing ? Brother, eat with me, and give thanks. I charge you before God, that ye speak to others, and invite them to help me to praise ! Oh, my debt of praise, how weighty it is, and how far run up ! 0 that others would lend me to pay, and learn me to praise ! Oh, I am a drowned dyvour ! Lord Jesus, take my thoughts for payments. Yet I am in this hot summer-blink with the tear in my eye ; for (by reason of my silence) sori'ow, sorrow hath filled me ; my harp is hanged upon the willow-trees, because I am in a strange land. I am still kept in exercise with envious brethren ; my mother hath borne me a man of contention. Write to me your mind anent Y. 0. : I cannot forget him ; I know not what God hath to do with him : — and your mind anent my parishioners' behaviour, and how they are served iu preaching ; or if there be a minister as yet thrust in upon them, which I desire greatly to know, and which I much fear. Dear broUier, ye are in my heart, to live and to die with you. Visit me with a letter. Pray for me. Remember my love to your wife. Grace, grace be with you ; and God, who heareth prayer, visit you, and let it be unto you according to the prayers of Your own brother, and Christ's prisoner, Aberdeen, Jan. 1, 1637. *^' -'- t637.] LETTER LXXVII. 163 LXXVII. — To my Lady Botd, [Lady Boyd, whose maiden name was Christian Hamilton, was the eldest daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Haddington. She was first married to Robert, ninth Lord Lindsay of Byres, who died in 1616. She married for her second husband, Robert, sixth Lord Boyd, who died in August 1628. Lady Boyd was distinguished for piety, and a zealous Presbyterian. Livingstone gives her a place among ' ' some of the professors in the Church of Scotland of his acquaintance, who were eminent for grace and gifts ; " eulogizes her as "a rare pattern of Christianity, grave, diligent, and prudent ; " and adds, "She used every night to write what had been the case of her soul all the day, and what she had observed of the Lord's dealing. " He speaks of residing for some time, during the course of his ministry, in the house of Kilmarnock, with "the worthy Lady Boyd." Some of her letters are given by Wodrow in his life of Boyd of Ti'ochrig (pp. 166, 272.) She used to reside much at Badenheath, in the parish of Chryston, near Glasgow, and there John Livingston visited her, ] {ABERDEEN— EXPERIENCE OF HIMSELF SAD— PRESSING FORWARDS.) jIADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be luito you. The Lord hath brought me to Aberdeen, where I see God in few. This town hath been advised upon of purpose for me ; it consisteth either of Papists, or men of Gallio's naughty faith. It is counted wisdom, in the most, not to countenance a confined minister ; but I find Christ neither strange nor unkind ; for I have found many faces smile upon me since I came hither. I am heavy and sad, considering what is betwixt the Lord and my soul, which none seeth but He. T find men have mistaken me ; it would be no art (as I now see) to spin small,^ and make hypocrisy a goodly web, and to go through the market as a saint among men, and yet steal quietly to hell, without observation : so easy is it to deceive men. I have disputed whether or no I ever knew anything of Christianity, save the letters of that name. Men see but as men, and they call ten twenty, and twenty an hundred ; but 0 ! to be approved of God in the heart and in sincerity is not an ordinary mercy. My neglects while I had a pulpit, and other things whereof I am ashamed to speak, meet me now, so as God maketh an honest cross my daily sorrow. And, for fear of scandal and stumbling, I must bide this day of the law's plead- ing : I know not if this court kept within my soul be fenced in Christ's name. If certainty of salvation were to be bought, God knoweth, if I had ten earths, I would not prig with God. Like a fool, I believed, under suffering for Christ, that I myself * Spin fine. 1.64 LETTER LXXVIII. [1637. should keep the key of Christ's treasures, and take out comforts when I listed, and eat and be fat : but I see now a sufferer for Christ will be made to know himself, and will be holden at the door as well as another poor sinner, and will be fain to eat with the bairns, and to take the by-board, and glad to do so. My blessing on the cross of Christ that hath made me see this ! Oh ! if we could take pains for the kingdom of heaven ! But we sit down upon some ordinary marks of God's children, thinking we have as much as will separate us from a reprobate ; and thereupon we take the play and cry, "Holiday!" and thus the devil casteth water on our fire, and blunteth our zeal and care. But I see heaven is not at the door ; and I see, howbeit my challenges be many, I suffer for Christ, and dare hazard my salvation upon it ; for sometimes my Lord cometh with a fair hour, and 0 ! but His love be sweet, delightful, and comfortable. Half a kiss is sweet ; but our doting love will not be content with a right to Christ, unless we get possession ; like the man who will not be content with rights to bought land, except he get also the ridges and acres laid upon his back to carry home with him ! However it be, Christ is wise ; and we are fools, to be browden and fond of a pawn in the loof of our hand. Living on trust by faith may well content us. Madam, I know your Ladyship knoweth this, and that made me bold to write of it, that others might reap somewhat by my bonds for the truth ; for I should desire, and I aim at this, to have my Lord well spoken of and honoured, howbeit He should make nothing of me but a bridge over a water. Thus, recommending your Ladyship, your son, and children to His grace, who hath honoured you with a name and room among the living in Jerusalem, and wishing grace to be with your Ladyship, I rest, Your Ladyship's in his sweetest Lord Jesus, Aberdeen. S. K. LXXVIII.— To my Lord Boyd. [Robert, sevciitli Lord Boyd, was tlio only son of IJobcit, sixth Lord Boyd, by Lady Christian Hamilton, mentioned in the jjreccding letter. His father (wlio was cousin of the famous Robert Boyd of Tiochrig, two miles from Gii'van, and under whom he studied at Saumur) died in August 1628, at the early age of 33. Young Robert was served heir to his father the 9th of May 1 629. His earthly course was, however, brief; for he died of a fever on the 17th of November 1640, aged about 24. He was married to Lady Anne Fleming, second daughter of John, second Earl of Wigtown. Lord Boyd warmly espoused the side of the Covenanters ; and though not a member of the General Assembly held at Glasgow in 1G3S, he attended ita meetings and took a deep interest in its proceedings.] 1637.1 LETTER LXXVIIL 165 (^ENCOURAGEMENT TO EXERTION FOR CHRIST S CAUSE.) |y very honoueable and good LOED,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Lordship. Out of the worthy report that I hear of your Lordship's zeal for tliis borne-down and oppressed Gospel, I am bold to write to your Lordship, beseeching you by the mercies of God, by the honour of our royal and princely King Jesus, by the sorrows, tears, and desolation of your afflicted mother-Church, and by the peace of your conscience, and your joy in the day of Christ, that your Lordship would go on, in the strength of your Lord, and in the power of His might, to bestir yourself, for the vindicating of the fallen honour of your Lord Jesus. Oh, blessed hands for evermore, that shall help to put the crown upon the head of Christ again in Scotland ! I dare promise, in the name of our Lord, that this will fasten and fix the pillars and the stakes of your honourable house upon earth, if you lend and lay in pledge in Christ's hand, upon spiritual hazard, life, estate, house, honour, credit, moyen, friends, the favour of men (suppose kings with three crowns), so being that ye may bear witness, and acquit yourself as a man of valour and courage to the Prince of your salvation, for the purging of His temple, and sweeping out the lordly Diotrepheses, time - courting Demases, corrupt Hymenaeuses and Philetuses, and other such oxen, that with their dung defile the temple of the Lord. Is not Christ now crying, " Who will help Me ? who will come out with Me, to take part with Me, and share in the honour of My victory over these Mine enemies, who have said. We will not have this man to rule over ua ? " Aly very honourable and dear Lord, join, join (as ye do) with Christ. He is more worth to you and your posterity than this world's May-flowers, and withering riches and honour, that shall go away as smoke, and evanish in a night vision, and shall, in one half-hour after the blast of the archangel's trumpet, lie in white ashes. Let me beseech your Lordship to draw by the lap of time's curtain, and to look in through the window to great and endless eternity, and consider if a worldly price (suppose this little round clay globe of this ashy and dirty earth, the dying idol of the fools of this world, were all your own) can be given for one smile of Christ's God-like and soul-ravishing countenance. In that day when so many joints and knees of thousand thousands i66 LETTER LXXIX. [1637. wailing shall stand before Christ, trembling, shouting, and mak- ing their prayers to hills and mountains to fall upon them, and hide them from the face of the Lamb, oh, how many would sell lordships and kingdoms that day, and buy Christ ! But, oh, the market shall be closed and ended ere then ! Your Lordship hath now a blessed venture of winning court with the Prince of the kings of the earth. He Himself weeping; truth borne down and fallen in the streets, and an oppressed Gospel ; Christ's bride with watery eyes and spoiled of her veil, her hair hanging about her eyes, forced to go in ragged apparel ; the banished, alienated, and imprisoned prophets of God, who have not the favour of liberty to prophesy in sackcloth, all these, I say, call for your help. Fear not worms of clay ; the moth shall eat them as a garment. Let the Lord be your fear; He is with you, and shall fight for you ; and ye shall make the heart of this your mother- Church to sing for joy. The Lamb and His armies are with you, and the kingdoms of the earth are the Lord's. I am persuaded that there is not anotlier gospel, nor another saving truth, thali that which ye now contend for. I dare hazard my heaven and salvation upon it, that this is the only saving way to glory. Grace, grace, be with your Lordship. Your Lordship's at all respectful obedience in Christ, Abeudekn, 1637. S. R LXXIX. — To Margaret Ballantine. [This name is not found among the pooiile of the parish of Anwoth. Like John Laurie, Letter CLXXV., slio may have been some one at a distance.] {VALUE OF THE SOUL AND URGENCY OF SALVATION.) ISTRESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. — It is more than time that I should have written to you ; but it is yet good time, if I could help your soul to mend your pace, and to go more swiftly to your heavenly country. For truly ye have need to make all haste, because the inch of your day that remaineth will quickly slip away ; for whether we sleep or wake, our glass runneth. The tide bideth no man. Beware of a beguile in the matter of your salvation. Woe, woe for evermore, to them that lose that prize. For wliat is behind, when the soul is once lost, but tliat sinners warm their bits of clay houses at a lire of their own 1 63 7-] LETTER LXXIX. 167 kindling, for a day or two (which doth rather suffocate with its smoke than warm them) ; and at length they lie down in sorrow, and are clothed with everlasting shame ! I would seek no further measure of faith to begin withal than to believe really and stedfastly the doctrine of God's justice, His all-devouring wrath, and everlasting burning, where sinners are burnt, soul and body, in a river and great lake of lire and brimstone. Then they would wish no more goods than the thousandth part of a cold fountain-well to cool their tongues. They would then buy death with enduring of pain and torment for as many years as God hath created drops of rain since the creation. But there is no market of buying or selling life or death there. 0, alas ! the greatest part of this world run to the place of that torment rejoicing and dancing, eating, drinking, and sleeping. My counsel to you is, that ye start in time to be after Christ ; for if ye go quickly, Christ is not far before you ; ye shall overtake Him. 0 Lord God, what is so needful as this, " Salvation, salvation ! " Fy upon this condemned and foolish world, that would give so little for salvation ! Oh, if there were a free market for salvation proclaimed in that day when the trumpet of God shall awake the dead, how many buyers would be then ! God send me no more happiness than that salvation which the blind world, to their eternal woe, letteth slip through their fingers. Therefore, look if ye can give out your money (as Isaiah speaketh) (Iv. 2) for bread, and lay Christ and His blood in wadset for heaven. It is a dry and hungry bairn's part of goods that Esaus are hunting for here. I see thousands follow- ing the chase, and in the pursuit of such things, while in the meantime they lose the blessing ; and, when all is done, they have caught nothing to roast for supper, but lie down hungry. And, besides, they go to bed, when they die, without a candle ; for God saitli to them, " This ye shall have at My hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow" (Isa. 1. 11). And truly this is as ill-made a bed to lie upon as one could wish ; for he cannot sleep soundly, nor rest sweetly, who hath sorrow for his pillow. Eouse, rouse up, therefore, your soul, and speer ^ how Christ and your soul met together. I am sure that they never got Christ, who were not once sick at the yolk of the heart for Him. Too, too many whole souls think that they have met with Christ, who had never a wearied night for the want of Him : but, alas ! what richer are men, that they dreamed the last niglit they had much 1 Ask. 1 68 LETTER LXXX. [1637. gold, and, when they awoke in the morning, they found it was but a dream ? What are all the sinners in the world, in that day when heaven and earth shall go up in a flame of fire, but a number of beguiled dreamers ? Every one shall say of his hunting and his conquest, " Behold, it was a dream ! " Every man in that day will tell his dream. I beseech you, in the Lord Jesus, beware, beware of unsound work in the matter of your salvation : ye may not, ye cannot, ye dow not want Christ. Then after this day, convene all your lovers before your soul, and give them their leave ; and strike hands with Christ, that thereafter there may be no happiness to you but Christ, no hunting for anything but Christ, no bed at night, when death Cometh, but Christ. Christ, Christ, who but Christ ! I know this much of Christ, that He is not ill to be found, nor lordly of His love. Woe had been my part of it for evermore, if Christ had made a dainty of Himself to me. But, God be thanked, I gave nothing for Christ. And now I protest before men and angels that Christ cannot be exchanged, that Christ cannot be sold, that Christ cannot be weighed. Where would angels, or all the world, find a balance to weigh Him in ? All lovers blush when ye stand beside Christ ! Woe upon all love but the love of Christ ! Hunger, hunger for evermore be upon all heaven but Christ ! Shame, shame for evermore be upon all glory but Christ's glory. I cry death, death upon all lives but the life of Christ. Oh, what is it that holdeth us asunder ? 0 that once we could have a fair meeting ! Thus recommending Christ to you and you to Him, for ever- more, I rest. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R. LXXX. — For Marion M'Naught. {HIS COMFORT UNDER TRIBULATION, AND THE PRISON A PALACE.) Y DEARLY BELOVED SISTER,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I complain that Galloway is not kind to me in paper. I have received no letters these sixteen weeks but two. I am well. ^ My prison is a palace to me, and Christ's banqueting -house. My Lord Jesus is as kind as they call Him. 0 that all Scotland knew my case, and had part of my feast ! I charge 1637] LETTER LXXXI. 169 you in the name of God, I charge you to believe. Fear not the sons of men ; the worms shall eat them. To pray and believe now, when Christ seems to give you a nay-say, is more than it was before. Die believing ; die, and Christ's promise in your hand. I desire, I request, I charge your husband and that town,^ to stand for the truth of the Gospel. Contend with Christ's enemies ; and I pray you show all professors whom you know my case. Help me to praise. The ministers here envy me ; they will have my prison changed. My mother hath borne me a man of contention, and one that striveth with the whole earth. Eemember my love to your husband. Grace be with you. Yours in the Lord, Aberdeen, Jan. 3, 1637 S, R, LXXXI. — To Mr. John Meine (/««.). [Mr. John Meine was the son of John Meine, merchant in Edinburgh, "a solid and stedfast professor of the truth of God. " His mother was Barbara Hamilton, a notice of whom see Letter CCCXIII. He was now, it would appear from an allusion in the close of this letter, a student of theology, with a view to the holy ministry. Halyburton on- his deathbed spake of this letter as one in which was to be found " More practical religion than in a large volume."] {EXPERIENCE— PA TIENT WAITING— SANCTIFICA TION. ) I0ETHY AND DEAE BEOTHEE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I have been too long in answering your letter, but other business took me up. I am here waiting, if the fair wind will turn upon Christ's sails in Scotland, and if deliverance be breaking out to this over- clouded and benighted kirk. 0 that we could contend, by prayers and supplications, with our Lord for that effect ! I know that He hath not given out His last doom against this land. I have little of Christ, in this prison, but groanings, and longings, and desires. All my stock of Christ is some hunger for Him, and yet I cannot say but I am rich in that. My faith, and hope, and holy practice of new obedience, are scarce worth the speaking of. But blessed be my Lord, who taketh me, light, and clipped, and naughty, and feckless as I am. I see that Christ will not prig with me, nor stand upon stepping-stones ; but Cometh in at the broadside without ceremonies, or making it nice, to make a poor, ransomed one His own. 0 that I could feed upon His breathing, and kissing, and embracing, and upon ' Kirkcudbright. 170 LETTER LXXXII. [1637- the hopes of my meeting and His ! when love-letters shall not go betwixt us, but He will be messenger Himself ! But there is required patience on our part, till the summer-fruit in heaven be ripe for us. It is in the bud ; but there be many things to do before our harvest come. And we take ill with it, and can hardly endure to set our paper-face to one of Christ's storms, and to go to heaven with wet feet, and pain, and sorrow. We love to carry a heaven to heaven with us, and would have two summers in one year, and no less than two heavens. But this will not do for us : one (and such a one !) may suffice us well enough. The man, Christ, got but one only, and shall we have two ? Remember my love in Christ to your father; and help me with your prayers. If ye would be a deep divine, I recommend to you sanctification. Fear Him, and He will reveal His covenant to you. Grace be with you. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abeedeek, Jan. 5, 1637. S. E. AiiiiOM.ss 1 A.ri,:;. LXXXII. — To John Gordon oj Cardoness, Elder. [John Gokdon of Cardoness, in the parish of Anwoth, -was descended from Gordon of lAH'liinvar ; but little is known concerning him. His name aii])cars the first of 188 signatures attaelied to an unsuccessful petition of the elders and 1637.] LETTER LXXXII. 171 parishioners of Anwoth, presented to the Commission of the General Assembly 1638, for Rutherford being continued minister of that parish, when counter applications were made by the city of Edinburgh and the University of St. Andrews for the transference of his services. From Rutherford's letters to him, we learn that he was at this time far advanced in life. He was naturally a man of strong passions, by which it would appear he had, in the previous part of his life, been led astray. The old castle of Cardoness stands on a tongue of land, at the mouth of the river Fleet, about a mile from Gatehouse. It is built on a rocky height, overhang- ing the public road, and looking toward the bay. You see an old square-built tower, or fortalice, raising its grey head fi'om among the tall trees that now surround it. Tradition tells of an old proprietor, that he was in league with Graeme, the Border outlaw ; and how, in consequence of his daring and God-defying deeds, the chief and his whole family ^lerished in the Black Loch, a small loch in the parish of Anwoth, at Woodend, 26 ft. deep. Though not a descendant, John Gordon seems to have been a man of like strong passions with that old chieftain, till subdued by grace.] {WIN CHRIST AT ALL HAZARDS— CHRIST S BEAUTY— A WORD TO CHILDREN.) JUCH HONOUEED SIE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I have longed to hear from you, and to know the estate of your soul, and the estate of that people with you. I beseech you, Sir, by the salvation of your precious soul, and the mercies of God, to make good and sure work of your salvation, and try upon what ground -stone ye have builded. Worthy and dear Sir, if ye be upon sinking sand, a storm of death, and a blast, will lose Christ and you, and wash you close oif the rock. Oh, for the Lord's sake, look narrowly to the work ! Eead over your life, with the light of God's day-light and sun ; for salvation is not casten down at every man's door. It is good to look to your compass, and all ye have need of, ere you take shipping; for no wind can blow you back again. Eemember, when the race is ended, and the play either won or lost, and ye are in the utmost circle and border of time, and shall put your foot within the march of eternity, and all your good things of this short night-dream shall seem to you like the ashes of a bleeze of thorns or straw, and your poor soul shall be crying, " Lodging, lodging, for God's sake ! " then shall your soul be more glad at one of your Lord's lovely and homely smiles, than if ye had the charters of three worlds for all eternity. Let pleasures and gain, will and desires of this world, be put over into God's hands, as arrested and fenced goods that ye cannot intromit with. Now, when ye are drinking the grounds of your cup, and ye are upon the utmost end of the last link of time, and old age, like death's long shadow, is casting a covering upon your days, it 172 LETTER LXXXII. [1637. is no time to court this vain life, and to set love anil heart upon it. It is near after-supper ; seek rest and ease for your soul in God through Christ. Believe me, that I find it to be hard wrestling to play fair with Christ, and to keep good quarters with Hiui, and to love Him in integrity and life, and to keep a constant course of sound and solid daily communion with Christ. Temptations are daily breaking the thread of that course, and it is not easy to cast a knot again ; and many knots make evil work. Oh, how fair have many ships been plying before the wind, that, in an hour's space, have been lying in the sea-bottom ! How many professors ea^t a golden lustre, as if they were pure gold, and yet are, under that skin and cover, but base and reprobate metal ! And how many keep breath in their race many miles, and yet come short of the prize and the garland ! Dear sir, my soul would mourn in secret for you, if I knew your case with God to be but false work. Love to have you anchored upon Christ maketh me fear your tottering and slips. False under-water, not seen in the ground'of an enlightened conscience, is dangerous ; so is often falling, and sinning against light. Know this, that those who never had sick nights or days in conscience for sin, cannot have but such a peace with God as will undercoat and break the flesh again, and end in a sad war at death. Oh, how fearfully are thousands beguiled with false hide, grown over old sins, as if the soul were cured and healed ! Dear Sir, I always saw nature mighty, lofty, heady, and strong in you ; and that it was more for you to be mortified and dead to the world, than for another common man. Ye will take a low ebb, and a deep cut, and a long lance, to go to the bottom of your wounds in saving humiliation, to make you a won prey for Christ. Be humbled ; walk softly, Down, down, for God's sake, my dear and worthy brother, with your topsail. Stoop, stoop ! it is a low entry to go in at heaven's gate. There is infinite justice in the party ye have to do with ; it is His nature not to acquit the guilty and the sinnner. Tlie law of God will not want one farthing of the sinner. God forgetteth not both the cautioner and the sinner ; and every man must pay, either in his own person (oh. Lord save you from that payment !), or in his cautioner, Christ. It is violence to corrupt nature for a man to be holy, to lie down under Cluist's feet, to quit will, pleasure, worldly love, earthly hope, and an itching of heart after this farded and over-gilded world, and to be content that Christ 1637] LETTER LXXXII. 173 trample upon all. Come in, come in to Christ, and see what ye want, and find it in Him. He is the short cut (as we used to say), and the nearest way to an outgate of all your burdens. I dare avouch that ye shall be dearly welcome to Him ; my soul would be glad to take part of the joy ye should have in Him. I dare say that angels' pens, angels' tongues, nay, as many worlds of angels as there are drops of water in all the seas, and foun- tains, and rivers of the earth, cannot paint Him out to you. I think His sweetness, since I was a prisoner, hath swelled upon me to the greatness of two heavens. Oh for a soul as wide as the utmost circle of the highest heaven that containeth all, to contain His love ! And yet I could hold little of it. 0 world's wonder ! Oh, if my soul might but lie within the smell of His love, suppose I could get no more but the smell of it ! Oh, but it is long to that day when I shall have a free world of Christ's love ! Oh, what a sight to be up in heaven, in that fair orchard of the new paradise ; and to see, and smell, and touch, and kiss that fair field-flower, that ever-green Tree of life ! His bare shadow were enough for me ; a sight of Him would be the earnest of heaven to me. Fy, fy upon us ! that we have love lying rusting beside us, or, which is worse, wasting upon some loath- some objects, and that Christ should lie His lone. Wo, wo is me ! that sin hath made so many madmen, seeking the fool's paradise, fire under ice, and some good and desirable things, without and apart from Christ. Christ, Christ, nothing but Christ, can cool our love's burning languor. 0 thirsty love ! wilt thou set Christ, the well of life, to thy head, and drink thy fill ? Drink, and spare not ; drink love, and be drunken with Christ ! Nay, alas ! the distance betwixt us and Christ is a death. Oh, if we were clasped in other's arms ! We should never twin again, except heaven twinned and sundered us ; and that cannot be. I desire your children to seek this Lord. Desire them from me, to be requested, for Christ's sake, to be blessed and happy, and to come and take Christ, and all things with Him. Let them beware of glassy and slippery youth, of foolish young notions, of worldly lusts, of deceivable gain, of wicked company, of cursing, lying, blaspheming, and foolish talking. Let them be filled with the Spirit ; acquaint themselves with daily praying ; and with the storehouse of wisdom and comfort, the good word of God. Help the souls of the poor people. 0 that my Lord would bring me again among them, that I might tell unco and »T4 LETTER LXXXIIl. [1637. great tales of Christ to them ! Eeceivc not a stranger to preach any other doctrine to them. Pray for me, His prisoner of hope. I pray for you without ceasing. I write my blessing, earnest prayers, the love of God, and the sweet presence of Christ to you, and yours, and tliem. Grace, grace, grace be with you. Your lawful and loving pastor, Aberdeen, 1637. S. II. LXXXm.— To the Earl of Lothian. [William, third Eakl of Lothian, to whom this letter is addressed, was the eldest son of Robert, lirst Earl of Ancruin ; aud he acquired the title of Earl of Lothian by his marriage with Anne Ker, Countess of Lothian, by whom lie succeeded to the estate and titles of Lothian in 1624. In 1638 he manifested gi-eat zeal for the Covenant. He was a member of the General Assembly which met at Glasgow that year, as elder for the Presbytery of Dalkeith. Hostilities having again commenced in 1640, his Lordship was in the Scottish army that invaded England, and defeated the Royalists at Newburn. Li 1643 he was sent from Scotland by the Privy Council, with the approbation of Charles L In 1644 he commanded, with the Marquis of Argyle, the forces sent against the Marquis of Montrose, whom he obliged to retreat, and then delivered up his commission to the Committee of Estates, who passed an act in approbation of his services. He was president of the Committee despatched by the Parliament to the King in December 1646, with their final propositions. He protested against the raising of an army in 1648 to rescue the King from the hands of the linglish, without receiving from His Majesty assurance that he would secure the religious liberties of his Scottish subjects, — an attempt which was called the "Engagement." But while resisting the arbitrary measures of his prince, he was of sincere and ardent loyalty. No sooner was it known that the Parliament of England intended to proceed against Charles I. before the High Court of Justice, than he and other commissioners were sent, in name of tlie kingdom of Scotland, to remonstrate against their proceedings in regard to the sacred person of the king. He took a solemn protest against their proceed- ings, for which he was put under arrest, sent witli a guard to Gravesend, and thence to Scotland. On his return he received the thanks of Parliament for his conduct on this occasion ; and, along with tlie Earl of Cassillis, was despatched to Breda in 1650 to invite King Charles to Scotland. His Lordshij) died in the year 1675. By Anne, Countess of Lothian, he had five sons and nine daughters.] {ADVICE AS TO PUBLIC CONDUCT— EVERYTHING TO BE ENDURED FOR CHRIST.) ilGHT HONOUEABLE, AND MY VEEY WORTHY AND NOBLE LORD,— Out of the honourable and good report that I hear of your Lordship's good-will and kindness, in taking to heart the honourable cause of Christ, and His afflicted Church aud wronged truth in this laud, I make bold to speak a word on paper, to your Lordship, at this distance, which I trust your Lordship will take in good part. It is to your Lordship's honour and credit, to put to your hand, as ye do (all honour to God !), to the falling and tottering 1637J LETTER LXXXIIl. 175 tabernacle of Christ, in this your mother-Church, and to own Christ's wrongs as your own wrongs. 0 blessed hand, which shall wipe and dry the watery eyes of our weeping Lord Jesus, now going mourning in sackcloth in His members, in His spouse in His truth, and in the prerogative royal of His kingly power ! He needeth not service and help from men ; but it pleaseth His wisdom to make the wants and losses, the sores and wounds of His spouse, a field and an ofhce-house for the zeal of His servants to exercise themselves in. Therefore, my noble and dear Lord, go on, go on in the strength of the Lord against all opposition, to side with wronged Christ. The defending, and warding of strokes off Christ's bride, the King's daughter, is like a piece of the rest of the way to heaven, knotty, rough, stormy, and full of thorns. Many would follow Christ, but with a reservation that, by open proclamation, Christ would cry down crosses, and cry up fair weather, and a summer sky and sun, till we were all fairly landed at heaven. I know that your Lordship hath not so learned Christ ; but that ye intend to fetch lieaven, suppose that your father were standing in your way, and to take it with the wind on your face ; for so both storm and wind were on the fair face of your lovely Forerunner, Christ, all His way. It is possible that the success answer not your desire in this worthy cause. What then ? duties are ours, but events are the Lord's ; and I hope, if your Lordship, and others with you, will go on to dive to the lowest ground and bottom of the knavery and per- fidious treachery to Christ of the accursed and wretched prelates, the Antichrist's first-born, and the first-fruit of his foul womb, and shall deal with our Sovereign (law going before you) for the reasonable and impartial hearing of Christ's bill of complaints, and set yourselves singly to seek the Lord and His face, that your righteousness shall break through the clouds which prejudice hath drawn over it, and that ye shall, in the strength of the Lord, bring our banished and departing Lord Jesus home again to His sanctuary. Neither must your Lordship advise with flesh and blood in this ; but wink, and in the dark, reach your hand to Christ, and follow Him. Let not men's fainting discourage you ; neither he afraid of men's canny wisdom, who, in this storm, take the nearest shore, and go to the lee and calm side of the Gospel, and hide Christ (if ever they had Him) in their cabinets, as if they were ashamed of Him, or as if Christ were stolen wares, and v/onld blush before the sun. My very dear and noble Lord, ye have rejoiced the hearts of 176 LETTER LXXXIII. [1637. mauy, that ye have made choice of Christ and His Gospel whereas such great temptations do stand in your way. But I love your profession the better that it endureth winds. If we knew ourselves well, to want temptations is the greatest tempta- tion of all. Neither is father, nor mother, nor court, nor honour, in this over-lustred world with all its paintry and farding, any- thing else, when they are laid in the balance with Christ, but feathers, shadows, night-dreams, and straws. Oh, if this world knew the excellency, sweetness, and beauty of that high and lofty One, the Fairest among the sons of men, verily they would see, that if their love were bigger than ten heavens, all in circles beyond each other, it were all too little for Christ our Lord ! I hope that your choice will not repent you, when life shall come to that twilight betwixt time and eternity, and ye shall see the utmost border of time, and shall draw the curtain, and look into eternity, and shall one day see God take the heavens in His hands, and fold them together, like an old holely garment, and set on fire this clay part of the creation of God, and consume away into smoke and ashes the idol-hope of poor fools, who think that there is not a better country than this low country of dying clay. Children cannot make comparison aright betwixt this life and that which is to come ; and, therefore, the babes of this world, who see no better, mould, in their own brain, a heaven of their own coining, because they see no farther than the nearest side of time, I dare lay in pawn my hope of heaven, that tliis reproached way is the only way of peace. I find it is the way that the Lord hath sealed with His comforts now, in my bonds for Christ ; and I verily esteem and find chains and fetters for that lovely One, Christ, to be watered over with sweet consolations, and the love-smiles of that lovely Bridegroom, for whose coming we wait. And when He cometh, then shall the blacks and whites of all men come before the sun ; then shall the Lord put a linal decision upon the pleas that Zion hath with her adversaries. And as fast as time passeth away (which neither sitteth, nor standetli, nor sleepeth), as fast is our hand-breadth of this short winter-night flying away, and the sky of our long-lasting day drawing near its breaking. Except your Lordship be pleased to plead for me against the tyranny of prelates, I shall be forgotten in this prison ; for they did shape my doom according to their new, lawless canons, which is, that a deprived minister shall be utterly silenced, and not 1637.] LETTER LXXXIV. x>]i preach at all ; which is a cruelty, contrary to their own former practices. iSTow, the only wise God, the very God of peace, confirm, strengthen, and establish your Lordship upon the stone laid in Zion, and be with you for ever. Your Lordship's at all respectful obedience in his sweet Lord Jesus_, Abekdeen, 1637. S. R. LXXXIV.— To Jean Brown. [Jean Brown was the mother of the well-known Mr. John Brown, minister of Wamphray in Annandale, who, after the restoration of Charles II., was ejected from his charge and banished from the King's dominions for his opposition to Prelacy. She was a woman of intelligence and piety.] {THE JOYS OF THIS LIFE EMBITTERED BY SIN— HEAVEN AN OBJECT OF DESIRE— TRIAL A BLESSED THING.) ISTRESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. I long to hear how your soul prospereth. I earnestly desire your on-going toward your country. I know that ye see your day melteth away by little and little, and that in a short time ye shall be put beyond time's bounds ; for life is a post that standeth not still, and our joys here are born weeping, rather than laughing, and they die weeping. Sin, sin, this body of sin and corruption embittereth and poisoneth all our enjoy- ments. 0 that I were where I shall sin no more ! 0 to be freed of these chains and iron fetters, which we carry about with us ! Lord, loose the sad prisoners ! Who of the children of God have not cause to say, that they have their fill of this vain life ? and, like a full and sick stomach, to wish at mid-supper that the supper were ended, and the table drawn, that the sick man might win to bed, and enjoy rest ? We have cause to tire at mid-supper of the best messes that this world can dress up for us ; and to cry to God, that He would remove the table and put the sin-sick souls to rest with Himself. 0 for a long play-day with Christ, and our long-lasting vacance of rest ! Glad may their souls be that are safe over the frith, Christ having paid the fraught. Happy are they who have passed their hard and wearisome time of apprenticeship, and are now freemen and citizens in that joyful, high city, the New Jerusalem. Alas ! that we should be glad of and rejoice in our fetters, and our prison-house, and this dear inn, a life of sin, where we M 178 LETTER LXXXIV. [1637. are absent from our Lord, and so far from our home. 0 that we could get bonds and law-suretyship of our love, that it fasten not itself on these clay-dreams, these clay-shadows, and worldly vanities ! We might be oftener seeing what they are doing in heaven, and our hearts more frequently upon our sweet treasure above. We smell of the smoke of this lower house of the earth, because our hearts and our thoughts are here. If we could haunt up with God, we should smell of heaven and of our country above ; and we should look like our country, and like strangers, or people not born or brought up hereaway. Our crosses would not bite ^ upon us if we were heavenly-minded, I know of no obligation which the saints have to this world, seeing we fare but upon the smoke of it ; and, if there be any smoke in the house, it bloweth upon our eyes. All our part of the table is scarce worth a drink of water ; and when we are stricken, we dare not weep, but steal our grief away betwixt our Lord and us, and content ourselves with stolen sorrow behind backs. God be thanked that we have many things that so stroke us against the hair that We may pray, " God keep our better home, God bless our Father's house ; and not this smoke, that bloweth us to seek our best lodging." I am sure that this is the best fruit of the cross, when we, from the hard fare of the dear inn, cry the more that God would send a fair wind, to land us, hungered and oppressed strangers, at the door of our Father's house, which now is made, in Christ, our kindly heritage. Oh ! then, let us pull up the stakes and stoups of our tent, and take our tent on our back, and go with our flitting to our best home ; for here we have no continuing city. I am waiting in hope here, to see what my Lord will do with me. Let Him make of me what He pleaseth ; providing He make glory to Himself out of me, I care not. I hope, yea, I am now sure, that I am for Christ, and all that I can or may make is for Him. I am His everlasting dyvour, and still shall be ; for, alas, I have nothing for Him, and He getteth but little service of me ! Pray for me, that our Lord would be pleased to give me houseroom, that I may serve Him in the calling which He hath called me unto. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R ^ Leave the mark of their teeth. 1637.] LETTER LXXXV. 179 LXXXV,— To John Kennedy, Bailie of Ayr. {THE REASONABLENESS OF BELIEVING UNDER ALL AFFLIC- TION—OBLIGATIONS TO FREE GRACE.) lOKTHY AND WELL-BELOVED BEOTHEE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. — I am yet waiting what our Lord will do for His afflicted Church, and for my re-entry to my Lord's house. 0 that I could hear the forfeiture of Christ (now casten out of His inheritance) recalled and taken off by open proclamation ; and that Christ were restored to be a freeholder and a landed heritor in Scotland ; and that the courts fenced in the name of the bastard prelates (their godfather, the Pope's, bailiffs and sheriffs) were cried down ! Oh, how sweet a sight were it to see all the tribes of the Lord in this land fetching home again our banished King, Christ, to His own palace, His sanctuary, and His throne ! I shall think it mercy to my soul, if my faith will out-watch all this winter-night, and not nod nor slumber till my Lord's summer-day dawn upon me. It is much if faith and hope, in the sad nights of our heavy trial, escape with a whole skin, and without crack or crook. I confess that unbelief hath not reason to be either father or mother to it,^ for unbelief is always an irrational thing ; but how can it be, but that such weak eyes as ours must cast water in a great smoke, or that a weak head should not turn giddy when the water runneth deep and strong ? But God be thanked that Christ in His children can endure a stress and a storm, howbeit soft nature would fall down in pieces. 0 that I had that confidence as to rest on this, though He should grind me into small powder, and bray me into dust, and scatter the dust to the four winds of heaven, that my Lord would gather up the powder, and make me up a new vessel again, to bear Christ's name to the world ! I am sure that love, bottomed and seated upon the faith of His love to me, would desire and endure this, and would even claim and threep kindness upon Christ's strokes, and kiss His love-glooms, and both spell and read salva- tion upon the wounds made by Christ's sweet hands. 0 that I had but a promise made from the mouth of Christ, of His love to me ! and then, howbeit my faith were as tender as paper, I think longing, and dwining, and greening of sick desires would cause it to bide out the siege till the Lord came to fill the soul with His love. And I know also, that in that case faith would bide ^ Unbelief has not its origin in reason. i8o LETTER LXXXV. [1637. green and sappy at the root, even at mid-winter, and stand out against all storms. However it be, I know that Christ winneth heaven in despite of helL But I owe as many praises and thanks to free grace as would lie betwixt me and the utmost border of the highest heaven, suppose ten thousand heavens were all laid above other. But oh ! I have nothing that can hire or bud grace ; for if grace would take hire, it were no more grace. But all our stability, and the strength of our salvation, is anchored and fastened upon free grace ; and I am sure that Christ hath by His death and blood casten the knot so fast, that the fingers of the devils and hell-fulls of sins cannot loose it. And that bond of Christ (that never yet was, nor ever shall, nor can be registrated) standeth surer than heaven, or the days of heaven, as that sweet pillar of the covenant whereon we all hang. Christ, with all His little ones under His two wings and in the compass or circle of His arms, is so sure, that, cast Him and them into the ground of the sea, He shall come up again and not lose one. An odd one can- not, nor shall, be lost in the telling. This was always God's aim, since Christ came into the play betwixt Him and us, to make men dependent creatures ; and, in the work of our salvation, to put created strength, and arms and legs of clay, quite out of place, and out of office and court. And now God hath substituted in our room, and accepted His Son, the Mediator, for us and all that we can make. If this had not been, I would have skinked over and foregone my part of paradise and salvation, for a breakfast of dead, moth-eaten earth ; but now I would not give it, nor let it go for more than I can tell. And truly they are silly fools, and ignorant of Christ's worth, and so full ill-trained and tutored, who tell Christ and heaven over the board for two feathers or two straws of the devil's painted pleasures, only lustred on the outer side. This is our happiness now, that our reckonings at night, when eternity shall come upon us, cannot be told. We shall be so far gainers, and so far from being super-expended (as the poor fools of this world are, who give out their money, and get in but black hunger), that augels cannot lay our counts, nor sum our advantage and incomes. Who knoweth how far it is to the bottom of our Christ's fulness, and to the ground of our heaven ? Who ever weighed Christ in a pair of balances ? Who hath seen the foldings and plies, and the heights and depths of that glory which is in Him, and kept for us ? 0 for such a heaven as to stand afar off, and see, and i637-] LETTER LXXXVI. i8i love, and long for Him, whill time's thread be cut, and this great work of creation dissolved, at the coming of our Lord ! Now to His grace I recommend you. I beseech you also to pray for a re-entry to me into the Lord's house, if it be His good will. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Jan. 6, 1637. ^' ^"^* LXXXVI. — To my Lord Craiqhall. [Sir John Hope, Lord Craighall, was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Hope (Lord Advocate of Scotland in the time of James VL and Charles L ) His property, Craig- hall, is in the parish of Inveresk, near Edinburgh. Sir Thomas was the most eminent lawyer of his day, and was first brought into notice by the ability with which he defended the cause of John Forbes, John Welsh, and the other ministers who were tried for high treason at Linlithgow, on account of their holding a General Assembly at Aberdeen in 1605. Craighall is in the parish of Ceres, in Fife,^ a fine old castellated ruin. John, second baronet, was admitted a Lord of Session 27 th July 1632, and became President of the Court, and in 1645 was appointed one of the Privy Council. His name appears on the roll of members of the General Assemblies 1645-1649, and of the commissions which these Assemblies appointed. In Lament's " Diary " we read (1659), "The Laird of Craighall, in Fyfe, depairted out of this lyfe on Sabbath at-nyght, and was interred at Ceres." {EPISCOPALIAN CEREMONIES— HOW TO ABIDE IN THE TRUTH —DESIRE FOR LIBERTY TO PREACH CHRIST.) Y LOED, — I received Mr. L.'s ^ letter with your Lord- ship's and his learned thoughts in the matter of ceremonies. I owe respect to the man's learning, for that I hear him to be opposed to Arminian heresies. But, with reverence of that worthy man, I wonder to hear such popish-like expressions as he hath in his letter, as, " Your Lord- ship may spare doubtings, when the King and Church have agreed in the settling of such orders ; and the Church's direction in things indifferent and circumstantial (as if indifferent and cir- cumstantial were all one !) should be the rule of every private Christian." I only viewed the papers two hours' space, the bearer hastening me to write. I find the worthy man not so seen in this controversy as some turbulent men of our country, whom he calleth " refusers of conformity ; " and let me say it, I ^ There is a village of Craighall near Inveresk, in the barony of Pinkie, which got its name from this family, just as there is an Earlston in Borgue parish, called from the old Earlston. ^ Who is here meant cannot now be well ascertained. It may have been Mr. Loudian, of whom Baillie says, "He was an excellent philosophe, sound and orthodox, opposite to Canterbury's way, albeit too conform. I counselled oft Glasgow to have him for their Divinity Lecturer " (" Letters and Journals," i. 77). i84 LETTER LXXXVI. [1637. am more confirmed in nonconformity, when I see such a great wit play the agent so slenderly. But I will lay the blame on the weakness of the cause, not on the meanness of Mr, L.'s learning. I have been, and still am confident, that Britain ^ cannot answer one argument, a scmidalo : and I longed much to hear Mr. L. speak to the cause ; and I would say, if some ordinary divine had answered as Mr. L. doth, that he understood not the nature of a scandal ; but I dare not vilify that worthy man so. I am now upon the heat of some other employment. I shall (but God willing) answer this, to the satisfying of any not prejudiced. I will not say that every one is acquainted with the reason in my letter, from God's presence and bright shining face in suffering for this cause. Aristotle never knew the medium of the conclusion : and Christ saith few know it (Eev. ii. 1 7). I am sure that conscience standing in awe of the Almighty, and fearing to make a little hole in the bottom for fear of under- water, is a strong medium to hold off an erroneous conclusion in the least wing, or lith, of sweet, sweet truth, that concerneth the royal prerogative of cur kingly and highest Lord Jesus. And my tvitness is in heaven, that I saw neither pleasure, nor profit, nor honour, to hook me, or catch me, in entering into prison for Christ, but the wind on my face for the present. And if I had loved to sleep in a whole skin, with the ease and present delight that I saw on this side of sun and moon, I should have lived at ease, and in good hopes to fare as well as others. The Lord knoweth that I preferred preaching of Christ, and still do, to anything, next to Christ Himself. And their new canons took my one, my only joy, from me, which was to me as the poor man's one ewe, that had no more ! And, alas ! there is little lodging in their hearts for pity or mercy, to pluck out a poor man's one eye for a thing indifierent ; i.e. for knots of straw, and things (as they mean) off the way to heaven. I desire not that my name take journey, and go a pilgrim to Cambridge, for fear I come into the ears of authority. I am sufficiently burnt already. In the mean time, be pleased to try if the Bishop of St. Andrews,^ and Glasgow (Galloway's ordinary),^ will be pleased to abate from the heat of their wrath, and let me go to my charge. Few know the heart of a prisoner ; yet I hope that the Lord will 1 AH tlie divines in Britain. ' John Spottiswoode. ' James Law, Bishop of Glasgow, was the deputy of Sydserff, the Bishop of Galloway. i637-] LETTER LXXXVII. 183 hew His own glory out of as knotty timber as I am. Keep Christ, my dear and worthy Lord. Pretended paper- arguments from^ angering the mother-Church (that can reel, and nod, and stagger), are not of such weight as peace with the Father, and Husband. Let the wife gloom, I care not, if the Husband laugh. Eemember my service to my Lord your father, and mother, and lady. Grace be with you. Yours at all obedience in Christ, Aberdeen, Jan. 24, 1637. S. R LXXXVII. — To Elizabeth Kennedy. [Elizabeth Kennedy was the sister of Hugh Kennedy, Provost of Ayr, and a woman as eminent for piety and prayer as her brother. Wodrow records of her that, being much afflicted Avith the stone, she was advised to submit to a surgical operation. Several meetings for prayer took place among the godly at Ayr in reference to her case. When the surgeon came to perform the operation, one of these meetings was going on in the house, and they continued so long in prayer as nearly to exhaust his patience ; but before they had concluded, the stone dissolved, and without sui'gical aid she obtained immediate reUef. ( Wodrow' s " Analecta," vol. ii. ) ] {^DANGER OF FORMALITY— CHRIST WHOLLY TO BE LOVED— OTHER OBJECTS OF LOVE.) fISTEESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I have ^1 long had a purpose of writing unto you, but I have been hindered. I heartily desire that ye would mind your country, and consider to what airt your soul setteth its face ; for all come not home at night who suppose that they have set their face heavenward. It is a woful thing to die, and miss heaven, and to lose house-room with Christ at night : it is an evil journey where travellers are benighted in the fields. I persuade myself that thousands shall be deceived and ashamed of their hope. Because they cast their anchor in sinking sands, they must lose it. Till now I knew not the pain, labour, nor difficulty that there is to win at home : nor did I understand so well, before this, what that meaneth, " The righteous shall scarcely be saved." Oh, how many a poor professor's candle is blown out, and never lighted again ! I see that ordinary profession, and to be ranked amongst the children of God, and to have a name among men, is now thought good enough to carry professors to heaven. But certainly a name is but a name, and will never bide a blast of God's storm. I ^ Arguments drawn from the risk of provoking, i84 LETTER LXXXVII. [1637. counsel you not to give your soul or Christ rest, nor your eyes sleep, till ye have gotten sometliing that will bide the fire, and stand out the storm, I am sure, that if my one foot were in heaven, and if then He should say, " Fend thyself, I will hold my grips of thee no longer," I should go no farther, but presently fall down in as many pieces of dead nature. They are happy for evermore who are over head and ears in the love of Christ, and know no sickness but love-sickness for Christ, and feel no pain but the pain of an absent and hidden Well-beloved. We run our souls out of breath and tire them, in coursing and galloping after our night-dreams (such are the rOvings of our miscarrying hearts), to get some created good thing in this life, and on this side of death. We would fain stay and spin out a heaven to ourselves, on this side of the water ; but sorrow, want, changes, crosses, and sin, are both woof and warp in that ill-spun web. Oh, how sweet and dear are those thoughts that are still upon the things which are above ! and how happy are they who are longing to have little sand in their glass, and to have tiine's thread cut, and can cry to Christ, "Lord Jesus, have over ; come and fetch the dreary ^ passenger ! " I wish that our thoughts were more frequently than they are upon our country. Oh, but heaven casteth a sweet smell afar off to those who have spiritual smelling ! God hath made many fair flowers ; but the fairest of them all is heaven, and the Flower of all flowers is Christ. Oh ! why do we not fly up to that lovely One ? Alas that there is such a scarcity of love, and of lovers, to Christ amongst us all ! Fie, fie, upon us, who love fair things, as fair gold, fair houses, fair lands, fair pleasures, fair honours, and fair persons, and do not pine and melt away with love to Christ ! Oh ! would to God I had more love for His sake ! 0 for as much as would lie betwixt me and heaven, for His sake ! 0 for as much as would go round about the earth, and over the heaven, yea, the heaven of heavens, and ten thousand worlds, that I might let all out upon fair, fair, only fair Christ ! But, alas ! I have nothing for Him, yet He hath much for me. It is no gain to Christ that He getteth my little, feckless span-length and hand-breadth of love. If men would have something to do with their hearts and their thoughts, that are always rolling up and down (like men with oars in a boat), after sinful vanities, they miglit find great and sweet employment to their thoughts upon Christ. If those ^ Sorrowful. 1637.] LETTER LXXXVIII. 185 frothy, fluctuating, and restless hearts of ours would come all about Christ, and look into His love, to bottomless love, to the depth of mercy, to the unsearchable riches of His grace, to inquire after and search into the beauty of God in Christ, they would be swallowed up in the depth and height, length and breadth of His goodness. Oh, if men would draw the curtains, and look into the inner side of the ark, and behold how the full- ness of the Godhead dwelleth in Him bodily ! Oh ! who would not say, " Let me die, let me die ten times, to see a sight of Him ? " Ten thousand deaths were no great price to give for Him. I am sure that sick, fainting love would heighten the market, and raise the price to the double for Him. But, alas ! if men and angels were rouped, and sold at the dearest price, they would not all buy a night's love, or a four-and-twenty-hours' sight of Christ ! Oh, how happy are they who get Christ for nothing ! God send me no more, for my part of paradise, but Christ : and surely I were rich enough, and as well heavened as the best of them, if Christ were my heaven. I can w;rite no better thing to you, than to desire you, if ever ye laid Christ in a count, to take Him up and count over again : and weigh Him again and again : and after this have no other to court your love, and to woo your soul's delight, but Christ. He will be found worthy of all your love, howbeit it should swell upon you from the earth to the uppermost circle of the heaven of heavens. To our Lord Jesus and His love I commend you. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R. LXXXVIII.— To Janet Kennedy. [This seems to be the wife of Mr. John Fergushill ; see Letter CXIL] {CHRIST TO BE KEPT AT EVERY SACRIFICE— HIS INCOMPAR- ABLE LOVELINESS.) ISTEESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. Ye are not a little obliged to His rich grace, who hath separated you for Himself, and for the promised in- heritance with the saints in light, from this con- demned and guilty world. Hold fast Christ, contend for Him ; it is a lawful plea to go to holding and drawing for Christ ; and it is not possible to keep Christ peaceably, having once gotten Him, except the devil were dead. It must be your resolution to set your face against Satan's northern tempests and storms, for i86 LETTER LXXXVIIL [1637. salvation. Nature would have heaven to come to us while /sleeping in our beds. We would all buy Christ, so being we might make price ourselves. But Christ is worth more blood and lives than either ye or I have to give Him. When we shall come home, and enter to the possession of our Brother's fair kingdom, and when our heads shall find the weight of the eternal crown of glory, and when we shall look back to pains and sufferings, then shall we see life and sorrow to be less than one step or stride from a prison to glory ; and that our little inch of time-suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome-home to heaven. Oh, what then shall be the weight of every one of Christ's kisses ! Oh, how weighty, and of what worth shall every one of Christ's love-smiles be ! Oh, when once He shall thrust a wearied traveller's head betwixt His blessed breasts, the poor soul will think one kiss of Christ hath fully paid home forty or fifty years' wet feet, and all its sore hearts, and light (2 Cor. iv. 17) sufferings it had in following after Christ! Oh, thrice- blinded souls, whose hearts are charmed and bewitched with dreams, shadows, feckless things, night -vanities, and night-fancies of a miserable life of sin ! Shame on us who sit still, fettered with the love and liking of the loan of a piece of dead clay ! Oh, poor fools, who are beguiled with painted things, and this world's fair weather, and smooth promises, and rotten, worm-eaten hopes ! May not the devil laugh to see us give out our souls, and get in but corrupt and counterfeit pleasures of sin ? 0 for a sight of eternity's glory, arid a little tasting of the Lamb's marriage- supper ! Half a draught, or a drop of the wine of consolation, that is up at our banqueting-house, out of Christ's own hand, would make our stomachs loathe the brown bread and the sour drink of a miserable life. Oh, how far are we bereaved of wit, to chafe, and hunt, and run, till our souls be out of breath, after a condemned happiness of our own making ! And do we not sit far in our own light to make it a matter of bairn's play, to skink and drink over ^ paradise, and the heaven that Christ did sweat for, even for a blast of smoke, and for Esau's morning breakfast ? 0 that we were out of ourselves, and dead to this world, and this world dead and crucified to us ! And, when we should be close out of love and conceit of any masked and farded lover whatso- ever, then Christ would win and conquer to Himself a lodging in the inmost yolk of our heart. Then Christ should be our night- song and morning-song ; then the very noise and din of our ^ Drink the health of the buyer over the concludoti bargain. 1637.] LETTER LXXXIX. 187 Well-beloved's feet, when He cometh, and His first knock or rap at the door, should be as news of two heavens to us. 0 that our eyes and our soul's smelling should go after a blasted and sun- burnt flower, even this plastered, fair-outsided world : and then we have neither eye nor smell for the Flower of Jesse, for that Plant of renown, for Christ, the choicest, the fairest, the sweetest rose that ever God planted ! Oh, let some of us die to smell the fragrance of Him ; and let my part of this rotten world be forfeited and sold for evermore, providing I may anchor my tottering soul upon Christ ! I know that it is sometimes at this, " Lord, what wilt Thou have for Christ ? " But, 0 Lord, canst Thou be budded, and propined with any gift for Christ ? 0 Lord, can Christ be sold ? or rather, may not a poor needy sinner have Him for nothing ? If I can get no more, oh, let me be pained to all eternity, with longing for Him ! The joy of hungering for Christ should be my heaven for evermore. Alas, that I cannot draw souls and Christ together ! But I desire the coming of His kingdom, and that Christ, as I assuredly hope He will, would come upon withered Scotland, as rain upon the new -mown grass. Oh, let the King come ! Oh, let His kingdom come ! Oh, let their eyes rot in their eyeholes (Zech. xiv. 12), who will not receive Him home again to reign and rule in Scotland. Grace, grace be with you. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R. LXXXIX. — To my Well-heloved and Reverend Brother, Mr. Robert Blair. [Mr. Robert Blair was born at Irvine in 1593. After completing his education at the College of Glasgow, he there held for several years the office of regent, during which time he was licensed as a probationer for the holy ministry. Having a strong desire to go to France, he was encouraged to this by M. Basnage, a French Protest- ant minister who visited Scotland in 1622. But Providence ordered his lot other- wise. He was induced to accept of the charge of Bangor, in Ireland, and was admitted in the year 1623. Here he laboured with great diligence and success ; and there being in the same part of the country several other devout ministers, by mutual co-operation, they were instrumental in producing in the north of Ireland a change upon an ignorant and irreligious people, much resembling the effects of the preaching of the Gospel in the apostolic age. But this good work was not allowed to go on un- opposed. In the autumn of 1631 he was suspended from his ministry by the Bishop of Down; in May 1632 he was deposed ; and in November 1634 solemnly excom- municated ; and all this simply for nonconfoi-mity. In these circumstances, he and some other ministers similarly situated, together with a considerable number of people, foi-med the purpose of going to New England, and actually embarked in 1636 ; but the tempestuous state of the weather forced them to return. He then came over to Scotland, and in 1638 became minister of Ayr, from which by a sentence of the General Assembly he was soon translated to St. Andrews, where he and Rutherford lived in the wannest friendship until the rise of the controversy between the Resolutioners and Protesters, which in some degree disturbed their i88 LETTER LXXXIX. [1637. mutual good understanding. Rutherford was a strong Protester : Blair regretted the extremes, as he conceived, to which both parties went ; and, Avitli Mr. James Durham of Glasgow, endeavoured to restore haiTnony between them, but without success. In 1661 he was summoned before the Privy Council for a sermon he had preached, in which he bore testimony to the covenanted Reformation, as well as against the defections of the times. He was sentenced to be confined to his own house, but afterwards permitted to retire to Musselburgh. He next removed to Kirkcaldy, and from thence to Meikle Couston, in the parish of Aberdour, where he died on the 27th of April 1 666. (See Life of Robert Blair, issued by the Wodrow Society, 1848. )] {GOD'S ARRANGEMENTS SOMETIMES MYSTERIOUS.) EVEREND AND DEAELY BELOVED BROTHER, — Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, be unto you. It is no great wonder, my dear brother, that ye be in heaviness for a season, and that God's will (in crossing your design and desires to dwell amongst a people whose God is the Lord) should move you. I deny not but ye have cause to inquire what His providence speaketh in this to you ; but God's directing and commanding Will can by no good logic be concluded from events of 'providence. The Lord sent Paul on many errands for the spreading of His Gospel, where he found lions in his way. A promise was made to His people of the Holy Land, and yet many nations were in the way, fighting against, and ready to kill them that had the promise, or to keep them from possessing that good land which the Lord their God had given them. I know that ye have most to do with submission of spirit ; but I persuade myself that ye have learned, in every condition wherein ye are cast, therein to be content, and to say, " Good is the will of the Lord, let it be done." I believe that the Lord tacketh His ship often to fetch the wind, and that He purposeth to bring mercy out of your sufferings and silence, which (I know from mine own experience) is grievous to you. Seeing that He knoweth our willing mind to serve Him, our wages and stipend is running to the fore with our God, even as some sick soldiers get pay, when they are bedfast and not able to go to the field with others. " Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength " (Isa. xlix. 5). And we are to believe it shall be thus ere all the play be played. " The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon " (and the great whore's lovers), " shall the inhabitants of Zion say ; and my blood be upon Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say." ^ And, " Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling to all the 1 Jcr. li. 35. 1637-] LETTER LXXXIX. 189 people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people : they that burden themselves with it shall be broken in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it." ^ When they have eaten and swallowed us up, they shall be sick and vomit us out living men again ; the devil's stomach cannot digest the Church of God. Suffering is the other half of our ministry, howbeit the hardest ; for we would be content that our King Jesus should make an open proclamation, and cry down crosses, and cry up joy, gladness, ease, honour, and peace. But it must not be so ; through many aiSiictions we must enter into the kingdom of God. Not only by them, but through them, must we go ; and wiles will not take us past the cross. It is folly to think to steal to heaven with a whole skin. For myself, I am here a prisoner confined in Aberdeen, threatened to be removed to Caithness, because I desire to edify in this town ; and am openly preached against in the pulpits in my hearing, and tempted with disputations by the doctors, especially by D. B. ^ Yet I am not ashamed of the Lord Jesus, His garland, and His crown. I would not exchange my weeping with the painted laughter of the fourteen prelates. At my first coming here I took the dorts at Christ, and would, forsooth, summon Him for unkindness. I sought a plea of my Lord, and was tossed with challenges whether He loved me or not ; and disputed over again all that He had done to me, because His word was a fire shut up in my bowels, and I was weary with forbear- ing, because I said I was cast out of the Lord's inheritance. But now I see that I was a fool. My Lord miskent all, and did bear with my foolish jealousies ; and miskent that ever I wronged His love. And now He has come again with mercy under His wings. I pass from my (oh witless !) summons : He is God, I see, and I am man. Now it hath pleased Him to re- new His love to my soul, and to dawt His poor prisoner. There- fore, dear brother, help me to praise and show the Lord's people with you what He hath done to my soul, that they may pray and praise. And I charge you in the name of Christ, not to omit it. For this cause I write to you, that my sufferings may glorify my 1 Zecli. xii. 2, 3. ^ Dr. Robert Baron, Professor of Divinity in the Marischal College of Aberdeen, one of the learned doctors of that city, whose dispute, in 1638, with Alexander Henderson, David Dickson, and Andrew Cant, on the subject of the Covenant, excited at the time so much attention. igo LETTER XC. [1637. royal King, and edify His Church in Ireland. He knoweth how one of Christ's love coals hath burnt my soul with a desire to have my bonds to preach His glory, whose cross I now bear. God forgive you if you do it not ; but I hope the Lord will move your heart, to proclaim in my behalf the sweetness, excellency, and glory of my royal King. It is but our soft flesh that hath raised a slander on the Cross of Christ : I see now the white side of it ; my Lord's chains are all over-gilded. Oh, if Scotland and Ireland had part of my feast ! And yet I get not my meat but with many strokes. There are none here to whom I can speak ; I dwell in Kedar's tents. Refresh me with a letter fi:om you. Few know what is betwixt Christ and me. Dear brother, upon my salvation, this is His truth that we suffer for. Christ would not seal a blank charter to souls. Courage, courage ! joy, joy for evermore ! Oh, joy unspeakable and glorious ! 0 for help to set my crowned King on high ! 0 for love to Him who is altogether lovely, — that love which many waters cannot quench, neither can the floods drown ! I remember you, and bear your name on my breast to Christ. I beseech you, forget not His afflicted prisoner. Grace, mercy, and peace be with you. Salute in the Lord, from me, Wx. Cunningham, Mr. Livingstone, Mr. Ridge,^ Mr. Colwart,^ &c. Your brother, and fellow-prisoner, Aberdeen, Feh. 7, 1637. S. R XC. — To Ids Reverend and Dear Brother, Mr. John LrviNGSTONE. [John Livingstone (the son of Alexander Livingstone, minister first at Monyabrocli or Kilsyth, and afterwards at Lanark) was born at Mouyabroch on the 21st of January 1603. At the College of Glasgow, he enjoyed the advantage of having as his regent for two years the famous Robert Blair, for whom he con- tinued ever after to retain the highest veneration. He was first settled minister at Killinchie, in Ireland, towards the close of the year 1630, but had not laboured above twelve months in that charge when he was suspended by the Bishop of Down, for nonconformity. To enjoy religious liberty, he set out with Mr. Blair and others in their intended emigi-ation to America ; but, with the rest, was forced by the adverse state of the weather to return. Shortly after, he received calls from two parishes, Stranraer and Stewarton, but preferred the call from the former, and his induction took place on the 5th of July 1638. Hero he continued in the assiduous ^ Mr. John Eidge was an English minister, whom opposition to ceremonial impositions on conscience led to leave his native country for Ireland. He was admitted to the vicarage of Antrim on the 7th of July 1619, in which he laboured with success for many years ; but being deposed by Henry Leslie, the Bishop of Down, for nonconformity, he came over to Irvine, where he died. ^ Mr. Henry Colwart was also a native of England ; and, like Mr. Eidge, left the land of his birth, and went to Ireland. He was admitted to the pastoral charge of OLlstone in 1630 ; but, being deposed by Bishop Leslie for refusing to submit to the innovations of Prelacy, he came over to Scotland, and was admitted minister of Paisley, where he died. 1637] LETTER XC. 191 discharge of liis pastoral functions until 1648, when, by tlie sentence of the General Assembly, he Avas translated to tlie parish of Ancnim, in the Presbytery of Jed- burgh. Upon the death of Charles I., he was sent to the Hague, and afterwards to Breda, as one of the commissioners from the Church of Scotland to treat with his son Charles II., whose character he had the penetration to discover. In the controversy between the Resolutioners and Protesters, Livingstone took the side of the latter, but was dissatisfied with the violence manifested by his party. After the restoration of Charles II., being summoned to appear before the Privy Council in 1662, he appeared ; but, declining to engage to observe the anniversary of the death of Charles I. , and to take the oath of allegiance in the precise w^ay in which it was dictated to him, he was sentenced to quit his native land within two months. Having repaired to Rotterdam, he preached occasionally to the Scottish congrega tion there, and devoted the remainder of his life to the cultivation of Biblical literature. He died in that city on the 9th of August 1672, in the seventieth year of his age. It was this same Livingstone that was so blessed in awakenings. By a sermon which he preached in 1630 at the Kirk-of-Shotts, on the Monday after the dispensa- tion of the Lord's Supper, five hundred souls, it is believed, were converted. On a similar occasion, at Holywood, in the north of Ireland, in one day, he was the instrument of awakening double that number to inquuy after salvation. (See Brief Historical Relation of the Life of John Livingston in " Select Biographies," vol. i., Wodrow Society, 1845.)] {RESIGNATION— ENJOYMENT— STATE OF THE CHURCH.) Y EEVEEEND AND DEAE BEO THEE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to hear from you, and to be refreshed with the comforts of The Bride of our Lord Jesus in Ireland. I suffer with you in grief, for the dash that your desires to be at New England have received of late ; but if our Lord, who hath skill to bring up His children, had not seen it your best, it would not have befallen you. Hold your peace, and stay yourselves upon the Holy One of Israel. Hearken to what He hath said in crossing of your desires ; He will speak peace to His people. I am here removed from my flock, and silenced, and confined in Aberdeen, for the testimony of Jesus. And I have been con- fined in spirit also with desertions and challenges. I gave in a bill of quarrels, and complaints of unkindness against Christ, who seemed to have cast me over the dyke of the vineyard as a dry tree, and separated me from the Lord's inheritance ; but high, high and loud praises be to our royal crowned King in Zion, that He hath not burnt the dry branch. I shall yet live, and see His glory. Your mother - Church, for her whoredom, is like to be cast off. The bairns may break their hearts to see such chiding betwixt the husband and the wife. Our clergy is upon a reconciliation with the Lutherans ; and the Doctors are writingr books, and drawing up a common confession, at the Council's command. Our Service Book is proclaimed with sound of 192 LETTER XCI. [1637. trumpet. The night is fallen down upon the prophets ! Scot- land's day of visitation is come. It is time for the bride to weep, while Christ is a-saying that He will choose another wife. But our sky will clear again ; the dry branch of cut - dov/n Lebanon will bud again and be glorious, and they shall yet plant vines upon our mountains. Now, my dear brother, I write to you for this end, that ye may help me to praise ; and seek help of others with you, that God may be glorified in my bonds. My Lord Jesus hath taken the withered, dry stranger, and His prisoner broken in heart, into His house of wine. Oh, oh, if ye, and all Scotland, and all our brethren with you, knew how I am feasted ! Christ's honey-combs drop comforts. He dineth with His prisoner, and the King's spikenard casteth a smelL The devil cannot get it denied that we suffer for the apple of Christ's eye. His royal prerogatives, as King and Lawgiver. Let us not fear or faint. He will have His Gospel once again rouped in Scotland, and have the matter going to voices, to see who will say, " Let Christ be crowned King in Scotland." It is true that Antichrist stirreth his tail ; but I love a rumbling and raging devil in the kirk (since the Church militant cannot or may not want a devil to trouble her), rather than a subtle or sleeping devil. Christ never yet got a bride without stroke of sword. It is now nigh the Bridegroom's entering into His chamber ; let us awake and go in with Him. I bear your name to Christ's door ; I pray you, dear brother, forget me not. Let me hear from you by a letter ; and I charge you, smother not Christ's bounty towards me. I write what I have found of Him in the house of my pilgrimage. Eemember my love to all our brethren and sisters there. The Keeper of the vineyard watch for His besieged city, and for you. Your brother, and fellow-sufferer, Abeedeen, Feb. 7, 1637. °' •^• XCI.— To Mr. Ephraim Melvin. [Efuiiaim Melvin, or Melville, was first ordained minister of Queensferry, and afterwards translated to Linlithgow, where he died. His ministiy was signally blessed of God for bringing many to the saving knowledge of the truth, among whom were some who afterwards became eminent ministers of the Gospel in their day. One of these was the famous Mr. James Durliam of Glasgow. Happening, with his pious wife, a daughter of the laird of Duntervie, to pay a visit to her mother, also a religious woman, in Queensferry, when the sacrament of the Lord's 1 63 7-] LETTER XCI. 193 Supper was to be observed in that place, bis mother-in-law, upon the Saturday, desired him to go with her to hear sermon. Being then a stranger to true religion, he was disinclined to go, and said, with a tone of indifterence, ' ' that he had not come there to hear sermon ; " but upon being pressed, to gi'atify his pious relative, he went. The discourse which he heard, though plain and ordinary, was delivered with an affection and earnestness that arrested the attention of Durham, and so impressed him, that on coming home he said to his mother-in-law, "Your minister preached very seriously, and I shall not need to be pressed to go to hear to-morrow." Accordingly he went, and Mr. Melvin, choosing for his text these words, ' ' To you which believe. He is precious," 1 Peter ii. 7, opened up the preciousness of Christ with such unction and seriousness, that it proved, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the means of his conversion. In that sermon he closed with Christ, and then took his seat at the Lord's Table, though to that day he had been an absolute stranger to believing. He was accustomed afterwards to call Mr. Melvin his father, when he spoke of him or to him. On another occasion, Mr. Melvin, by a sermon which he preached at Stewarton, when a probationer and chaplain to the excellent Lady Boyd, was the instrument of converting Mr. John Stirling in the fourteenth or sixteenth year of his age — one who proved a useful minister in his day, "Some say also," remarks Wodrow, "that he was a spiritual father to Mr. John Dury of Dalmeny, a man much esteemed of in his time, as having a taking and soaring gift of preaching, much like Mr. William Guthrie's gift." When Rutherford heard of Melvin's death, he is represented to have said, "And is Ephraim dead? He was an interpreter among a thousand." (Wodrow's "Anal.," vol. iii.)] {THE IDOLATRY OF KNEELING AT THE COMMUNION.) EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,— I received your letter, and am contented, with all my heart, that our acquaintance in our Lord continue. I am wrestling as I dow, up the mount with Christ's cross : my Second is kind and able to help. As for your questions, because of my manifold distractions, and letters to multitudes, I have not time to answer them. What shall be said in common for that shall be imparted to you ; for I am upon these questions. Therefore spare me a little, for the Service Book would take a great time. But I think ; " Sicut deosculatio religiosa imaginis, aut etiam elemento- rum, est in se idololatria externa, etsi intentio deosculandi, tota, quanta in actu est, feratur in Deum irpcororvTrov ; ita, geniculatio coram pane, quando, nempe, ex instituto, totus homo externus et internus versari debeat circa elementaria signa, est adoratio relativa, et adoratio ipsius panis. Ratio : Intentio adorandi ob- jectum materiale, non est de essentia externse adorationis, ut patet in deosculatione religiosa. Sic geniculatio coram imagine Babylonica est externa adoratio imaginis, etsi tres pueri mente intendissent adorare Jehovam. Sic, qui ex metu solo, aut spe pretii, aut inanis glorise, geniculatur coram aureo vitulo Jeroboami (quod ab ipso rege, qui null^ religione inductus, sed libidine dominandi tantum, vitulum erexit, factitatum esse, textus satie N 194 LETTER XCL [1637. luculenter clamat), adorat vitulum extern^, adoratione. Esto quod putaret vitulum esse meram creaturam, et honore nullo dignum : quia geniculatio, sive nos nolumus, sive volumus, ex institute Dei et naturae, in actu religiose, est symbolum religiosee adorationis. Ergo, sicut panis significat corpus Christi, etsi absit actus omnis nostra? intentionis ; sic religiosa geniculatio, sublata omni intentioue human a, est externa adoratio panis, coram quo adoramus, ut coram signo vicario et reprtesentativo Dei. [As the religious homage done to an image, or even to elements, is in itself an external act of idolatry, in so far as the act is con- cerned, although the intention of such homage may be directed to God the Great First Cause, — so the act of kneeling to a piece of bread, seeing that, according to the ordinance, the whole man, internal and external, ought to be engaged in the elementary signs, is a relative act of worship and an adoration of the bread itself. The reason is : an intention to worship a material object is not of the essence of external adoration, as appears in a religious act of homage. Thus, the bending of the knee before the Babyionish image is an external act of worship, even though the three youths had no intention to worship any but the true God ; and in like manner, those who, from fear or the hope of reward or vain-glory, bend the knee to Jeroboam's golden calf (which the text clearly enough proclaims to have been done by the king himself, from no religious motive but the mere desire to rule), do pay adoration to the calf by the external act, although, no doubt, they may suppose the calf a mere created object and unworthy of honour, — because the act of homage, whether we mean it or not, is, from the ordinance of God and nature, a symbol of worship. Therefore, as the bread denotes the body of Christ (even though that idea be not present to the mind), so in like manner, kneeling, when used as a religious service, is the external adoration of that bread, in presence of which we bow as before the delegated representative of God, be our intention what it may.] ^ Thus recommending you to God's tender mercy, I desire that you would remcm1)er me to God. Sanctification will settle you most in the trutli. Grace be with you, Brother in Christ Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S- ^' ^ The Latin is to be accounted for as being an extract from some learned treatise. It is in substance what we find in Oalderwood's "Altare Damascenum,'' p. 595. 1637.] LETTER XCIL 195 XCII. — To Robert Gordon of Knockhrex. {VISITS OF CHRIST— THE THINGS WHICH AFFLICTION TEACHES.) Y VERY WORTHY AND DEAR ER I END,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. Though all Galloway should have forgotten me, I would have expected a letter from you ere now ; but I will not expound it to be forgetfulness of me. Now, my dear brother, I cannot show you how matters go betwixt Christ and me. I find my Lord going and coming seven times a day. His visits are short ; but they are both frequent and sweet. I dare not for my life think of a challenge of my Lord. I hear ill tales, and hard reports of Christ, from The Tempter and my flesh ; but love believeth no evil. I may swear that they are liars, and that apprehensions make lies of Christ's honest and unalterable love to me. I dare not say that I am a dry tree, or that I have no room at all in the vineyard ; but yet I often think that the sparrows are blessed, who may resort to the house of God in Anwoth, from which I am banished. Temptations, that I supposed to be stricken dead and laid upon their back, rise again and revive upon me; yea, I see that while I live, temptations will not die. The devil seemeth to brag and boast as much as if he had more court with Christ than I have ; and as if he had charmed and blasted my ministry, that I shall do no more good in public. But his wind shaketh no corn.^ I will not believe that Christ would have made such a mint to have me to Himself, and have taken so much pains upon me as He hath done, and then slip so easily from possession, and lose the glory of what He hath done. Nay, since I came to Aberdeen, I have been taken up to see the new land, the fair palace of the Lamb ; and will Christ let me see heaven, to break my heart, and never give it to me ? I shall not think my Lord Jesus giveth a dumb earnest, or putteth His seals to blank paper, or intendeth to put me off with fair and false promises. I see that now which I never saw well before. (1.) I see faith's necessity in a fair day is never known aright ; but now I miss nothing so much as faith. Hunger in me runneth to fair and sweet promises ; but when I come, I am like a hungry man that wanteth teeth, or a weak stomach having a sharp appetite that ^ Does no harm. 196 LETTER XCIL [1637. is filled with the very sight of meat, or like one stupefied with cold under the water, that would fain come to land, but cannot grip anything casten to him. I can let Christ grip me, but I cannot grip Him. I love to be kissed, and to sit on Christ's knee ; but I cannot set my feet to the ground, for afflictions bring the c^amp upon my faith. All that I dow do is to hold out a lame faith to Christ, like a beggar holding out a stump, instead of an arm or leg, and cry, " Lord Jesus, work a miracle ! " Oh, what would I give to have hands and arms to grip strongly, and fold heartsomely about Christ's neck, and to have my claim made good with real possession ! I think that my love to Christ hath feet in abundance, and runneth swiftly to be at Him, but it wanteth hands and fingers to apprehend Him. I think that I would give Christ every morning my blessing, to have as much faith as I have love and hunger ; at least, I miss faith more than love or hunger. (2.) I see that mortification, and to be crucified to the world, is not so highly accounted of by us as it should be. Oli, how heavenly ar thing it is to be dead, and dumb, and deaf to this world's sweet music ! I confess it hath pleased His Majesty to make me laugh at the children, who are wooing this world for their match. I see men lying about the world, as nobles about a king's court ; and I wonder what they are all doing there. As I am at this present, I would scorn to court such a feckless and petty princess, or buy this world's kindness with a bow of my knee. I scarce now either hear or see what it is that this world olfereth me ; I know that it is little which it can take from me, and as little that it can give me. I recommend mortification to you above anything ; for, alas ! we but chase feathers flying in the air, and tire our own spirits for the froth and over-gilded clay of a dying life. One sight of what my Lord hath let me see within this short time is worth a world of worlds. (3.) I thought courage, in the time of trouble for Christ's sake, a thing that I might take up at my foot. I thought that the very remembrance of the honesty of the cause would be enough. But I was a fool in so thinking. I have much ado now to win to one smile. But I see that joy groweth up in heaven, and it is above our short arm. Christ will be steward and dispenser Himself, and none else but He ; therefore, now, I count much of one dram weight of spiritual joy. One smile of Christ's face is now to me as a kingdom ; and yet He is no niggard to me of comforts. Truly I have no cause to say that I 1637.] LETTER XCIII. 197 am pinched with penury, or that the consolations of Christ are dried up : for He hath poured down rivers upon a dry wilderness the like of me/ to my admiration ; and in my very swoonings, He holdeth up my head, and stayeth me with flagons of wine, and comforteth me with apples. My house and bed are strewed with kisses of love. Praise, praise with me. Oh, if ye and I betwixt us could lift up Christ upon His throne, howbeit all Scotland should cast Him down to the ground ! My brother's case toucheth me near. I hope that ye will be kind to him, and give him your best counsel. Eemember my love to your brother, to your wife, and G. M.^ Desire him to be faithful, and to repent of his hypocrisy ; and say that I wrote it to you. I wish him salvation. "Write to me your mind anent C. E. and C. Y., and their wives, and I. G., or any others in my parish. I fear that I am forgotten amongst them ; but I cannot forget them. The prisoner's prayers and blessings come upon you. Grace, grace be with you. Your brother, in the Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Feb. 9, 1637. S. R SBii-i. L ■....!.> XCIII. — To the Honourable and truly Noble Lady, the Viscountess of Kenmueb. (GOjyS DEALINGS WITH SCOTLAND— THE EYE TO BE DIRECTED HEAVENWARD.) I'ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Ladyship. — I long to hear from you. I am here waiting, if a good wind, long looked for, will at length blow into Christ's sails, in this land. But I wonder if Jesus be not content to suffer more yet in His members and cause, and in the beauty of His house, rather than He should not be avenged upon this land. I hear that many worthy men, who see more in the Lord's dealings than I can take up with my dim sight, are of a contrary mind, and do believe that the Lord is coming home again to His house in Scotland. I hope He is on His journey that way ; yet I look not but that He will feed this land with their own blood, before He establish His throne amongst us. ^ Sucli as I am ! ^ All those whose initials are given are understood to have been parishioners of his at Auwoth. I9& LETTER XCIV. [1637. I know that your honour is not looking after things here- away. Ye have no great cause to think that your stock and principal is under the roof of these visible heavens ; and I hope that ye would think yourself a beguiled and cozened soul if it were so. I should be sorry to counsel your Ladyship to make a covenant with time, and this life ; but rather desire you to hold in fair generals, and afar off from this ill-founded heaven that is on this side of the water. It speaketh somewhat when our Lord bloweth the bloom off our daft hopes in this life, and loppeth the branches off our worldly joys, well nigh the root, on purpose that they should not thrive. Lord, spill my fool's heaven in this life, that I may be saved for ever. A forfeiture of the saint's part of the yolk and marrow of short-laughing worldly happiness, is not such a real evil as our blinded eyes conceive. I am thinking long now for some deliverance more than before. But I know I am in an error. It is possible I am not come to that measure of trial which the Lord is seeking in His work. If my friends in Galloway would effectually do for my deliverance, I should exceedingly rejoice ; but I know not but the Lord hath a way whereof He will be the only reaper of praises. Let me know with the bearer how the child is. The Lord be his father and tutor, and your only comforter. There is no- thing here, where I am, but profanity and atheism. Grace, grace, be with your Ladyship. Your Ladyship's, at all obliged obedience, in Christ, Abeedeen, Ftb. 13, 1637. S. R. XCIV. — To the Noble and Christian Lady, the Viscountess of Kenmure. {TlfE TIMES— CHRIST'S SWEETNESS IN TROUBLE— LONGING AFTER HIM.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I would not omit the occasion to write to your Ladyship with the bearer. I am glad that the child is well. God's favour, even in the eyes of men, be seen upon him ! I hope that your Ladyship is thinking upon these sad and woful days wherein we now live, when our Lord, in His righteous judgment, is sending the kirk the gate she is going to Eome's brothel-house to seek a lover of her own, seeing that she hath given up with Christ her Husband. Oh, what sweet comfort, 1637.] LETTER XCIV. 199 what rich salvation, is laid up for those who had rather wash and roll their garments in their own blood, than break out ^ from Christ by apostacy ! Keep yourself in the love of Christ, and stand far aback from the pollutions of the world. Side not with these times ; and hold off from coming nigh the signs of a con- spiracy with those that are now come out against Christ, that ye may be one kept for Christ only. I know that your Ladyship thinketh upon this, and how you may be humbled for yourself and this backsliding land ; for I avouch, that wrath from the Lord is gone out against Scotland. I think aye the longer the better of my royal and worthy Master. He is become a new Well-beloved to me now, in renewed consolations, by the presence of the Spirit of grace and glory. Christ's garments smell of the powder of the merchant, when He cometh out of His ivory chambers. Oh, His perfumed face, His fair face. His lovely and kindly kisses, have made me, a poor prisoner, see that there is more to be had of Christ in this life than I believed ! We think all is but a little earnest, a four-hours, a small tasting, that we have, or that is to be had, in this life (which is true compared with the inheritance) ; but yet I know it is more : it is the king- dom of God within us. Wo, wo is me, that I have not ten loves for that one Lord Jesus ; and that love faileth, and drieth up in loving Him ; and that I find no way to spend my love desires, and the yolk of my heart upon that fairest and dearest One. ' I am far behind with my narrow heart. Oh, how ebb a soul have I to take in Christ's love ! for let worlds be multiplied, according to angels' understanding, in millions, whill they weary themselves, these worlds would not contain the thousandth part of His love. Oh, if I could yoke in amongst the thick of angels, and seraphims, and now glorified saints, and could raise a new love -song of Christ, before all the world ! I am pained with wondering at new-opened treasures in Christ. If every finger, member, bone, and joint, were a torch burning in the hottest fire in hell, I would that they could all send out love praises, high songs of praise for evermore, to that Plant of Eenown, to that royal and high Prince, Jesus my Lord. But alas ! His love swelleth in me, and findeth no vent. Alas ! what can a dumb prisoner do or say for Him ! 0 for an ingine to write a book of Christ and His love ! Nay, I am left of Him bound and chained with His love. I cannot find a loosed soul to lift up His praises, and give them out to others. But oh ! my day-light hath thick clouds ; I can- ' Of, probably. 200 LETTER XCV L1637. not shine in His praises. I am often like a ship plying about to seek the wind ; I sail at great leisure, and cannot be blown upon that loveliest Lord. Oh, if I could turn my sails to Christ's right airth, and that I had my heart's wishes of His love ! But I but mar His praises : nay, I know no comparison of what Christ is, and what His worth is. All the angels, and all the glorified, praise Him not so much as in halves. Who can advance Him, or utter all His praises ? I want nothing ; un- known faces favour me ; enemies must speak good of the truth ; my Master's cause purchaseth commendations. The hopes of my enlargement, from appearances, are cold. My faith hath no bed to sleep upon but omnipotency. The good-will of the Lord, and His sweetest presence, be with you and that child. Grace and peace be yours. Your Ladyship's, in all duty in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S- J^- XCV. — To the Rigid Honourahle and Christian Ladrj, the . ' Viscountess op Kenmure. (CHRIST'S CROSS SWEET— HIS COMING TO BE DESIRED- JEALOUS OF ANY RIVAL.) i ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Ladyship. I would not omit to write a line with this Christian bearer ; one in your Ladyship's own case, driven near to Christ, in and by her affliction. I wish that my friends in Galloway forget me not. However it be, Christ is so good, I will have no other tutor, suppose I could have wale and choice of ten thousand beside. I think now five hundred heavy hearts for Him too little. I wish that Christ, now weeping, suffering, and contemned of men, were more dear and desirable to many souls than He is. I am sure that if the saints wanted Christ's cross, so profitable, and so sweet, they might, for the gain and glory of it, wish it were lawful either to buy or borrow His cross. But it is a mercy that the saints have it laid to their hand for nothing ; for I know no sweeter way to heaven than through free grace and hard trials together ; and one of these cannot well want another. 0 that time would post faster, and hasten our looked-for communion with that fairest, fairest among the sous of men ! 0 that the day would favour us and come, and put Clirist and us into each other's arms ! I am sure that a few years will do 1637.] LETTER XCVI. 201 our turn, and the soldier's hour-glass will soon run out. Madam, look to your lamp, and look for your Lord's Coming, and let your heart dwell aloof from that sweet child. Christ's jealousy will not admit of two equal loves in your Ladyship's heart. He must have one, and that the greatest ; a little one to a creature may and must suffice a soul married to Him. " Thy Maker is thine Husband " (Isa. liv. 5). I would wish you well, and my obliga- tions these many years byegone speak no less to me ; but more I can neither wish, nor pray, nor desire for your Ladyship, than Christ singled and waled out from all created good things, or Christ howbeit wet in His own blood, and wearing a crown of thorns. I am sure that the saints, at their best, are but strangers to the weight and worth of the incomparable sweetness of Christ. He is so new, so fresh in excellency every day of new, to those that search more and more in Him, as if heaven could furnish us as many new Christs (if I may so speak) as there are days betwixt Him and us ; and yet He one and the same. Oh, we love an unknown lover when we love Christ ! Let me hear how the child is every way. The prayers of a prisoner of Christ be upon him. Grace for evermore, even whill glory perfect it, be with your Ladyship. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. E. XCVI. — To the Nolle and Christian Lady, the Viscountess of Kenmure. {CHRIST ALL WORTHY— ANWOTIL) I'ADAM, — Notwithstanding the great haste of the bearer, I would bless your Ladyship on paper, desiring, that since Christ hath ever envied that the world should have your love by Him,^ that ye give yourself out for Christ, and that ye may be for no other. I know none worthy of you but Christ. Madam, I am either suffering for Christ, and this is the sure and good way ; or, I have done with heaven, and shall never see God's face, which, I bless Him, cannot be. I write my blessing to that sweet child, that ye have borrowed from God. He is no heritage to you, but a loan ; love him as folks do borrowed things. My heart is heavy for you. They say that the kirk of Christ hath neither son nor heir, and therefore that her enemies shall possess her. But I know ^ More than He ; settinj; Him aside. 202 LETTER XCVII. [1637. that she is not that ill-friended ; her Husband is her heir, and she His heritage. If my Lord would be pleased, I should desire that some be dealt with, for my return to Anwoth. But if that never be, I thank God Anwoth is not heaven ; preaching is not Christ. I hope to wait on. Let me hear how your child is, and your Ladyship's mind and hopes of him ; for it would ease my heart to know that he is well. I am in good terms with Christ ; but oh, my guiltiness ! Yet He bringeth not pleas betwixt Him and me to the streets, and before the sun. Grace, grace for ever more be with your Ladyship. Your Ladyship's, at all obedience in Christ, Aberdeen, 1637. S. K. XCVII. — To Alexander Gordon 0/ Earlstmi. [JCHRIST.ENDEARED BY BITTER EXPERIENCES— SEARCHINGS OF HEART— FEAR FOR THE CHURCH.) UCH HONOURED SIE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I received your letter, which refreshed me. Except from your son, and my brother, I have seen few letters from my acquaintance in. that country; which maketh me heavy. But I have the company of a Lord who can teach us all to be kmd, and hath the right gate of it. Though, for the present, I have seven ups and downs every day, yet I am abundantly comforted and feasted with my King and Well-beloved daily. It pleaseth Him to come and dine with a sad prisoner, and a solitary stranger. His spikenard casteth a smell. Yet my sweet hath some sour mixed with it, wherein I must acquiesce ; for there is no reason that His comforts be too cheap, seeing they are delicates. Why should He not make them so to His own ? But I verily think now, that Christ hath led me up to a nick in Christianity that I was never at before ; I think all before was but childhood and bairn's play. Since I departed from you, I have been scalded, whill the smoke of hell's fire went in at my throat, and I would have bought peace with a thousand years' torment in hell ; and I have been up also, after these deep down-castings and sorrows, before the Lamb's white throne, in my Father's inner court, the Great King's dining-hall. And Christ did cast a covering of love on me. He hath casteu i637 i LETTER XCVIL 203 a coal into my soul, and it is smoking among the straw and keeping the hearth warm. I look back to what I was before, and I laugh to see the sand-houses I built when I was a child. At first the remembrance of the many fair feast-days with my Lord Jesus in public, which are now changed into silent Sabbaths, raised a great tempest, and (if I may speak so) made the devil ado in my soul. The devil came in, and would prompt me to make a plea with Christ, and to lay the blame on Him as a hard master. But now these mists are blown away, and I am not only silenced as to all quarrelling, but fully satisfied. Now, I wonder that any man living can laugh upon the world, or give it a hearty good-day. The Lord Jesus hath handled me so, that, as I am now disposed, I think never to be in this world's commons again for a night's lodging. Christ beareth me good company. He hath eased me, when I saw it not, lifting the cross off my shoulders, so that I think it to be but a feather, because underneath are everlasting arms. God forbid it come to bartering or nifferings of crosses ; for I think my cross so sweet, that I know not where I would get the like of it. Christ's honey-combs drop so abundantly, that they sweeten my gall. Nothing breaketh my heart, but that I cannot get the daughters of Jerusalem to tell them of my Bridegroom's glory. I charge you in the name of Christ, that ye tell all that ye come to of it ; and yet it is above telling and understanding. Oh, if all the kingdom were as I am, except my bonds ! They know not the love-kisses that my only Lord Jesus wasteth on a dawted prisoner. On my salvation, this is the only way to the New City. I know that Christ hath no dumb seals. Would He put His privy-seal upon blank paper ? He hath sealed my sufferings with His comforts. I write this to confirm you. I write now what I have seen as well as heard. Now and then my silence burneth up my spirit ; but Christ hath said, " Thy stipend is running up with interest in heaven, as if thou wert preaching ; " and this from a King's mouth rejoiceth my heart. At other times I am sad, dwelling in Kedar's tents. There are none (that I yet know of) but two persons in this town that I dare give my word for. And the Lord hath removed my brethren and my acquaintance far from me ; and it may be, that I shall be forgotten in the place where the Lord made me the instrument to do some good. But I see that this is vanity in me ; let Him make of me what He pleaseth, if He make salvation out of it to me. I am tempted and troubled, that all the fourteen 204 LETTER XCVIII. [1637. prelates ^ should have been armed of God against me only, while the rest of my brethren are still preaching. But I dare not say one word but this, " It is good, Lord Jesus, because Thou hast done it." Wo is me for the virgin-daughter ! wo is me for the desola- tion of the virgin-daughter of Scotland ! Oh, if my eyes were a fountain of tears, to weep day and night for that poor widow-kirk, that poor miserable harlot ! Alas, that my Father hath put to the door on my poor harlot-mother ! 0 for that cloud of black wrath, and fury of the indignation of the Lord, that is hanging over the land ! Sir, write to me, I beseech you. I pray you also be kind to my afflicted brother, Eemember my love to your wife ; and the prayer and blessing of the prisoner of Christ be on you. Frequent your meetings for prayer and communion with God : they would be sweet meetings to me. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Feh. 16, 1637. S. R. XCVIII, — To tlie Worthy and much HoTioured Mr. Alexander Colville of Blair. [Alexander Colville of Blair (which is in the parish of Camock, Fifeshire) early commended himself to the gratitude of Rutherford by befriending him under prelatio persecutions. When Rutherford in 1630 was summoned before the High Commission Court, this gentleman, being one of the judges, exerted himself in his behalf; and his influence, together with the absence of the Archbishop of St Andrews, occasioned the desertion of the diet, and put a stop to the proceedings against the obnoxious minister, (See Letter XI.) As wo learn from this letter, he also showed much kindness to Rutherford's brother on his trial before the High Commission in Novem- ber 1630, for his nonconformity and zealous support of Mr Glendinning, the injured minister of Kirkcudbright. Colville was an elder of the Church, and his name appears on the roll of the members of the General Assemblies 1645, 1646, 1648, and 1G49, and of the Commissions appointed by these Assemblies. We find him after tliis, in co-oi)eration with another iiidividual, delating Jlr. Robert Bruce, minister of Ballagi-ay, of which they were parishioners, on the ground that they were not edified by his doctrine.] {INCREASING EXPERIENCE OF CHRIST S LOVE— GOD WITH HIS SAINTS.) luCH HONOUEED SIR, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. The bearer hereof, ]\Ir. R, F., is most kind to me ; I desire you to thank him. But none is so kind as my only royal King and Master, whose cross is my garland. The King dineth with His prisoner, and His spikenard casteth a smell. He hath led me up to such a pitch and nick of joyful communion with Himself, as I never knew before. When I look back to by-gones, I judge myself to 1 See Letter LXVIII. 1637] LETTER XCIX. 205 have been a child at A, B, C with Christ. Worthy Sir, pardon me, I dare not conceal it from you ; it is as a fire in my bowels. (In His presence who seeth me I speak it !) I am pained, pained with the love of Christ ; He hath made me sick, and wounded me. Hunger for Christ outrunueth faith ; I miss faith more than love. Oh, if the three kingdoms would come and see ! Oh, if they knew His kindness to my soul ! It hath pleased Him to bring me to this, that I will not strike sails to this world, nor flatter it, nor adore this clay idol that fools worship. As I am now disposed, I think that I shall neither borrow nor lend ^ with it ; and yet I get my meat from Christ with nurture ; for seven times a-day I am lifted up, and casten down. My dumb Sabbaths burden my heart, and make it bleed. I want not fearful challenges, and jealousies sometimes of Christ's love, that He hath casten. me over the dyke of the vineyard as a dry tree. But this is my infirmity. By His grace I take myself in these ravings. It is kindly that faith and love both be sick, and fevers are kindly to most joyful communion with Christ. Ye are blessed who avouch Christ openly before The Prince of this kingdom, whose eyes are upon you. It is your glory to lift Him up on His throne, to carry His train, and bear up the hem of His robe royal. He hath an hiding-place for Mr Alexander Colville against the storm : go on, and fear not what man can do. The saints seem to have the worst of it (for apprehension can make a lie of Christ and His love) ; but it is not so. Providence is not rolled upon unequal and crooked wheels ; all things work together for the good of those who love God, and are called according to His purpose. Ere it be long, we shall see the white side of God's providence. My brother's case hath moved me not a little. He wrote to me your care and kindness. Sir, the prisoner's blessings and prayers, I trust, shall not go past you. He that is able to keep you, and to present you before the presence of His face with joy, establish your heart in the love of Christ. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abekdeen, Feb. 19, 1637. S. K. XCIX. — To Earlston, Younger. ["William Gordon, to whom this letter is addressed, was the eldest son of Alex- ander Gordon of Earlston, formerly noticed (Letter LIX.). He exhibited in youth much of the piety and public spiiit of his father. His well-known attachment to ^ "Neither borrow nor lend," have no dealings with it. 206 LETTER XCIX. [1637. tlie cause of Presbytery rendered liini early olmoxious to Charles II. and the Malig- nant party. "When that monarch came to Scotland in 1651, and lield a Parliament, he was fined for his compliance with the English ; and on his refusing to pay the fine, soldiers Mxre sent out to extract it l>y compulsion from his tenants, who were almost ruined by the driving away of their cattle and the robl^ing of their houses. He was again fined by Middleton, in 1662, and summoned before the Privy Council. On the 1st of March 1664, sentence of banishment from the kingdom was pronounced upon him for keeping con- venticles, and for refusing to engage to refrain from such meetings in all time coming. Whither he went is not knoA\ni ; but the Council, on bei)ig petitioned, gianted him licence to return until the 15th of March en- suing, at the same time requiring him to "depart and remain forth of the kingdom the said day, in case the said Lords give order therefor" ("Deer. Seer. Council," Register House, Edin.). After this he remained at home, but his end was near, for, set- ting out to join the forces of the Covenanters at Bothwell, in the beginning of the year 1679, after the defeat (either on the day of it, or the day after), he was met 1)}^ a party of English dragoons, who, upon his refusing to surrender, killed him on the spot. " Thus fell," says Howie, in the "Scots "Worthies," "areno^^^led Gordon, a gentleman of good parts and endowments ; a man devoted unto religion and godliness, and a prime supporter of the Presbyterian interest in that part of the country where he lived." He was married to Mary, daughter of Sir John Hope, second baronet of Craighall, and President of the Court of Session, by his wife Margaret, daughter of Sir Archibald Murray of Blackbarony. His eldest son, Alexander, succeeded him.] BOTHWELL BRIDCL. [CHRIST S WAYS MISUNDERSTOOD— HIS INCREASING KIND- NESS —SPIRITUAL DELICACY— HARD TO BE DEAD TO THE WORLD.) ONOUEED AND DEAE BEOTHEE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I received your letter, which refreshed my soul. I thank God that the court is closed ; I think shame of my part of it. I pass now from my unjust summons of unkindness libelled against Christ my Lord. He is not such a Lord and Master as I took Him to be ; verily He is God, and I am dust and ashes. It took Christ's glooms to be as good as Scripture speaking wrath ; but I have seen the other side of Christ, and the white side of His cross now. I behoved to come to Aberdeen to learn a new mystery in Christ, that His promise is better to be believed than His looks, and that the devil can 1 63 7-] LETTER XCIX. 207 cause Christ's glooms to speak a lie to a weak man. Nay, verily, I was a child before ; all by-gones are but bairn's play. I would I could begin to be a Christian in sad earnest. I need not blame Christ if I be not one, for He hath showed me heaven and hell in Aberdeen. But the truth is, for all my sorrow, Christ is nothing in my debt, for comforts have refreshed my soul. I have heard and seen Him in His sweetness, so as I am almost saying, it is not He that I was wont to meet with. He smileth more cheerfully, His kisses are more sweet and soul-refreshing than the kisses of the Christ I saw before were, though He be the same. Or rather, the King hath led me up to a measure of joy and communion with my Bridegroom that I never attained to before, so that often I think that I will neither borrow nor lend with this world.^ I will not strike sail to crosses, nor flatter them to be quit of them, as I have done. Come all crosses, welcome, welcome ! so that I may get my heartful of my Lord Jesus. I have been so near Him, that I have said, " I take instruments that this is the Lord. Leave a token behind Thee, that I may never forget this." Now, what can Christ do more to dawt one of His poor prisoners ? Therefore, Sir, I charge you in the name of my Lord Jesus, praise with me, and show unto others what He hath done unto my soul. This is the fruit of my sufferings, that I desire Christ's name may be spread abroad in this kingdom, in my behalf. I hope in God not to slander Him again. Yet in this, I get not my feasts without some mixture of gall ; neither am I free of old jealousies, for He hath removed my lovers and friends far from me ; He hath made my congregation desolate, and taken away my crown. And my dumb Sabbaths are like a stone tied to a bird's foot, that wanteth not wings, — they seem to hinder me to fly, were it not that I dare not say one word, but, " Well done, Lord Jesus." We can, in our prosperity, sport ourselves, and be too bold with Christ ; yea, be that insolent, as to chide with Him ; but under the water we dare not speak. I wonder now of my some- time boldness, to chide and quarrel Christ, to nickname provi- dence when it stroked me against the hair ; for now, swimming in the waters, I think my will is fallen to the ground of the water : I have lost it. I think that I would fain let Christ alone, and give Him leave to do with me what He pleaseth, if He would smile upon me. A^erily, we know not what an evil it is to spill and indulge ourselves, and to make an idol of our will. I was 1 See Letter XCVIH. 2o8 LETTER C. [1637, once that I would not eat except I had waled meat ; now I dare not complain of the crumbs and parings under His table. I was once that I would make the house ado, if I saw not the world carved and set in order to my liking ; now I am silent when I see God hath set servants on horseback, and is fattening and feed- ing the children of perdition. I pray God, that I may never find my will again. Oh, if Christ would subject my will to His, and trample it under His feet, and liberate me from that lawless lord ! Now, Sir, in your youth gather fast ; your sun will mount to the meridian quickly, and thereafter decline. Be greedy of grace. Study above anything, my dear brother, to mortify your lusts. Oh, but pride of youth, vanity, lusts, idolizing of the world, and charming pleasures, take long time to root them out ! As far as ye are advanced in the way to heaven, as near as ye are to Christ, as much progress as ye have made in the way of mortifi- cation, ye will find that ye are far behind, and have most of your work before you. I never took it to be so hard to be dead to my lusts and to this world. When the day of visitation cometh, and your old idols come weeping about you, ye will have much ado not to break your heart. It is best to give up in time with them, so as ye could at a call quit your part of this world for a drink of water, or a thing of nothing. Verily I have seen the best of this world, a moth-eaten, threadbare coat : I purpose to lay it aside, being now old and full of holes. 0 for my house above, not made with hands ! Pray for Christ's prisoner ; and write to me. Eemember my love to your mother. Desire her, from me, to make ready for removing ; the Lord's tide will not bide her ; and to seek an heavenly mind, that her heart may be often there. Grace be with you. Yours, and Christ's prisoner, Aberdeen, Fth, 20, 1637. ^- -^ Qi.—To the Lady Cardoness. {T//£ ONE THING NEEDFUL— CONSCIENTIOUS ACTING IN THE WORLD— ADVICE UNDER DEJECTING TRIALS.) \y deaely beloved, and longed-eoe in THE LORD, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I long to hear how your soul prospereth, and how the kingdom of Christ thriveth in you. I exhort you and beseech you in the bowels of Christ, faint not, weary 1 63 7- J LETTER C. 209 not. There is a great necessity of heaven ; ye must needs have it. All other things, as houses, lands, children, husband, friends, country, credit, health, wealth, honour, may be wanted ; but heaven is your one thing necessary, the good part that shall not be taken from you. See that ye buy the field where the pearl is. Sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy ; for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory ; many are lying dead by the way, that v/ere slain with security. I have now been led by my Lord Jesus to such a nick in Christianity, as I think little of former things. Oh, what I want ! I want so many things, that I am almost asking if I have any- thing at all. Every man thinketh he is rich enough in grace, till he take out his purse, and tell his money, and then he findeth his pack but poor and light in the day of a heavy trial I found that I had not to bear my expenses, and I should have fainted, if want and penury had not chased me to the storehouse of all. I beseech you to make conscience of your ways. Deal kindly, and with conscience, with your tenants. To fill a breach or a hole, make not a greater breach in the conscience. I wish plenty of love to your soul. Let the world be the portion of bastards ; make it not yours. After the last trumpet is blown, the world and all its glory will be like an old house that is burnt to ashes, and like an old fallen castle, without a roof. Fy, fy upon us, fools ! who think ourselves debtors to the world ! My Lord hath brought me to this, that I would not give a drink of cold water for this world's kindness. I wonder that men long after, love, or care for these feathers. It is almost an unco world to me. To think that men are so mad as to block with dead earth! To give out conscience, and get in clay again, is a strange bargain ! I have written my mind at length to your husband. Write to me again his case. I cannot forget him in my prayers ; I am looking up (Ps. v. 3). Christ hath some claim to him. My counsel is, that ye bear with him when passion overtaketh him : " A soft answer putteth away wrath." Answer him in what he speaketh, and apply yourself in the fear of God to him ; and then ye will remove a pound weight of your heavy cross, that way, and so it shall become light. When Christ hideth Himself, wait on, and make din till He return ; it is not time then to be carelessly patient. I love to be grieved when He hideth His smiles. Yet believe His love in a patient onwaiting and believing in the dark. Ye must learn o 2IO LETTER CL [1637. to swim and hold up your head above the water, even when the sense of His presence is not with you to hold up your chin. I trust in God that He will bring your ship safe to land. I counsel you to study sanctification, and to be dead to this world. Urge kindness on Knockbrex. Labour to benefit by his company ; the man is acquainted with Christ. I beg the help of your prayers, for I forget not you. Counsel your husband to fulfil my joy, and to seek the Lord's face. Show him, from me, that my joy and desire is to hear that he is in the Lord. God casteth him often in my mind, I cannot forget him. I hope Christ and he have something to do together. Bless John from me. I write blessings to him, and to your husband, and to the rest of your children. Let it not be said, "I am not in your house," through neglect of the Sabbath exercise. Your lawful and loving pastor in his only, only Lord, Aberdeen, F^. 20, 1637. S, R. CI. — To JoNET Macculloch. [No doubt this lady was one of tlie Maccullochs of Ardtoell, a residence near Amvoth, next to Cardoness. The Letter, CLXXXIV., to Mr. Thomas Macculloch of Nethtr Ardwell, relates apparently to another of the same house. The house is very pleasantly situated near the mouth of the Fleet. The old mansion-house of Ardwell, or Ardwall, bore the name of " Nether Ardwell ; " it occupied a spot about a hundred yards distant from the present mansion, lying towards the shore, a little below where the bay receives the waters of the Fleet. "Higher Ardwell" was towards the north : a farm near Bushy Bield (Rutherford's old manse, which was originally a mansion house) still bears that name. The family of the MaccuUochs, who were intimate with Rutherford, still retain the property. They are an ancient family ; for William Macculloch got a feu charter of the lands of Nether Ardwell from his cousin, or uncle, Macculloch of Cardoness and Myreton, in 1587. It is the wife of this William Macculloch, in all probability, of whom the following linea speak, on the tomb at the south side of the raised pile in the old churchyard :— Dumb, senseless statue of a painted stone, What means this boast ? Thy captive is but clay. Thou gainest nothing but some lifeless bones ; Her choicest part, her soul, triumi»lis for aye. Then, gazing friends, do not her death deplore ; You lose, wliile she doth gain for evermore. "Margrat Maklellan, goodwife of Ai-dwell, departed this life 1620. ^tatii Kuse 31." We may add, the grand-daughter of this lady, to whom the lines on the monument refer, was mother of the martyr, John Bell of Whyteside.] 1637.] LETTER CII. 911 {CHRIST S SUFFICIENCY— STEDFASTNESS IN THE TRUTH.) EAE SISTEK, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I long to hear how your soul prospereth. I am as well as a prisoner of Christ can be, feasted and made fat with the comforts of God. Christ's kisses are made sweeter to my soul than ever they were. I would not change my Master with all the kings of clay upon the earth. Oh ! my Well-beloved is altogether lovely and loving. I care not what flesh can do. I persuade my soul that I delivered the truth of Christ to you. Slip not from it, for any hosts or fear of men. If ye go against the truth of Christ that I now suffer for, I shall bear witness against, you in the day of Christ. Sister, fasten your grip fast on Christ. Follow not the guises of this sinful world. Let not this clay portion of earth take up your soul : it is the portion of bastards, and ye are a child of God ; and, therefore, seek your Father's heritage. Send up your heart to see the dwelling house and fair rooms in the New City. Fy, fy upon those who cry, " Up with the world and down with conscic«ace and heaven ! " We have bairn's wits, and therefore we cannot prize Christ aright. Counsel your husband, and mother, to make them ready for eternity. That' day is drawing nigh. Pray for me, the prisoner of Christ. I cannot forget you. Your lawful pastor and brother, Abeedeen, Feb. 20, 1637. S. E. CII. — To Alexander Gordon of Knochgray. [Knockgray is a farm-like house, enclosed by trees, at the foot of the hills of Carsphairn. It is on your right hand, coming from Earlston to Carsphairn, after passmg the little hUl of Dundeuch. "Alexander Gordon of Knockgray," says Livingstone, who personally knew him, "was a rare Christian in his time. His chief, the Laird of Locliinvar, put him out of his land mostly for his religion ; yet, being thereafter restored by that man's son, Lord Viscount of Kenmure, he told me the Lord had blessed him, so as he had ten thousand sheep" ("Select Biograph." vol. i.).^ From what Rutherford says in a subsequent letter addressed toliim,— 'Christ's ways were kno^vn to you long before I (who am but a child) knew any- ttiing of Him,"— it may be concluded that he was much older than Rutherford. The venerable old man was apprehended in his own house by one Captain Stuart ; by whom also he seems to have been carried to Edinburgh, and there incarcerated. Alexander, his son (the grandson of Rutlierford's correspondent), had also his own share of persecution under the intolerant reign of Charles IL He suffered much by garrisons put into his house, by the loss of household articles which they carried away, and by the forfeiture of his property. (Wodrow, MSS. vol, xxxvii. )] 212 LETTER CTI. [1637. {GROUNDS OF PRAISE— AFFLICTION TEMPTS TO MISREPRESENT CHRIST— IDOLS.) EAK BEOTHEll, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to hear how your soul prospereth. I expected letters from you ere now. As for myself, I am here in good case, well feasted with a great King. At my coming here, I was that bold as to take up a jealousy of Christ's love, I said I was cast over the dyke of the Lord's vineyard, as a dry tree ; but I see that if I had been a withered brfinch, the fire would have burned me long ere now. Blessed be His high name, who hath kept sap in the dry tree. And now, as if Christ hath done the wrong, He hath made the mends, and hath miskent my ravings ; for a man under the water cannot well command his wit, far less his faith and love. Because it was a fever, my Lord Jesus forgave me that amongst the rest. He knoweth that in our afflictions we can find a spot in the fairest face that ever was, even in Christ's face. I would not have believed that a gloom should have made me to misken my old Master ; but we must be whiles ^ sick. Sickness is but kindly to both faith and love. But oh, how ex- ceedingly is a poor dawted prisoner obliged to sweet Jesus ! My tears are sweeter to me than the laughter of the fourteen prelates ^ is to them. The worst of Christ, even His chaff, is better than the world's corn. Dear Brother, I beseech you, I charge you in the name and authority of the Son of God, to help me to praise His Highness ; and I charge you also to tell all your acquaintance, that my Master may get many thanks. Oh, if my hairs, all my members, and all my bones, were well-tuned tongues, to sing the high praises of my great and glorious King ! Help me to lift Christ up upon His throne, and to lift Him up above the thrones of the clay-kings, the dying sceptre-bearers of this world. The prisoner's blessing, the blessing of him that is separate from his brethren, be upon them all who will lend me a lift in this work. Show this to that people with you to whom I sometimes preached. Brother, my Lord hath brought me to this, that I will not flatter the world for a drink of water, I am no debtor to clay ; Christ hath made me dead to that. I now wonder that ever I was such a child, long since, as to beg at such beggars ! Fy upon us, who woo such a black-skinned harlot, when we may get such a fair, fair match in heaven ! 0 that I could give up ' Occasionally, 1637.] LETTER cm. 213 this clay-idol, this masked, painted, over-gilded dirt, that Adam's sons adore ! We make an idol of our will. As many lusts in us, as many gods ; we are all godmakers. We are like to lose Christ, the true God, in the throng of those new and false gods. Scotland hath cast her crown off her head ; the virgin- daughter hath lost her garland. Wo, wo to our harlot mother. Our day is coming ; a time when women shall wish they had been childless, and fathers shall bless miscarrying wombs and dry breasts ; many houses great and fair shall be desolate. This kirk shall sit on the ground all the night, and the tears shall run down her cheeks. The sun hath gone down upon her prophets. Blessed are the prisoners of hope, who can run into their strong- hold, and hide themselves for a little, till the indignation be overpast. Commend me to your wife, your daughters, your son-in-law, and to A. T. Write to me the case of your kirk. Grace be with you. I am much moved for my brother. I entreat for your kind- ness and counsel to him. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Feb. 23, 1637. S. E. cm. — To the Lady Cardgness, Elder. {CHRIS! AND HIS CAUSE RECOMMENDED— HEAVENLY-MINDED- NESS— CAUTION AGAINST COMPLIANCES— ANXIETY ABOUT HIS PARISH.) OETHY AND WELL-BELOVED IN THE LOED, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to hear from you on paper, that I may know how your soul prospereth. My desire and longing is to hear that ye walk in the truth, and that ye are content to follow the despised but most lovely Son of God. I cannot but recommend Him unto you, as . your Husband, your Well-beloved, your Portion, your Comfort, and your Joy. I speak this of that lovely One, because I praise and commend the ford (as we used to speak) as I find it. He hath watered with His sweet comforts an oppressed prisoner. He was always kind to my soul ; but never so kind as now, in my greatest ex- tremities. I dine and sup with Christ. He visiteth my soul with the visitations of love, in the night-watches. I persuade my soul that this is the way to heaven, and Hia 214 LETTER CIII. [1637. own truth I now suffer for. I exhort you in the name of Christ to continue in the truth which I delivered unto you. Make Christ sure to your soul ; for your day draweth nigh to an end. Many slide back now, who seemed to be Christ's friends, and prove dishonest to Him ; but be ye faithful to the death, and ye shall have the crown of life. This span-length of your days (whereof the spirit of God speaketh, Ps. xxxix. 5) shall, within a short time, come to a finger-breadth, and at length to nothing. Oh, how sweet and comfortable will the feast of a good conscience be to you, when your eye-strings shall break, your face wax pale, and the breath turn cold, and your poor soul come sighing to the windows of the house of clay of your dying body, and shall long to be out, and to have the jailor to open the door, that the prisoner may be set at liberty ! Ye draw nigh the water-side : look your accounts ; ask for your Guide to take you to the other side. Let not the world be your portion ; what have ye to do with dead clay ? Ye are not a bastard, but a lawfully begotten child ; therefore set your heart on the inheritance. Go up beforehand, and see your lodging. Look through all your Father's rooms in heaven : in your Father's house are many dwelling-places. Men take a sight of lands ere they buy them. I know that Christ hath made the bargain already ; but be land to the house ye are going to, and see it often. Set your heart on things that are above, where Christ is at the right hand of God. Stir up your husband to mind his own country at home. Counsel him to deal mercifully with the poor people of God under him. They are Christ's, and not his; therefore, desire him to show them merciful dealing and kindness, and to be good to their souls. I desire you to write to me. It may be that my parish forget me ; but my witness is in heaven that I dow not, I do not, forget them. They are my sighs in the night, and my tears in the day. I think myself like a husband plucked from the wife of his youtli. 0 Lord, be my Judge : what joy would it be to my soul to hear that my ministry hath left the Son of God among them, and that they are walking in Christ ! Ee- member my love to your son and daughter. Desire them from me to seek the Lord in their youth, and to give Him the morning of their days. Acquaint them with the word of God and prayer. Grace be with you. Pray for the prisoner of Christ ; in my heart I forget you not. Your lawful and loving pastor, in his only Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 6, 1637. ^- ^- 1 63 7- J LETTER CIV, 215 CIV. — To the Bight Honoiirahle and Christian Lady, my Lady Viscountess OF Kenmure. {PAINSTAKING IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST— UNUSUAL ENJOYMENT OF HIS LOVE — NOT EASY TO BE A CHRIS- TIAN— FRIENDS MUST NOT MISLEAD.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I am refreshed with your letter. The right hand of Him to whom belong the issues from death hath been gracious to that sweet child. I dow not, I do not, forget him and your Ladyship in my prayers. Madam, for your own case. I love careful, and withal, doing complaints of want of practice ; because I observe many who think it holiness enough to complain, and set themselves at nothing : as if to say " I am sick " could cure them. They think complaints a good charm for guiltiness. I hope that ye are wrestling and struggling on, in this dead age, wherein folks have lost tongue, and legs, and arms for Christ. I urge upon you, Madam, a nearer communion with Christ, and a growing com- munion. There are curtains to be drawn by in Christ, that we never saw, and new foldings of love in Him. I despair that ever I shall win to the far end of that love, there are so many plies in it. Therefore, dig deep ; and sweat, and labour, and take pains for Him ; and set by as much time in the day for Him as you can. He will be won with labour. I, His exiled prisoner, sought Him, and He hath rued upon me, and hath made a moan for me, as He doth for His own,i and I know not what to do with Christ. His love surroundeth and surchargeth me. I am burdened with it ; but oh, how sweet and lovely is that burden ! I dow not keep it within me. I am so in love with His love, that if His love were not in heaven, I should be unwilling to go thither. Oh, what weighing, and what telling is in Christ's love ! I fear nothing now so much as the losing 2 of Christ's cross, and of the love - showers that accompany it. I wonder what He meaneth, to put such a slave at the board-head, at His own elbow. 0 that I should lay my black mouth to such a fair, fair, fair face as Christ's ! But [ dare not refuse to be loved. The cause is not in me, why He ^ Jcr. xxxi. 20 ; Hos, xi. 8. » mis ?t ^^^^ *° ^^ deprived of it. Early editions give " langJnng," which secma 2i6 LETTER CIV. [1637. liatli looked upon me, and loved me for He got neither bud nor hire of me. It cost me nothing, it is good-cheap love. Oh, the many pound-weights of His love under which I am sweetly pressed ! Now, Madam, I persuade you, that the greatest part but play with Christianity ; they put it by-hand easily. I thought it had been an easy thing to be a Christian, and that to seek God had been at the next door ; but 0 the windings, the turnings, the ups and the downs that He hath led me through ! And I see yet much way to the ford. He speaketh with my reins in the night-season ; and in the morning, when I awake, I find His love-arrows, that He shot at me, sticking in my heart. Who will help me to praise ? Who will come to lift up with me, and set on high, His great love ? And yet I find that a fire-flaught of challenges will come in at midsummer, and question me. But it is only to keep a sinner in order. As for friends, I will not think the world to be the world if that well go not dry. I trust, in God, to use the world as a canny or' cunning master doth a knave servant (at least God give me grace to do so !) : he giveth him no handling nor credit, only he intrusteth him with common errands, wherein he cannot play the knave. I pray God that I may not give this world the credit' of my joys, and comforts, and confidence. That were to put Christ out of His office. Nay, I counsel you. Madam, from a little experience, let Christ keep the great seal, and intrust Him so as to hing your vessels, great and small, and pin your burdens, upon the Nail fastened in David's house (Isa. xxii. 23). Let me not be well, if ever they get the tutoring of my comforts. Away, away with irresponsal tutors that would play me a slip, and then Christ would laugh at me, and say, " Well-wared ! try again ere you trust." Now woe is me, for my whorish mother, the Kirk of Scotland ! Oh, who will bewail her ! Now the presence of the great Angel of the Covenant be with you and that sweet child. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 7, 1637. "• ^- 1637.] LETTER CV. aif CV. — To a Gentleivoman, upon the death of her husband. {/DESIGNATION UNDER BEREAVEMENT— HIS OWN ENJOYMENT OF CHRIST S LOVE.) 1 ISTEESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I cannot but rejoice, and withal be grieved, at your case. It hath pleased the Lord to remove your husband (my friend, and this kirk's faithful professor ^) soon to his rest ; but shall we be sorry that our loss is his gain, seeing his Lord would want his company no longer ? Think not much of short summons ; for, seeing he walked with his Lord in his life, and desired that Christ should be magnified in him at his death, ye ought to be silent and satisfied. When Christ cometh for His own, He runneth fast : mercy, mercy to the saints goeth not at leisure. Love, love in our Eedeemer is not slow ; and withal He is homely with you, who cometh at His own hand to your house, and intromitteth, as a friend, with any- thing that is yours. I think He would fain borrow and lend with you. Now he shall meet with the solacious company, the fair flock, and blessed bairn-teme of the first-born, banqueting at the marriage supper of the Lamb. It is a mercy that the poor wandering sheep get a dyke-side in this stormy day, and a leaking ship a safe harbour, and a sea-sick passenger a sound and soft bed ashore. Wrath, wrath, wrath from the Lord is coming upon this land that he hath left behind him. Know, therefore, that the wounds of your Lord Jesus are the wounds of a lover, and that He will have compassion upon a sad-hearted servant ; and that Christ hath said. He will have the husband's room in your heart. He loved you in your first husband's time, and He is but wooing you still. Give Him heart and chair, house and all. He will not be made companion with any other. Love is full of jealousies : He will have all your love ; and who should get it but He ? I know that ye allow it upon Him. There are comforts both sweet and satisfying laid up for you : wait on. Frist Christ ; He is an honest debtor. Now for mine own case. I think some poor body would be glad of a dawted prisoner's leavings. I have no scarcity of Christ's love : He hath wasted more comforts upon His poor banished servant than would have refreshed many souls. My burden was once so heavy, that one ounce weight would have casten the balance, and broken my back ; but Christ said, " Hold, ^ Confessor, 2i8 LETTER CVI. [1637. hold ! " to my sorrow, and hath wiped a bluthered face, which was foul with weeping. I may joyfully go my Lord's errands, with wages in my hands. Deferred hopes need not make me dead-sweir (as we used to say) : my cross is both my cross and my reward. 0 that men would sound His high praise ! I love Christ's worst reproaches. His glooms, His cross, better than all the world's plastered glory. My heart is not longing to be back again from Christ's country ; it is a sweet soil I am come to. I, if any in the world, have good cause to speak much good of Him. Oh, hell were a good-cheap price to buy Him at ! Oh, if all the three kingdoms were witnesses to my pained, pained soul, overcome with Christ's love ! I thank you most kindly, my dear sister, for your love to, and tender care of, my brother. I shall think myself obliged to you if ye continue his friend. He is more to me than a brother now, being engaged to suffer for so honourable a Master and cause. Pray for Christ's prisoner ; and grace, grace be with you. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 7, 1637. S. R. CVI. — To the Right Honourable and Christian Lady, my Lady Kenmure. {WEAIC ASSURANCE— GRACE DIFFERENT FROM LEARNING- SELF- A ecus A TIONS. ) ADAM, — Upon the offered opportunity of this worthy bearer, I could not omit to answer the heads of your letter. \stly, I think not much to set down on paper some good things anent Christ (that sealed and holy thing),^ and to feed my soul with raw wishes to be one with Christ ; for a wish is but broken and half love. But verily to obey this, " Come and see," is a harder matter ! Oh, I have smoke rather than fire, and guessings rather than real assurances of Him. I have little or nothing to say, that I am as one who hath found favour in His eyes ; but there is some pining and mismannered hunger, that maketh me miscall and nickname Christ as a changed Lord. But alas ! it is ill-flitten. I cannot believe without a pledge. I can- not take God's word without a caution, as if Christ had lost and sold His credit, and were not in my books responsal, and law- biding. But this is my way ; for His way is, " After that ye 1 Luke i. o5. 1637.] LETTER CVI. 2t^ believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise " (Eph. i. 13). 2ndly, Ye write, " that I am filled with knowledge, and stand not in need of these warnings," But certainly my light is dim when it cometh to handy-grips. And how many have full coffers, and yet empty bellies ! Light, and the saving use of light, are far different. Oh, what need then have I to have the ashes blown away from my dying-out fire ! I may be a book- man, and (yet) be an idiot and stark fool in Christ's way ! Learning will not beguile Christ. The Bible beguiled the Pharisees, and so may I be misled. Therefore, as night-watchers hold one another waking by speaking to one another, so have we need to hold one another on foot : sleep stealeth away the light of watching, even the light that reproveth sleeping. I doubt not but more would fetch heaven, if they believed not heaven to be at the next door. The world's negative holiness — " no adulterer, no murderer, no thief, no cozener" — maketh men believe they are already glorified saints. But the sixth chapter to the Hebrews may affright us all, when we hear that men may take (a taste) of the gifts and common graces of the Holy Spirit, and a taste of the powers of the life to come, to hell with them. Here is reprobate silver, which yet seemeth to have the King's image and superscription upon it ! ordly, I find you complaining of yourself. And it becometh a sinner so to do. I am not against you in that. Sense of death is a sib friend, and of kin and blood to life ; the more sense, the more life ; the more sense of sin, the less sin. I would love my pain, and soreness, and my wounds, howbeit these should bereave me of my night's sleep, better than my wounds without pain. Oh, how sweet a thing it is to give Christ His handful of broken arms and legs, and disjointed bones ! Athly, Be not afraid for little grace. Christ soweth His living seed, and He will not lose His seed. If He have the guiding of my flock and state, it shall not miscarry. Our spilled works, losses, deadness, coldness, wretchedness, are the ground upon which the Good Husbandman laboureth. hthly. Ye write, " that His compassions fail not, notwith- standing that your service to Christ miscarrieth." To which I answer : God forbid that there were buying and selling, and blocking for as good again, betwixt Christ and us ; for then free grace might go to play, and a Saviour sing dumb, and Christ go to 830 LETTER CVIL [1637. sleep. But we go to heaven with light shoulders ; and all the bairu-teme, and the vessels great and small that we have, are fastened upon the sure Nail (Isa. xxii. 23, 24). The only danger is, that we give grace more to do than God giveth it ; that is, by turning His grace into wantonness. Stilly, Ye write, that " few see your guiltiness, and that ye cannot be free with many, as with me." I answer : Blessed be God, that Christ and we are not heard before men's courts. It is at home, betwixt Him and us, that pleas are taken away. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen. ^« -t^ CVII. — To the Right Honourable and Christian Lady, my Lady Boro. {CONSCIOUSNESS OF DEFECTS NO ARGUMENT OF CHRIST BEING UNKNOWN— HIS EXPERIENCE IN EXILE.) Adam, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you, from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. I cannot but thank your Ladyship for your letter, that hath refreshed my soul. I think myself many ways obliged to your Ladyship for your love to my afflicted brother, now embarked with me in that same cause. His Lord hath been pleased to put him on truth's side. I hope that your Ladyship will befriend him with your counsel and countenance in that country, where he is a stranger. And your Ladyship needeth not fear but your kindness to His own will be put up into Christ's accounts. Now, Madam, for your Ladyship's case. 1 rejoice exceedingly that the Father of lights hath made you see that there is a nick in Christianity, which ye contend to be at ; and that is, to quit the right eye, and the right hand, and to keep the Son of God. I hope your desire is to make Him your garland, and that your eye looketh up the mount, which certainly is nothing but the new creature. Fear not, Christ will not cast water upon your smoking coal ; and then who else dare do it if He say nay ? Be sorry at corruption, and be not secure. That companion lay with you in your mother's womb, and was as early friends with you as the breath of life. And Christ will not have it other- wise ; for He delighteth to take up fallen bairns, and to mend broken brows. Binding up of wounds is His office (Isa. Ixi. 1). 1 63 7-1 LETTER CVII. lai First, I am glad that Christ will get employment of His calling in you. Many a whole soul is in heaven which was sickerer than ye are. He is content that ye lay broken arms and legs on His knee, that He may spelk them. Secondly, hiding of His face is wise love. His love is not fond, doting, and reasonless, to give your head no other pillow whill ye be in at heaven's gates, but to he between His breasts, and lean upon His bosom. Nay, His bairns must often have the frosty cold side of the hill, and set down both their bare feet among thorns. His love hath eyes, and, in the meantime, is looking on. Our pride must have winter weather to rot it. But I know that Christ and ye will not be heard ; ^ ye will whisper it over betwixt yourselves, and agree again. For the anchor-tow abideth fast within the vail ; the end of it is in Christ's ten fingers : who dare puU, if • He hold ? " I, the Lord thy God, will hold thy right hand, saying, Fear not, I will help thee. Fear not, Jacob " (Isa. xli. 13, 14). The sea-sick passenger shall come to land; Christ will be the first to meet you on the shore. I hope that your ladyship will keep the King's highway. Go on (in the strength of the Lord), in haste, as if ye had not leisure to speak to the innkeepers by the way. He is over beyond time, on the other side of the water, who thinketh long for you. For my unfaithful self. Madam, I must say a word. At my first coming hither, the devil made many a black lie of my Lord Jesus, and said the court was changed, and He was angry, and would give an evil servant his leave at mid-term.^ But He gave me grace not to take my leave. I resolved to bide summons, and sit, howbeit it was suggested and said, " What should be done with a withered tree, but over the dyke with it ? " But now, now (I dare not, I dow not keep it up !), who is feasted as His poor exiled prisoner. I think shame of the board-head and the first mess, and the royal King's dining-hall, and that my black hand should come upon such a Euler's table. But I cannot mend it ; Christ must have His will : only He paineth my soul so sometimes with His love, that I have been nigh to pass modesty, and to cry out. He hath left a smoking, burning coal in my heart, and gone to the door Himself, and left me and it together. Yet it is not desertion ; I know not what it is, but I was never so sick for Him as now. I durst not challenge my Lord, if I got no more for heaven ; it is a dawting cross. I ^ No one will ever hear the chiding. See Note, Letter LXX. * Discharge His servant before the term. - ■ 942 LETTER CVIII. [1637 know He hath other things to do than to play with me, and to trindle an apple with me, and that this feast will end. 0 for instruments in God's name, that this is He ! and that I may make use of it, when, it may be, a near friend within me will say, and when it will be said by a challenging devil, " Where is thy God ? " Since I know that it will not last, I desire but to keep broken meat. But let no man after me slander Christ for His cross. The great Lord of the Covenant, who brought from the dead the great Shepherd of His sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant establish you, and keep you and yours to His appearance. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 7, 1637. S. R. CVIII. — To airs, each pair for three months successively, to instruct, comfort, and encourage the Presbyterians in that country, who had been deprived of their ministers through the tyranny of the prelates. In 1645 he was appointed by the General Assembly chaplain to Colonel Stuart's regiment ; and in 1648 translated to Dumfries. Shortly after the restora- tion of Charles II., he, and all the ministers of the Presbytery of Dumfries, were, by the order of the King's Commissioner, carried prisoners to Edinburgh, for refusing to observe the 29th day of May as a religious anniversary, in commemora- tion of the King's birth and restoration. But he and the rest (with the exception of two) at last yielded so far as to engage simply to preach on that day, knowing it would be the day of their ordinary weekly sermon ; a promise hardly compatible with straightforwardness, being something like a disingenuous attempt to make it ap[)ear that they were complying with the statute of Parliament, when they were merely discharging a professional duty. Henderson exhibited more consistency and stedfastness the subsequent year, when he preferred being expelled from his charge to conforming to Prelacy. He was ejected in the close of the year 1662, by the Earl of Middleton. After this, Henderson frequently preached in his own house in Galloway.] {TRIALS SELECTED BY GOD— PATIENCE— LOOKING FOR THE /UDGE.) Y REVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,— I hear that you bear the marks of Christ's dying about with you, and that your brethren have cast you out for your Master's sake. Let us wait on till the evening, and till our reckoning in black and white come before 1 637-] LETTER CXXXIX, 267 our Master. Brother, since we must have a devil to trouble us, I love a raging devil best. Our Lord knoweth what sort of devil we have need of : it is best that Satan be in his own skin, and look like himself. Christ weeping looketh like Himself also, with whom Scribes and Pharisees were at yea and nay, and sharp contradiction. Ye have heard of the patience of Job. When he lay in the ashes, God was with him, claM'ing and curing his scabs, and letting out his boils, comforting his soul ; and He took him up at last. That God is not dead yet ; He will stoop and take up fallen bairns. Many broken legs since Adam's days hath He spelked, and many weary hearts hath He refreshed. Bless Him for comfort. Why ? None cometh dry from David's well. Let us go among the rest, and cast down our toom buckets into Christ's ocean, and suck consolations out of Him. We are not so sore stricken, but we may fill Christ's hall with weeping. We have not gotten our answer from Him yet. Let us lay up our broken pleas to a full sea, and keep them till the day of Christ's Coming, We and this world will not be even till then : they would take our garment from us ; but let us hold and ihe,m draw. Brother, it is a strange world if we laugh not. I never saw the like of it, if there be not " paiks the man," for this contempt done to the Son of God, We must do as those who keep the bloody napkin to the Bailie, and let him see blood ; we must keep our wrongs to our Judge, and let Him see our bluddered and foul faces. Prisoners of hope must run to Christ, with the gutters that tears have made on their cheeks. Brother, for myself, I am Christ's dawted one for the present ; and I live upon no deaf nuts, as we use to speak. He hath opened fountains to me in the wilderness. Go, look to my Lord Jesus : His love to me is such, that I defy the world to find either brim or bottom to it. Grace be with you. Your brother, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 13, 1637. S. E. CXXXIX. — To my Lord Balmkrinoch. [John Elphinston, second Lord Balmerinoch, was the only son by the first marriage of the Honourable Sir James Elphinston, first Lord Balmerinoch. He dis- tinguished himself in 1633 for his opposition to the measm-es of the Court in favour of Prelacy, and_ particularly for opposing in Parliament the Act concerning the King's prerogative in imposing Apparel on Churchmen, and also the Act ratifying the Acts previously made for settling the estate of Bishops. Soon after he waa 268 LETTER CXXXIX. [1637. libelled and condemned to death as guilty of treason. However, after a long and severe imprisonment, he obtained fom his Majesty a free though reluctant pardon. True to his former principles, he still continued to oppose the measures then pursued by Government, and particularly the attempts to introduce the Service Book into Scotland. He was a member of the Glasgow Assembly 1638, being returned as elder for the Presbytery of Edinburgh. "His Lordship," says Wood, "was, without exception, the best friend the Covenanters had, as he not only assisted that party with his advice on all occasions, but also supplied them with large sums of money, by which he irreparably injured the veiy ample fortune he inherited from his father. He lived in habits of strict friendship with the chief leaders of the Presbyterians, and was particularly intimate with Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston. He had so strong a sense of justice, that, having reason to suspect his father had made too advantageous a purchase of the lands of Balumby, in the county of Forfar, he, of his own accord, gave 10,000 merles to the heir of that estate, by way of compensation " (Wood's " Cramoud "). He died suddenly in 1649, at the very time when commissioners (of whom he was one) were sent to treat with Charles II. in Holland. (Lament's "Diary," p. 1.)] {HIS HAPPY OBLIGATIONS TO CHRIST— EMPTINESS OF THE WORLD.) |y very noble and truly honourable LORD, — I make bold to write news to your Lord- ship from my prison, though your Lordship have experience more than I can have. At my first entry here, I was not a little casten down with challenges, for old, unrepented-of sins ; and Satan and my own apprehensions made a lie of Christ, that He hath casten a dry, withered tree over the dyke, of the vineyard. But it was my folly (blessed he His great name), the fire cannot burn the dry tree. He is pleased now to feast the exiled prisoner with His lovely presence ; for it suiteth Christ well to be kind, and He dineth and suppeth with such a sinner as I am. I am in Christ's tutoring here. He hath made me content with a borrowed fireside, and it casteth as much heat as mine own. I want nothing but real possession of Christ ; and He hath given me a pawn of that also, which I hope to keep till He come Himself to loose the pawn. I cannot get help to praise His high name. He hath made me king over my losses, im- prisonment, banishment ; and only my dumb Sabbaths stick in my throat. But I forgive Christ's wisdom in that. I dare not say one word ; He hath done it, and I will lay my hand upon my mouth. If any other hand had done it to me, I could not have borne it. Now, my Lord, I must tell your Lordship that I would not give a drink of cold water for this clay idol, this plastered world. I testify, and give it under my own hand, that Christ is most worthy to be suffered for. Our lazy flesh, which would have 1637.] LETTER CXL. 269 Christ to cry down crosses by open proclamation, hath but raised a slander upon the cross of Christ. My Lord, I hope that ye will not forget what He hath done for your soul. I think that ye are in Christ's count-book, as His obliged debtor. Grace, grace be with your spirit. Your Lordship's obliged servant, Aberdeen, March 13, 1637. »• ^^' CXL. — To my Lady Mar, Younger. [Ladt Mae, younger, whose maiden name was Christian Hay, was the wife of John Erskine, eighth Earl of Mar. She became a widow in 1654, his Lordship having died in that year. Her son, John, became ninth Earl of Mar, and her daughter, Elizabeth, was married to Archibald, Lord Napier. Lady Mar, senior, was Lady Mary Stewart, daughter of Esme, Duke of Lennox, second wife of John, Lord Erskine, seventh Earl of Mar. She died in the house of Sir Thomas Hope, in the Cowgate, Edinburgh, and was buried at Alloa, 11th May 1644. (Sir Thomas Hope's " Diary," p. 205.) It was for her that, in 1625, the book of devotion, called " The Countess of Mar's Sanctuary, or Arcadia," was drawn up — a little work of which only two copies were known to be in existence, till reprinted in 1862, at Edinburgh.] {NO EXCHANGE FOR CHRIST.) Y VERY NOBLE AND DEAR LADY, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I received your Lady- ship's letter, which hath comforted my soul. God give you to find mercy in the day of Christ. I am in as good terms and court with Christ as an exiled, oppressed prisoner of Christ can be. I am still welcome to His house ; He knoweth my knock, and letteth in a poor friend. Under this black, rough tree of the cross of Christ, He hath ravished me with His love, and taken my heart to heaven with Him. Well and long may He brook it. I would not niffer Christ with all the joys that man or angel can devise beside Him. Who hath such cause to speak honourably of Christ as I have ? Christ is King of all crosses, and He hath made His saints little kings under Him ; and He can ride and triumph upon weaker bodies than I am (if any can be weaker), and His horse will neither fall nor stumble. Madam, your Ladyship hath much ado with Christ, for your soul, husband, children, and house. Let Him find much em- ployment for His calling with you ; for He is such a friend as delighteth to be burdened with suits and employments ; and the more ye lay on Him, and the more homely ye be with Him, the 270 LETTER CXLI. [1637. more welcome. 0 the depth of Christ's love ! It hath neither brim nor bottom. Oh, if this blind world saw His beauty ! When I count with Him for His mercies to me, I must stand still and wonder, and go away as a poor dyvour, who hath nothing to pay. Free forgiveness is payment. I would that I could get Him set on high ; for His love hath made me sick, and I die except I get real possession. Grace, grace be with you. Your Ladyship's, at all obedience in Christ, Aberdeen, March 13, 1637. S. R. CXLI. — To James Macadam. [John Livingstone ("Histor. Relation"), along with Marion M'Naught and other such, mentions John Macadam and Christian Macadam of Waterhead, near Cars- Ehairn, as eminent Christians. The person to whom this letter is addressed may ave been one of that family. The famous road engineer in our day, Macadam, bom at Waterhead, was descended from this ancient famUy. It seems that the Christian Macadam mentioned above was afterwards Lady Cardoness ; and because of her connection with this correspondent of Rutherford's, we may give the inscription on her tomb. The tomb is part of the enclosed pile close to the old Anwoth church. The inscription is on the north side of the pile : — "Christian M'Adam, Lady Cardynes. Departed 16th June of 1628. ^tatis suae, 33. " Ye gazers on the trophy of a tomb, Send out one groan for want of her whose life, * Twice born on earth, now is in earth's womb. Lived long a virgin, now a spotless wife. Church keeps her godly life, the tomb her corpse. And earth her precious name. Who then does lose ? Her husband ? No, since heaven her soul doth gain. "] {THE KINGDOM TAKEN BY FORCE.) Y VERY DEAR AND WORTHY FRIEND,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to hear of your growing in grace, and of your advancing in your journey to heaven. It will be the joy of my heart to hear that ye hold your face up the brae, and wado through temptations without fearing what man can do. Christ shall, when He ariseth, mow down His enemies, and lay bulks ^ (as they use to speak) oi"" the green, and fill the pits with dead bodies (Ps. ex. 6 ; " the places "). They shall lie like handfuls of withered hay, when He ariseth to the prey. Salvation, salva- tion is the only necessary thing. This clay idol, the world, is ^ Carcases ; properly, the tranlt, or hulk of the man. In some editions it is written " bonks ; " but " hulka " is in all the old editions. 1637.] LETTER CXLIL 471 not to be sought ; it is a morsel not for you, but for hunger-bitten bastards. Contend for salvation. Your Master, Christ, won heaven with strokes : it is a besieged castle ; it must be taken with violence. Oh, this world thinketh heaven but at the next door, and that godliness may sleep in a bed of down till it come to heaven ! But that will not do it. For myself, I am as well as Christ's prisoner can be ; for by Him I am master and king of all my crosses. I am above the prison, and the lash of men's tongues ; Christ triumpheth in me. I have been casten down, and heavy with fears, and haunted with challenges. I was swimming in the depths, but Christ had His hand under my chin all the time, and took good heed that I should not lose breath ; and now I have gotten my feet again, and there are love-feasts of joy, and spring-tides of consolation betwixt Christ and me. We agree well ; I have court with Him; I am, still welcome to His house. Oh, my short arms cannot fathom His love ! I beseech you, I charge you, to help me to praise. Ye have a prisoner's prayers, therefore forget me not. I desire Sibylla to remember me dearly to all in that parish who know Christ, as if I had named them. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 13, 1637. °« R- CXLII. — To my very dear brother, William Livingstone. [Probably one of his Anwoth parishioners. There are Livingstones in that neighbourhood to this day.] (COUNSEL TO A YOUTH.) JY VERY DEAR BEOTHER,— I rejoice to hear that Christ hath run away with your young love, and that ye are so early in the m.orning matched with such a Lord ; for a young man is often a dressed lodging for the devil to dwell in. Be humble and thankful for grace ; and weigh it not so much by weight, as if it be true. Christ will not cast water on your smoking coal ; He never yet put out a dim candle that was lighted at the Sun of Righteousness. I recom- mend to you prayer and watching over the sins of your youth ; for I know that missive letters go between the devil and young blood. Satan hath a friend at court in the heart of youth ; and there pride, luxury, lust, revenge, forgetfulness of God, are hired 272 LETTER CXLIlL [1637. as his agents. Happy is your soul if Christ man the house, and take the keys Himself, and command all, as it suiteth Him full well to rule all wherever He is. Keep Christ, and entertain Him well. Cherish His grace ; blow upon your own coal ; and let Him tutor you. Now for myself : know that I am fully agreed with my Lord. Christ hath put the Father and me into each other's arms. Many a sweet bargain He made before, and He hath made this among the rest. I reign as king over my crosses. I will not flatter a temptation, nor give the devil a good word : I defy hell's iron gates. God hath passed over my quarrelling of Him at my entry here, and now He feedeth and feasteth with me. Praise, praise with me ; and let us exalt His name together. Your brother in Christ, Aberdeen, March 13, 1637. ^' -K- CXLIII. — To William Gordon of Whiteparh. [This may be a son of George Gordon, who is recorded as heir to the estate of " Whytpark," March 20, 1628. It was not, in the parish of Anwoth, but close to Castle Douglas.] {NOTHING LOST BY TRIALS— LONGING FOR CHRIST HIMSELF BECAUSE OF HIS LOVE.) [OETHY SIR, — Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. I long to hear from you. I am here the Lord's prisoner and patient, handled as softly by my Physi- cian as if I were a sick man under a cure. I was at hard terms with my Lord, and pleaded with Him, but I had the worst side. It is a wonder that He should have suffered the like of me to have nicknamed the vSon of His love, Christ, and to call Him a changed Lord, who hath forsaken me. But misbelief hath never a good word to speak of Christ. The dross of my cross gathered a scum of fears in the fire — doubtings, impatience, unbelief, challenging of Providence as sleeping, and as not regard- ing my sorrow ; but my goldsmith, Christ, was pleased to take off the scum, and burn it in the fire. And, blessed be my Eefiner, He hath made the metal better, and furnished new supply of grace, to cause me hold out weight ; and I hope that He hath not lost one grain-weight by burning His servant. Now His love in my heart casteth a mighty heat ; He knoweth that the desire I have to be at Himself paineth me. I have sick i637-] LETTER CXLIV. 273 nights and frequent fits of love-fevers for my Well-beloved. Nothing paineth me now but want of His presence. I think it long till day. I challenge time as too slow in its pace, that holdeth my only fair one, my love, my Well-beloved from me. Oh, if we were together once ! I am like an old crazed ship that hath endured many storms, and that would fain be in the Ice of the shore, and feareth new storms; I would be that nigh heaven, that the shadow of it might break the force of the storm, and the crazed ship might win to land. My Lord's sun casteth a heat of love and beam of light on my soul. My blessing thrice every day upon the sweet cross of Christ ! I am not ashamed of my garland, " the banished minister," which is the term of Aberdeen. Love, love defieth reproaches. Tlie love of Christ hath a corslet of proof on it, and arrows will not draw blood of it. We are more than conquerors through the blood of Him that loved us (Rom. viii. 37). The devil and the world cannot wound the love of Christ. I am further from yielding to the course of defection than when I came hitlier. Sufferings blunt not the fiery edge of love. Cast love into the floods of hell, it will swim above. It careth not for the world's busked and plastered offers. It hath pleased my Lord so to line my heart with the love of my Lord Jesus, that, as if the field were already won, and I on the other side of time, I laugh at the world's golden pleasures, and at this dirty idol which the sons of Adam worship. This worm- eaten god is that which my soul hath fallen out of love with. Sir, ye were once my hearer : I desire now to hear from you and your wife. I salute her and your children with blessings. I am glad that ye are still handfasted with Christ. Go on in your journey, and take the city by violence. Keep your garments clean. Be clean virgins to your husband the Lamb. The world shall follow you to heaven's gates : and ye would not wish it to go in with you. Keep fast Christ's love. Pray for me, as I do for you. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 13, 1637. S. B, CXLIV. — To Mr George Gillespie. [George Gillespie was the son of Mr. Jolin Gillespie, some time minister of tlio Gospel at Kirkcaldy. Ho was licensed to prcacii tlio Gos[)ul some time prior to 1(538 ; and iii April, that year, was ordained minister of Wemyss. In IGI'2, by the General Assembly he was translated to one of the chnrclies in Edinbnrgh, wliero he con- 274 LETTER CXLIV. [1637 tinned till his death. Gillespie possessed talents of tlie liighest order ; and so much were these appreciated that, young as he was, he was one of the four ministers sent as commissioners from the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Assembly in 1643. There he attracted general notice, by the cogency of argument, and the rare learning which he showed in pleading the cause of Presbytery and opposing Erastianism. At one of the meetings of that Assembly, when the learned Selden had delivered a long and an elaborate discourse in favour of Erastianism, to which none seemed pre- pared to reply, Gillespie, who was still a young man, was observed to be WTiting. A venerable friend went to his chair, and asked if he had taken notes, but found that he had written nothing except these words, frequently repeated, ' ' Give light, Lord." His friend urged him to answer. Gillespie at last rose, and in an extempore speech refuted Selden with a power of reasoning and an amount of learning which excited the admiration of all present. Selden himself is said to liave observed, after hearing this reply, ' ' That young man, by a single speech, has swept away the labour and the learning of ten years of my life I " Gillespie died in December 1648, in the 36th year of his age. During his last illness he enjoyed little comfort, but was strong in the faith of adherence to the divine promises — a subject on which he insisted much in his sermons. When asked if he had any comfort, he said, ' ' No ; but though the Lord allow me no comfort, yet I \vill believe that my Beloved is mine, and that I am His." To two ministers, who asked what advice he had to give them, he answered : "I have little experience of the ministry, having been in it only nine years ; but I can say that I have got more assistance in the work of preaching from prayer than study ; and much more help from the assistance of the Spirit than from books." And yet he was knowm to have been an indefatigable student. He is the author of various works, which are chiefly controversial, such as " The English Popish Ceremonies," and " Aaron's Rod Blossoming."] (SUSPICIONS OF CHRIST'S LOVE REMOVED THREE DESIRES.) lEVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,— I received your letter. As for my case, brother, I bless His glorious name, that my losses are my gain, my prison a palace, and my sadness joyfulness. At my first entry, my apprehensions so wrought upon my cross, that I became jealous of the love of Christ, as being by Him thrust out of the vineyard, and I was under great challenges, as ordinarily melted gold casteth forth a drossy scum, and Satan and our corruption form the first words that the heavy cross speaketh, and say, " God is- angry. He loveth you not." But our apprehensions are not canonical ; ^ they indite lies of God and Christ's love. But since my spirit was settled, and the clay has fallen to the bottom of the well, I see better what Christ was doing. And now my Lord is returned with salvation under His wings. Now I want little of half a heaven, and I find Christ every day so sweet, comfort- able, lovely, and kind, that three things only trouble me : 1st, 1 see not how to be thankful, or how to get help to praise that Royal King, who raiseth up those that are bowed down. 2nd, His love paineth me, and woundeth my soul, so that I am in a fever for want of real presence. 3rd, An excessive desire to take in- struments in God's name, that this is Christ and His truth, ^ Authentic Scripture. 1637.] LETTER CXLV. 875 which I now suffer for ; yea, the apple of the eye of Christ's honour, even the sovereignty and royal privileges of our King and Lawgiver, Christ. And, therefore, let no man scaur at Christ's cross, or raise an ill report upon Him or it ; for He beareth the sufferer and it both. I am here troubled with the disputes of the great doctors (especially with Dr. B.^) in Ceremonial and Arminian contro- versies, for all are corrupt here ; but, I thank God, with no detriment to the truth, or discredit to my profession. So, then, I see that Christ can triumph in a weaker man nor I ; and who can be more weak ? But His grace is sufficient for me. Brother, remember our old covenant, and pray for me, and write to me your case. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 13, 1637. S. E. CXLV.— To Jean Gordon. {GOD THE SATISFYING PORTION— ADHERENCE TO CHRIST.) \y VEEY DEAE and loving SISTEE,— Grace mercy, and peace be to you. — I long to hear from you. I exhort you to set up the brae to the King's city, that must be taken by violence. Your after- noon's sun is wearing low. Time will eat up your frail life, like a worm gnawing at the root of a May-flower. Lend Christ your heart. Set Him as a seal there. Take Him in within, and let the world and children stand at the door. They are not yours ; make you and them ^ for your proper owner, Christ. It is good that He is your Husband and their Father. What missing can there be of a dying man, when God filleth His chair? Give hours of the day to prayer. Fash Christ (if I may speak so), and importune Him ; be often at His gate ; give His door no rest. I can tell you that He will be found. Oh, what sweet fellowship is betwixt Him and me ! I am imprisoned, but He is not im- prisoned. He hath shamed me with His kindness. He hath come to my prison, and run away with my heart and all my love. Well may He brook it! I wish that my love get never an owner but Christ. Fy, fy upon old lovers, that held us so long asunder ! We shall not part now. He and I shall be heard, ' Dr. Robert Barron. ^ This seems to mean mould, or fashion, yourself and them. 276 LETTER CXLVI. [1637. before He win out of my grips. I resolve to wrestle with Christ, ere I quit Him. But my love to Him hath casten my soul into a fever, and there is no cooling of my fever, till I get real pos- session of Christ. 0 strong, strong love of Jesus, thou hast wounded my heart with thine arrows ! Oh pain ! Oh pain of love for Christ ! Who will help me to praise ? Let me have your prayers. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 13, 1637. S. R. CXLVI.— ^0 Mr James Bruce, Minister of the Gospel. [Mk. James Bruce was minister of Kingsbams, in the Presbytery of St Andrews ; admitted in 1630. Prelacy and the English ceremonies had then, for a considerable time, been imposed upon the Church of Scotland. But Bruce, like many other of her ministers, being in principle decidedly favourable to Presbytery, refused to conform. He was, however, permitted to continue in his charge, the Bishops at that time removing very few, because the introduced ceremonies were so unpopular, that it was judged dangerous and impolitic to enforce a rigid and universal compliance with them. Bruce made an early public appearance against the attempts of the Court to impose the Anglo- Popish liturgy, or Service Book, in 1637. He was a member of the Glasgow Assembly, 1638. He died at Kingsbams, May 26, 1662, when the storm of persecution was about to break upon the Church of Scotland, being thus taken away from the evil to come.] {MISJUDGING OF CHRIST'S WAYS.) EVEREND AND WELL-BELOVED BROTHER,— Grace, liiercy, and peace be to you. — Upon the nearest acquaintance (that we are Father's children), I thought good to write to you. My case, in my bonds for the honour of my royal Prince and King, Jesus, is as good as becometh the witness of such a sovereign King. At my first coming hither, I was in great heaviness, wrestling with challenges ; being burdened in heart (as I am yet), for my silent Sabbaths, and for a bereaved people, young ones new-born, plucked from the breast, and the children's table drawn. I thought I was a dry tree cast over the dyke of the vineyard. But my secret conceptions of Christ's love, at His sweet and long-desired return to my soul, were found to be a lie of Christ's love, forged by the tempter and my own heart. And I am per- suaded it was so. Now there is greater peace and security within than before ; the court is raised and dismissed, for it was not fenced in God's name. I was fa^" mistaken who should have summoned Christ for unkindness; misted faith, and my fever, conceived amiss of Him. Now, now, He is pleased to feast a 1637.] LETTER CXLVII. afj poor prisoner, and to refresh me with joy unspeakable and glorious ! so as the Holy Spirit is witness that my sufferings are for Christ's truth ; and God forbid that I should deny the testimony of the Holy Spirit and make Him a false witness. Now, I testify under my hand, out of some small experience, that Christ's cause, even with the cross, is better than the king's crown ; and that His reproaches are sweet, His cross perfumed, the walls of my prison fair and large, my losses gain. I desire you, my dear brother, to help me to praise, and to remember me in your prayer to God. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in our Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 14, 1637. *^' ^' CXLVII. — To John Gordon, at Rusco, in the Parish of Anwoth, Galloway. [It is said that " Eusco " means "a boggy place," referring to the original state of the place. The old tower or castle still stands on a gentle slope, three miles from Gatehouse and two from Anwoth, Init uninhabited. The wooded height of Castramont was part of the domain. It was at this old mansion (Eusco) that Robert Campbell, laird of Kinzeancleugh, the friend of John Knox, died of fever, in 1574, when on a visit to Gordon of Lochinvar, "expressing his confidence of victory, and his desire to depart and be with Christ."] {PRESSING INTO HEAVEN— A CHRISTIAN NO EASY ATTAIN- MENT—SINS TO BE AVOIDED.) [y worthy and DEAE brother,— Misspend not your short sand-glass, which runneth very fast ; seek your Lord in time. Let me obtain of you a letter under your hand, for a promise to God, by His grace, to take a new course of walking with God. Heaven is not at the next door ; I find it hard to be a Christian. There is no little thrusting and thringing to thrust in at heaven's gates ; it is a castle taken by force ; — " Many shall strive to enter in, and shall not be able." I beseech and obtest you in the Lord, to make conscience of rash and passionate oaths, of raging and sudden avenging anger, of night drinking, of needless companionry, of Sabbath-breaking, of hurting any under you by word or deed, of hating your very enemies. " Except ye receive the kingdom of God as a little child," and be as meek and sober-minded as a babe, " ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God." That is a word which should touch you near, and make you stoop and cast yourself down, and make yom' great spirit fall. I know that this will not be easily 478 LETTER CXLVIIL [1637. done, but I recommend it to you, as you tender your part of the kingdom of heaven. Brother, I may, from new experience, speak of Christ to you. Oh, if ye saw in Him what I see ! A river of God's unseen joys has flowed from bank to brae over my soul since I parted with you. I wish that I wanted part, so being ye might have ; that your soul might be sick of love for Christ, or rather satiated with Him. This clay-idol, the world, would seem to you then not worth a fig ; time will eat you out of possession of it. When the eye-strings break, and the breath groweth cold, and the im- prisoned soul looketh out of the windows of the clay-house, ready to leap out into eternity, what would you then give for a lamp full of oil ? Oh seek it now. I desire you to correct and curb banning, swearing, lying, drinking, Sabbath-breaking, and idle spending of the Lord's day in absence from the kirk, as far as your authority reacheth in that parish. I hear that a man is to be thrust into that place, to the which I have God's right. I know that ye should have a voice by God's, word in that (Acts i. 15, 16, to the end; vi. 3-5). Ye would be loath that any prelate should put you out of your possession earthly ; and this is your right. What I write to you, I write to your wife. Grace be with you. Your loving Pastor, Aberdeen, March 14, 1637. S. R. CXLVIII,— To the Lady Hallh^l. [Laby Hallhill, whose maiden name was Learmonth, was the wife of Sir James Melville of Hallhill, in Fife, the son of Sir James Melville of Hallhill, a privy councillor to King James VI., and an accomplished statesman and courtier in his day, who died in 1617. (Douglas' " Peerage," vol. ii.) Consequently, this lady was sister-in-law to Lady Culross, formerly noticed. Livingstone, who was person- ally acquainted with her, describes her as " eminent for grace and gifts ; " and whose " memory was very precious and refreshing " to him.] {CHRIST'S CROSSES BETTER THAN EGYPT'S TREASURES.) EAE AND CHRISTIAN LADY,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I longed much to write to your Ladyship ; but now, the Lord offering a fit occasion, I would not omit to do it. I cannot but acquaint your Ladyship with the kind dealing 1 63 7-] LETTER CXLVIII. 279 of Christ to my soul, in this house of my pilgrimage, that your Ladyship may know that He is as good as He is called. For at my first entry into this trial (being casten down and troubled with challenges and jealousies of His love, whose name and testi- mony I now bear in my bonds), I feared nothing more than that I was casten over the dyke of the vineyard, as a dry tree. But, blessed be His great name, the dry tree was in the fire, and was not burnt ; His dew came down and quickened the root of a withered plant. And now He is come again with joy, and hath been pleased to feast His exiled and afflicted prisoner with the joy of His consolations. Now I weep, but am not sad ; I am chastened, but I die not ; I have loss, but I want nothing ; this water cannot drown me, this fire cannot burn me, because of the good-will of Him that dwelt in The Bush. The worst things of Christ, His reproaches. His cross, are better than Egypt's treasures. He hath opened His door, and taken into His house- of-wine a poor sinner, and hath left me so sick of love for my Lord Jesus, that if heaven were at my disposing, I would give it for Christ, and would not be content to go to heaven, except I were persuaded that Christ were there. I would not give, nor exchange, my bonds for the prelates' velvets ; nor my prison for their coaches ; nor my sighs for all the world's laughter. This clay-idol, the world, hath no great court in my soul. Christ hath come and run away to heaven with my heart and my love, so that neither heart nor love is mine : I pray God, that Christ may keep both without reversion. In my estimation, as I am now disposed, if my part of this world's clay were rouped and sold, I would think it dear of a drink of water. I see Christ's love is so kingly, that it will not abide a marrow ; it must have a throne all alone in the soul. And I see that apples beguile bairns, howbeit they be worm-eaten. The moth-eaten pleasures of this present world make bairns believe ten is a hundred, and yet all that are here are but shadows. If they would draw by the curtain that is hung betwixt them and Christ, they should see themselves fools who have so long miskenned the Son of God. I seek no more, next to heaven, than that He may be glorified in a prisoner of Christ; and that in my behalf many would praise His high and glorious name who heareth the sighing of the prisoner. Remember my service to the laird, your husband ; and to your son, my acquaintance. I wish that Christ had his young love, and that in the morning he would start to the gate, to seek 28o LETTER CXLIX. [1637 that which the world knoweth not, and, therefore, doth not seek it. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 14, 1637. "• ^' CXLIX. — To the much honoured John Osburn, Provost of Ayr. [Of John Osburn, merchant in Ayr, and at this time chief magistrate of that burgh, little is now known. He died about the close of the year 1653, or begin- ning of the following year, as appears from his son David being retoured his heir on 17th January 1654. He appears on the list of the gentlemen in Ayrshire whom Middleton fined in 1662.] {ADHERENCE TO CHRIST— HIS APPROBATION WORTH ALL WORLDS.) |UCH HONOUKED SIR,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — Upon our small acquaintance, and the good report I hear of you, I could not but write to you. I have nothing to say, but that Christ, in that hon- ourable place He hath put you in, hath intrusted you with a dear pledge, which is His own glory ; and hath armed you with His sword to keep the pledge, and make a good account of it to God. Be not afraid of men. Your Master can mow down His enemies, and make withered hay of fair flowers. Your time will not be long ; after your afternoon will come your evening, and after evening, night. Serve Christ. Back Him ; let His cause be your cause ; give not an hair-breadth of truth away ; for it is not yours, but God's. Then, since ye are going, take Christ's testificate with you out of this life — " Well done, good and faith- ful servant ! " His " well done " is worth a shipful of " good- days " and earthly honours. I have cause to say this, because I find Him truth itself. In my sad days, Christ laugheth cheer- fully, and saith, " All will be well ! " Would to God that all this kingdom, and all that know God, knew what is betwixt Christ and me in this prison — what kisses, embracements, and love communion ! I take His cross in my arms with joy ; I bless it, I rejoice in it. Suffering for Christ is my garland. I would not exchange Christ for ten thousand worlds ! nay, if the com- parison could stand, I would not exchange Christ with heaven. Sir, pray for me, and the prayers and blessing of a prisoner of Christ meet you in all your straits. Grace be with you. Yours, in Christ Jesus, his Lord. Aberdeen, March 14, 1637, "^^ ^^- I637.J LETTERS CL., CLL 281 CL. — To his loving Friend, John Henderson. [See Letter CCVII.] {CONTINUING IN CHRIST— PEPAREDNESS FOR DEATH.) OVING FEIEND— Continue in the love of Christ, and the doctrine which I taught you faithfully and pain- fully, according to my measure. I am free of your blood. Tear the dreadful name of God. Keep in mind the examinations^ which I taught you, and love the truth of God. Death, as fast as time fleeth, chaseth you out of this life ; it is possible that ye may make your reckoning with your Judge before I see you. Let salvation be your care, night and day, and set aside hours and times of the day for prayer. I rejoice to hear that there is prayer in your house. See that your servants keep the Lord's day. This dirt and god of clay (I mean the vain world) is not worth the seeking. An hireling pastor is to be thrust in upon you, in the room to which I have Christ's warrant and right. Stand to your liberties, for the word of God alloweth you a vote in choosing your pastor. What I write to you, I write to your wife. Commend me heartily to her. The grace of God be with you. Your loving Friend and Pastor, Aberdeen, March 14, 1637. ^' ■^• CLI. — To John Meine, Smior. [John Meine, merchant in Edinburgh, was a man of enlightened piety, and a decided Presbytei-ian. His zeal and stedfastness in maintaining Presbyterian principles exposed him to the resentment of the court and prelates. Having, with other citizens of Edinburgh, encouraged Nonconfonning ministers, by accompanying them to the court when they were dragged before the High Commission, he was, without citation or trial, banished to Wigto^vn by the Privy Council, according to the orders of the king. But the execution of the sentence was suspended. In regard to the Perth Articles, he would make no compromise. In 1624, when the Town Council, Session, and citizens of Edinburgh, convened, according to an ancient custom observed among them from the time of the Eeformation, to remove such grounds of diflerence as might have arisen, before uniting in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, Meine strongly pleaded that the ordinance should be solemnised without kneeling, a ceremony with which (he said) he could not comply. On account of his zeal in this matter, he was summoned before the Privy Council. The result was, that in June that year, he was sentenced to be banished to the north and con- fined within the town of Elgin. About the beginning of January next year, he obtained liberty for a few days to visit his family, but on the understanding that he should afterwards return to his place of confinement. However, the death of James VI. on the 27th of March that year, put an end to his trouble for a time. Living- stone, describing him in his Memorable Characteristics, says, "He used, summer Perhaps (see in Letter CLXVI.) his instructions on the Catechism are meant. 282 LETTER CLI. [1637. and winter, to rise about three in the morning, and always sing some psalm as he put on his clothes. He spent till six o'clock alone in religious exercises, and at six worshipped God with his family, and then went to his shop." Meine wm married to Barbara Hamilton, sister to the first wife of the famous Robert Blair.] {ENJOYMENT OF GOD'S LOVE— NEED OF HELP— BURDENS.) EAR BROTHER, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I wonder that ye sent me not an answer to my last letter, for I stand in need of it. I am in some piece of court, with our great King, whose love would cause a dead man to speak, and live. Whether my court will continue or not, I cannot well say ; but I have His ear frequently, and (to His glory only I speak it) no penury of the love-kisses of the Son of God. He thinketh good to cast apples to me in my prison to play withal, lest I should think long and faint. I must give over all attempts to fathom the depth of His love. All I can do is, but to stand beside His great love, and look and wonder. My debts of thankfulness affright me ; I fear that my creditor get a dyvour-bill and ragged account. I would be much the better of help. Oh for help ! and that ye would take notice of my case. Your not writing to me maketh me think ye suppose that I am not to be bemoaned, because He sendeth comfort. But I have pain in my unthank- fulness, and pain in the feeling of His love, whill I am sick again for real presence and real possession of Christ. Yet there is no gowked (if I may so speak), nor fond love in Christ. He casteth me down sometimes for old faults ; and I know that He knoweth well that sweet comforts are swelling, and there- fore sorrow must take a vent to the wind. My dumb Sabbaths are undercoating wounds. The condition of this oppressed kirk, and my brother's case (I thank you and your wife for your kindness to him), hold my sore smarting, and keep my wounds bleeding. But the groundwork standeth sure. Pray for me. Grace be with you. Remember me to your wife. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 14, 1637. S. R. 1637.] LETTER CLII. 283 QlAl.—To Mr Thomas Qarven. [Tliis correspondent was one of the ministers of Edinburgh. Letters CLXV. and CCXLVII. also are addressed to him. Brodie, in his "Diary," June 1662, speaks of hearing him preach.] {A PRISONER'S JOYS— LOVE OF CHRIST— THE GOOD PART- HE A VEN IN SIGHT. ) EVEEEND AND DEAE BEOTHEE,— I bless you for your letter ; it was a shower to the new-mown grass. The Lord hath given you the tongue of the learned. Be fruitful and humble. It is possible that ye may come to my case, or the like ; but the water is neither so deep, nor the stream so strong, as it is called. I think my fire is not so hot ; my water is dry land, my loss rich loss. Oh, if ^ the walls of my prison be high, wide, and large, and the place sweet ! No man knoweth it, no man, I say, knoweth it, my dear brother, so well as He and I ; no man can put it down in black and white as my Lord hath sealed it in my heart. My poor stock hath grown since I came to Aberdeen ; and if any had known the wrong I did, in being jealous of such an honest lover as Christ, who withheld not His love from me, they would think the more of it. But I see. He must be above me in mercy. I will never strive with Him ; to think to re- compense Him is folly. If I had as many angels' tongues, as there have fallen drops of rain since the creation, or as there are leaves of trees in all the forests of the earth, or stars in the heaven, to praise, yet my Lord Jesus would ever be behind with me.^ We will never get our accounts fitted. A pardon must close the reckoning ; for His comforts to me in this honourable cause have almost put me beyond the bounds of modesty ; howbeit I will not let every one know what is betwixt us. Love, love (I mean Christ's love), is the hottest coal that ever I felt. Oh, but the smoke of it be hot ! Cast all the salt sea on it, it will flame ; hell cannot quench it ; many many waters will not quench love. Christ is turned over to His poor prisoner in a mass and globe of love. I wonder that He should waste so much love upon such a waster as I am ; but He is no waster, but abundant in mercy. He hath no niggard's alms, when He is pleased to give. Oh that I could invite all the nation to love Him ! Free grace is an unknown thing. This world hath heard ^ " Ohif;" q.d., What will you say if I tell you that the walls of my prison are, etc. " Never have got His due from me. 284 LETTER CLIII. [1637 but a bare name of Christ, and no more. There are infinite plies in His love that the saints will never win to unfold ; I would it were better known, and that Christ got more of His own due than He doth. Brother, ye have chosen the good part, who have taken part with Christ. Ye will see Him win the field, and shall get part of the spoil when He divideth it. They are but fools who laugh at us ; for they see but the backside of the moon, yet our moon- light is better than their twelve-hours' sun. "We have gotten the New Heavens, and, as a pledge of that, the Bridegroom's love- ring. The children of the wedding-chamber have cause to skip and leap for joy ; for the marriage-supper is drawing nigh, and we find the four-hours sweet and comfortable. 0 time, be not slow ! 0 sun, move speedily, and hasten our banquet ! O Bridegroom, be like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains ! 0 Well- beloved, run fast, that we may once meet ! Brother, I restrain myself for want of time. Pray for me ; 1 hope to remember you. The good-will of Him who dwelt in the bush, the tender mercies of God in Christ, enrich you. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 14, 1637. "• •^• CLIII.— To Bethaia Aird. [The name Aird is not uncommon in the liistory of the Church. Mr, Wm. A inl was a noted minister in Edinburgh in Livingstone's days. Wodrow's ' * History " mentions Aird of Muirkirk, and also John Aird of Milton. In the memoir of Walter Pringle of Greenknow, we find James Aird was his intimate friend. But whether this correspondent was related to any of them, w^o know not. She may have been simply an Anwoth parishioner.] {"NBELIEF UNDER TRIAL— CHRIST'S SYMPATHY AND LOVE.) |OETHY SISTER, — Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. I know that ye desire news from my prison, and I shall show you news. At ray first entry hither, Clirist and I agreed not well upon it. The devil made a plea in the house, and I laid the blame upon Christ ; for my heart was fraughted with challenges, and I feared that I was an outcast, and that I was but a withered tree in the vineyard, and but held the sun off the good plants with my idle shadow, and tliat, therefore, my Master had given the evil servant the fields, to send him. Old guiltiness (as witness) said, " All is true." 1637.] LETTER CLIII. 285 My apprehensions were with child of faithless fears, and unbelief put a seal and amen to all. I thought myself in a hard case. Some said I had cause to rejoice that Christ had honoured me to be a witness for Him ; and I said in my heart, " These are words of men, who see but mine outside, and cannot tell if I be a false witness or not." If Christ had in this matter been as wilful and short as I was, my faith had gone over the brae, and broken its neck. But we were well met, — a hasty fool, and a wise, patient, and meek Saviour. He took no law-advantage of my folly, but waited on till my ill-blood was fallen, and my drumbled and troubled well began to clear. He was never a whit angry at the fever- ravings of a poor tempted sinner ; but He mercifully forgave, and came (as it well becometh Him), with grace and new comfort, to a sinner who deserved the contrary. And now He is content to kiss my black mouth, to put His hand into mine, and to feed me with as many consolations as would feed ten hungry souls. Yet I dare not say that He is a waster of comforts, for no less would have borne me up ; one grain- weight less would have casten the balance. Now, who is like to that royal King, crowned in Zion ! Where shall I get a seat for real Majesty to set Him on ? If I could set Him as far above the heaven as thousand thousands of heights devised by men and angels, I should think Him but too low. I pray you, for God's sake, my dear sister, to help me to praise. His love hath neither brim nor bottom ; His love is like Himself, it passeth all natural understanding. I go to fathom it with my arms ; but it is as if a child would take the globe of sea and land in his two short arms. Blessed and holy is His name ! This must be His truth which I now suffer for ; for He would not laugh upon a lie, nor be witness with His comforts to a night-dream. I entreat for your prayers ; and the prayer and blessing of a prisoner of Christ be upon you. Grace be with you. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abekdeen, March 14, 1637. S. S. 286 LETTERS CUV., CLV. [1637. CLIV. — To Alexander Gordon of KnocJcgray, nea/r Garsphairn. {PROSPECTIVE TRIALS.) EAE BEOTHER, — I have not leisure to write to you. Christ's ways were kuown to you long before I, who am but a child, knew anything of Him. What wrong and violence the prelates may, by God's permission, do unto you, for your trial, I know not ; but this I know, that your ten days' tribulation will end. Contend to the last breath for Christ. Banishment out of these kingdoms is determined against me, as I hear ; this land dow not bear me. I pray you, to recommend my case and bonds to my brethren and sisters with you. I intrust more of my spiritual comfort to you and them that way, my dear brother, than to many in this kingdom besides. I hope that ye will not be wanting to Christ's prisoner. Fear nothing ; for I assure you that Alexander Gordon of Knockgray shall win away and get his soul for a prey. And what can he then want that is worth the having ? Your friends are cold (as ye write) ; and so are those in whom I trusted much. Our Husband doth well in breaking our idols in pieces. Dry wells send us to the fountain. " My life is not dear to me, so being I may fulfil my course with joy." I fear that ye must remove ; your new hireling will not bear your discountenancing of him, for the prelate is afraid that Christ get you ; and that he hath no will to. Grace be with you. Yours in his sweet Lord and Master, Aberdeen, 1637. S- -K- CLV. — To Qrizzel Fullerton. [Grizzel Fullerton was the daughter of "William Fullerton, Provost of Kirk- cudbright, and Marion M'Naught. See Letter VI.] (^THE ONE THING NEEDFUL— CHRISl'S LOVE.) fl^^^lEAR SISTER, — I exhort you in the Lord, to seek your one thing, Mary's good part, that shall not be taken from you. Set your heart and soul on the children's inheritance. This clay-idol, the world, is but for bastards, and ye are His lawfully-begotten child. Learn the way (as your dear mother hath done before you) to knock at Christ's door. Many an alms of mercy hath Christ given to her, and hath abundance behind to give to you. Ye are the seed of the 1637-] LETTER CLVI. 287 faithful, and born within the covenant ; claim your right. I would not exchange Christ Jesus for ten worlds of glory. I know now (blessed be my Teacher !) how to shute the lock, and unbolt my Well-beloved's door ; and He maketh a poor stranger welcome when He cometh to His house. I am swelled up and satisfied with the love of Christ, that is better than wine. It is a fire in my soul ; let hell and the world cast water on it, they will not mend themselves. I have now gotten the right gate of Christ. I recommend Him to you above all things. Come and find the smell of His breath ; see if His kisses be not sweet. He desireth no better than to be much made of ; be homely with Him, and ye shall be the more welcome ; ye know not how fain Christ would have all your love. Think not this is imagination and bairns' play, which we make din for. I would not suffer for it, if it were so. I dare pawn my heaven for it, that it is the way to glory. Think much of truth, and abhor these ways devised by men in God's worship. The grace of Christ be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 14, 1637. S. R. CLVL— ^0 Patrick Carsen. [This was, perhaps, the son of John Carsen, formerly noticed. See Letter CXXVII.] {EARLY DEVOTEDNESS TO CHRIST.) EAR AND LOVING FRIEND,— I cannot but, upon the opportunity of a bearer, exhort you to resign the love of your youth to Christ ; and in this day, while your sun is high and your youth serveth you, to seek the Lord and His face. For there is nothing out of heaven so necessary for you as Christ. And ye cannot be ignorant but your day will end, and the night of death shall call you from the pleasures of this life : and a doom given out in death standeth for ever — as long as God liveth ! Youth, ordinarily, is a post and ready servant for Satan, to run errands ; for it is a nest for lust, cursing, drunkenness, blaspheming of God, lying, pride, and vanity. Oh, that there were such an heart in you as to fear the Lord, and to dedicate your soul and body to His service ! When the time cometh that your eye-strings shall break, and your face 288 LETTER CLVIL [1637 wax pale, and legs and arms tremble, and your breath shall grow cold, and your poor soul look out at your prison house of clay, to be set at liberty ; then a good conscience, and your Lord's favour, shall be worth all the world's glory. Seek it as your garland and crown. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 14, 1637. ^* •^* CLVII.— To Carleton. [Livingstone, in his Characteristics, mentions two persons of this name : *' Fullerton of Carleton, in Galloway, a grave and cheerful Christian ; " and "Cathcart of Carleton, in Carrick, an old, experienced Christian," in much repute among the religious of his day, for his skill in solving cases of conscience, and dealing with persons under spiritual affliction. But it seems clear that Rutherford's correspondent was John Fullerton of Carleton, in the parish of Borgue. For, in Letter XV. he is spoken of as in Galloway. In the "Minutes of Comm. of Covenanters," we find the following estates put side by side, all of them a few miles from Anwoth, viz. " Eoberton and Carleton, Caillie and Rusco, Carsluth and Cassincarrie. " His lady's name appears prefixed to Letter CCLVI. This, too, was the Carleton that wrote the Acrostic on Marion M 'Naught (see note on Letter V.). He was the author of a poem — "The Turtle Dove, under the absence and presence of her only Choice. J 664," — dedicated by the author to Lady Jane Campbell, Viscountess Kenmure, with whom he was connected. He also wrote "A Manifesto of the Kingdom of Scotland in favour of the League and Covenant," in verse. (See '* Minutes of Comm. of Covenanters.")] {INCREASING SENSE OF CHRISTS LOVE— RESIGNATION— DEAD- NESS TO EARTH— TEMPTATIONS— INFIRMITIES.) UGH HONOUEED SIE,— I will not impute your not writing to me to forgetfulness. However, I have One above who forgetteth me not — nay, He groweth in His kindness. It hath pleased His holy Majesty to take me from the pulpit, and teach me many things, in my exile and prison, that were mysteries to me before. I see His bottomless and boundless love and kindness, and my jealousies and ravings, which, at my first entry into this furnace, were so foolish and bold, as to say to Christ, who is truth itself, in His face, " Thou liest." I had well nigh lost my grips. I wondered if it was Christ or not ; for the mist and smoke of my perturbed heart made me mistake my Master, Jesus. My faith was dim, and hope frozen and cold ; and my love, which caused jealousies, had some warmness, and heat, and smoke, but no flame at all. Yet I was looking for some good of i637-] LETTER CLVII. 289 Christ's old claim to me, though ^ I had forfeited all my rights. But the tempter was too much upon my counsels, and was still blowing the coal. Alas ! I knew not well before how good skill my Intercessor and Advocate, Christ, hath of pleading, and of pardoning me such follies. Now He is returned to my soul with healing under His wings ; and I am nothing behind with Christ ^ now ; for He hath overpaid me, by His presence, the pain I was put to by on-waiting, and any little loss that I sustained by my witnessing against the wrongs done to Him. I trow it was a pain to my Lord to hide Himself any longer. In a manner, He was challenging His own unkindness, and repented Him of His glooms. And now, what want I on earth that Christ can give to a poor prisoner ? Oh, how sweet and lovely is He now ! Alas ! that I can get none to help me to lift up my Lord Jesus upon His throne, above all the earth. 2ndly, I am now brought to some measure of submission, and I resolve to wait till I see what my Lord Jesus will do with me. I dare not now nickname, or speak one word against, the all- seeing and over-watching providence of my Lord. I see that providence runneth not on broken wheels. But I, like a fool, carved a providence for my own ease, to die in my nest, and to sleep still till my grey hairs, and to lie on the sunny side of the mountain, in my ministry at Anwoth. But now I have nothing to say against a borrowed fireside, and another man's house, nor Kedar's tents, where I live, being removed far from my acquaint- ance, my lovers, and my friends. I see that God hath the world on His wheels, and casteth it as a potter doth a vessel on the wheel. I dare not say that there is any inordinate or irregular motion in providence. The Lord hath done it. I will not go to law with Christ, for I would gain nothing of that. Srdly, I have learned some greater mortification ; and not to mourn after, or seek to suck, the world's dry breasts. Nay, my Lord hath filled me with such dainties, that I am like to a full banqueter, who is not for common cheer. What have I to do to fall down upon my knees, and worship mankind's great idol, the world ? I have a better God than any claygod : nay, at present, as I am now disposed, I care not much to give this world a discharge of my life-rent of it, for bread and water. I know that it is not my home, nor my Father's house ; it is but His foot-stool, the outer close of His house. His out-fields and muir- ^ " I thought " is the old reading, but it has no meaning. ^ Christ has paid me all my claim. T 290 LETTER CLVIIL [i63r ground. Let bastards take it. I hope never to think myself in its common, for honour or riches. Nay, now I say to laughter, " Thou art madness." Stilly, I find it to be most true, that the greatest temptation out of hell is to live without temptations. If my waters should stand, they would rot. Faith is the better of the free air, and of the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withereth without adversity. The devil is but God's master fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons. ^thhj, I never knew how weak I was, till now when He hideth Himself, and when I have Him to seek, seven times a day. I am a dry and withered branch, and a piece of dead carcass, dry bones, and not able to step over a straw. The thoughts of my old sins are as the summons of death to me, and my late brother's case hath stricken me to the heart. When my wounds are closing, a little ruffle ^ causeth them to bleed afresh ; so thin-skinned is my soul, that I think it is like a tender man's skin that may touch nothing. Ye see how short I would shoot of the prize, if His grace were not sufficient for me. Wo is me for the day of Scotland ! Wo, wo is me for my harlot-mother ; for the decree is gone forth ! Women of this land shall call the childless and miscarrying wombs blessed. The anger of the Lord is gone forth, and shall not return, till He perform the purpose of His heart against Scotland. Yet He shall make Scotland a new, sharp instrument, having teeth to thresh the mountains, and fan the hills as chafif. The prisoner's blessing be upon you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, March 14, 1637. ^- -'^• CLVIIL— To the Lady Bdsbie. [See Letter CXXXIIL] (^CHRIST ALLWORTHY AND BEST AT OUR LOWEST— SINFUL- NESS OF THE LAND— PRAYERS.) ISTRESS, — I know that ye are thinking sometimes what Christ is doing in Zion, and that the haters of Zion may get the bottom of our cup, and the burning coals of our furnace that we have been tried in, those many years bygone. Oh, that this nation would be awakened to cry mightily unto God, for the setting up of a new tabernacle ^ It is written "rifle" in old editions. 1637] LETTER CLVIIL 291 to Christ in Scotland. Oh, if this kingdom knew how worthy Christ were of His room ! His worth was ever above man's estimation of Him. And for myself I am pained at the heart, that I cannot find myself disposed to leave myself and go wholly into Christ. Alas ! that there should be one bit of me out of Him, and that we leave too much liberty and latitude for ourselves, and our own ease, and credit, and pleasures, and so little room for all- love-worthy Christ. Oh, what pains and charges it costeth Christ ere He get us ! and when all is done, we are not worth the having. It is a wonder that He should seek the like of us. But love overlooketh blackness and fecklessness ; for if it had not been so, Christ would never have made so fair and blessed a bargain with us as the covenant of grace is. I find that in all our sufferings Christ is but redding marches, that every one of us may say, " Mine, and thine ; " and that men may know by their crosses, how weak a bottom nature is to stand upon in trial ; that the end which our Lord intendeth, in all our sufifer- ings, is to bring grace into court and request amongst us. I should succumb and come short of heaven, if I had no more than my own strength to support me ; and if Christ should say to me, " Either do or die," it were easy to determine what should become of me. The choice were easy, for I behoved to die if Christ should pass by with straitened bowels ; and who then would take us up in our straits ? I know we may say that Christ is kindest in His love, when we are at our weakest ; and that if Christ had not been to the fore, in our sad days, the waters had gone over our soul. His mercy hath a set period, and appointed place, how far and no farther the sea of affliction shall flow, and where the waves thereof shall be stayed. He prescribeth how much pain and sorrow, both for weight and measure, we must have. Ye have, then, good cause to recall your love from all lovers, and give it to Christ. He who is afflicted in all your afflictions, looketh not on you in your sad hours with an insensible heart or dry eyes. All the Lord's saints may see that it is lost love which is bestowed upon this perishing world. Death and judgment will make men lament that ever their miscarrying hearts carried them to lay and lavish out their love upon false appearances and night-dreams. Alas ! that Christ should fare the worse, because of His own goodness in making peace and the Gospel to ride together; and that we have never yet weighed the worth of 292 LETTER CLIX. [1637. Christ in His ordinances, and that we are like to be deprived of the well, ere we have tasted the sweetness of the water. It may be that with watery eyes, and a wet face, and wearied feet, we seek Christ, and shall not find Him. Oh, that this laud were humbled in time, and by prayers, cries, and humiliation, would bring Christ in at the church-door again, now when His back is turned towards us, and He is gone to the threshold, and His one foot, as it were, is out of the door ! I am sure that His departure is our deserving ; we have bought it with our iniquities ; for even the Lord's own children are fallen asleep, and, alas ! professors are made all of shows and fashions, and are not at pains to recover themselves again. Every one hath his set measure of faith and holiness, and contenteth himself with but a stinted measure of godliness, as if that were enough to bring him to heaven. We forget that as our gifts and light grow, so God's gain and the interest of His talents, should grow also ; and that we cannot pay God with the old use and wont (as we use to speak) which we gave Him seven years ago ; for this were to mock the Lord, and to make price with Him as we list. Oh, what difficulty is there in our Christian journey, and how often come we short of many thousand things that are Christ's due ! and we consider not how far our dear Lord is behind with us. Mistress, I cannot render you thanks, as I would, for your kindness to my brother, an oppressed stranger ; but I remember you unto the Lord as I am able. I entreat you to think upon me, His prisoner, and pray that the Lord would be pleased to give me room to speak to His people in His name. Grace, grace be with you. Yours in his sweet Lord and Master, Aberdeen, 1637. S. K. CLIX. — To John Fleming, Bailie of Leith. [Letter LXVIIL] {DIRECTIONS FOR CHRISTIAN CONDUCT.) fOETHY AND DEAELY BELOVED IN THE LORD, — Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. I received your letter. I wish that I could satisfy your desire in drawing up, and framing for you, a Christian directory. But the learned have done it before mo, 1637] LETTER CLIX. 293 more judiciously than I can ; especially Mr, Eogers,* Greenham, and Perkins.^ Notwithstanding, I shall show you what I would have been at myself ; howbeit I came always short of my purpose. 1. That hours of the day, less or more time, for the word and prayer, be given to God ; not sparing the twelfth hour, or mid-day, howbeit it should then be the shorter time. 2. In the midst of worldly employments, there should be some thoughts of sin, death, judgment, and eternity, with at least a word or two of ejaculatory prayer to God. 3. To beware of wandering of heart in private prayers. 4. Not to grudge, howbeit ye come from prayer without sense of joy. Down-casting, sense of guiltiness, and hunger, are often best for us. 5. That the Lord's-day, from morning to night, be spent always either in private or public worship. 6. That words be observed, wandering and idle thoughts be avoided, sudden anger and desire of revenge, even of such as persecute the truth, be guarded against ; for we often mix our zeal with our wild- fire. 7. That known, discovered, and revealed sins, that are against the conscience, be eschewed, as most dangerous pre- paratives to hardness of heart. 8. That in dealing with men, faith and truth in covenants and trafficking be regarded, that we deal with all men in sincerity ; that conscience be made of idle and lying words ; and that our carriage be such, as that they who see it may speak honourably of our sweet Master and profession. 9. I have been much challenged — 1. For not referring all to God as the last end ; that I do not eat, drink, sleep, journey, * Dr. Daniel Rogers, a Puritan divine, author of a treatise called ' ' David's Cost; or, What it will cost to serve God aright," "Naaman the Syrian," and others. He was born in 1573, educated at Cambridge, suffered from the persecution of Laud, and died in 1652 at the age of eighty. He was a man of great talents, deep humility and devotion, but of a temper so bold that a friend said of him, ' ' He had grace enough for two men, but not enough for himself." * Richard Greenham, a Puritan, who was born in 1531, and died of the plague 1591. He was the author of several sermons and practical treatises. (See Brooke's "Lives of the Puritans," vol. ii.) ' Dr. "Wm. Perkins, an English divine, who lived in the end of the sixteenth century, and was the author of several practical and doctrinal treatises ; among others, the one here referred to, "A Case of Conscience, and Thii'teen Principles of Pieligion," published after his death. He was a strict Calvinist, and took part in the controversy against Arminianism. He used so to apply the terrors of the law to the conscience, that oftentimes his hearers fell down before him. It was also said that he pronounced the word "Damnation" with such an emphasis and pathos as left a doleful echo in the ear long after. He wrote on all his books, ' ' Thou art a minister of the Word : mind thy business," 394 LETTER CLIX. [1637. speak, and think for God. 2. That I have not benefited by good company ; and that I left not some word of conviction, even upon natural and wicked men, as by reproving swearing in them ; or because of being a silent witness to their loose carriage ; and because I intended not in all companies to do good, 3. That the woes and calamities of the kirk, and of particular professors, have not moved me. 4. That at the reading of the life of David, Paul, and the like, when it humbled me, I (coming so far short of their holiness) laboured not to imitate them, afar off at least, according to the measure of God's grace. 5. That unrepented sins of youth were not looked to, and lamented for. 6. That sudden stirrings of pride, lust, revenge, love of honours, were not resisted and mourned for. 7. That my charity was cold. 8. That the experiences I had of God's hearing me, in this and the other particular, being gathered, yet in a new trouble I had always (once at least) my faith to seek, as if I were to begin at A, B, C again. 9. That I have not more boldly contradicted the enemies speaking against the truth, either in public church meetings, or at tables, or ordinary conference. 10. That in great troubles I have received false reports of Christ's love, and misbelieved Him in His chastening ; whereas the event hath said, " All was in mercy." 11. Nothing more moveth me, and weighteth my soul, than that I could never from ^ my heart, in my prosperity, so wrestle in prayer with God, nor be so dead to the world, so hungry and sick of love for Christ, so heavenly-minded, as when ten stone- weight of a heavy cross was upon me. 12. That the cross extorted vows of new obedience, which ease hath blown away, as chaff before the wind. 13. That practice was so short and narrow, and light so long and broad. 14. That death hath not been often meditated upon. 15. That I have not been careful of gaining others to Christ. 16. That my grace and gifts bring forth little or no thankfulness. There are some things, also, whereby I have been helped, as — 1. I have been benefited by riding alone a long journey, in giving that time to prayer. 2. By abstinence, and giving days to God. 3. By praying for others ; for by making an errand to God for them, I have gotten something for myself. 4. I have been really confirmed, in many particulars, that God heareth prayers ; and, therefore, I used to pray for anything, of how little importance soever. 5. He enabled me to make no ques- * Should probably be "from ;" though it is "for" in other editions. 1637.] LETTER CLX. 295 tiou, that this mocked way, which is nicknamed, is the only way to heaven. Sir, these and many more occurrences in your life, should be looked into; and, 1. Thoughts of Atheism should be watched over, as, " If there be a God in heaven ? " which will trouble and assault the best at some times. 2. Growth in grace should be cared for above all things ; and falling from our first love mourned for. 3. Conscience made of praying for the enemies, who are blinded. Sir, I thank you most kindly for the care of my brother, and of me also. I hope it is laid up for you, and remembered in heaven. I am still ashamed with Christ's kindness to such a sinner as I am. He hath left a fire in my heart, that hell cannot cast water on, to quench or extinguish it. Help me to praise, and pray for me, for ye have a prisoner's blessing and prayers. Eemember my love to your wife. Grace be with you. Yours in Christ Jesus, Aberdeen, March 15, 1637. S- •^• - CLX. — To Alexander Gordon of Earlston. {HUNGERING AFTER CHRIST HIMSELF RATHER THAN HIS LOVE.) UCH HONOUEED AND WOETHY SIE, — Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. — I long to hear from you. I have received few letters since I came hither ; I am in need of a word. A dry plant should have some watering. My case betwixt Christ my Lord, and me, standeth between love and jealousy, faith and suspicion of His love ; it is a marvel He keepeth house with me. I make many pleas with Christ, but He maketh as many agreements with me. I think His unchangeable love hath said, " I defy thee to break Me and change Me." If Christ had such changeable and new thoughts of my salvation as I have of it, I think I should then be at a sad loss. He humoureth not a fool like me in my unbelief, but rebuketh me, and fathereth kindness upon me. Christ is more like the poor friend and needy prisoner begging love, than 1 am. I cannot, for shame, get Christ said " nay " of my whole love, for He will not want His errand for the seekinsf. God be thanked 896 LETTER CLX. [1637. that my Bridegroom tireth not of wooing. Honour to Him ! He is a wilful ^ suitor of my soul. But as love is His, pain is mine, that I have nothing to give Him. His account-book is full of my debts of mercy, kindness, and free love towards me. Oh that I might read with watery eyes ! Oh that He would give me the interest of interest to pay back ! Or rather, my soul's desire is, that He would comprise my person, soul and body, love, joy, confidence, fear, sorrow, and desire, and drive the poind, and let me be rouped, and sold to Christ, and taken home to my creditor's house and fireside. The Lord knoweth that, if I could, I would sell myself without reversion to Christ. 0 sweet Lord Jesus, make a market, and overbid all my buyers ! I dare swear that there is a mystery in Christ which I never saw ; a mystery of love. Oh, if He would lay by the lap of the covering that is over it, and let my greening soul see it ! I would break the door, and be in upon Him, to get a wombful of love ; for I am an hungered and famished soul. Oh, sir, if you, or any other, would tell Him how sick my soul is, dying for want of a hearty draught of Christ's love ! Oh, if I could dote (if I may make use of that word in this case) as much upon Himself as I do upon His love ! It is a pity that Christ Himself should not rather be my heart's choice, than Christ's manifested love. It would satisfy me, in some measure, if I had any bud to give for His love. Shall I offer Him my praises ? Alas ! He is more than praises. I give it over to get Him exalted according to His worth, which is above what can be known. Yet all this time I am tempting Him, to see if there be both love and anger in Him against me. I am plucked from His flock (dear to me ! ), and from feeding His lambs ; I go, therefore, in sackcloth, as one who hath lost the wife of his youth. Grief and sorrow are suspicious, and spew out against Him the smoke of jealousies ; and I say often, " Show me where- fore Thou contendest with me. Tell me, 0 Lord : read the process against me." But I know that I cannot answer His allegations ; I shall lose the cause when it cometh to open pleading. Oh, if I could force my heart to believe dreams to be dreams ! Yet when Christ giveth my fears the lie, and saith to me, " Thou art a liar," then I am glad. I resolve to hope to be quiet, and to lie on the brink on my side, till the water fall and the ford be ridable. And, howbeit there be pain upon me, in ' In the sense of not to be turned from His purpose. 1 637-] LETTER CLX. 297 longing for deliverance that I may sjjeak of Him in the great congregation, yet I think there is joy in that pain and on- waiting ; and I even rejoice that He putteth me off for a time, and shifteth me. Oh, if I could wait on for all eternity, how- beit I should never get my soul's desire, so being He were glorified ! I would wish my pain and my ministry could live long to serve Him ; for I know that I am a clay vessel, and made for His use. Oh, if my very broken sherds could serve to glorify Him ! I desire Christ's grace to be willingly content, that my hell (excepting His hatred and displeasure, which I put out of all play, for submission to this is not called for) were a preaching of His glory to men and angels for ever and ever ! When all is done, what can I add to Him ? or what can such a clay-shadow as I do ? I know that He needeth not me. I have cause to be grieved, and to melt away in tears, if I had grace to do it (Lord, grant it to me ! ), to see my Well-beloved's fair face spitted upon by dogs, to see loons pulling the crown off my royal King's head ; to see my harlot-mother and my sweet Father agree so ill, that they are going to skail and give up house. My Lord's palace is now a nest of unclean birds. Oh, if harlot, harlot Scotland would rue upon her provoked Lord, and pity her good Husband, who is broken with her whorish heart ! But these things are hid from her eyes. I have heard of late of your new trial by the Bishop of Galloway.^ Fear not clay, worms' meat. Let truth and Christ get no wrong in your hand. It is your gain if Christ be glori- fied ; and your glory to be Christ's witness. I persuade you, that your sufferings are Christ's advantage and victory ; for He is pleased to reckon them so. Let me hear from you. Christ is but winning a clean kirk out of the fire ; He will win this play. He will not be in your common for any charges ye are at in His service. He is not poor, to sit in your debt ; He will repay an hundred-fold more, it may be, even in this life. The prayers and blessings of Christ's prisoner be with you. Your brother, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abekdeen, 1637. S. E ^ The Bishop of Galloway held this year a High Commission Court in Galloway, in which, besides fining some gentlemen, and confining the magistrates of Kirkcud- bright to Wigtown, for matters of nonconformity, he fined Gordon of Earlston for his absence, five hundred merks, and banished him to Montrose. (Baillie's "Letters and Journals.") This, no doubt, is the " new trial by the Bishop of Galloway," to which Rutherford refers. See Letter LIX. agS LETTER CLXT. [1637. CLXI. — To John Stuart, Provost of Ayr. [John Stuart, Provost of Ayr, is described by Livingstone as "a godly and zealous Christian of a long standing," and from his earliest years. Inheriting, after the death of his father, considerable property, he largely applied it to bene- volent purposes. Such was his disinterested love to those who were the friends of Christ and His truth, tliat he called a number of them whose straitened condition he knew, to meet with him in Edinburgh ; and after some time spent in prayer, told them he had brought a little money to lend to each of them, which they were not to offer to pay back till he reqiiiied it, at the same time requiring them to promise not to make this known during his life. Not long after (the plague raging with severity in Ayr, and trade becoming, in consequence, much depressed) he himself fell into pecuniary difficulties, which made him at that time remove from the country. Borrowing a little money, he went over to France, and coming to Rochelle, loaded a ship with salt and other conamodities, which he purchased at a very cheap rate. He then returned the nearest way to England, and thence to Ayr, in expectation of the ship's return. After waiting long, he was informed that it was taken by the Turks, which, considering the loss which others in that case would sustain, much afflicted hun. But it at last arrived in the Road. It was on this occasion that his friend John Kennedy, going out to the vessel in a small boat, was driven away by a storm. (See notice of Kennedy, Letter LXXV.) Stuart having sold the commodities which he brought from France, not only was enabled by the profits to pay all his debts, but cleared twenty thousand merks. (Fleming's " Fulfilling of the Scriptures.") He joined with Mr. Blair, Mr. Livingstone, and others, in their plan of emigrating to New England, though they were forced to give it up. This good man was much afflicted on his death-bed, so that one day he said, " I testify, that except when I slept, or was in business, I was not these ten years without thoughts of God, so long as I would be in going from my o\vn house to the cross ; and yet I doubt myself, and am in great agony, yea, at the brink of despair." But a day or two before he died, all his doubts were dispelled ; and to Mr. Ferguson, the pious irQnister of Ayr, ho said, referring to his struggle with temptations at that time, " I have been fighting and working out my salvation with fear and trembling, ftnd now I bless God it is perfected, sealed, confirmed, and all fears are gone."] {COMMERCIAL MISFORTUNES— SERVICE-BOOK— BLESSEDNESS OF TRIAL.) |UCH HONOUEED SIE, — Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. I long to hear from you, being now removed from my flock, and the prisoner of Christ at Aberdeen. I would not have you to think it strange that your journey to New England liath gotten such a dash.^ It indeed hath made my heart heavy ; yet I know it is no dumb providence, but a speaking one, whereby our Lord speaketh His mind to you, though for the present ye do not well understand what He saith. However it be, He who sitteth upon the floods hath shown you His marvellous kindness in the great depths. I know that your loss is great, and your hope is gone far against you ; but I entreat you, sir, expound aright our Lord's laying all hindrances in the way. I persuade myself that your heart aimeth at the footsteps of the flock, to feed beside the shepherds' tents, and to dwell beside Him whom your soul 1 See note at Letter LXIII. 1637.] LETTER CLXI. 299 loveth ; and that it is your desire to remain in the wilderness, where the Woman is kept from the Dragon. (Eev. xii. 14.) And this being your desire, remember that a poor prisoner of Christ said it to you, that that miscarried journey is with child to you of mercy and consolation ; and shall bring forth a fair birth on which the Lord will attend. Wait on ; " He that believeth maketh not haste " (Isa. xxviii. 1 6). I hope that ye have been asking what the Lord meaneth, and what further may be His will, in reference to your return. My dear brother, let God make of you what He will. He will end all with consolation, and will make glory out of your sufferings ; and would you wish better work ? This water was in your way to heaven, and written in your Lord's book ; ye behoved to cross it, and, therefore, kiss His wise and unerring providence. Let not the censures of men, who see but the outside of things, and scarce well that, abate your courage and rejoicing in the Lord. How- beit your faith seeth but the black side of providence ; yet it hath a better side, and God will let you see it. Learn to believe Christ better than His strokes, Himself and His promises better than His glooms. Dashes and disappointments are not canonical Scripture ; fighting for the promised land seemed to cry to God's promise, " Thou liest," If our Lord ride upon a straw, His horse shall neither stumble nor fall. " For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God " (Eom. viii. 28) ; ergo, shipwreck, losses, etc., work together for the good of them that love God. Hence I infer, that losses, disappointments, ill- tongues, loss of friends, houses, or country, are God's workmen, set on work to work out good to you, out of ever} thing that befalleth you. Let not the Lord's dealing seem harsh, rough, or unfatherly, because it is unpleasant. When the Lord's blessed will bloweth across your desires, it is best, in humility, to strike sail to Him, and to be willing to be led any way our Lord pleaseth. It is a point of denial of yourself, to be as if ye had not a will, but had made a free disposition of it to God, and had sold it over to Him ; and to make use of His will for your own is both true holiness, and your ease and peace. Ye know not what the Lord is working out of this, but ye shall know it here- after. And v/hat I write to you, I write to your wife. I compas- sionate her case, but entreat her not to fear nor faint. This journey is a part of her wilderness to heaven and the promised land, and there are fewer miles behind. It is nearer the dawning 300 LETTER CLXI. [1637. of the day to her than when she went out of Scotland. I should be glad to hear that ye and she have comfort and courage in the Lord. Now, as concerning our kirk ; our Service-Book is ordained, by open proclamation and sound of trumpet, to be read in all the kirks of the kingdom.-^ Our prelates are to meet this month about our Canons,^ and for a reconciliation betwixt us and the Lutherans. The Professors of Aberdeen University are charged to draw up the Articles of an uniform Confession ; but recon- ciliation with Popery is intended. This is the day of Jacob's visitation ; the ways of Zion mourn, our gold is become dim, the sun is gone down upon our prophets. A dry wind, but neither to fan nor to cleanse, is coming upon this land ; and all our ill is coming from the multiplied transgressions of this land, and from the friends and lovers of Babel among us. " The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon thee, Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion say ; and, My blood upon the inhabitants of Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say."^ Now for myself : I was three days before the High Commis- sion, and accused of treason preached against our King. (A minister 'being witness, went well nigh to swear it.) God hath saved me from their malice, \stly, They have deprived me of my 1 The Service-Book, or Liturgy, at this time imposed upon Scotland, was that of England, but with numerous alterations. The Act of Privy Council, enjoining the use of the Service-Book, is dated 20th December 1636 ; and it was next day proclaimed at the cross of Edinburgh : but it was not published till towards the end of May 1637. Its title is, "The Booke of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other parts of Divine Service, for the use of the Church of Scotland. Edinburgh, 1637." This book was extremely obnoxious to the gi-eat body of the ministers and people of Scotland, both from the manner of its introduc- tion, which was by the sole authority of the King, without the Church having been even consulted in the matter, and from the doctrines which it contained, in which it approached nearer to the Roman Missal than the English liturgy, It was drawn up by James Wedderburn, Bishop of Dunblane, and John Maxwell, Bishop of Ross, with the assistance of Sydserif, Bishop of Galloway, and Ballenden, Bishop of Aber- deen. It was levised by Archbishop Laud, and Wren, Bishop of Norwich. Kirkton mentions that he saw the original copy corrected by Laud's own hands, and that all his corrections approached towards Popery and the Roman MissaL (Kirk ton's " History," ji. 30.) ^ ' ' The Book of Canons " was, in obedience to the King's orders, drawn up by four of the Scottish bishops, — SyJserff of Galloway, Maxwell of Ross, Ballenden of Aberdeen, and Whiteford of Dunblane. It received the Royal sanction, and became law in 1635. This book, like the Service-Book which followed it, was extremely obnoxious to the people of Scotland, because it was ini]!0sed solely by Royal authority, and from the nature of tlie canons themselves, which prescribed a variety of ceremonial and superstitious rites in the observance of baptism and the Lord's Supper ; invested bishops with uncontrollable power ; inculcated the doctrine of the King's supremacy in matters ecclesiastical as well as civil, — aGBrming that no meeting of General Asscn'.bly could be held unless called by the King's authority ; with otlicr uuscriptural innovations. s Jer. li. 35. 1637.] LETTER CLXI. 301 ministry ; ^ndly, Silenced me, that I exercise no part of the ministerial function within this kingdom, under the pain of rebellion ; Zrdly, Confined my person within the town of Aberdeen, where I find the ministers working for my confine- ment in Caithness or Orkney, far from them, because some people here (willing to be edified) resort to me. At my first entry, I had heavy challenges within me, and a court fenced (but I hope not in Christ's name), wherein it was asserted that my Lord would have no more of my services, and was tired of me ; and, like a fool, I summoned Christ also for unkindness. My soul fainted, and I refused comfort, and said, " What ailed Christ at me ? for I desired to be faithful in His house." Thus, in my rovings and mistakings, my Lord Jesus bestowed mercy on me, who am less than the least of all saints. I lay upon the dust, and bought a plea from Satan against Christ, and He was content to sell it. But at length Christ did show Himself friends with me, and in mercy pardoned and passed my part of it, and only complained that a court should be holden in His bounds without His allowance. Now I pass from my compearance ; and, as if Christ had done the fault. He hath made the mends, and returned to my soul ; so that now His poor prisoner feedeth on the feasts of ■ love. My adversaries know not what a courtier I am now with my Eoyal King, for whose crown I now sujSer. It is but our soft and lazy flesh that hath raised an ill report of the cross of Christ. 0 sweet, sweet is His yoke ! Christ's chains are of pure gold ; sufferings for Him are perfumed. I would not give my weeping for the laughing of all the fourteen prelates ; I would not exchange my sadness with the world's joy. 0 lovely, lovely Jesus, how sweet must Thy kisses be, when Thy cross smelleth so sweetly ! Oh, if all the three kingdoms had part of my love-feast, and of the comfort of a dawted prisoner ! Dear Brother, I charge you to praise for me, and to seek help of our acquaintance there to help me to praise. Why should I smother Christ's honesty to me ? My heart is taken up with this, that my silence and sufferings may preach. I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, to help me to praise. Remember my love to your v/ife, to Mr. Blair, and Mr. Livingstone, and Mr. Cunningham. Let me hear from you, for I am anxious what to do. If I saw a call for New England, I would follow it. Grace be with you. Yours in our Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S- B.- 3oa LETTER CLXII. [1637. CLXII. — To John Stuart, Provost of Ayr. {THE BURDEN OF A SILENCED MINISTER— SPIRITUAL SHORTCOMINGS. ) UCH HONOURED AND DEAREST IN CHRIST,— Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, be upon you. I expected the comfort of a letter to a prisoner from you, ere now. I am here, Sir, putting off a part of my inch of time ; and when I awake first in the morning (which is always with great heaviness and sadness), this question is brought to my mind, " Am I serving God or not ? " Not that I doubt of the truth of this honourable cause wherein I am engaged ; I dare venture into eternity, and before my Judge, that I now suffer for the truth — because that I cannot endure that my Master, who is a freeborn King, should pay tribute to any of the shields or potsherds of the earth. Oh that I could hold the crown upon my princely King's head with my sinful arm, howbeit it should be struck from me in that service, from the shoulder-blade. But my closed mouth, my dumb Sabbaths, the memory of my com- munion with Christ, in many fair, fair days in Anwoth, whereas now my Master getteth no service of my tongue as then, hath almost broken my faith in two halves. Yet in my deepest apprehensions of His anger, I see through a cloud that I am wrong ; and He, in love to my soul, hath taken up the controversy betwixt faith and apprehensions, and a decreet is passed on Christ's side of it, and I subscribe the decreet. The Lord is equal in His ways, but my guiltiness often overmastereth my believing. I have not been well known : for except as to open outbreakings, I want nothing of what Judas and Cain had ; only He hath been pleased to prevent me in mercy, and to cast me into a fever of love for Himself, and His absence maketh my fever most painful. And beside. He hath visited my soul and watered it with His comforts. But yet I have not what I would. The want of real and felt possession is my only death. I know that Christ pitieth me in this. The great men, my friends that did ^ for me, are dried up like winter-brooks of water. All say, " No dealing for that man ; hia best will be to be gone out of the kingdom." So I see they tire of me. But, believe me, I am most gladly content that Christ ^ Acted for me ; as Va. cix. 21. 1637.1 LETTER CLXIl. 303 breaketh all my idols in pieces. It hath put a new edge upon my blunted love to Christ ; I see that He is jealous of my love, and will have all to Himself. In a word, these six things are my burden: 1. I am not in the vineyard as others are; it may be, because Christ thinketh me a withered tree, not worth its room. But God forbid ! 2. Woe, v;oe, woe is coming upon my harlot-mother, this apostate kirk ! The time is coming when we shall wish for doves' wings to flee and hide us. Oh, for the desolation of this land ! 3. I see my dear Master Christ going His lone (as it were), mourning in sackcloth. His fainting friends fear that King Jesus shall lose the field. But He must carry the day. 4. My guiltiness and the sins of youth are come up against me, and they would come into the plea in my sufferings, as deserving causes in God's justice ; but I pray God, for Christ's sake, that he may never give them that room. 5. Woe is me, that I cannot get my royal, dreadful, mighty, and glorious Prince of the kings of the earth set on high. Sir, ye may help me and pity me in this ; and bow your knee, and bless His name, and desire others to do it, that He hath been pleased, in my sufferings, to make Atheists, Papists, and enemies about me say, " It is like that God is with this prisoner." Let hell and the powers of hell (I care npt) be let loose against me to do their worst, so being that Christ, and my Father, and His Father, be magnified in my sufferings. 6. Christ's love hath pained me : for howbeit His presence hath shamed me, and drowned me in debt, yet He often goeth away when my love to Him is burning. He seemeth to look like a proud wooer, who will not look upon a poor match that is dying of love. I will not say He is lordly. But I know He is wise in hiding Himself from a child and a fool, who maketh an idol and a god of one of Christ's kisses, which is idolatry. I fear that I adore His comforts more than Himself, and that I love the apples of life better than the tree of life. Sir, write to me. Commend me to your wife. Mercy be her portion. Grace be with you. Yours, in his dearest Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R. 304 LETTER CLXIII. [1637 CLXIII. — To John Stuart, Provost of Ayr. {VIEW OF TRIALS PAST— HARD THOUGHTS OF CHRIST- CROSSES— HOPE. ) JOETHY AND DEAKLY BELOVED IN OUE LORD, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I was refreshed and comforted with your letter. What I wrote to you, for your comfort, I do not remember ; but I believe that love will prophesy homeward,' as it would have it. I wish that I could help you to praise His great and holy name who keepeth the feet of His saints, and hath numbered all your goings. I know that our dearest Lord will pardon and pass by our honest errors and mistakes, when we mind His honour ; yet I know that none of you have seen the other half, and the hidden side, of your wonderful return home to us again, I am confident ye shall yet say, that God's mercy blew your sails back to Ireland again. Worthy and dear Sir, I cannot but give you an account of my present estate, that ye may go an errand for me to my high and royal Master, of whom I boast all the day. I am as proud of His love (nay, I bless myself, and boast more of my present lot) as any poor man can be of an earthly king's court, or of a kingdom. First, I am very often turning both the sides of my cross, especially my dumb and silent Sabbaths ; not because I desire to find a crook or defect in my Lord's love, but because my love is sick with fancies and fear. Whether or not the Lord hath a process leading against my guiltiness, that I have not yet well seen, I know not. My desire is to ride fair, and not to spark dirt (if, with reverence to Him, I may be permitted to make use of such a word) in the face of my only, only Well- beloved ; but fear of guiltiness is a talebearer betwixt me and Christ, and is still whispering ill tales of my Lord, to weaken my faith. I had rather that a cloud went over my comforts by these messages, than that my faith should be hurt ; for, if my Lord get ^ The ministers, after their return to this country, were settled in various parishes ; Messrs. Blair at Ayr, Livingstone at Stranraer, M'Clelland at Kirk- cudbright, and Hamilton at Dumfries. They were zealous promoters of all the measures by which the triumph of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland was ulti- mately secured ; and all of them were members of the celebrated Assembly held at Glasgow in 1638. Speaking of their return, Row of Ceres says : "Neither the pre- lates and conformists, nor they themselves, knew that within a year the Lord would not only root out the prelates in Scotland, and, after that, out of England and Ireland, but make some of them, especially Messrs. Blair, Livingstone, and M'Clelland, to be very instrumental in the work of reformation" ("Life of Robert Blair," Wodrow Society). 1637.] LETTER CLXIII. 305 no wrong by me, verily I desire grace not to care what become of me. I desire to give no faith nor credit to my sorrow, that can make a lie of my best friend Christ. Woe, woe be to them all who speak ill of Christ ! Hence these thoughts awake with me in the morning, and go to bed with me. Oh, what service can a dumb body do in Christ's house ! Oh, I think the word of God is imprisoned also ! Oh, I am a dry tree ! Alas, I can neither plant nor water ! Oh, if my Lord would make but dung of me, to fatten and make fertile His own corn-ridges in Mount Zion ! Oh, if I might but speak to three or four herdboys^ of my worthy Master, I would be satisfied to be the meanest and most obscure of all the pastors in this land, and to live in any place, in any of Christ's basest outhouses ! But He saith, " Sirrah, I will not send you ; I have no errands for you thereaway." My desire to serve Him is sick of jealousy, lest He be unwilling to employ me. Secondly, This is seconded by another. Oh ! all that I have done in Anwoth, the fair work that my Master began there, is like a bird dying in the shell ; and what will I then have to show of all my labour, in the day of my compearance before Him, when the Master of the vineyard calleth the labourers, and giveth them their hire ? Thirdly, But truly, when Christ's sweet wind is in the right airth, 1 repent, and I pray Christ to take law-burrows of my quarrelous unbelieving sadness and sorrow. Lord, rebuke them that put ill betwixt a poor servant like me and his good Master. Then I say, whether the black cross will or not, I must climb on hands and feet up to my Lord. I am now ruing from my heart that I pleasured the law (my old dead husband) so far as to apprehend wrath in my sweet Lord Jesus. I had far rather take a hire to plead for the grace of God, for I think myself Christ's sworn debtor ; and the truth is (to speak of my Lord what I cannot deny), I am over head and ears, drowned in many obligations to His love and mercy. He handleth me some time so, that I am ashamed almost to seek more for a four-hours, but to live content (till the marriage- supper of the Lamb) with that which He giveth. But I know not how greedy and how ill to please love is. For either my Lord Jesus hath taught me ill manners, not to be content with a seat, except my head lie in His bosom, and except I be fed with the fatness of His house ; or else I am grown impatiently dainty, and ill to please, as if Christ were obliged, under this cross, to do no other thing but bear me in His arms, and as if I had ^ Boys, like David, keeping the sheep or cattle, U 3o6 LETTER CLXIII. [1637. claim by merit for my suffering for Him. But I wish He would give me grace to learn to go on my own feet, and to learn to do without His comforts, and to give thanks and believe, when the sun is not in my firmament, and when my Well-beloved is from home, and gone another errand. Oh, what sweet peace have I, when I find that Christ holdeth and I draw ; when I climb up and He shuteth me down ; when I grips Him and embrace Him, and He seemeth to loose the grips and flee away from me ! I think there is even a sweet joy of faith, and contentedness, and peace, in His very tempting unkindness, because my faith saith, " Christ is not in sad earnest with me, but trying if I can be kind to His mask and cloud that covereth Him, as well as to His fair face." I bless His great name that I love His vail which goeth over His face, whill God send better ; for faith can kiss God's tempting reproaches when He nicknameth a sinner, " A dog, not worthy to eat bread with the bairns " (Mark vii. 27, 28). I think it an honour that Christ miscalleth me, and reproacheth me. I will take that well of Him, howbeit I would not bear it well if another should be that homely ; but because I am His own (God be thanked), Hfe may use me as He pleaseth. I must say, the saints have a sweet life between them and Christ. There is much sweet solace of love between Him and them, when He feedeth among the lilies, and cometh into His garden, and maketh a feast of honeycombs, and drinketh His wine and His milk, and crieth, " Eat, 0 friends : drink, yea, drink abundantly, 0 well-beloved." One hour of this labour is worth a shipful of the world's drunken and muddy joy ; nay, even the gate ^ to heaven is the sunny side of the brae, and the very garden of the world. For the men of this world have their own unchristened and profane crosses ; and woe be to them and their cursed crosses both ; for their ills are salted with God's vengeance, and our ills seasoned with our Father's blessing. So that they are no fools who choose Christ, and sell all things for Him. It is no bairns' market, nor a blind block ; we know well what we get, and what we give. Now, for any resolution to go to any other kingdom, I dare not speak one word.^ My hopes of enlargement are cold, my ^ Before we come to heaven, the very way (gate) to heaven is pleasant. ^ Rutherford appears sometimes to liave entertained the idea of removing abroad, should he succeed in obtaining his liberty. In a jireceding letter to Stuart, he names New PjUgland ; and some of his friends thouglit that he might be honourably and usefully employed abroad. Robert Baillie, in a letter to Mr. "William Spang, minister at Campvere, dated January 29, 1637, says : " Alwayes I take the man [Rutherford] to be among the most learned and best ingynes of our nation. I think he were verie able for acme profession in your coUedges of Utrecht, Groningen, or Rotterdam ; for ,637.] LETTER CLXIV. 307 hopes of re-entry to my Master's ill-dressed vineyard again are far colder. I have no seat for my faith to sit on, but bare omnipotency, and God's holy arm and good-will. Here I desire to stay, and ride at anchor, and winter, whill God send fair weather again, and be pleased to take home to His house my harlot-mother. Oh, if her husband would be that kind, as to go and fetch her out of the brothel-house, and chase her lovers to the hills ! But there will be sad days ere it come to that. Eemember my bonds. Grace be with you. Yours, in our Lord Jesus, S. E. Abekdeen, 1637. CLXIV.— To NiNiAN Mure [see Letter CXCI.], one of the family of Casd'iicarrie. [We do not know more of Ninian Mure than that he was a parishioner of Anwoth. The name "Mure" is found on several tombs in the old churchyard, of which the oldest and most interesting is the following, on the east side of the enclosed pile : — " Walking with God in purity of life, In Christ I died, and endit aU my strife. For in my saul Christ here did dwell by grace ; Now dwells my saul in glory of His face. Therefore my body shaU not here remain, But to full glory surely rise again." ♦' Marion Mure, goodwife of Cullindock, Departed this life, anno 1612."] {A YOUTH ADMONISHED.) OVING FEIEND, — I received your letter. I entreat you now, in the morning of your life, to seek the Lord and His face. Beware of the follies of danger- ous youth, a perilous time for your soul. Love not the world. Keep faith and truth with all men in your covenants and bargains. Walk with God, for He seeth you. Do nothing but that which ye may and would do if your eye-strings were breaking, and your breath growing cold. Ye heard the truth of God from me, my dear heart, follow it, and forsake it not. Prize Christ and salvation above all the world. To live after the guise and course of the rest of the world will not bring you to heaven; without faith in Christ, and repentance, ye cannot see God. Take pains for salvation; press forward toward the mark for the prize of the high calling. If ye watch not against our King's dominions, there is no appearance he will ever gett \irmg into them. If you could quietly procure him a calling, I think it were a good service to God to relieve one of his troubled ministers ; a good to the place he came to, for he is both godlie and learned ; yea, I think by time he might be ane ornament to our nations " (Bailie's "Letters and Journals," vol. i. p. 9), 3o8 LETTER CLXV. [1637. evils night and day, which beset you, ye will come behind. Beware of lying, swearing, uncleauness, and the rest of the works of the flesh ; because " for these things the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience." How sweet soever they may seem for the present, yet the end of these courses is the eternal wrath of God, and utter darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Grace be with you. Your loving pastor, Abeedeen, 1637. S* ^ CLXV.— To Mr. Thomas Garven. [Thomas Garven, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. " R. Blair's Life," by Row, tells of his being banished from the town by the King in 1662, for his adher- ence to Presbytery.] {PERSONAL INSUFFICIENCY— GRACE FROM CHRIST ALONE- LONGINGS AFTER HIM.) |eVEREND and dear brother,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am sorry that what joy and sorrow drew from my imprisoned pen in my love-fits hath made you and many of God's children believe that there is something in a broken reed the like of me. Except that Christ's grace hath bought such a sold body, I know not what else any may think of me, or expect from me. My stock is less (my Lord knoweth that I speak truth) than many believe. My empty sounds have promised too much. I should be glad to lie under Christ's feet, and kep and receive the off-fallings, or the old pieces of any grace, that fall from His sweet fingers to forlorn sinners. I lie often, unco-like, looking at the King's windows. Surely I am unworthy of a seat in the King's hall- floor ; I but often look afar off, both feared and fremmed-like, to that fairest face, fearing He bid me look away from Him. My guiltiness riseth up upon me, and I have no answer for it. I offered my tongue to Christ, and my pains in His house : and what know I what it meaneth, when Christ will not receive my poor propine ? When love will not take, we expone that it will neither take nor give, borrow nor lend. Yet Christ hath another sea-compass which He saileth by, than my short and raw thoughts. I leave His part of it to Himself. I dare not expound His dealing as sorrow and misbelief often dictate to jne. I look often with bleared and blind eyes to my Lord's 1637.] LETTER CLXV. 309 cross ; and when I look to the wrong side of His cross, I know that I miss a step and slide. Surely, I see that I have not legs of my own for carrying me to heaven : I must go in at heaven's gates, borrowing strength from Christ. I am often thinking, " Oh, if He would but give me leave to love Him, and if Christ would but open up His wares, and the infinite plies, and windings, and corners of His soul- delighting love, and let me see it, backside and foreside ; and give me leave but to stand beside it, like a hungry man beside meat, to get my fill of wondering, as a preface to my fill of enjoying ! " But, verily, I think that my foul eyes would defile His fair love to look to it. Either my hunger is over humble (if that may be said), or else I consider not what honour it is to get leave to love Christ. Oh, that He would pity a prisoner, and let out a flood upon the dry ground ! It is nothing to Him to fill the like of me ; one of His looks would do me meikle world's good, and Him no ill. I know that I am not at a point yet with Christ's love : I am not yet fitted for so much as I would have of it. My hope sitteth neighbour with meikle black hunger : and certainly I dow not but think that there is more of that love ordained for me than I yet comprehend, and that I know not the weight of the pension which the King will give me. I shall be glad if my hungry bill get leave to lie beside Christ, waiting on an answer. Now I should be full and rejoice, if I got a poor man's alms of that sweetest love ; but I confidently believe that there is a bed made for Christ and me, and that we shall take our fill of love in it. And I often think, when my joy is run out, and at the lowest ebb, that I would seek no more than my rights passed the King's great seal, and that these eyes of mine could see Christ's hand at the pen. If your Lord call you to suffering, be not dismayed ; there shall be a new allowance of the King for you when you come to it. One of the softest pillows Christ hath is laid under His witnesses' head, though often they must set down their bare feet among thorns. He hath brought my poor soul to desire and wish, " Oh that my ashes, and the powder I shall be dissolved into, had well-tuned tongues to praise Him ! " Thus in haste, desiring your prayers and praises, I recom- mend you to my sweet, sweet Master, my honourable Lord, of whom I hold all. Grace be with you. Your own, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. E. 310 LETTER CLXVL [1637. CLXVI.— To Cardoness, the Elder. {A GOOD CONSCIENCE— CHRIST KIND TO SUFFERERS- RESPONSIBILITY— YO UTH. ) UGH HONOUKED SIE,— I long to hear how your soul prospereth. I wonder that ye write not to me ; for the Holy Ghost beareth me witness, that I cannot, I dare not, I dow not,^ forget you, nor the souls of those with you, who are redeemed by the blood of the great Shepherd. Ye are in my heart in the night-watches ; ye are my joy and crown in the day of Christ. 0 Lord, bear me witness, if my soul thirsteth for anything out of heaven, more than for your salvation. Let God lay me in an even-balance, and try me in this. Love heaven ; let your heart be on it. Up, up, and visit the new Land and view the fair City, and the white Throne, and the Lamb, the bride's Husband in His Bridegroom's clothes, sitting on it. It were time that your soul cast itself, and all your burdens, upon Christ. I beseech you by the wounds of your Redeemer, and by your compearance before Him, and by the salvation of your soul, lose no more time ; run fast, for it is late. God hath sworn by Himself, who made the world and time, that time shall be no more (Eev. x. 6). Ye are now upon the very border of the other life. Your Lord cannot be blamed for not giving you warning. I have taught the truth of Christ to you, and delivered unto you the whole counsel of God ; and I have stood before the Lord for you, and I will yet still stand. Awake, awake to do righteously. Think not to be eased of the burdens and debts that are on your house by oppressing any, or being rigorous to those that are under you. Eemember how I endeavoured to walk before you in this matter, as an example. " Behold, here am I, witness against me, before the Lord and His Anointed : whose ox or whose ass have I taken ? Whom have I defrauded ? Whom have I oppressed ? " (1 Sam. xii. 3). Who knoweth how my soul feedeth upon a good conscience, when I remember how I spent this body in feeding the lambs of Christ ? At my jBrst entry hither, I grant, I took a stomach against my Lord, because He had casten me over the dyke of the vine- yard, as a dry tree, and would have no more of my service. My dumb Sabbaths broke my heart, and I would not be comforted. But now He whom my soul loveth is come again, and it pleaseth * Letter CIV. might suggest "do not " to be the right word. 1 63 7-] LETTER CLXVI. 311 Him to feast me with the kisses of His love. A King dineth with me, and His spikenard casteth a sweet smell. The Lord is my witness above, that I write my heart to you. I never knew, by my nine years' preaching, so much of Christ's love, as He has taught me in Aberdeen, by six months' imprisonment. I charge you in Christ's name to help me to praise ; and show that people and country the loving-kindness of the Lord to my soul, that so my sufferings may someway preach to them when I am silent. He hath made me to know now better than before, what it is to be crucified to the world. I would not now give a drink of cold water for all the world's kindness. I owe no service to it : I am not the flesh's debtor. My Lord Jesus hath dawted His prisoner, and hath thoughts of love concerning me. I would not exchange my sighs with the laughing of adversaries. Sir, I write this to inform you, that ye may know that it is the truth of Christ I now suffer for, and that He hath sealed my suffering with the comforts of His Spirit on my soul ; and I know that He putteth not His seal upon blank paper. Now, sir, I have no comfort earthly, but to know that I have espoused, and shall present a bride to Christ in that con- gregation. The Lord hath given you much, and therefore He will require much of you again. Number your talents, and see what you have to render back. Ye cannot be enough persuaded of the shortness of your time. I charge you to write to me, and in the fear of God to be plain with me, whether or not ye have made your salvation sure. I am confident, and hope the best ; but I know that your reckonings with your Judge are many and deep. Sir, be not beguiled, neglect not your one thing (Phil. iii. 13), your one necessary thing (Luke x. 42), the good part that shall not be taken from you. Look beyond time : things here are but moonshine. They have but children's wit who are delighted with shadows., and deluded with feathers flying in the air. Desire your children, in the morning of their life, to begin and seek the Lord, and to remember their Creator in the days of their youth (Eccles. xii. 1), to cleanse their way, by taking heed thereto, according to God's word (Ps. cxix. 9). Youth is a glassy age. Satan finds a swept chamber, for the most part, in youthhood, and a garnished lodging for himself and his train. Let the Lord have the flower of their age ; the best sacrifice is due to Him. Instruct them in this, that they have a soul, and that this life is nothing in comparison of eternity. They will 3t2 LETTER CLXVIL \\(>ii. have much need of God's conduct in this world, to guide them by^ those rocks upon which most men spht ; but far more need when it cometh to the hour of death, and their compearance before Christ. Oh that there were such an heart in them, to fear the name of the great and dreadful God, who hath laid up great things for those that love and fear Him ! I pray that God may be their portion. Show others of my parishioners, that I write to them my best wishes, and the blessings of their lawful pastor. Say to them from me, that I beseech them, by the bowels of Christ, to keep in mind the doctrine of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which I taught them ; that so they may lay hold on eternal life, striving together for the faith of the Gospel, and making sure salvation to themselves. Walk in love, and do righteousness ; seek peace ; love one another. Wait for the coming of our Master and Judge. Eeceive no doctrine contrary to that which I delivered to you. If ye fall away, and forget it, and that Catechism which I taught you, and so forsake your own mercy, the Lord be Judge betwixt you and me. I take heaven and earth to witness, that such shall eternally perish. But if they serve the Lord, great will their reward be when they and I shall stand before our Judge. Set forward up the mountain, to meet with God ; climb up, for your Saviour calleth on you. It may be that God will call you to your rest, when I am far from you ; but ye have my love, and the desires of my heart for your soul's welfare. He that is holy, keep you from falling, and establish you, till His own glorious appearance. Your affectionate and lawful pastor, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R. CLXVII.— To my Lady Boyd. [Letter CVII.] {LESSONS LEARNED IN THE SCHOOL OF ADVERSITY.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, be multiplied upon you. I have reasoned with your son^ at large ; I rejoice to see him set his face in the right airth, now when the nobles love the sunny side of the Gospel best, and are afraid that Christ want soldiers, and shall not be able to do for Himself. Madam, our debts of obligation to Christ are not small ; the freedom of grace and of salvation is the wonder of men and ^ Guide them past. » Lord Boyd. See Lettor LXXVIIL 1637.] LETTER CLXVII. 313 angels. But mercy in our Lord scorneth hire. Ye are bound to lift Christ on high, who hath given you eyes to discern the devil now coming out in his whites, and the idolatry and apostasy of the time, well washen with fair pretences ; but the skin is black and the water foul. It were art, I confess, to wash a black devil, and make him white. I am in strange ups and downs, and seven times a day I lose ground. I am put often to swimming ; and again my feet are set on the Eock that is higher than myself. He hath now let me see four things which I never saw before : \st, That the Supper shall be great cheer, that is up in the great hall with the Eoyal King of glory, when the four-hours, the standing drink,^ in this dreary wilderness, is so sweet. When He bloweth a kiss afar off to His poor heart-broken mourners in Zion, and sendeth me but His hearty commendations till we meet, I aca confounded with wonder to think what it shall be, when the Fairest among the sons of men shall lay a King's sweet soft cheek to the sinful cheeks of poor sinners. 0 time, time, go swiftly, and hasten that day ! Sweet Lord Jesus, post ! come, flying like a young hart or a roe upon the mountains of separa- tion. I think that we should tell the hours carefully, and look often how low the sun is. For love hath no " Ho ! " it is pained, pained in itself, till it come into grips with the party beloved. 2ndly. I find Christ's absence to be love's sickness and love's death. The wind that bloweth out of the airth where my Lord Jesus reigneth is sweet-smelled, soft, joyful, and heartsome to a soul burnt with absence. It is a painful battle for a soul sick of love to fight with absence and delays. Christ's " Not yet " is a stounding of all the joints and liths ^ of the soul. A nod of His head, when He is under a mask, would be half a pawn. To say, " Fool, what aileth thee ? He is coming," would be life to a dead man. I am often in my dumb Sabbaths seeking a new plea with my Lord Jesus (God forgive me !), and I care not if there be not two or three ounce-weight of black wrath in my cup. Srdly. For the third thing, I have seen my abominable vileness ; if I were well known, there would none in this kingdom ask how I do. Many take my ten to be a hundred, but I am a deeper hypocrite, and shallower professor, than every ^ When even the slight afternoon meal and the cup handed to one at the door is so sweet. " "Joist" was in some old editions. 314 LETTER CLXVIL [1637. one believeth. God knoweth I feign not. But I think my reckonings on the one page written in great letters, and His mercy to such a forlorn and wretched dyvour on the other, to be more than a miracle. If I could get my finger-ends upon a full assurance, I trow that I would grip fast ; but my cup wanteth not gall. And, upon my part, despair might be almost excused, if every one in this land saw my inner side. But I know that I am one of them who have made great sale, and a free market, to free grace. If I could be saved, as I would fain believe, sure I am that I have given Christ's blood. His free grace, and the bowels of His mercy, a large field to work upon ; and Christ hath manifested His art, I dare not say to the uttermost (for He can, if He would, forgive all the devils and damned reprobates, in respect of the wideness of His mercy), but I say to an admirable degree. 4tLi}ily. I am stricken with fear of unthankfulness. This apostate kirk hath played the harlot with many lovers. They are spitting in the face of my lovely King, and mocking Him, and I dow not mend it ; and they are running away from Christ in troops, and I dow not mourn and be grieved for it. I think Christ lieth like an old forcasten ^ castle, forsaken of the inhabitants ; all men run away now from Him. Truth, innocent truth, goeth mourning and wringing her hands in sackcloth and ashes. Woe, woe, woe is me, for the virgin daughter of Scotland ! Woe, woe to the inhabitants of this land ! for they are gone back with a perpetual backsliding. These things take me so up, that a borrowed bed, another man's fireside, the wind upon my face (I being driven from my lovers and dear acquaintance, and my poor flock), find no room in my sorrow. I have no spare or odd sorrow for these ; only I think the sparrows and swallows that build their nests in the kirk of Anwoth, blessed birds. Nothing hath given my faith a harder back-set ^ till it crack again, than my closed mouth. But let me be miserable myself alone ; God keep my dear brethren from it. But still I keep breath ; and when my royal, and never, never-enough-praised King returneth to His sinful prisoner, I ride upon the high places of Jacob. I divide Shechem (Ps. Ix, 6), I triumph in His strength. If this kingdom would glorify the Lord in my behalf ! I desire to be weighed in God's even * Not used ; cast off. ' A thrust back. In a sermon at Anwoth, 1630, on Zccli. xiii. 7, he says, " God gives a back-set and fall under temptation." 1637.] LETTER CLXVIII. S^S balance in this point, if I think not my wages paid to the full. I shall crave no more hire of Christ. Madam, pity me in this, and help me to praise Him; for whatever I be, the chief of sinners, a devil, and a most guilty devil, yet it is the apple of Christ's eye. His honour and glory, as the Head of the Church, that I suffer for now, and that I will go to eternity with. I am greatly in love with Mr. M. M. ; ^ I see him stamped with the image of God. I hope well of your son, my Lord Boyd. Your Ladyship and your children have a prisoner's prayers. Grace be with you. Your Ladyship's, at all obedience in Christ, Abeedeen, May 1, 1637. K^Un| k CLXVIII.— To Us reverend and dear Brother, Mb. Davh) Dickson. I^CHRISTS INFINITE FULNESS.) Y EEVEEEND AND DEAE BEOTHEE,— I fear that ye have never known me well. If ye saw my inner side, it is possible that ye would pity me, but you would hardly give me either love or respect: men mistake me the whole length of the heavens. My sins prevail over me, and the terrors of their guiltiness. I am put often to ask, if Christ and I did ever shake hands together in earnest. I mean not that my feast-days are quite gone, but I am made of extremes. I pray God that ye never have the woful and dreary experience of a closed mouth; for then ye shall judge the sparrows, that may sing on^ the church of Irvine, blessed birds. But my soul hath been refreshed and watered, when I hear of your courage and zeal for your never- enough-praised, praised Master, in that ye put the men of God, chased out of Ireland, to work.^ Oh, if I could confirm you ! I 1 Mr. Matthew Mowat, minister of Kilmarnock. See notice of him, Letter CXX. 2 On, not "in," as in old editions. j j • « When Mr. Robert Blair and Mr. John Livingstone, who had heen deposed m Ireland by the Bishop of Down, were obliged to leave that country, they came over to Irvine in 1637, to Mr. Dickson. Dickson had been advised by some respectable gentlemen not to ask them to preach, lest the bishops should thereby take occasion to remove him from his ministry. But his reply was : " I dare not be of their opiiii -in, nor follow their counsel, so far as to discountenance these worthies, now when they are suffering for holding fast the name of Christ, and every letter of that blessed name, as not to employ them as in former times. Yea, I would think my so doing would provoke the Lord, so that I might upon another account be deposed, and not have so good a conscience" ("Life of Robert Blair"), 3i6 LETTER CLXVIII. [1637. dare say, in God's presence, " That this shall never hasten your suffering, but will be David Dickson's feast and speaking joy (viz.), that while he had time and leisure, he put many to work, to lift up Jesus, his sweet Master, high in the skies." 0 man of God, go on, go on ; be valiant for that Plant of renown, for that Chief among ten thousands, for that Prince of the kings of the earth. It is but little that I know of God ; yet this I dare write, that Christ will be glorified in David Dickson, howbeit Scotland be not gathered. I am pained, pained, that I have not more to give my sweet Bridegroom. His comforts to me are not dealt with a niggard's hand ; but I would fain learn not to idolise comfort, sense, joy, and sweet, felt presence. All these are but creatures, and nothing but the kingly robe, the gold ring, and the bracelets of the Bridegroom ; the Bridegroom Himself is better than all the ornaments that are about Him. Now, I would not so much have these as God Himself, and to be swallowed up of love to Christ. I see that in delighting in a communion with Christ, we may make more gods than one. But, however, all was but bairns' play between Christ and me till now. If one would have sworn unto me, I would not have believed what may be found in Christ. I hope that ye pity my pain that much, in my prison, as to help me yourself, and to cause others help me, a dyvour, a sinful wretched dyvour, to pay some of my debts of praise to my great King. Let my God be judge and witness, if my soul would not have sweet ease and comfort, to have many hearts confirmed in Christ, and enlarged with His love, and many tongues set on work to set on high my royal and princely Well-beloved. Oh that my sufferings could pay tribute to such a king ! I have given over wondering at His love ; for Christ hath manifested a piece of art upon me, that I never revealed to any living. He hath gotten fair and rich employment, and sweet sale, and a goodly market for His honourable calling of showing mercy, on me the chief of sinners. Every one knoweth not so well as I do, my wofuliy-often broken covenants. My sins against light, working ^ in the very act of sinning, have been met with admir- able mercy : but, alas ! He will get nothing back again but wretched unthankfulness. I am sure, that if Christ pity anything in me next to my sin, it is pain of love for an armful and soulful of Himself, in faith, love, and begun fruition. My sorrow is, ^ The sense may he, " My sins against light which was at work even when I was in the act of sinning." 1637] LETTER CLXIX. 317 that I cannot get Christ lifted off the dust in Scotland, and set on high, above all the skies, and heaven of heavens. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abeedeen, May 1, 1637. »• i»* CLXIX. — To the Laird of Carleton. {GOD'S WORKING INCOMPREHENSIBLE— LONGING AFTER ANY DROP OF CHRIST S FULNESS.) OKTHY SIE, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I received your letter, and am heartily glad that our Lord hath begun to work for the apparent delivery of this poor oppressed kirk. Oh that salvation would come for Zion ! I am for the present hanging by hope, waiting what my Lord will do with me, and if it will please my sweet Master to send me amongst you again, and keep out a hireling from my poor people and flock. It were my heaven till I come home, even to spend this life in gathering in some to Christ. I have still great heaviness for my silence, and my forced standing idle in the market, when this land hath such a plentiful, thick harvest. But I know that His judgments, who hath done it, pass finding out. I have no knowledge to take up the Lord in all His strange ways, and passages of deep and unsearchable providences. For the Lord is before me, and I am so bemisted that I cannot follow Him ; He is behind me, and following at the heels, and I am not aware of Him ; He is above me, but His glory so dazzleth my twilight of short knowledge, that I cannot look up to Him. He is upon my right hand, and I see Him not ; He is upon my left hand, and within me, and goeth and cometh, and His going and coming are a dream to me ; He is round about me, and com- passeth all my goings, and still I have Him to seek. He is every way higher, and deeper, and broader than the shallow and ebb handbreadth of my short and dim light can take up ; and, therefore, I would that my heart could be silent, and sit down in the learnedly-ignorant wondering at the Lord, whom men and angels cannot comprehend. I know that the noon-day light of the highest angels, who see Him face to face, seeth not the 3i8 LETTER CLX2X, [1637. borders of His infiniteness. They apprehend God near hand ; but they cannot comprehend Him, And, therefore, it is my happiness to look afar off, and to come near to the Lord's back parts, and to light my dark candle at His brightness, and to have leave to sit a,nd content myself with a traveller's light, without the clear vision of an enjoyer. I would seek no more till I were in my country, than a little watering and sprinkling of a withered soul, with some half out-breakings and half out-lookings of the beams, and small ravishing smiles of the fairest face of a revealed and believed-on Godhead. A little of God would make my soul bankf uU. Oh that I had but Christ's odd off-fallings ; that He would let but the meanest of His love-rays and love-beams fall from Him, so as I might gather and carry then with me ! I would not be ill to please with Christ, and vailed visions of Christ ; neither would I be dainty in seeing and enjoying of Him : a kiss of Christ blown over His shoulder, the parings and crumbs of glory that fall under His table in heaven, a shower like a thin May-mist of His love, would make me green, and sappy, and joyful, till the summer-sun of an eternal glory break up (Song ii. 17). Oh that I had anything of Christ! Oh that I had a sip, or half a drop, out of the hollow of Christ's hand, of the sweetness and excellency of that lovely One ! Oh that my Lord Jesus would rue upon me, and give me but the meanest alms of felt and believed salvation ! Oh, how little were it for that infinite sea, that infinite fountain of love and joy, to fill as many thousand thousand little vessels (the like of me) as there are minutes of hours since the creation of God ! I find it true that a poor soul, finding half a smell of the Godhead of Christ, hath desires (paining and wounding the poor hearts so with longings to be up at Him) that make it sometimes think, " Were it not better never to have felt anything of Christ, tlian thus to lie dying twenty deaths, under these felt wounds, for the want of Him ? " Oh, where is He ? 0 Fairest, where dwellest Thou ? 0 never-enough admired Godhead, how can clay win up to Thee ? how can creatures of yesterday be able to enjoy Thee ? Oh, what pain is it, that time and sin should be so many thousand miles betwixt a loved and longed-for Lord and a dwining and love- sick soul, who would rather than all the world have lodging with Christ I Oh, let this bit of love of ours, this inch and half- span length of heavenly longing, meet with Thy infinite love ! Oh, if the little I have were swallowed up with the infiniteness of that excellency which is in Christ ! Oh that we little ones 1637.] LETTER CLXX. 319 were in at the greatest Lord Jesus ! Our wants should soon be swallowed up with His fulness. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abeedeen, May 10, 1637. S. R. CLXX. — To Robert Gordon of Knockbrex. {LONGING FOR CHRISTS GLORY— FELT GUILTINESS— LONGING FOR CHRIST'S LOVE—SANCTIFICATION) EAR BROTHEE, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you I received your letter from Edinburgh. I would not wish to see another heaven, whill I get mine own heaven, but a new moon like the light of the sun, and a new sun like the light of seven days shining upon my poor self, and the Church of Jews and Gentiles, and upon my withered and sunburnt mother, the Church of Scotland, and upon her sister Churches, England and Ireland ; and to have this done, to the setting on high of our great King ! It mattereth^ not, howbeit I were separate from Christ, and had a sense of ten thousand years' pain in hell, if this were. O blessed nobility ! 0 glorious, renowned gentry ! Oh, blessed were the tribes in this land to wipe my Lord Jesus' weeping face, and to take the sackcloth off Christ's loins, and to put His kingly robes upon Him ! Oh, if the Almighty would take no less wager of me than my heaven to have it done ! But my fears are still for wrath once upon Scotland. But I know that her day will clear up, and that glory shall be upon the top of the mountains, and joy at the voice 2 of the married wife, once again. Oh that our Lord would make us to contend, and plead, and wrestle by prayers and tears, for our Husband's restoring of His forfeited heritage in Scotland. Dear brother, I am for the present in no small battle, betwixt felt guiltiness, and pining longings and high fevers for my Well-beloved's love! Alas! I think that Christ's love playeth the niggard to me, and I know it is not for scarcity of love. There is enough in Him, but my hunger prophesieth of in-holding and sparingness in Christ ; for I have but little of Him, and little of His sweetness. It is a dear summer with ^ Mattereth? In other editions it is "maketh." * "Noise," in old editions. 320 LETTER CLXX. [1637. me; yet there is such joy in the eagerness and working of hunger for Christ, that I am often at this, that if I had no other heaven than a continual hunger for Christ, such a heaven of ever-working hunger were still a heaven to me. I am sure that Christ's love cannot be cruel ; it must be a ruing, a pitying, a melting-hearted love ; but suspension of that love I think half a hell, and the want of it more than a whole hell. When I look to my guiltiness, I see that my salvation is one of our Saviour's greatest miracles, either in heaven or earth. I am sure I may defy any man to show me a greater wonder. But, seeing I have no wares, no hire, no money for Christ, He must either take me with want, misery, corruption, or then want me. Oh, if He would be pleased to be compassionate and pitiful- hearted to my pining fevers of longing for Him ; or then give me a real pawn to keep, out of His own hand, till God send a meeting betwixt Him and me ! But I find neither as yet. Howbeit He who is absent be not cruel nor unkind, yet His absence is cruel and unkind. His love is like itself ; His love is His love ; but the covering and the cloud, the vail and the mask of His love, is more wise than kind, if I durst speak my apprehensions. I lead no process now against the suspension and delay of God's love ; I would with all my heart frist till a day ten heavens, and the sweet manifestations of His love. Certainly I think that I could give Christ much on His word ; but my whole pleading is about intimated and borne-in assurance of His love. Oh, if He would persuade me of ^ my heart's desire of His love at all. He should have the term-day of payment at His own cowing.2 But I know that raving unbelief speaketh its pleasure, while it looketh upon guiltiness and this body of corruption. Oh how loathsome and burdensome is it to carry about a dead corpse, this old carrion of corruption ! Oh how steadable a thing is a Saviour, to make a sinner rid of his chains and fetters ! I have now made a new question, whether Christ be more to be loved, for giving Sanctification or for free Justification. And I hold that He is more and most to be loved for sanctifica- tion. It is in some respect greater love in Him to sanctify, than to justify ; for He maketh us most like Himself in His own essential portraiture and image, in sanctifying us. Justification doth but make us happy, which is to be like angels only. Neither is it such a misery to lie a condemned man, and under unforgiven ^ Convince mo that He intends to gratify my heart's desire. ^ Carving, 1637.] LETTER CLXXl. 321 guiltiness, as to serve sin, and work the works of the devil ; and, therefore, I think sanctification cannot be bought : it is above price. God be thanked for ever, that Christ was a told-down price for sanctification. Let a sinner, if possible, lie in hell for ever, if He make him truly holy ; and let him lie there burning in love to God, rejoicing in the Holy Ghost, hanging upon Christ by faith and hope, — that is heaven in the heart and bottom of hell ! Alas ! I find a very thin harvest here, and few to be saved. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his lovely and longed-for Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. E. CLXXI. — To the Laird op Moncrieff. [Sir John Moncrieff, of that ilk, was the eldest son of "William Moncrieff of that ilk, by his wife Anne, daughter of Robert Murray of Abercarnie, who was bis second wife. He was a zealous Covenanter, and a ruling elder in the parish of Carnbee, in which he resided. His name appears in the list of the General Assembly's Commission for the public affairs of the Church, in the years 1646 and 1648 ; and he was an active member of the Presbytery of St. Andrews. He died about the close of the year 1650. Lady Leyes, to whom reference is made in this letter, was his third sister Jean, married to Hay of Leyes, in Aberdeensbire (Douglas' "Baronage of Scotland," p. 46).] {CONCERT IN PRAYER— STEDFASTNESS TO CHRIST— GRIEF MISREPRESENTS CHRIST S GLORY.) UCH HONOUKED SIE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. Although not acquainted, yet at the desire of your worthy sister, the Lady Leys, and upon the report of your kindness to Christ and His oppressed truth, I am bold to write to you, earnestly desiring you to join with us (so many as in these bounds profess Christ), to wrestle with God, one day of the week, especially the Wednesday, for mercy to this fallen and decayed kirk, and to such as suffer for Christ's name ; and for your own necessities, and the necessities of others who are by covenant engaged in that business. For we have no other armour in these evil times but prayer, now when wrath from the Lord is gone out against this backsliding land. For ye know we can have no true public fasts, neither are the true causes of our humiliation ever laid before the people. Now, very worthy Sir, I am glad in the Lord, that the Lord reserveth any of your place, or of note, in this time of common apostasy, to come forth in public to bear Christ's name before %2i LETTER CLXXT. [1637. men, when the great men think Christ a cumbersome neighbour, and that religion carrieth hazards, trials, and persecutions with it. I persuade myself that it is your glory and your garland, and shall be your joy in the day of Christ, and the standing of your house and seed, to inherit the earth, that you truly and sincerely profess Christ. Neither is our King, whom the Father hath crowned in Mount Zion, so weak, that He cannot do for Himself and His own cause. I verily believe that they are blessed who can hold the crown upon His head, and carry up the train of His robe royal, and that He shall be victorious, and triumph in this land. It is our part to back our royal Xing, howbeit there was not six in all the land to follow Him. It is our wisdom now to take up, and discern, the devil and the anti- christ coming out in their whites, and the apostasy and idolatry of this land washen with foul waters. I confess that it is art to wash the devil till his skin be white. For myself. Sir, I have bought a plea against Christ, since I came hither, in judging my princely Master angry at me, because I was cast out of the \dneyard as a withered tree, my dumb Sabbaths working me much sorrow. But I see now that sorrow hath not eyes to read love written upon the cross of Christ ; and, therefore, I pass from my rash plea. Woe, woe is me, that I should have received a slander of Christ's love to my soul ! ■ And for all this, my Lord Jesus hath forgiven all, as not willing to be heard ^ with such a fool ; and is content to be, as it were, confined with me, and to bear me company, and to feast a poor oppressed prisoner. And now I write it under my hand, worthy Sir, that I think well and honourably of this cross of Christ. I wonder that He will take any glory from the like of me. I find when He but sendeth His hearty commendations to me, and but bloweth a kiss afar off, I am confounded with wondering what the supper of the Lamb will be, up in our Father's dining-palace of glory, since the four-hours in this dismal wilderness, and (when in prisons and in our sad days), a kiss of Christ, are so comfortable. Oh, how sweet and glorious shall our case be, when that Fairest among the sons of men will lay His fair face to our now sinful faces, and wipe away all tears from our eyes ! 0 time, time, run swiftly and hasten this day ! 0 sweet Lord Jesus, come flying like a roe or a young hart ! Alas ! that we, blind fools, are fallen in love with moonshine and shadows. How sweet is the wind that bloweth out of the airth ' Not willing to be henrd disputing with such a fool. 1637.] LETTER CLXXIL 323 where Christ is ! Every day we may see some new thing in Christ ; His love hath neither brim nor bottom. Oh, if I had help to praise Him ! He knoweth that if my sufferings glorify His name, and encourage others to stand fast for the honour of our supreme Lawgiver, Christ, my wages then are paid to the full. Sir, help me to love that never-enough-praised Lord. I find now, that the faith of the saints, under suffering for Christ, is fair before the wind, and with full sails carried upon Christ. And I hope to lose nothing in this furnace but dross ; for Christ can triumph in a weaker man than I am, if there be any such. And when all is done, His love paineth me, and leaveth me under such debt to Christ, as I can neither pay principal nor interest. Oh, if He would comprise myself, and if I were sold to Him as a bondman, and that He would take me home to His house and fireside ; for I have nothing to render to Him ! Then, after me, let no man think hard of Christ's sweet cross ; for I would not exchange my sighs with the painted laughter of all my adver- saries. I desire grace and patience to wait on, and to lie upon the brink, till the water fill and flow. I know that He is fast coming. Sir, ye will excuse my boldness : and, till it please God that I see you, ye have the prayers of a prisoner of Christ ; to whom I recommend you, and in whom I rest. Yours, at all obedience in Christ, Aberdeen, May 14, 1637. ^' ^^' CLXXII. — To John Clark (supposed to be one of his Parishioners at Anwoth). {MARKS OF DIFFERENCE BETWIXT CHRISTIANS AND REPROBATES.) OVING BEOTHEE, — Hold fast Christ without waver- ing, and contend for the faith, because Christ is not easily gotten nor kept. The lazy professor hath put heaven as it were at the very next door, and thinketh to fly up to heaven in his bed, and in a night-dream ; but, truly, that is not so easy a thing as most men believe. Christ Himself did sweat ere He wan this city, howbeit He was the frceborn heir. It is Christianity, my Heart, to be sincere, unfeigned honest, and upright-hearted before God, and to live and serve God, suppose there was not one man nor woman in all the world ^ 3*4 LETTER CLXXIII. [1637. dwelling beside you, to eye you. Any little grace that ye have, see that it be sound and true. Ye may put a difference betwixt you and reprobates, if ye have these marks : — 1. If ye prize Christ and His truth so as ye will sell all and buy Him ; and suffer for it. 2. If the love of Christ keepeth you back from sinning, more than the law, or fear of hell. 3. If ye be humble, and deny your own will, wit, credit, ease, honour, the world, and the vanity and glory of it. 4. Your profession must not be barren, and void of good works. 5. Ye must in all things aim at God's honour ; ye must eat, drink, sleep, buy, sell, sit, stand, speak, pray, read, and hear the word, with a heart-purpose that God may be honoured. 6. Ye must show yourself an enemy to sin, and reprove the works of darkness, such as drunkenness, swearing, and lying, albeit the company should hate you for so doing. 7. Keep in mind the truth of God, that ye heard me teach, and have nothing to do with the corruptions and new guises entered into the house of God. 8. Make conscience of your calling, in covenants, in buying and selling. 9. Acquaint yourself with daily praying ; commit all your ways and actions to God, by prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving ; and count not much of being mocked ; for Christ Jesus was mocked before you. Persuade yourself, that this is the way of peace and comfort which I now suffer for. I dare go to death and into eternity with it, though men may possibly see another way. Remember me in your prayers, and the state of this oppressed church, Grace be with you. Your soul's well-wisher, Aberdeen. 5- R. CLXXIII.— To Cardoness, the Younger. [Letter CXXIIL] {WARNING AND ADVICE AS TO THINGS OF SALVATION.) UCH HONOUEED SIR,— I long to hear whether or not your soul be hand-fasted with Christ. Lose your time no longer : flee the follies of youth : gird up the loins of your mind, and make you ready for meeting the Lord. I have often summoned you, and now I summon you again, to compear before your Judge, to make a reckoning of your life. While ye have time, look upon your papers, and consider your ways. Oh that there were such an heart in you, as to think what an ill conscience will be to you, when ye are upon the border of eternity, and your one foot out of time ! Wi 1 63 7] LETTER CLXXIII. 325 Oh then, ten thousand thousand floods of tears cannot extinguish these flames, or purchase to you one hour's release from that pain ! Oh, how sweet a day have ye had ! But this is a fair- day that runneth fast away. See how ye have spent it, and consider the necessity of salvation ! and tell me, in the fear of God, if ye have made it sure. I am persuaded that ye have a conscience that will be speaking somewhat to you. Why will ye die, and destroy yourself ? I charge you in Christ's name, to rouse up your conscience, and begin to indent and contract with Christ in time, while salvation is in your offer. This is the accepted time, this is the day of salvation. Play the merchant ; for ye cannot expect another market-day when this is done. Therefore, let me again beseech you to " consider, in this your day, the things that belong to your peace, before they be hid from your eyes." Dear brother, fulfil my joy, and begin to seek the Lord while He may be found. Forsake the follies of deceiving and vain youth : lay hold upon eternal life. Whoring, night- drinking, and the misspending of the Sabbath, and neglecting of prayer in your house, and refusing of an offered salvation, will burn up your soul with the terrors of the Almighty, when your awakened conscience shall flee in your face. Be kind and loving to your wife : make conscience of cherishing her, and not being rigidly austere. Sir, I have not a tongue to express the glory that is laid up for you in your Father's house, if ye reform your doings, and frame your heart to return to the Lord. Ye know that this world is but a shadow, a short-living creature, under the law of time. Within less than fifty years, when ye look back to it, ye shall laugh at the evanishing vanities thereof, as feathers flying in the air, and as the houses of sand within the sea-mark, which the children of men are building. Give up with courting of this vain world : seek not the bastard's moveables, but the son's heritage in heaven. Take a trial of Christ. Look unto Him, and His love will so change you, that ye shall be taken with Him, and never choose to go from Him. I have experience of His sweetness, in this house of my pilgrimage here. My Witness, who is above, knoweth that I would not exchange my sighs and tears with the laughing of the Fourteen Prelates.^ There is nothing that will make you a Christian indeed, but a taste of the sweetness of Christ. " Come and see," will speak best to your soul. I would fain hope good of you. Be not discouraged at broken and spilled resolutions ; but to it, 1 The Bishops whom the King sought to thrust on Scotland. 326 LETTER CLXXIV. [1637. and to it again ! Woo about Christ, till ye get your soul espoused as a chaste virgin to Him. Use the means of profiting with your conscience ; pray in your family, and read the word. Eemember how our Lord's day was spent when I was among you. It will be a great challenge to you before God, if ye forget the good that was done within the walls of your house on the Lord's day ; and if ye turn aside after the fashions of this world, and if ye go not in time to the kirk, to wait on the public worship of God, and if ye tarry not at it, till all the exercises of religion be ended. Give God some of your time both morning and evening, and afternoon ; and in so doing, rejoice the heart of a poor oppressed prisoner. Eue upon your own soul, and from your heart fear the Lord. Now He that brought again from the dead the great Shep- herd of His sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, establish your heart with His grace, and present you before His presence with joy. Your affectionate and loving pastor, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R. CLXXIV.— iTo my Lord Craighall. [Letter LXXXVL] {IDOLATRY CONDEMNED.) Y LORD, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am not only content, but I exceedingly rejoice, that I find any of the rulers of this land, and especially your Lordship so to affect Christ and His truth, as that ye dare, for His name, come to yea and nay with monarchs in their face. I hope that He who hath enabled you for that, will give more, if ye show yourself courageous, and (as His word speaketh), " a man in the streets," for the Lord (Jer. v. 1). But I pray your Lordship, give me leave to be plain with you, as one who loveth both your honour and your soul. I verily believe that there was never idolatry at Rome, never idolatry condemned in God's word by the prophets, if religious kneeling before a consecrated creature, standing in room of Christ crucified, in that very act, and that for reverence of the elements (as our Act cleareth), be not idolatry.^ Neither will your intention help, which is not of the essence of worship ; for then, Aaron saying, " To-morrow shall be a feast for Jehovah," that is, for the golden calf, should not have been guilty of idolatry : for he intended only to decline the ' See Letter XCXI. r637] LETTER CLXXIV. 327 lash of the people's fury, not to honour the calf. Your intention to honour Christ is nothing, seeing that religious kneeling, by- God's institution, doth necessarily import religious and divine adoration, suppose that our intention were both dead and sleeping ; otherwise, kneeling before the image of God and directing prayer to God were lawful, if our intention go right. My Lord, I cannot in these bounds dispute ; but if Cambridge and Oxford, and the learning of Britain, will answer this argument, and the argument from active scandal, which yeur Lordship seemeth to stand upon, I will turn a formalist, and call myself an arrant fool (by doing what I have done) in my suffering for this truth. I do much reverence Mr. L.'s ^ learning ; but, my Lord, I will answer what he writeth in that, to pervert you from the truth ; else repute me, beside an hypocrite, an ass also. I hope ye shall see something upon that subject (if the Lord permit), that no sophistry in Britain shall answer. Courtiers' arguments, for the most part, are drawn from their own skin, and are not worth a straw for your conscience. A Marquis' or a King's word, when ye stand before Christ's tribunal, shall be lighter than the wind. The Lord knoweth that I love your true honour, and the stand- ing of your house ; but I would not that your honour or house were established upon sand, and hay, and stubble. But let me, my very dear and worthy Lord, most humbly beseech you, by the mercies of God, by the consolations of His Spirit, by the dear blood and wounds of your lovely Eedeemer, by the salvation of your soul, by your compearance before the awful face of a sin-revenging and dreadful Judge, not to set in comparison together your soul's peace, Christ's love, and His kingly honour now called in question, with your place, honour, house, or ease, that an inch of time will make out of the way. I verily believe that Christ is now begging a testimony of you, and is saying, " And will ye also leave Me ? " It is possible that the wind shall not blow so fair for you all your life, for coming out and appearing before others to back and countenance Christ, the fairest among the sons of men, the Prince of the kings of the earth. " Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings : for the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool " (Isa. li. 7, 8). When the Lord will begin, He will make an end, and mow down His adversaries; and they shall lie before Him like withered hay, and their bloom be shaken off them. Consider ^ Probably Mr. Loudian, Letter LXXXVI., note. 328 LETTER CLXXIV. [1637. how many thousands in this kingdom ye shall cause to fall and stumble, if ye go with them ; and that ye shall be out of the prayers of many who do now stand before the Lord for you and your house. And further ; when the time of your accounts Cometh, and your one foot shall be within the border of eternity, and the eyestrings shall break, and the face wax pale, and the poor soul shall look out at the windows of the house of clay, longing to be out, and ye shall find yourself arraigned before the Judge of quick and dead, to answer for your jDutting to your hand, with the rest confederated against Christ, to the overturn- ing of His ark, and the loosing of the pins of Christ's tabernacle in this land, and shall certainly see yourself mired in a course of apostasy — then, then, a king's favour and your worm-eaten honour shall be miserable comforters to you! The Lord hath enlightened you with the knowledge of His will ; and as the Lord liveth, they lead you and others to a communion with great Babel, the mother of fornications. God said of old, and con- tinueth to say the same to you, " Come out of her. My people, lest ye be partakers of her plagues," Will ye, then, go with them, and set your lip to the whore's golden cup, and drink of the wine of the wratl^ of God Almighty with them ? Oh, poor hungry honour ! Oh, cursed pleasure ! and, oh, damnable ease, bought with the loss of God ! How many will pray for you ! what a sweet presence shall ye find of Christ under your sufferings, if ye will lay down your honours and place at the feet of Christ. What a fair recompense of reward ! I avouch before the Lord that I am now showing you a way how the house of Craighall may stand on sure pillars. If ye will set it on rotten pillars, ye cruelly wrong your posterity. Ye have the word of a King for an hundred-fold more in this life (if it be good for you), and for life everlasting also. Make not Christ a liar, in distrusting His promise. Kings of clay cannot back you when you stand before Him. A straw for them and their hungry heaven, that standeth on this side of time ! A fig for the day's-smile of a worm ! Consider who have gone before you to eternity, and would have given a world for a new occasion of avouching that truth. It is true they call it not substantial, and we are made a scorn to those that are at ease, for suffering these things for it. But it is not time to judge of our losses by the morning ; stay till the evening, and we will count with the best of them. I have found by experience, since the time of my imprison- ment (my witness is above), that Christ is sealing this honour- 1637-] LETTER CLXXIV. 329 able cause with another and a nearer fellowship than ever I knew before ; and let God weigh me in an even balance in this, if I would exchange the cross of Christ or His truth, with the four- teen prelacies, or what else a King can give. My dear Lord, venture to take the wind on your face for Christ. I believe that if He should come from heaven in His own person, and seek the charters of Craighall from you, and a demission of your place, and ye saw His face, ye would fall down at His feet and say, " Lord Jesus, it is too little for Thee." If any man think it not a truth to die for, I am against him. I dare go to eternity with it, that this day the honour of our Lawgiver and King, in the government of His own free kingdom (who should pay tribute to no dying king), is the true " state of the question." ^ My Lord, be ye upon Christ's side of it, and take the word of a poor prisoner (nay, the Lord Jesus be surety for it), that ye have incomparably made the wisest choice. For my own part, I have so been in this prison, that I would be half-ashamed to seek more till I be up at the Well-head. Eew know in this world the sweetness of Christ's breath, the excellency of His love, which hath neither brim nor bottom. The world hath raised a slander upon the cross of Christ, because they love to go to heaven by dry land, and love not sea-storms. But I write it under my hand (and would say more, if possibly a reader would not deem it hypocrisy), that my obligation to Christ for the smell of His garments, for His love-kisses these thirty weeks, standeth so great, that I should (and I desire also to choose to) suspend my salvation, to have many tongues loosed in my behalf to praise Him. And, suppose in person I never entered within the gates of the New Jerusalem, yet so being Christ may be set on high, and I had the liberty to cast my love and praises for ever over the wall to Christ, I would be silent and content. But oh. He is more than my narrow praises ! 0 time, time, flee swiftly, that our communion with Jesus may be perfected ! I wish that your Lordship would urge Mr. L. to give his mind in the ceremonies ; and be pleased to let me see it as quickly as can be, and it shall be answered. To His rich grace I recommend your Lordship, and shall remain, Yours, at all respectful obedience in Christ, Aberdeen, June, 8, 1637. S. R. ' "Status qucestionis," a phrase in logical works — the way of stating a matter to be discussed. 330 LETTER CLXXV. [1637. CLXXV. — To John Laurie (probably some one at a distance, like Lady Rohertland in Stewarton). {CHRIST'S LOVE— A RI GUT ESTIMATE OF HIM— HIS GRACE.) EAE BROTHEE, — I am sorry that ye, or so many in this kingdom, should expect so much of me, an empty reed. Verily I am a noughty ^ and poor body ; but if the tinkling of the iron chains of my Lord Jesus on legs and arms could sound the high praises of my royal King, whose prisoner I am, oh, how would my joy run over ! If my Lord would bring edification to one soul by my bonds, I am satisfied. But I know not what I can do to such a princely and beautiful Well-beloved ; He is far behind with me.^ Little thanks to me, to say to others that His wind bloweth on me, who am but withered and dry bones ; but, since ye desire me to write to you, either help me to set Christ on high, for Llis running-over love, in that the heat of His sweet breath hath melted a frozen heart ; else I think that ye do nothing for a prisoner. I am fully confirmed, that it is the honour of our Lawgiver which I suffer for now. I am not ashamed to give our letters of recommendation of Christ's love to as many as will extol the Lord Jesus and His Cross. If I had not sailed this sea-way to heaven, but had taken the land-way, as many do, I should not have known Christ's sweetness in such a measure. But the truth is, let no man thank me, for I caused not Christ's wind to blow upon me. His love came upon a withered creature, whether I would or not ; and yet by coming it procured from me a welcome. A heart of iron, and iron doors, will not hold Christ out. I give Him leave to break iron locks and come in, and that is all. And now I know not whether pain of love for want of possession, or sorrow that I dow not thank Him, paineth me the most ; but both work upon me. For the first : oh that He would come and satisfy the longing soul, and fill the hungry soul with these good things ! I know indeed that my guiltiness may be a bar in His way ; but He is God, and ready to forgive. And for the other : woe, woe is me, that I cannot find a heart to give back again my unworthy little love for His great sea-full of love to me ! Oh that He would leani me this piece of gratitude ! Oh that I could have leave to look in through the hole of the ^Worthless; good for nothing. It is, however, written "naughty," evil, iu 0.1(1 editions. ' He has so fully paid me. 1637.] LETTER CLXXVI. 331 door, to see His faee and sing His praises ! or could break up one of His chamber-windows, to look in upon His delighting beauty, till my Lord send more ! Any little communion with Him, one of His love-looks, should be my begun heaven. I know that He is not lordly, neither is the Bridegroom's love proud, though I be black, and unlovely, and unworthy of Him. I would seek but leave, and withal grace, to spend my love upon Him. I counsel you to think highly of Christ, and of free, free grace, more than ye did before ; for I know that Christ is not known amongst us. I think that I see more of Christ than ever I saw ; and yet I see but little of what may be seen. Oh that He would draw by the curtains, and that the King would come out of His gallery and His palace, that I might see Him ! Christ's love is young glory and young heaven ; it would soften hell's pain to be filled with it. What would I refuse to suffer, if I could get but a draught of love at my heart's desire ! Oh, what price can be given for Him. Angels cannot weigh Him. Oh, His weight. His worth. His sweetness. His overpassing beauty ! If men and angels would come and look to that great and princely One, their ebbness could never take up His depth, their narrowness could never comprehend His breadth, height, and length. If ten thousand thousand worlds of angels were created, they might all tire themselves in wondering at His beauty, and begin again to wonder of new. Oh that I could win nigh Him, to kiss His feet, to hear His voice, to feel the smell of His ointments ! But oh, alas ! I have little, little of Him. Yet I long for more. Eemember my bonds, and help me with your prayers ; for I would not niffer or exchange my sad hours with the joy of my velvet adversaries. Grace be with you. Yours in His sweet Lord Jesus, Abeedeen, Jvim 10, 1637. S. K. CLXXVI.— ro Carleton. (^ CHRISTIAN'S CONFESSION OF UN WORTHINESS— DESIRE FOR CHRIST'S HONOUR— PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES.) |OKTHY AND MUCH HONOUEED,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I received your letter from my brother, to which I now answer particularly. I confess two things of myself: 1st, Woe, woe is me, that men should think there is anything in me ! He is 332 LETTER CLXXVI. [1637. my witness, before whom I am as crystal, that the secret house- devils that bear me too often company, and that this sink of corruption which I find within, make me go with low sails. And if others saw what I see, they would look by ^ me, but not to me. 2ndly, I know that this shower of His free grace behoved to be on me, otherwise I should have withered. I know, also, that I have need of a buffeting tempter, that grace may be put to exercise, and I kept low. Worthy and dear brother in the Lord Jesus, I write that from my heart which ye now read. 1st, I avouch that Christ, and sweating and sighing under His cross, is sweeter to me by far, than all the kingdoms in the world could possibly be. Indly, If you, and my dearest acquaintance in Christ, reap any fruit by my suffering, let me be weighed in God's even balance, if my joy be not fulfilled. What am I, to carry the marks of such a great King ! But, howbeit I am a sink and sinful mass, a wretched captive of sin, my Lord Jesus can hew heaven out of worse timber than I am ; if worse can be. Srdly, I now rejoice with joy unspeakable and glorious, that I never purposed ta bring Christ, or the least hoof or hair-breadth of truth, under trysting.^ I desired to have and keep Christ all alone ; and that He should never rub clothes with that black-skinned harlot of Eome. I am now fully paid home, so that nothing aileth me for the present, but love-sickness for a real possession of my fairest Well-beloved. I would give Him my bond under my faith and hand, to frist heaven an hundred years longer, so being He would lay His holy face to my sometimes wet cheeks. Oh, who would not pity me, to know how fain I would have the King shaking the tree of life upon me, or letting me into the well of life with my old dish, that I might be drunken with the fountain here in the house of my pilgrimage ! I cannot, nay, I would not, be quit of Christ's love. He hath left the mark behind where He gripped. He goeth away and leaveth me and His burning love to wrestle together, and I can scarce win my meat of His love, because of His absence. My Lord giveth me but hungry half-kisses, which serve to feed pain and increase hunger, but do not satisfy my desires ; His dieting of my soul for this race maketh me lean. I have gotten the wale and choice of Christ's crosses, even the tithe and the flower of the gold of all crosses, to bear witness to the truth ; and herein find ^ Look past me. ' To bring under man's appointment the smallest part of Christ's truth. 1637.] LETTER CLXXVI. 333 I liberty, joy, access, life, comfort, love, faith, submission, patience, and resolution to take delight in on- waiting. And withal, in my race, He hath come near me, and let me see the gold and crown. What, then, want I but fruition and real enjoyment, which is reserved to my country ? 1 Let no man think he shall lose at Christ's hands in suffering for Him. 4^AZy, As for these present trials, they are most dangerous ; for people are stolen off their feet with well-washen and white-skinned pretences of indifferency. But it is the power of the great antichrist working in this land. Woe, woe, woe be to apostate Scotland ! There is wrath, and a cup of the red wine of the wrath of God Almighty in the Lord's hand, that they shall drink and spue, and fall and not rise again. The star called " Wormwood and gall " is fallen into the fountains and rivers, and hath made them bitter. The sword of the Lord is furbished against the idol-shepherds of the land. Women shall bless the barren womb and miscarrying breast ; all hearts shall be faint, and all knees shall tremble. An end is coming ; the leopard and the lion shall watch over our cities ; houses great and fair shall be desolate without an inhabitant. The Lord hath said, " Pray not for this people, for I have taken My peace from them." Yet the Lord's third part" shall come through the fire, as refined gold for the treasure of the Lord, and the outcasts of Scotland shall be gathered together again, and the wilderness shall blossom as the flower, and bud, and grow as the rose of Sharon ; and great shall be the glory of the Lord upon Scotland. ^tUy, I am here assaulted with the learned and pregnant wits of this kingdom. But, all honour be to my Lord, truth but laughs at bemisted and blind scribes, and disputers of this world ; and God's wisdom confoundeth them, and Christ triumpheth in His own strong truth, that speaketh for itself, ^tlily, I doubt not but my Lord is preparing me for heavier trials. I am most ready at the good pleasure of my Lord, in the strength of His grace, for anything He will be pleased to call me to ; neither shall the black-faced messenger, Death, be holden at the door, when it shall knock. If my Lord will take honour of the like of me, how glad and joyful will my soul be ! Let Christ come out with me to a hotter battle than this, and I will fear no flesh. I know that my Master shall win the day, and that He hath taken the ordering of my sufferings into His own hand, ^ihly, As for my deliverance that miscarrieth ; I am here, by my Lord's grace, to lay my hand on my mouth, to be silent, and wait on. My Lord ^ Till I reach the heavenly country ? 334 LETTER CLXXVI. [1637. Jesus is on His journey for my deliverance; T will not grudge that He runneth nob so fast as I would have Him. On-waitiu" till the swelling rivers fall, and till my Lord arise as a mighty man after strong wine, will be my best. I have not yet resisted to blood. Wily, Oh, how often am I laid in the dust, and urged by the tempter (who can ride his own errands upon our lying apprehensions) to sin against the unchangeable love of my Lord ! When I think upon the sparrows and swallows that build their nests in the kirk of Anwoth, and of my dumb Sabbaths, my sorrowful, bleared eyes look asquint upon Christ, and present Him as angry. But in this trial (all honour to our princely and royal King !) faith saileth fair before the wind, with topsail up, and carrieth the passenger through. I lay inhibitions upon my thoughts, that they receive no slanders of my only, only Beloved. Let Him even say out of His own mouth, " There is no hope ; " yet I will die in that sweet beguile, " It is not so, I shall see the salvation of God." Let me be deceived really, and never win to dry land ; it is my joy to believe under the water, and to die with faith in my hand, gripping Christ. Let my conceptions of Christ's love go to the grave with me, and to hell with me ; I may not, I dare not quit them. I hope to keep Christ's pawn : if He never come to loose it, let Him see to His own promise. I know that presumption, howbeit it be made of stoutness, will not thus be wilful in heavy trials. Now my dearest in Christ, the great Messenger of the Covenant, the only wise and all-sufficient Jehovah, establish you to the end. I hear that the Lord hath been at your house, and hath called home your wife to her rest. I know. Sir, that ye see the Lord loosing the pins of your tabernacle, and wooing your love from this plastered and over-gilded world, and calling upon you to be making yourself ready to go to your Father's country, which shall be a sweet fruit of that visitation. Ye know, " to send the Comforter," was the King's word when He ascended on high. Ye have claim to, and interest in, that promise. Remember my love in Christ to your father. Show him that it is late and black night with him. His long lying at the water-side is that he may look his papers ere he take shipping, and be at a point for his last answer before his Judge and Lord. All love, all mercy, all grace and peace, all multiplied saving consolations, all joy and faith in Christ, all stability and confirm- 1637.] LETTER CLXXVIl. 335 ing strength of grace, and the good-will of Him that dwelt in The Bush, be with you. Your unworthy brother, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, June, 15, 1637. *^- -'^• CLXXVIL— To Marion M'Naught. (CHRIST SUFFERING IN HIS CHURCH— HIS COMING— OUT- POURINGS OF LOVE FROM HIM.) [OETHY AND DEAREST IN THE LORD,— I ever loved (since I knew you) that little vineyard of the Lord's planting in Galloway ; but now much more, since I have heard that He who hath His fire in Zion, and His furnace in Jerusalem, hath been pleased to set up a furnace amongst you with the first in this kingdom. He who maketh old things new, seeing Scotland an old, drossy, and rusted kirk, is beginning to make a new, clean bride of her, and to bring a young, chaste wife to Himself out of the fire. This fire shall be quenched, so soon as Christ has brought a clean spouse through the fire ! Therefore, my dearly beloved in the Lord, fear not a worm. "Fear not, worm Jacob" (Isa. xli. 15). Christ is in that plea, and shall win the plea. Charge an unbelieving heart, under the pain of treason against our great and royal King Jesus, to dependence by faith, and quiet on-waiting on our Lord. Get you into your chambers, and shut the doors about you. In, in with speed to your stronghold, ye prisoners of hope. Ye doves, fly into Christ's windows till the indignation be over, and the storm be past. Glorify the Lord in your sufferings, and take His banner of love, and spread it over you. Others will follow you, if they see you strong in the Lord. Their courage will take life from your Christian carriage. Look up and see who is coming ! Lift up your head. He is coming to save, in garments dyed in blood, and travelling in the greatness of His strength. I laugh, I smile, I leap for joy, to see Christ coming to save you so quickly. Oh, such wide steps Christ taketh ! Three or four hills are but a step to Him ; He skippeth over the mountains. Christ hath set a battle betwixt His poor weak saints and His enemies. He waleth the weapons for both parties, and saith to the enemies, " Take you a sword ^ of steel, law, authority, parlia- ments, and kings upon your side ; that is your armour." And ' In old editions, "word;" but the contrast, "tree-sword" (sword of ivood, instead of steel), shows the true reading. 336 LETTER CLXXVIL [1637. He saith to His saints, " I give you a feckless tree-sword in your hand, and that is suffering, receiving of strokes, spoiling of your goods ; and with your tree-sword ye shall get and gain the victory." Was not Christ dragged through the ditches of deep distresses and great straits ? And yet Christ, who is your Head, hath won through with His life, howbeit not with a whole skin. Ye are Christ's members, and He is drawing His members through the thorny hedge up to heaven after Him. Christ one day will not have so much as a pained toe. But there are great pieces and portions of Christ's mystical body not yet within the gates of the great high city, the IS'ew Jerusalem ; and the dragon will strike at Christ, so long as there is one bit or member of Christ's body out of heaven. I tell you, Christ will make new work out of old, forcasten Scotland, and gather the old broken boards of His tabernacle, and pin them and nail them together. Our bills and supplications are up in heaven ; Christ hath coffers full of them. There is mercy on the other side of this His cross ; a good answer to all our bills is agreed upon. I must tell you what lovely Jesus, fair Jesus, King Jesus hath done to my soul. Sometimes He sendeth me out a standing driuk,^ and whispereth a word through the wall ; and I am well content of kindness at the second hand : His bode ^ is ever welcome to me, be what it will. But at other times He will be messenger Himself, and I get the cup of salvation out of His own hand (He drinking to me), and we cannot rest till we be in other's arms. And oh, how sweet is a fresh kiss from His holy mouth ! His breathing that goeth before a kiss upon my poor soul is sweet, and hath no fault but that it is too short. I am careless, and stand not much on this, howbeit loins, and back, and shoulders, and head should rive in pieces in stepping up to my Father's house. I know that my Lord can make long, and broad, and high, and deep glory to His name, out of tliis bit feckless body ; for Christ looketh not what stuff He maketh glory out of. My dearly beloved, ye have often refreshed me. But this is put up in my Master's account ; ye have Him debtor for me. But if ye will do anything for me (as I know ye will) now in my extremity, tell all my dear friends that a prisoner is fettered and chained in Christ's love (Lord, never loose the fetters !) ; and ye and they together take my heartiest commendations to my Lord Jesus, and thank Him for a poor friend. ^ It is like the stirnip-cup. '^ Offer made in order to bargain. 1 63 7-] LETTER CLXXVIII. 337 I desire your husband to read this letter. I send him a prisoner's blessing. I will be obliged to him, if he will be willing to suffer for my dear Master. Suffering is the professor's golden garment ; there shall be no losses on Christ's side of it. Ye have been witnesses of much joy betwixt Christ and me at communion feasts, the remembrance whereof (howbeit I be feasted in secret) holeth my heart; for I am put from the board-head and the King's first mess to His by-board. And His broken meat is sweet unto me ; I thank my Lord for borrowed crumbs, no less than when I feasted at the communion table at Anwoth and Kirkcudbright. Pray that I may get one day of Christ in public, such as I have had long since, before my eyes be closed. Oh that my Master would take up house again, and lend me the keys of His wine-cellar again, and God send me borrowed drink till then ! Eemember my love to Christ's kinsmen with you. I pray for Christ's Father's blessing to them all. Grace be with you ; a prisoner's blessing be with you. I write it and abide by it, God will be glorious in Marion M'Naught, when this stormy blast shall be over. 0 woman beloved of God, believe, rejoice, be strong in the Lord ! Grace is thy portion. Your brother, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abeedeen, Jum 15, 1637. S. R. CLXXVIII.— To Lady Culross. pLetter LXXIV.] {CHRIST'S MANAGEMENT OF TRIALS— WHAT FAITH CAN DO- CHRIST NOT EXPERIENCE— PRA VERS.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I dare not say that I wonder that ye have never written to me in my bonds, because I am not ignorant of the cause ; yet I could not but write to you. I know not whether joy or heaviness in my soul carrieth it away. Sorrow, without any mixture of sweetness, hath not often love-thoughts of Christ ; but I see that the devil can insinuate himself, and ride his errands upon the thoughts of a poor dis- tressed prisoner. I am woe^ that I am making Christ my unfriend, by seeking pleas against Him, because I am the first in the kingdom put to utter silence, and because I cannot preach my Lord's righteousness in the great congregation. I am, notwith- ^Sad. Y .-t.^S LETTER CLXXVTII. [1637. standing, the less solicitous how it go, if there be not wrath in my cup. But I know that I but claw my wounds when my Physician hath forbidden me. I would believe in the dark upon luck's head, and take my hazard of Christ's good-will, and rest on this, that in my fever my Physician is at my bedside, and that He sympathizeth with me when I sigh. My borrowed house, and another man's bed and fireside, and other losses, have no room in my sorrow ; a greater heat to eat out a less fire, is a good remedy for some burning. I believe that when Christ draweth blood. He hath skill to cut the right vein ; and that He hath taken the whole ordering and disposing of my sufferings. Let Him tutor me, and tutor my crosses, as He thinketh good. There is no danger nor hazard in following such a guide, howbeit He should lead me through hell, if I could put faith foremost, and fill the field with a quiet on-waiting, and believing to see the salvation of God. I know that Christ is not obliged to let me see both the sides of my cross, and turn it over and over that I may see all. My faith is richer to live upon credit, and Christ's borrowed money, than to have much on hand. Alas ! I have forgotten that faith in times past hath stopped a leak in my crazed bark, and half filled my sails with a fair wind. I see it a work of God that experiences are all lost, when summons of improbation, to prove our charters of Christ to be counterfeits, are raised against poor souls in their heavy trials. But let me be a sinner, and worse than the chief of sinners, yea, a guilty devil, I am sure that my Well-beloved is God. And when I say that Christ is God, and that my Christ is God, I have said all things, I can say no more. I would that I could build as much on this, " My Christ is God," as it would bear. I might lay all the world upon it. I am sure, that Christ untried, and untaken-up in the power of His love, kindness, mercies, goodness, wisdom, long-suftering, and greatness, is the rock that dim-sighted travellers dash their foot against, and so stumble fearfully. But my wounds are sorest, and pain me most, when I sin against His love and mercy. And if He would set me and my conscience by the ears together, and resolve not to red the plea, but let us deal it betwixt us, my spitting upon the fair face of Christ's love and mercies by my jealousies, unbelief, and doubting, would be enough to sink me. Oh, oh, I am convinced ! 0 Lord, I stand dumb before Thee for this ! Let me be mine own judge in this, and I take a dreadful doom upon me for it. For 1 still misbelieve, though I have seen that my Lord hath made 1637.] LETTER CLXXVIIL 339 my cross as if it were all crystal, so as I can see through it Christ's fair face and heaven ; and that God hath honoured a lump of sinful flesh and blood the like of me, to be Christ's honourable lord-prisoner. I ought to esteem the walls of the thieves' hole (if I were shut up in it), or any stinking dungeon, all hung with tapestry, and most beautiful, for my Lord Jesus ; and yet, I am not so shut up but that the sun shineth upon my prison, and the fair wide heaven is the covering of it. But my Lord, in His sweet visits, hath done more ; for He maketh me to find that He will be a confined prisoner with me. He lieth down and riseth up with me ; when I sigh, He sigheth ; when I weep, He suffereth with me ; and I confess that here is the blessed issue of my sufferings already begun, that my heart is filled with hunger and desire to have Him glorified in my sufferings. Blessed be ye of the Lord, Madam, if ye would help a poor dyvour, and cause others of your acquaintance in Christ to help me to pay my debt of love, even real praises to Christ my Lord. Madam, let me charge you in the Lord, as ye shall answer to Him, to help me in this duty (which He hath tied about my neck with a chain of such singular expressions of His loving- kindness), to set on high Christ ; to hold in my honesty at His hands ^ ; for I have nothing to give to Him. Oh that He would arrest and comprise my love and my heart for all ! I am a dyvour, who have no more free goods in the world for Christ save that ; it is both the whole heritage I have, and all my moveables besides. Lord, give the thirsty man a drink. Oh, to be over the ears in the well ! Oh, to be swattering and swimming over head and ears in Christ's love ! I would not have Christ's love entering into me, but I would enter into it, and be swallowed up of that love. But I see not myself here ; for I fear I make more of His love than of Himself ; whereas Himself is far beyond and much better than His love. Oh, if I had my sinful arms filled with that lovely one Christ ! Blessed be my rich Lord Jesus, who sendeth not away beggars from His house with a toom dish. He filleth the vessels of such as will come and seek. We might beg ourselves rich (if we were wise) if we could hold out our withered hands to Christ, and learn to suit and seek, ask and knock. I owe my salvation for Christ's glory, I owe it to Christ ; and desire that my hell, yea, a new hell, seven times hotter than the old hell, might buy praises before men and angels to my ' To keep up my character with Him. ,^40 LETTER CLXXIX, [1637. Lord Jesus ; providing always that I were free of Christ's hatred and displeasure. What am I, to be forfeited and sold in soul and body, to have my great and royal King set on high and ex- tolled above all ? Oh, if I knew how high to have Him set, and all the world far, far beneath the soles of His feet ? Nay, I deserve not to be the matter of His praises, far less to be an agent in praising of Him. But He can win His own glory out of me, and out of worse than I (if any such be), if it please His holy majesty so to do. He knoweth that I am not now flatter- ing Him. Madam, let me have your prayers, as ye have the prayers and blessing of him that is separated from his brethren. Grace, grace be with you. Your own, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, June 15, 1637. *^* ■^'■■ CLXXIX. — To his reverend mid loving Brother, Mr. John Nevat. [Mr. John Nevay, or Neave, was minister of Newmills, in the parish of Loudon, and chaplain to the Earl of Loudon. In all the questions which divided the Covenanters in his day, he adhered to what may be called the strict party, being opposed to the Public Resolutions. After the restoration of Charles IL, Nevay, in 1662, was obliged to subscribe an engagement to remove forth of the king's dominions before the 1st of February, and not to return under pain of death. He reached Holland, and lived for some time in Rotterdam. On the 26th of July 1670, a letter of Charles IL was laid before the assembled States of Holland, accusing Nevay and other two ministers, Mr. Robert Trail and Mr. Robert M'Ward (who was secretary to Rutherford at the Westminster Assembly, and who first edited his " Letters "), all residing within the jurisdiction of the States, of writing and publish- ing ^^asg-JuYs against his Majesty's Government. However, it would appear that he still continued at Rotterdam, and died there. "Wodrow describes him as "a person of very considerable parts, and bright piety." Robert M'Ward, in 1677, thus wites : " Oh 1 when I remember that burning and shining light, worthy and warm Mr. Livingstone, who used to preach as within the sight of Christ, and the glory to be revealed ; acute and distinct Nevay ; judicious and neat Simson ; fervent, serious, and zealous Trail ; — when I remember, I say, that all these great luminaries are now set and removed by death from our people, and out of our pulpit, in so short a time, what matter of sorrow presents itself to my eye ! " Nevay cultivated the art of poetry, and is the author of a paraphrase (called by Wodrow "a handsome paraphrase") of the Song of Solomon in Latin verse. The General Assembly entertained so high an opinion of his poetical talents, that they appointed him, in August 1647, along with three other ministers, to revise Rous' metrical version of the Psalms. The portion assigned to him for revisal was the last thirty psalms of that version. After his death, a volume of sermons, preached by him on "the Covenant of Grace," was published at Glasgow in 1748, 12mo. His son married Sarah Van Brakel, whose poetical compositions are favourably exhibited in her elegy upon a popular preacher, and who was a kind friend to the British refugees.] 1637-] LETTER CLXXIX. 341 {CHRIST S LOVE SHARPENED IN SUFFERING— KNEELING AT THE COMMUNION— POSTURES AT ORDINANCES.) EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you, I received yours of April 11, as I did another of March 25, and a letter for Mr. Andrew Cant.^ I am not a little grieved that our mother church is running so quickly to the brothel-house, and that we are hiring lovers, and giving gifts to the Great Mother of Fornications (Rev. xvii. 5). Alas, that our Husband is like to quit us so shortly ! It were my part (if I were able) when our Husband is departing, to stir up myself to take hold of Him, and keep Him in this land ; for I know Him to be a sweet second,^ and a lovely companion to a poor prisoner. I find that my extremity hath sharpened the edge of His love and kiadness, so that He seemeth to divise new ways of expressing the sweetness of His love to my soul. Suffering for Christ is the very element wherein Christ's love liveth, and exerciseth itself, in casting out flames of fire, and sparks of heat, to warm such a frozen heart as I have. And if Christ weeping in sackcloth be so sweet, I cannot find any imaginable thoughts to think what He will be, when we clay-bodies (having put off mortality) shall come up to the marriage-hall and great palace, and behold the King clothed in his robes royal, sitting on His throne. I would desire no more for my heaven beneath the moon, while I am sighing in this house of clay, but daily renewed feasts of love with Christ, and liberty now and then to feed my hunger with a kiss of that fairest face, that is like the sun in his strength at noon -day. I would willingly subscribe an ample resignation to Christ of the fourteen prelacies of this land, and of all the most delightful pleasures on earth, and forfeit my part of this clay god, this earth, which Adam's foolish children worship, ^ Mr. Andrew Cant was at this time minister of Pitsligo, in Buchan, Aberdeen- shire. He had been previously minister of Alford. In 1639 he was removed from Pitsligo to Newbottle, and in 1640 to the New Hovm. of Aberdeen, where he became Professor of Theology in Marischal College. In this situation he continued till the year after the restoration of Charles II. Rutherford's " Lex Rex " having then, by the orders of the State, been publicly burnt, and the author himself summoned before Parliament to answer an accusation of high treason, Cant, indignant at such un- generous treatment of a great and good man, condemned it in one of his sermons. For this he was accused of treason before the magistrates. Whereupon he demitted his charge, and came to dwell mth his son at Liberton. In 1663 he was formally deposed by the Bishop and Synod of Aberdeen, and died not long after, aged seventy- nine. He is the author of a treatise on " The Titles of our Blessed Saviour." ^ Helper. 34» LETTER CLXXIX. [1637. to have no other exercise than to lie on a love-bed with Christ, and fill this hungered and famished soul with kissing, embracing, and real enjoying of the Son of God ; and I think that then I might write to my friends, that I had found the Golden World, and look out and laugh at the poor bodies who are slaying one another for feathers. For verily, brother, since I came to this prison, I have conceived a new and extraordinary opinion of Christ which I had not before. For, I perceive, we frist all our joys to Christ till He and we be in our own house above, as married parties, thinking that there is nothing of it here to be sought or found, but only hope and fair promises ; and that Christ will give us nothing here but tears, sadness, and crosses ; and that we shall never feel the smell of the flowers of that high garden of paradise above, till we come there. Nay, but I find that it is possible to find young glory, and a young green paradise of joy, even here. I know that Christ's kisses will cast a more strong and refreshful smell of incomparable glory and joy in heaven than they do here ; because a drink of the well of life, up at the well's head, is more sweet and fresh by far than that which we get in our borrowed, old, running-out vessels, and our wooden dishes here. Yet I am now persuaded it is our folly to frist all till the term-day, seeing abundance of earnest will not diminish anything of our principal sum. We dream of hunger in Christ's house while we are here, although He alloweth feasts to all the bairns within God's household. It were good, then, to store ourselves with more borrowed kisses of Christ, and with more borrowed visits, till we enter heirs to our new inheritance, and our Tutor put us in possession of our own when we are past minority. Oh that all the young heirs would seek more, and a greater, and a nearer communion with my Lord Tutor, the prime heir of all, Christ ! I wish that, for my part, I could send you, and that gentleman who wrote his commendations to me, into the King's innermost cellar and house of wine, to be filled with love. A drink of this love is worth the having indeed. AYe carry our- selves but too nicely with Christ our Lord ; and our Lord loveth not niceness, and dryness, and unconess in friends. Since need- force that we must be in Christ's common, then let us be in His common ; for it will be no otherwise. Now, for ray present case in my imprisonment : deliverance (for any appearance that I see) looketli cold-like. My hope, if it looked to or leaned upon men, would wither soon at the root, like a May flower. Yet I resolve to ease myself with on-waiting I637-] LETTER CLXXIX. ' 343 on my Lord, and to let my faith swim where it loseth ground. I am under a necessity either of faintirg (which I hope my Master, of whom I boast all the day, will avert), or then to lay my faith upon Omnipotency, and to wink and stick by my grip. And I hope that my ship shall ride it out, seeing Christ is willing to blow His sweet wind in my sails, and mendeth and closeth the leaks in my ship, and ruleth all. It will be strange if a believ- ing passenger be casten overboard. As for your master, my lord and my lady,^ I shall be loath to forget them. I think my prayers (such as they are) are debt due to him ; and I shall be far more engaged to his Lordship, if he be fast for Christ (as I hope he will) now when so many of his coat and quality slip from Christ's back, and leave Him to fend for Himself. I entreat you to remember my love to that worthy gentle- man, A. C, who saluted me in your letter : I have heard that he is one of my Master's friends, for the which cause I am tied to him. I wish that he may more and more fall in love with Christ. Now for your question : — As far as I rawly conceive, I think that God is praised two ways : 1st. By a concional^ profession of His highness before men, such as is the very hearing of the word, and receiving of either of the sacraments ; in which acts by profes- sion, we give out to men, that He is our God with whom we are in covenant, and our Lawgiver. Thus eating and drinking in the Lord's Supper, is an annunciation and profession before men, that Christ is our slain Eedeemer. Here, because God speaketh to us, not' we to Him, it is not a formal thanksgiving, but an annunciation or predication of Christ's death — concional, not adorative — neither hath it God for the immediate object, and therefore no kneeling can be here. 2ndly. There is another praising of God, formal, when we are either formally blessing God, or speaking His praises. And this I take to be twofold: — 1. When we directly and formally direct praises and thanksgiving to God. This may well be done kneel- ing, in token of our recognizance of His Highness ; yet not so but that it may be done standing or sitting, especially seeing joyful elevation (which should be in praising) is not formally signified by kneeling. 2. When we speak good of God, and ^ John Campbell, first Earl of Loudon, and his lady, Margaret Campbell, Baroness of Loudon, daughter of George Campbell, master of Loudon. ' An act in which we address men, not God. 344 LETTER CLXXX. [1637 declare His glorious nature and attributes, extolling Him before men, to excite men to conceive highly of Him. The former I hold to be worship every way immediate, else I know not any immediate worship at all ; the latter hath God for the subject, not properly the object, seeing the predication is directed to men immediately, rather than to God ; for here we speak of God by way of praising, rather than to God. And, for my own part, as I am for the present minded, I see not how this can be done kneel- ing, seeing it is prcedicatio Dei et Christi, non laudatio aut henedidio Dei. [A preaching of God and Christ, and not a praising or blessing of God.] But observe, that it is formal praising of God, and not merely concional, as I distinguished in the first member ; for, in the first member, any speaking of God, or of His works of creation, providence, and redemption, is indirect and concional praising of Him, and formally preaching, or an act of teaching, not an act of predication of His praises. Tor there is a difference betwixt the simple relation of the virtues of a thing (which is formally teaching), and the extolling of the worth of a thing by way of commendation, to cause others to praise with us. Thus recommending you to God's grace/ I rest, yours, in his sweet Lord' Jesus, Aberdeen, J2me 15, 1637. ^* ^' OTf CLXXX. — To the much Honoured John Gordon of Gardoness, the Elder. (LONGINGS FOR THOSE UNDER HIS FORMER MINISTRY— DELIGHT IN CHRIST AND HIS APPEARING — PLEADING WITH HIS FLOCK.) UCH HONOUKED AND DEAREST IN MY LORD, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. My soul longeth exceedingly to hear how matters go betwixt you and Christ ; and whether or not there be any work of Christ in that parish, that will bide the trial of fire and water. Let me be weighed of my Lord in a just balance, if your souls lie not weighty upon me. Ye go to bed and ye rise with me : thoughts of your soul, my dearest in our Lord, depart not from me in my sleep. Ye have a great part of my tears, sighs, supplications, and prayers. Oh, if I could buy your soul's salvation with any suffering wliatsoever, and that ye and I might meet with joy up in the rainbow, when we shall stand before our Judge ! Oh, my Lord, forbid that I have any hard thing to ' In some ciUtioiis it is "sweet grace ;" but not so in the earliest. 1637.] LETTER CLXXX. 345 depone against you in that day ! Oh that He who quickeneth the dead would give life to my sowing among you ! What joy is there (next to Christ). that standeth on this side of death, which would comfort me more, than that the souls of that poor people were in safety, and beyond all hazard of being lost ! Sir, show the people this ; for when I write to you, I think I write to you all, old and young. J'ulfil my joy, and seek the Lord. Sure I am, that once I discovered my lovely, royal, princely Lord Jesus to you all. Woe, woe, woe shall be your part of it for evermore, if the Gospel be not the savour of life to you. As many sermons as I preached, as many sentences as I uttered, as many points of dittay shall there be, when the Lord shall plead with the world, for the evil of their doings. Believe me, I find heaven a city hard to be won. " The righteous shall scarcely be saved." Oh, what violence of thronging will heaven take ! Alas ! I see many deceiving themselves ; for we will ^ all to heaven now ! Every foul dog, with his foul feet, will in at the nearest, to the new and clean Jerusalem. All say they have faith ; and the greatest part in the world know not, and will not consider, that a slip in the matter of their salvation is the most pitiable slip that can be ; and that no loss is comparable to this loss. Oh, then, see that there be not a loose pin in the work of your salvation ; for ye will not believe how quickly the Judge will come. And for yourself, I know that death is waiting, and hovering, and lingering at God's command. That ye may be prepared, then, ye had need to stir your time, and to take eternity and death to your riper advisement. A wrong step, or a wrong stot, in going out of this life, in one property is like the sin against the Holy Ghost, and can never be forgiven, because ye cannot come back again through the last water to mourn for it. I know your accounts are many, and will take telling and laying, and reckoning betwixt you and your Lord. Fit your accounts, and order them. Lose not the last play, whatever ye do, for in that play with death your precious soul is the prize : for the Lord's sake spill not the play, and lose not such a treasure. Ye know that, out of love which I had to your soul, and out of desire which I had to make an honest account of you, I testified my displeasure and disliking of your ways very often, both in private and public. I am not now a witness of your doings, but your Judge is always your witness. I beseech you by the mercies of God, by the salvation of your soul, by your comfort when ^ Insist on being admitted to. 346 LETTER CLXXX. [1637. your eye-strings shall break, and the face wax pale, and the soul shall tremble to be out of the lodging of clay, and by your com- pearance before your awful Judge, after the sight of this letter to take a new course with your ways, and now, in the end of your day, make sure of heaven. Examine yourself if ye be in good earnest in Christ ; for some are partakers of the Holy Ghost, and taste of the good word of God, and of the powers of the life to come, and yet have no part in Christ at all. Many think they believe, but never tremble : the devils are farther on than these (James ii. 19). Make sure to yourself that ye are above ordinary professors. The sixth part of your span-length and hand-breadth of days is scarcely before you. Haste, haste, for the tide will not bide. Put Christ upon all your accounts and your secrets. Better it is that you give Him your accounts in this life, out of your own hand, than that, after this life, He take them from you. I never knew so well what sin was as since I came to Aberdeen, howbeit I was preaching of it to you. To feel the smoke of hell's fire in the throat for half an hour ; to stand beside a river of fire and brimstone broader than the earth ; and to think to be bound hand and foot, and casten into the midst oi it quick, and then to have God locking the prison door, never to be opened for all eternity ! Oh how it will shake a conscience that hath any life in it ! T find the fruits of my pains to have Christ and that people once fairly met, now meet my soul in my sad hours. And I rejoice that I gave fair warn- ing of all the corruptions now entering into Christ's house ; and now many a sweet, sweet, soft kiss, many perfumed, well-smelled kisses, and embracements have I received of ray royal Master. He and I have had much love together. I have for the present a sick d wining life, with much pain, and much love-sickness for Christ. Oh, what would I give to have a bed made to my wearied soul in His bosom ! I would frist heaven for many years, to have my fill of Jesus in this life, and to have occasion to offer Christ to my people, and to woo many people to Christ. I cannot tell you what sweet pain and delightsome torments are in Christ's love ; I often challenge time, that holdeth us sundry. I i)rofess to you, I have no rest, I have no ease, whill I be over head and ears in love's ocean. If Christ's love (that fountain of deliglit) were laid as open to me as I would wisli, oh, how I would drink, and drink abundantly ! oh, how drunken would this my soul be ! I half call His absence cruel ; and the mask and vail on Christ's face a cruel covering, that hideth such a fair, 1637.] LETTER CLXXX. 347 fair face from a sick soul. I dare not challenge Himself, but His absence is a mountain of iron upon my heavy heart. Oh, when shall we meet ? Oh, how long it is to the dawning of the marriage-day ! 0 sweet Lord Jesus, take wide steps ! 0 my Lord, come over mountains at one stride ! 0 my Beloved, be like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of Separation (Song ii. 17). Oh, if He would fold the heavens together like an old cloak, and shovel time and days out of the way, and make ready in haste the Lamb's wife for her Husband ! Since He looked upon me, my heart is not mine own ; He hath run away to heaven with it. I know that it was not for nothing that I spake so meikle good of Christ to you in public. Oh, if the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, were paper, and the sea ink, and the multitude of mountains pens of brass, and I able to write that paper, within and without, full of the praises of my fairest, my dearest, my loveliest, my sweetest, my matchless, and my most marrowless and marvellous Well-beloved ! Woe is me, I cannot set Him out to men and angels ' Oh, there are few tongues to sing love-songs of His incomparable excellence ! What can I, poor prisoner, do to exalt Him ? or what course can I take to extol my lofty and lovely Lord Jesus ? I am put to my wits' end, how to get His name made great. Blessed they who would help me in this ! How sweet are Christ's back parts ? Oh, what then is His face ? Those that see His face, how dow they get their eye plucked off Him again ! Look up to Him and love Him. Oh, love and live ! It were life to me if you would read this letter to that people, and if they did profit by it. Oh, if I could cause them to die of love for Jesus ! Charge them, by the salvation of their souls, to hang about Christ's neck, and take their fill of His love, and follow Him as I taught them. Part by no means with Christ. Hold fast what ye have received. Keep the truth once delivered. If ye or that people quit it in an hair, or in a hoof, ye break your conscience in twain ; and who then can mend it, and cast a knot on it ? My dearest in the Lord, stand fast in Christ ; keep the faith ; contend for Christ. Wrestle for Him, and take men's feud for God's favour ; there is no compari- son betwixt these. Oh that the Lord would fulfil my joy, and keep the young bride that is at Anwoth to Christ ! And now, whoever they be that have returned to the old vomit since my departure, I bind upon their back, in my Master's name and authority, the long-lasting, weighty vengeance and curse of God. In my Lord's name I give them a doom of black, 348 LETTER CLXXXI. [1637. unmixed, pure wrath, which my Master will ratify and make good, when we stand together before Him, except they timeously repent and turn to the Lord. And I write to thee, poor mourn- ing and broken-hearted believer, be thou who thou wilt, of the free salvation, Christ's sweet balm for thy wounds, 0 poor, humble believer ! Christ's kisses for thy watery cheeks ! Christ's blood of atonement for thy guilty soul ! Christ's heaven for thy poor soul, though once banished out of paradise ! And my Master will make good my word ere long. Oh that people were wise ! Oh that people were wise ! Oh that people would speer out Christ, and never rest whill they find Him. Oh, how my soul will mourn in secret, if my nine years' pained head, and sore breast, and pained back, and grieved heart, and private and public prayers to God, will all be for nothing among that people ! Did my Lord Jesus send me but to summon you before your Judge, and to leave your summons at your houses ? Was I sent as a witness only to gather your dittays ? Oh, may God forbid ! Often did I tell you of a fan of God's word ^ to come among you, for the contempt of it. I told you often of wrath, wrath from the Lord, to come upon Scotland ; and yet I bide by my Master's word. It is quickly coming ! desolation for Scotland, because of the quarrel of a broken covenant. Now, worthy Sir, now my dear people, my joy, and my crown in the Lord, let Him be your fear. Seek the Lord, and His face : save your souls. Doves ! flee to Christ's windows. Pray for me, and praise for me. The blessing of my God, the prayers and blessing of a poor prisoner, and your lawful pastor, be upon you. Your lawful and loving pastor, Aberdeen, June 16, 1637. ^' -'^• CLXXXI. — To Earlston, the Younger. [DANGERS OF YOUTH— CHRIST THE BEST PHYSICIAN- FOUR REMEDIES AGAINST DOUBTING — BREATHINGS AFTER CHRIST S HONOUR. ) UCH HONOURED AND WELL-BELOVED IN THE LORD, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. Your letters give a dash to my laziness in writing. I must first tell you, that there is not such a glassy, icy, and slippery piece of way betwixt you and heaven, as Youth ; * Perhaps this should be wind, not " word ;" alluding to Jer. iv. 12. 1637.] LETTER CLXXXl. 349 and I have experience to say with me here, and to seal what I assert. The old ashes of the sins of my youth are new fire of sorrow to me. I have seen the devil, as it were, dead and buried, and yet rise again, and be a worse devil than ever he was ; therefore, my brother, beware of a green young devil, that hath never been buried. The devil in his flowers (I mean the hot, fiery lusts and passions of youth) is much to be feared : better yoke with an old grey-haired, withered, dry devil. For in youth he findeth dry sticks, and dry coals, and a hot hearth-stone ; and how soon can he with his flint cast fire, and with his bellows blow it up, and fire the house ! Sanctified thoughts, thoughts made conscience of, and called in, and kept in awe, are green fuel that burn not, and are a water for Satan's coal. Yet I must tell you, that the whole saints now triumphant in heaven, and standing before the throne, are nothing but Christ's forlorn and beggarly dyvours. What are they but a pack of redeemed sinners ? But their redemption is not only past the seals, but completed ; and yours is on the wheels, and in doing. All Christ's good bairns go to heaven with a broken brow, and with a crooked leg. Christ hath an advantage of you, and I pray you to let Him have it ; He will find employment for His calling in you. If it were not with you as ye write, grace should find no sale nor market in you ; but ye must be content to give Christ somewhat to do. I am glad that He is employed that way. Let your bleeding soul and your sores be put in the hand of this expert Physician ; let young and strong corruptions and His free grace be yoked together, and let Christ and your sins deal it betwixt them. I shall be loath to put you off your fears, and your sense of deadness : I wish it were more. There be some wounds of that nature, that their bleeding should not be soon stopped. Ye must take a house beside the Physician. It will be a miracle if ye be the first sick man whom He put away uncured, and worse than He found you. Nay, nay, Christ is honest, and in that is flyting-free with sinners. "Him that Cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out" (John vi. 37). Take ye that. It cannot be presumption to take that as your own, when you find that your wounds stound you. Presumption is ever whole at the heart, and hath but the truant sickness, and groaneth only for the fashion. Faith hath sense of sickness, and looketh, like a friend, to the promises ; and, looking to Christ therein, is glad to see a known face. Christ is as full a feast as ye can have to hunger. Nay, Christ, I say, is not a full man's 350 LETTER CLXXXI. [1637. leavings. His mercy sendeth always a letter of defiance to all your sins, if there were ten thousand more of them. I grant you that it is a hard matter for a poor hungry man to win his meat upon hidden Christ : for then the key of His pantry-door, and of the house of wine, is a-seeking and cannot be had. But hunger must break through iron locks. I bemoan them not who can make a din, and all the fields ado, for a lost Saviour. Ye must let Him hear it (to say so) upon both sides of His head, when He hideth Himself ; it is no time then to be bird-mouthed and patient. Christ is rare indeed, and a delicacy to a sinner. He is a miracle, and a world's wonder, to a seeking and a weeping sinner ; but yet such a miracle as shall be seen by them who will come and see. The seeker and sigher, is at last a singer and enjoyer ; nay, I have seen a dumb man get alms from Christ. He that can tell his tale, and send such a letter to heaven as he hath sent to Aberdeen, it is very like he will come speed with Christ. It bodeth God's mercy to complain heartily for sin. Let wrestling be with Christ till He say, " How is it, sir, that I cannot be quit of your bills, and your misleared cries ? " and then hope for Christ's blessing ; and His blessing is better than ten other blessings. Think not shame because of your guiltiness ; necessity must not blush to beg. It standeth you hard to want Christ ; and, therefore, that which idle on- waiting cannot do, misnurtured crying and knocking will do. And for doubtings, because you are not as you were long since with your Master : consider three things. \st. What if Christ had such tottering thoughts of the bargain of the new covenant betwixt you and Him, as you have ? 2nclly, Your heart is not the compass which Christ saileth by. He will give you leave to sing as you please, but He will not dance to your daft spring. It is not referred to you and your thoughts, what Christ will do with the charters betwixt you and Him. Your own misbelief hath torn them ; but He hath the principal in heaven with Himself. Your thoughts are no parts of the new covenant ; dreams change not Christ, 'drdly, Doubtings are your sins ; but they are Christ's drugs, and ingredients that the Physician maketh use of for the curing of your pride. Is it not suitable for a beggar to say at meat, " God reward the winners " ? ^ for then he saith that he knoweth who beareth the charges of the house. It is also meet that ye should know, by experience, that faith is not nature's ill-gotten bastard, but your Lord's free gift, * Tliose who got this meat for us. 1637.] LETTER CLXXXI. 351 that lay in the womb of God's free grace. Praised be the Winner ! I may add a Mhly, In the passing of your bill and your charters, when they went through the Mediator's great seal, and were concluded, faith's advice was not sought. Faith hath not a vote beside Christ's merits : blood, blood, dear blood, that came from your Cautioner's holy body, maketh that sure work. The use, then, which ye have of faith now (having already closed v/ith Jesus Christ for justification) is, to take out a copy of your pardon ; and so ye have peace with God upon the account of Christ. For, since faith apprehendeth pardon, but never payeth a penny for it, no marvel that salvation doth not die and live, ebb or flow, with the working of faith. But because it is your Lord's honour to believe His mercy and His fidelity, it is infinite goodness in our Lord, that misbelief giveth a dash to our Lord's glory, and not to our salvation. And so, whoever want (yea, howbeit God here bear with the want of what we are obliged to give Him, even the glory of His grace by believing), yet a poor covenanted sinner wanteth not. But if guiltiness were removed, doubtings would find no friend, nor life ; and yet faith is to believe the removal of guiltiness in Christ. A reason why ye get less now (as ye think) than before, as I take it, is, because, at our first conversion, our Lord putteth the meat in young bairns' mouths with His own hand ; but when we grow to some further perfection, we must take heaven by violence, and take by violence from Christ what we get. And He can, and doth hold, because He will have us to draw. Eemember now that ye must live upon violent plucking. Laziness is a greater fault now than long since. We love always to have the pap put in our mouth. Now for myself ; alas ! I am not the man I go for in this nation ; men have not just weights to weigh me in. Oh, but I am a silly, feckless body, and overgrown with weeds ; corruption is rank and fat in me. Oh, if I were answerable to this holy cause, and to that honourable Prince's love for whom I now suffer ! If Christ should refer the matter to me (in His presence I speak it), I might think shame to vote my own salvation. I think Christ might say, " Thinkest thou not shame to claim heaven, who doest so little for it ? " I am very often so, that I know not whether I sink or swim in the water. I find myself a bag of light froth. I would bear no weight (but vanities and nothings weigh in Christ's balance) if my Lord cast not in borrowed weight and metal, even Christ's righteousness, to weigh for me. The stock I have is not mine own ; I am but the 352 LETTER CLXXXI. [1637. merchant that trafficketh with other folks' goods. If my creditor, Christ, should take from me what He hath lent, I should not long keep the causeway ; but Christ hath made it mine and His. I think it manhood to play the coward, and jouk in the lee-side of Christ ; and thus I am not only saved from my enemies, but I obtain the victory. I am so empty, that I think it were an alms-deed in Christ, if He would win a poor prisoner's blessing for evermore, and fill me with His love. I complain that when Christ cometh, He cometh always to fetch fire ; He is ever in haste. He may not tarry ; and poor I (a beggarly dyvour) get but a standing visit and a standing kiss, and but, " How doest thou ? " in the by-going. I dare not say He is lordly, because He is made a King now at the right hand of God ; or is grown miskenning and dry to His poor friends : for He cannot make more of His kisses than they are worth. But I think it my happiness to love the love of Christ : and when He goeth away, the memory of His sweet presence is like a feast in a dear summer. I have ccinfort in this, that my soul desireth that every hour of my imprisonment were a company of heavenly tongues to praise Him on my behalf, howbeit my bonds were prolonged for many hundred years. Oh that I could be the man who could procure my Lord's glory to flow like a full sea, and blow like a mighty wind upon all the four airths of Scotland, England, and Ireland ! Oh, if I could write a book of His praises ! 0 Fairest among the sons of men, why stayest Thou so long away ? 0 heavens, move fast ! 0 time, run, run, and hasten the marriage-day ! for love is tormented with delays. 0 angels, O seraphims, who stand before Him, 0 blessed spirits who now see His face, set Him on high ! for when ye have worn your harps in His praises, all is too little, and is nothing, to cast the smell of the praise of that fair Flower, the fragrant Eose of Sharon, through many worlds ! Sir, take my hearty commendations to Him, and tell Him that I am sick of love, Grace be with you. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, June 16, 1637. S* ■**■ I637-] LETTER CLXXXII. 353 CLXXXII. — To his honoured and dear Brother, Alexander Gordon 0/ Knockgray. {JOY IN GOD— TRIALS WORK OUI GLORY TO CHRIST) EAEEST AND TEULY HONOUEED BEOTHEE, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I have seen no letter from you since I came to Aberdeen. I will not interpret it to be forgetfulness. I am here in a fair prison : Christ is my sweet and honourable fellow-prisoner, and I His sad and joyful lord-prisoner,^ if I may speak so. I think this cross becometh me well, and is suitable to me in respect of my duty to suffer for Christ, howbeit not in regard of my deserving to be thus honoured. However it be, I see that Christ is strong, even lying in the dust, in prison, and in banishment. Losses and disgraces are the wheels of Christ's triumphant chariot. In the sufferings of His own saints, as He intendeth their good, so He intendeth His own glory, and that is the butt His arrows shoot at. And Christ shooteth not at rovers. He hitteth what He purposeth to hit ; therefore He doth make His own feckless and weak nothings, and those who are the contempt of men, " a new sharp threshing instrument, having teeth, to thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and to make the hills as chaff, and to fan them" (Isa. xli. 15, 16). What harder stuff, or harder grain for threshing out, than high and rocky mountains ? But the saints are God's threshing instruments, to beat them all into chaff. Are we not God's leem vessels ? and yet when they cast us over a house we are not broken into sherds. We creep in under our Lord's wings in the great shower, and the water cannot come through those wings. It is folly then for men to say, " This is not Christ's plea. He will lose the wad-set ; men are like to beguile Him : " that were indeed a strange play. Nay, I dare pledge my soul, and lay it in pawn on Christ's side of it, and be half-tiner, half- winner with my Master ! Let fools laugh the fool's laughter, and scorn Christ, and bid the weeping captives in Babylon " sing us one of the songs of Zion, play a spring to cheer up your sad-hearted God ! " We may sing upon luck's-head beforehand, even in our winter-storm, in the expectation of a summer sun, at the turn of the year. No created powers in hell, or out of hell, can mar the music of our Lord Jesus, nor spoil our song of joy. Let us then be glad, and rejoice in the ^ In Luther's style, he playfully speaks of himself as if raised to nobility among prisoners. 354 LETTER CLXXXII. [1637 salvation of our Lord ; for faith had never yet cause to have wet cheeks, and hanging down brows, or to droop or die. What can ail faith, seeing Christ suffereth Himself (with reverence to Him be it spoken) to be commanded by it, and Christ com- mandeth all things ? Faith may dance because Christ singeth ; and we may come into the choir, and lift our hoarse and rough voices, and chirp, and sing, and shout for joy with our Lord Jesus. We see oxen go to the shambles, leaping and startling ; we see God's fed oxen, prepared for the day of slaughter, go dancing and singing down to the black chambers of hell ; and why should we go to heaven weeping, as if we were like to fall down through the earth for sorrow ? If God were dead (if I may speak so, with reverence of Him who liveth for ever and ever), and Christ buried, and rotten among the worms, we might have cause to look like dead folks ; but " the Lord liveth, and blessed be the Eock of our salvation " (Ps. xviii. 46). None have right to joy but we; for joy is sown for us, and an ill summer or harvest will not spill the crop. The children of this world have much robbed joy that is not well-come. It is no good sport they laugh at : they steal joy, as it were, from God ; for He commandeth them to mourn and howl (James v. 1). Then let us claim our leal-come and lawfully conquessed joy. My dear brother, I cannot but speak what I have felt ; seeing my Lord Jesus hath broken a box of spikenard upon the head of His poor prisoner, and it is hard to hide a sweet smell. It is a pain to smother Christ's love ; it will be out whether we will or not. If we did but speak according to the matter, a cross for Christ should have another name ; yea, a cross, especially when He cometh with His arms full of joys, is the happiest hard tree that ever was laid upon my weak shoulder. Christ and His cross together are sweet company, and a blessed couple. My prison is my palace, my sorrow is with child of joy, my losses are rich losses, my pain easy pain, my heavy days are holy and happy days. I may tell a new tale of Christ to my friends. Oh, if I could make a love song of Him, and could commend Christ, and tune His praises aright ! Oh, if I could set all tongues in Great Britain and Ireland to work, to help me to sing a new song of my Well-beloved ! Oh, if I could be a bridge over a water for my Lord Jesus to walk upon, and keep His feet dry ! Oh, if my poor bit heaven could go betwixt my Lord and blasphemy, and dishonour ! (Upon condition He loved me.) Oh that my heart could say this word, and abide by it for ever ! Is it not great ■d 1637.] LETTER CLXXXIII. 355 art and incomparable wisdom in my Lord, who can bring forth such fair apples out of this crabbed tree of the cross ? Nay, my Father's never-enough admired providence can make a fair face ^ out of a black devil. Nothing can come wrong to my Lord in His sweet working. I would even fall sound asleep in Christ's arms, and my sinful head on His holy breast, while He kisseth me ; were it not that often the wind turneth to the north, and whiles my sweet Lord Jesus is so that He will neither give nor take, borrow nor lend with me. I complain that He is not social ; I half call Him proud and lordly of His company, and nice of His looks, which yet is not true. It would content me to give, howbeit He should not take. I should be content to want His kisses at such times, providing He would be content to come near-hand, and take my wersh, dry, and feckless kisses. But at that time He will not be entreated, but let a poor soul stand still and knock, and never let-on him that He heareth ; and then the old leavings, and broken meat, and dry sighs, are greater cheer than I can tell. All I have then is, that howbeit the law and wrath have gotten a decreet against me, I can yet lippen that meikle good in Christ as to get a suspension, and to bring my cause in reasoning again before my Well-beloved. I desire but to be heard, and at last He is content to come and agree the matter with a fool, and forgive freely, because He is God. Oh, if men would glorify Him, and taste of Christ's sweetness ! Brother, ye have need to be busy with Christ for this whorish kirk ; I fear lest Christ cast water upon Scotland's coal. Nay, I know that Christ and His wife will be heard : He will plead for the broken covenant. Arm you against that time. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Jxmt 16, 1637. S. R. CLXXXIII.— To Mr. J R- [It is highly probable that the individual to whom this letter is addressed was John Row, son of John Row, minister of Carnock, a grandson of John Row the reformer, and contemporary of Knox. In 1632 he was appointed master of the Grammar School of Perth, in which situation he continued, for some years. The year after his appointment, he was in some danger of expulsion, for refusing to join in the observance of the Lord's Supper after the manner enjoined by the Perth Articles. At the time when this letter was written, he appears to have been exposed to a similar danger. In 1641 he was ordained minister of St. Nicholas Church, Aberdeen ; and in 1652 was elevated to be Principal of King's College. Row was a man of learning, and was the author of the first Hebrew grammar printed in Scotland. He died in 1646,] ^ " Feast " is in moat editions. 356 LETTER CLXXXIII, [1637. {CHRIST THE PURIFIER OF HIS CHURCH— SUBMISSION TO HIS WAYS.) EAE BROTHER, — Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. Upon the report which I hear of you, without any further acquaintance, except our straitest bonds in our Lord Jesus, I thought good to write unto you, hearing of your danger to be thrust out of the Lord's house for His name's sake. Therefore, my earnest and humble desire to God is, that ye may be strengthened in the grace of God, and, by the power of His might, to go on for Christ, not standing in awe of a worm that shall die. I hope that ye will not put your hand to the ark to give it a wrong touch,^ and to overturn it, as many now do, when the archers are shooting sore at Joseph, whose bow shall abide in its strength. We owe to our royal King and princely Master a testimony. Oh, how blessed are they who can ward a blow off Christ, and His borne-down truth ! Men think Christ a gone man now, and that He shall never get up His head again ; and they believe that His court is failed, because He suffereth men to break their spears and swords upon Him, and the enemies to plough Zion, and make long and deep their furrows on her back. But it would not be so, if the Lord had not a sowing for His ploughing. What can He do, but melt an old drossy kirk, that He may bring out a new bride out of the lire again ? I think that Christ is just now repairing His house, and exchanging His old vessels with new vessels, and is going through this land, and taking up an inventory and a roll of so many of Levi's sons, and good professors, that He may make them new work for the Second Temple ; and whatsoever shall be found not to be for the work, shall be casten over the wall. When the house shall be builded, He will lay by His hammers, as having no more to do with them. It is possible that He may do worse to them than lay them by ; and I think the vengeance of the Lord, and the vengeance of His temple, shall be upon them. I desire no more than to keep weight when I am past the fire ; and I can now, in some weak measure, give Christ a testi- monial of a lovely and loving companion under suffering for Him. I saw Him before, but afar off. His beauty, to my eyesight, groweth. A fig, a straw for a ten worlds' plastered glory, and ^ In old editions, " totcli ; " and explained to be a sudden push, such a push, too, as sets the object in motion. The allusion is to 2 Sam. vi. 6. 1637.] LETTER CLXXXIII. 357 for childish shadows, the idol of clay (this god, the world) that fools fight for ! If I had a lease of Christ of my own dating (for whoever once cometh nigh-hand, and taketh a hearty look of Christ's inner side, shall never wring nor wrestle themselves out of His love-grips again), I would rest contentedly in my prison, yea, in my prison without light of sun or candle, providing Christ, and I had a love-bed, not of mine, but of Christ's own making, that we might lie together among the lilies, till the day break and the shadows flee away. Who knoweth how sweet a drink of Christ's love is ! Oh, but to live on Christ's love is a king's life ! The worst things of Christ, even that which seemeth to be the refuse of Christ, His hard cross. His black cross, is white and fair ; and the cross receiveth a beautiful lustre and a perfumed smell from Jesus. My dear brother, scaur not at it. While ye have time to stand upon the watch-tower and speak, contend with this land. Plead with your harlot-mother, who hath been a treacherous half -marrow to her husband Jesus. For I would think liberty to preach one day the root and top of my desires ; and would seek no more of the blessings that are to be had on this side of time, till I be over the water, than to spend this my crazy clay-house in His service, and saving of souls. But I hold my peace, because He hath done it. My shallow and ebb thoughts are not the compass which Christ saileth by. I leave His ways to Himself, for they are far, far above me : only I would contend with Christ for His love, and be bold to make a plea with Jesus, my Lord, for a heart-fill of His love ; for there is no more left to me. What standeth beyond the far end of my sufferings, and what shall be the event. He knowetli, and I hope, to my joy, will make me know, when God will unfold His decrees concerning me. For there are windings, and tos and fros, in His ways, which blind bodies like us cannot see. Thus much for farther acquaintance ; so, recommending you, and what is before you, to the grace of God, I rest, Your very loving brother in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, June. 16, 1637. S. R. 3S8 LETTER CLXXXIV. [1637 CLXXXIV.— To Mr. William Dalgleish. [Letter CXVII.] {THE FRAGRANCE OF THE MINISTRY— A REVIEW OF HIS PAST AND PRESENT SITUATION, AND OF HIS PROSPECTS.) EVEEEND AND WELL-BELOVED BEOTHER,— Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. I have heard somewhat of your trials in Galloway. I bless the Lord, who hath begun first in that corner to make you a new kirk to Himself. Christ hath the less ado behind, when He hath refined you. Let me entreat you, my dearly beloved, to be fast to Christ. My witness is above, my dearest brother, that ye have added much joy to me in my bonds, when I hear that ye grow in the grace and zeal of God for your Master. Our ministry, whether by preaching or suffering, will cast a smell through the world both of heaven and hell (2 Cor. ii. 15, 16). I persuade you, my dear brother, that there is nothing out of heaven, next to Christ, dearer to me than my ministry ; and the worth of it, in my estimation, is swelled, and paineth me exceedingly. Yet I am content, for the honour of my Lord, to surrender it back again to the Lord of the vineyard. Let Him do with it, and me both, what He thinketh good. I think myself too little for Him. And, let me speak to you, how kind a fellow-prisoner is Christ to me ! Believe me, this kind of cross (that would not go by my door, but would needs visit me) is still the longer the more wel- come to me. It is true, my silent Sabbaths have been, and still are, as glassy ice, whereon my faith can scarce hold its feet, and I am often blown on my back, and o£f my feet, with a storm of doubting ; yet truly, my bonds all this time cast a mighty and rank smell of high and deep love in Christ. I cannot, indeed, see through my cross to the far end; yet I believe I am in Christ's books, and in His decree (not yet unfolded to me), a man triumphing, dancing, and singing, on the other side of the Eed Sea, and laughing and praising the Lamb, over beyond time, sorrow, deprivation, prelates' indignation, losses, want of friends, and death. Heaven is not a fowl flying in the air (as men use to speak of things that are uncertain) ; nay, it is well paid for. Christ's comprisement lieth on ^ glory for all the mourners in Zion, and shall never be loosed. Let us be glad and rejoice, that we ' " To lie on" is for a thing to be a matter of duty or obligation, or of legal Bccurity. Christ has laid His comprisement on glory ; He hath taken care that the ipourners in Zion be secured in possession of glory. 1637.] LETTER CLXXXIV. 359 have blood, losses, and wounds, to show our Master and Captain at His appearance, and what we suffered for His cause. Woe is me, my dear brother, that I say often, " I am but dry bones, which my Lord will not bring out of the grave again ; " and that my faithless fears say, " Oh, I am a dry tree, that can bear no fruit ; I am a useless body, who can beget no children to the Lord in His house !" Hopes of deliverance look cold and uncer- tain, and afar off, as if I had done with it. It is much for Christ (if I may say so) to get law-borrows of my sorrow, and of my quarrelous heart. Christ's love playeth me fair play. I am not wronged at all ; but there is a tricking and false heart within me, that still playeth Christ foul play. I am a cumbersome neighbour to Christ : it is a wonder that He dwelleth beside the like of me. Yet I often get the advantage of the hill above my tempta- tions, and then I despise temptation, even hell itself, and the stink of it, and the instruments of it, and am proud of my honourable Master. And I resolve, whether contrary winds will or not, to fetch Christ's harbour ; and I think a wilful and stiff contention with my Lord Jesus for His love very lawful. It is sometimes hard to me to win my meat upon Christ's love, be- cause my faith is sick, and my hope withereth, and my eyes wax dim ; and unkind and comfort-eclipsing clouds go over the fair and bright Sun, Jesus ; and then, when I and temptation tryst the matter together, we spill all through unbelief. Sweet, sweet for evermore would my life be, if I could keep faith in exercise ! But I see that my fire cannot always cast light ; I have even a " poor man's hard world," when He goeth away. But surely, since my entry hither, many a time hath my fair sun shined without a cloud : hot and burning hath Christ's love been to me. I have no vent to the expression of it ; I must be content with stolen and smothered desires of Christ's glory. Oh, how far is His love behind the hand with me ! ^ I am just like a man who hath nothing to pay his thousands of debt : all that can be gotten of him is to seize upon his person. Except Christ would seize upon myself, and make the readiest payment that can be of my heart and love to Himself, I have no other thing to give Him. If my sufferings could do beholders good, and edify His kirk, and proclaim the incomparable worth of Christ's love to the world, oh, then would my soul be overjoyed, and my sad heart be cheered and calmed ! Dear brother, I cannot tell what is become of my labours ^ Far from receiving wliat I owe to it. 36o . LETTER CLXXXIV. [1637. among that people ! If all that my Lord builded by me be casten down, and the bottom be fallen out of the profession of that parish, and none stand by Christ, whose love I once preached as clearly and plainly as I could (though far below its worth and excellence) to that people ; if so, how can I bear it ! And if another make a foul harvest, where I have made a painful and honest sowing, it will not soon digest with me. But I know that His ways pass finding out. Yet my witness, both within me and above me, knoweth. And my pained breast upon the Lord's Day at night, my desire to have had Christ awful, and amiable, and sweet to that people, is now my joy. It was my desire and aim to make Christ and them one ; and, if I see my hopes die in the bud, ere they bloom a little, and come to no fruit, I die with grief. 0 my God, seek not an account of the violence done to me by my brethren, whose salvation I love and desire. I pray that they and I be not heard as contrary parties in the day of our compearance before our Judge, in that process, led by them against my ministry which I received from Christ. I know that a little inch, and less than the third part of this span-length , and hand-breadth of time, which is posting away will put me without the stroke, and above the reach, of either brethren or foes ; and it is a short-lasting injury done to me, and to my pains in that part of my Lord's vineyard. Oh, how silly an advantage is my deprivation to men, seeing that my Lord Jesus hath many ways to recover His own losses, and is irresist- ible to compass His own glorious ends, that His lily may grow amongst thorns, and His little kingdom exalt Himself, even under the swords and spears of contrary powers ! But, my dear brother, go on in the strength of His rich grace, whom ye serve. Standfast for Christ. Deliver the Gospel off your hand, and your ministry to your Master, with a clean and undefiled conscience. Loose not a pin of Christ's tabernacle. Do not so much as pick with your nail at one board or border of the ark. Have no part or dealing, upon any terms, in a hoof (Exod. X. 26), in a closed window (Dan. vi. 10), or in a bowing of your knee, in casting down of the temple. But be a mourn- ing and speaking witness against them who now ruin Zion. Our Master will be on us all now in a clap, ere ever we wit. That day will discover all our whites and our blacks, concerning this controversy of poor oppressed Zion. Let us make our part of it good, that it may be able to abide the fire, when hay and stubble shall be burned to ashes. Notliing, nothing, I say, nothing, but 1637.] LETTER CLXXXV. 361 sound sanctification can abide the Lord's fan. I stand to my testimony that I preached often of Scotland, — " Lamentation, mourning, and woe abideth thee, 0 Scotland ! 0 Scotland ! the fearful quarrel of a broken covenant standeth good with thy Lord ! *' Now, remember my love to all my friends, and to my parish- ioners, as if I named each of them particularly. I recommend you, and God's people, committed by Christ to your trust, to the rich grace of our all-sufficient Lord. Eemember my bonds. Praise my Lord, who beareth me up in my sufferings. As ye find occasion, according to the wisdom given you, show our acquaintance what the Lord hath done to my soul. This I seek not, verily, to hunt my own praise, but that my sweetest and dearest Master may be magnified in my sufferings. I rest. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, June. 16, 1637. S. R. CLXXXV.— To Makion M'Naught, {LONGING TO BE RESTORED TO HIS CHARGE.) EAELY BELOVED IN OUE LOED JESUS CHEIST, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. Few know the heart of a stranger and prisoner. I am in the hands of mine enemies. I would that honest and lawful means were essayed for bringing me home to my charge, now when Mr. A. E. and Mr, H. E, are restored. It concerneth you of Galloway most, to use supplications and addresses for this purpose, and try if by fair means I can be brought back again. As for liberty, without I be restored to my flock, it is little to me ; for my silence is my greatest prison. However it be, I wait for the Lord ; I hope not to rot in my sufferings : Lord, give me submission to wait on. My heart is sad that my days flee away, and I do no service to my Lord in His house, now when His harvest and the souls of perishing people require it. But His ways are not like my ways, neither can I find Him out. Oh that He would shine upon my darkness, and bring forth my morning light from under the thick cloud that men have spread over me ! Oh that the Almighty would lay my cause in a balance and weigh me, if my soul was not taken up, when others were sleeping, how to have Christ betrothed with a bride, in that part of the land ! But that day that my mouth was most un- 362 LETTER CLXXXV. [1637. justly and cruelly closed, the bloom fell off my branches, and my joy did cast the flower. Howbeit, I have been casting myself under God's feet, and wrestling to believe under a hidden and covered Lord ; yet my fainting cometh before I eat, and my faith hath bowed with the sore cast, and under this almost insupport- able weight ! Oh that it break not ! I dare not say that the Lord hath put out my candle, and hath casten water upon my poor coal, and broken the stakes of my tabernacle ; but I have tasted bitterness, and eaten gall and wormwood, since that day on which my Master laid bonds upon me to speak no more. I speak not this because the Lord is unco to me, but because be- holders, that stand on dry land, see not my sea-storm. The witnesses of my sad cross are but strangers to my sad days and nights. Oh that Christ would let me alone, and speak love to me, and come home to me, and bring summer with Him ! Oh that I might preach His beauty and glory, as once I did, before my clay-tent be removed to darkness ! and that I might lift Christ off the ground ! and my branches might be watered with the dew of God, and my joy in His work might grow green again, and bud, and send out a flower ! But I am but a short-sighted creature, and my candle casteth not light afar off. He knoweth all that is done to me ; how that when I had but one joy, and no more, and one green flower that I esteemed to be my garland. He came in one hour and dried up my flower at the root, and took away mine only eye, and my one only crown and garland. What can I say ? Surely my guiltiness hath been remembered before Him, and He was seeking to take down my sails, and to land the flower of my delights, and to let it lie on the coast, like an old broken ship, that is no more for the sea. But I praise Him for this waled stroke. I welcome this furnace ; God's wisdom made choice of it for me, and it must be best, because it was His choice. Oh that I may wait for Him till the morning of this benighted • kirk break out I This poor, afflicted kirk had a fair morning, but her night came upon her before her noon-day, and she was like a traveller, forced to take house in the morning of his journey. And now her adversaries are the chief men in the land ; her ways mourn ; her gates languish ; her children sigh for bread ; and there is none to be instant with the Lord, that He would come again to His house, and dry the face of His weeping spouse, and comfort Zion's mourners, who are waiting for Him. I know that He will make corn to grow upon the top of His withered Mount Zion again. 1637.] LETTER CLXXXVL 363 Eemember my bonds, and forget me not. Oh that my Lord would bring me again amongst you with abundance of the Gospel of Christ I But, oh, that I may set down my desires where my Lord biddeth me ! Eemember my love in the Lord to your husband ; God make him faithful to Christ ! and my blessing to your three children. Faint not in prayer for this kirk. Desire my people not to receive a stranger and intruder upon my ministry. Let me stand in that right and station that my Lord Jesus gave me. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord and Master, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R. CLXXXVL— To RoBERi Stuart. [This Robert Stuart was probably the son of Provost Stuart of Ayr, to whom several letters are addressed. Allusion is made to his early conversion.] {CHRIST CHOOSES HIS OWN IN THE FURNACE— NEED OF A DEEP WORK— THE GOD- MAN, A WORLD'S WONDER.) |rOT||Y VERY DEAR BROTHER,— Grace, mercy, and peace \ ^Si \ be to you. Ye are heartily welcome to my world of \ ^^J suffering, and heartily welcome to my Master's house. God give you much joy of your new Master. If I have been in the house before you, I were not faithful to give the house an ill name, or to speak evil of the Lord of the family ; I rather wish God's Holy Spirit (0 Lord, breathe upon me with that Spirit !), to tell you the fashions of the house (Ezek. xliii. 11). One thing I can say, by on- waiting ye will grow a great man with the Lord of the house. Hang on till ye get some good from Christ. Lay all your loads and your weights by faith upon Christ ; take ease to yourself, and let Him bear aU. He can, He dow,^ He will bear you, howbeit hell were upon your back. I rejoice that He is come, and hath chosen you in the furnace ; it was even there where ye and He set tryst. That is an old gate of Christ's : He keepeth the good old fashion with you, that was in Hosea's days : " Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak to her heart " (Hos. ii. 1 4, margin). There was no talking to her heart, while He and she were in the fair and flourishing city, and at ease ; but out in the cold, hungry, waste wilderness, He allured her. He whispered ^ Should we not read '■' dolh " ? 364 LETTER CLXXXVL [1637. news into her ear there, and said, "Thou art Mine." What would ye think of such a bode ? Ye may soon do worse than say, " Lord, hold all ; Lord Jesus, a bargain be it, it shall not go back on my side." Ye have gotten a great advantage in the way of heaven, that ye have started to the gate in the morning. Like a fool, as I was, I suffered my sun to be high in the heaven, and near after- noon, before ever I took the gate by the end. I pray you now keep the advantage ye have. My heart, be not lazy ; set quickly up the brae on hands and feet, as if the last pickle of sand were running out of your glass, and death were coming to turn the glass. And be very careful to take heed to your feet, in that slippery and dangerous way of youth that ye are walking in. The devil and temptations now have the advantage of the brae of you, and are upon your wand-hand, and your working-hand. Dry timber will soon take fire. Be covetous and greedy of the grace of God, and beware that it be not a holiness which cometh only from the cross ; for too many are that way disposed. " When He slew them, then they sought Him, and they returned and inquired early after God." " Nevertheless, they did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues" (Ps. Ixxviii. 34, 36). It is part of our hypocrisy, to give God fair, white words,-^ when He hath us in His grips (if I may speak so), and to flatter Him till He win to the fair fields again. Try well green godliness, and examine what it is that ye love in Christ. If ye love but Christ's sunny side, and would have only summer weather and a land-gate, not a sea-way to heaven, your profession will play you a slip, and the winter- well will go dry again in summer. Make no sport nor bairn's play of Christ ; but labour for a sound and lively sight of sin, that ye may judge yourself an un- done man, a damned slave of hell and of sin, one dying in your own blood, except Christ come and rue upon you, and take you up. And therefore, make sure and fast work of conversion. Cast the earth deep ; and down, down with the old work, the building of confusion, that was there before ; and let Christ lay new work, and make a new creation within you. Look if Christ's rain goeth down to the root of your withered plants, and if His love wound your heart whill it bleed with sorrow for sin, and if ye can pant and fall aswoon, and be like to die for that lovely one, Jesus. I know that Christ will not be hid where He is ; grace will ever ^ Plausible speeches. 1637.] LETTER CLXXXVl. 365 speak for itself, and be fruitful in well-doing. The sanctified cross is a fruitful tree ; it bringeth forth many apples. If I should tell you by some weak experience, what I have found in Christ, ye or others could hardly believe me. I thought not the hundredth part of Christ long since, that I do now, though, alas ! my thoughts are still infinitely below His worth. I have a dwining, sickly, and pained life, for a real possession of Him ; and am troubled mth love-brashes and love-fevers ; but it is a sweet pain. I would refuse no conditions, not hell excepted (reserving always God's hatred), to buy possession of Jesus. But, alas ! I am not a merchant, who have any money to give for Him : I must either come to a good-cheap market, where wares are had for nothing, else I go home empty. But I have casten this work upon Christ to get me Himself. I have His faith, and truth, and promise, as a pawn of His, all engaged that I shall obtain that which my hungry desires would be at ; and I esteem that the choice of my happiness. And for Christ's cross, especi- ally the garland and Sower of all crosses, to suffer for His name, I esteem it more than I can write or speak to you. And I write it under mine own hand to you, that it is one of the steps of the ladder up to our country ; and Christ (whoever be one) is still at the heavy end of this black tree, and so it is but as a feather to me. I need not run at leisure,^ because of a burden on my back ; my back never bare the like of it ; the more heavily crossed for Christ, the soul is still the lighter for the journey. Now, would to God that all cold-blooded, faint-hearted soldiers of Christ would look again to Jesus, and to His love ; and when they look, I would have them to look again and again, and fill themselves with beholding of Christ's beauty; and I dare say then that Christ would come into great court and request with many. The virgins would flock fast about the Bridegroom; they would embrace and take hold of Him, and not let Him go. But when I have spoken of Him, till my head rive, I have said just nothing. I may begin again. A Godhead, a Godhead is a world's wonder. Set ten thousand thousand new-made worlds of angels and elect men, and double them in number, ten thou- sand, thousand, thousand times ; let their heart and tongues be ten thousand thousand times more agile and large, than the heart and tongues of the seraphim that stand with six wings before Him (Isa. vi. 2), when they have said all for the glorify- ing and praising of the Lord Jesus, they have but spoken little ^ I am not obliged to run slowly. 366 LETTER CLXXXVIl. [1637. or nothing ; His love will abide all possible creatures praise. Oh, if I could wear this tongue to the stump, in extolling His highness ! But it is my daily-growing sorrow, that I am con- founded with His incomparable love, and that He doeth so great things for my soul, and hath got never yet anything of me worth the speaking of. Sir, I charge you, help me to praise Him ; it is a shame to speak of what He hath done for me, and what I do to Him again. I am sure that Christ hath many drowned dyvours ^ in heaven beside Him ; and when we are convened, man and angel, at the great day, in that fair last meeting, we are all but His drowned dyvours : it is hard to say who oweth Him most. If men could do no more, I would have them to wonder : if ye cannot be filled with Christ's love, we may be filled with wondering. Sir, I would that I could persuade you to grow sick for Christ, and to long after Him, and be pained with love for Himself. But His tongue is in heaven who can do it. To Him and His rich grace I recommend you. I pray you, pray for me, and forget not to praise. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Juva 17, 1637. ^* -"" CLXXXVIL— To fhe Lady Gaitoirth. [Lady Gaitgirth, or Isabel Blair, (laughter to John Blair of that ilk, by Grizel his wife, daughter to Robert, Lord Semple, was the wife of James Chalmers of Gaitgirth. To him she had five sons and five daughters. Mr. Fergushill of Ochiltree resided in the vicinity ; see Letter CXII. Her husband, to whom Ruther- ford expresses his obligations in the close of this letter, was a man of worth. He was made Sheriff-Principal of Ayrshire in 1632 ; and in 1633, he and Sir William Cunningham of Cunninghamhead represented Ayrshire in Parliament. Embracing the cause of the Covenant, he, in 1641, with Cassilis and Caprington, were sent as commissioners from the Scottish Parliament to Newcastle ; and in 1649 he had a troop in Colonel Robert Montgomery's Horse (Robertson's " AjTshire Families " ). His great-grandfather, James Chalmers of Gaitgirth, who lived at the time of the Reformation, was a very zealous reformer, and is described by Knox, Caldcrwood, and Spottiswood, as one of the boldest and most daring men of any who took part in that important revolution. The name is often written Gathgirth and Gadgirth. It is in the parish of Coylton, about four miles from Monkton. The modern mansion occupies the fine site of the old, on a wooded knoll that overhangs the river Ayr, at one point commanding a view of Arran and Goatt'ell. It is a small estate.] ^ Drowned over head and ears in His debt. 1637.] LETTER CLXXXVII. 367 {CHRIST UNCHANGEABLE, THOUGH NOT ALWAYS ENJOYED— HIS LOVE NEVER YET FULLY POURED OUT— HIMSELF HIS PEOPLE'S CAUTIONER.) I ISTKESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long to know how matters stand betwixt Christ and your soul, I know that ye find Him still the longer the better ; time cannot change Him in His love. Ye may yourself ebb and flow, rise and fall, wax and wane ; but your Lord is this day as He was yesterday. And it is your comfort that your salvation is not rolled upon wheels of your own making, neither have ye to do with a Christ of your own shaping. God hath singled out a Mediator (Ps. Ixxxix. 19), strong and mighty : if ye and your burdens were as heavy as ten hills or hells. He is able to bear you, and save you to the uttermost. Your often seeking to Him cannot make you a burden to Him. I know that Christ compassionateth you, and maketh a moan for you, in all your dumps, and under your downcastings ; but it is good for you that He hideth Himself sometimes. It is not niceness, dryness, nor coldness of love, that causeth Christ to withdraw, and slip in under a curtain and a vail, that ye cannot see Him ; but He knoweth that ye could not bear with upsails, a fair gale, a full moon, and a high spring-tide of His felt love, and always a fair summer-day and a summer-sun of a felt and possessed and embracing Lord Jesus. His kisses and His visits to His dearest ones are thin-sown. He could not let out His rivers of love upon His own, but these rivers would be in hazard of loosening a young plant at the root ; ^ and He knoweth this of you. Ye should, therefore, frist Christ's kindness, as to its sensible and full manifestations, till ye and He be above sun and moon. That is the country where ye will be enlarged for that love which ye dow not now contain. Cast the burden of your sweet babes upon Christ, and lighten your heart, by laying your all upon Him : He will be their God. I hope to see you up the mountain yet, and glad in the salvation of God. Frame yourself for Christ, and gloom not upon His cross. I find Him so sweet, that my love, suppose I would charge it to remove from Christ, would not obey me: His love hath stronger fingers than to let go its grips of us ' The river Ayr flows close to Gaitgirth ; so that, in time of flood, Lady Gaitgirth would often see an exemplification of what is alluded to, — the watei loosening the tree's roots. 368 LETTER CLXXXVIIL [1637. bairns, who cannot go but by such a hold as Christ. It is good that we want legs of our own, since we may borrow from Christ ; and it is our happiness that Christ is under an act of cautionary for heaven, and that Christ is booked in heaven as the principal debtor for such poor bodies as we are. I request you to give the laird, your husband, thanks for his care of me, in that he hath appeared in public for a prisoner of Christ. I pray and write mercy, and peace, and blessings to him and his. Grace, grace be with you for ever. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. K. CLXXXVIII.— To Mr. John Fergushill of Ochiltree. {DESPONDING VIEWS OF HIS OWN STATE— MINISTERIAL DILI- GENCE— CHRIST'S WOR TH— SELF-SEEKING. ) EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,— Grace, mercy and peace be to you. My longings and desires for a sight of the new-builded tabernacle of Christ again in Scotland, that tabernacle that came down from heaven, hath now taken some life again, when I see Christ making a mint to sow vengeance among His enemies. I care not, if this land be ripe for such a great, wonderful mercy ; but I know He must do it, whenever it is done, without hire. I find the grief of my silence, and my fear to be holden at the door of Christ's house, swelling upon me ; and the truth is, were it not that I am dawted now and then with pieces of Christ's sweet love and comforts, I fear I should have made an ill browst of this honourable cross, that I know such a soft and silly-minded body as I am is not worthy of. For I have little in me but soft- ness, and superlative and excessive apprehensions of fear, and sadness, and sorrow ; and often God's terrors do surround me, because Christ looketh not so favourably upon me as a poor witness would have Him. And I wonder how I have past a year and a quarter's imprisonment without shaming my sweet Lord, to whom I desire to be faithful ; and I think I shall die but even ^ minting and aiming to serve and honour my Lord Jesus. Few know how toom and empty I am at home ; but it is a part of marriage-love and husband-love, that my Lord Jesus goeth not to the streets with His chiding against me. It is but stolen and ^ Only just attempting. 1637.] LETTER CLXXXVIII. 369 concealed anger that 1 find and feel, and His glooms to me are kept under roof, that He will not have mine enemies hear what is betwixt me and Him, And, believe me, I say the truth in Christ, that the only gall and wormwood in my cup, and that which hath filled me with fear, hath been, lest my sins, that sun and moon and the Lord's children were never witness to, should have moved my Lord to strike me with dumb Sabbaths. Lord, pardon my soft and weak jealousies, if I be here in an error. My very dear brother, I would have looked for larger and more particular letters from you, for my comfort in this ; for your words before have strengthened me. I pray you to mend this ; and be thankful and painful, while ye have a piece or corner of the Lord's vineyard to dress. Oh, would to God that I could have leave to follow you, to break the clods ! But I wish I could command my soul to be silent, and to wait upon the Lord. I am sure that while Christ lives, I am well enough friend-stead. I hope that He will extend His kindness and power for me ; but God be thanked it is not worse with me than a cross for Christ and His truth. I know that He might have pitched upon many more choice and worthy witnesses, if He had pleased ; but I seek no more (be what timber I will, suppose I were made of a piece of hell) than that my Lord, in His infinite art, hew glory to His name, and enlargement to Christ's king- dom, out of me. Oh that I could attain to this, to desire that my part of Christ might be laid in pledge for the heightening of Christ's throne in Britain ! Let my Lord redeem the pledge ; or, if He please, let it sink and drown unredeemed. But what can I add to Him ? or what way can a smothered and borne-down prisoner set out Christ in open market, as a lovely and desirable Lord to many souls ? I know that He seeth to His own glory better than my ebb thoughts can dream of ; and that the wheels and paces of this poor distempered kirk are in His hands ; and that things shall roll as Christ will have them : — only, Lord, tryst the matter so, as Christ may be made a householder and lord again in Scotland, and wet faces for His departure may be dried at His sweet and much-desired welcome-home ! I see that, in all our trials, our Lord will not mix our wares and His grace overhead through other ; but He will have each man to know his own, that the like of me may say in my sufferings, " This is Christ's grace, and this is but my coarse stuff : This is free grace, and this is but nature and reason." We know what our legs would play us, if they should carry us through all our waters. 2 A 370 LETTER CLXXXVIIL [1637. And the least thing our Lord can have of us, is to know we are grace's dyvours, and that nature is of a base house and blood, and grace is better born, and of kin and blood to Christ, and of a better house. Oh that I were free of that idol which they call myself ; and that Christ were for myself ; and myself a decourted cypher, and a denied and forsworn thing ! But that proud thing, myself, will not play, except it ride up side for side with Christ, or rather have place before Him. 0 myself (another devil, as evil as the prince of devils !), if thou couldst give Christ the way, and take thine own room, which is to sit as low as nothing or corruption ! Oh, but we have much need to be ransomed and redeemed by Christ from that master-tyrant, that cruel and law- less lord, ouTself Nay, when I am seeking Christ, and am out of myself, I have the third part of a squint eye upon that vain, vain thing, myself, myself, and something of mine own. But I must hold here. I desire you to contribute your help, to see if I can be restored to my wasted and lost flock. I see not how it can be, except the lords would procure me a liberty to preach ; and they have reason. 1. Because the opposers and my adversaries have practised their new canons upon me, whereof one is, that no deprived minister preach, under the pain of excommunication. 2. Because my opposing of these canons was a special thing that incensed Sydserff against me.^ 3. Because I was judicially accused for my book against the Arminians, and commanded by the Chancellor to acknowledge that I had done a fault in writing against Dr. Jackson, a wicked Arminian.^ Pray for a room in the house to me. Grace, grace be (as it is) your portion. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R ^ Thomas Sydserflf, now Bishop of Galloway, was the chief insti-ument in procuring Rutherl'oid's banishment to Aberdeen. He was minister of the College Church, Edinburgh ; and afterwards successively Bishop of Brechin, Galloway, and Orkney. He early imbibed Arminian principles, and promoted the measures of Archbishop Laud, and was supposed to lean to Popery, it being generally believed that he wore under his coat a crucifix of gold. All this rendered him so unpopular, that, on appearing in the streets of Edinburgh in 1637, when gi-eat excitement existed on account of the Service-Book, he was attacked by the matrons of the city. He had equal reason to "cry to the gentlemen for help" under similar attacks in other places. At the Restoration of Charles II. he was the only surviving bishop in Scotland. He was then nominated to the see of Orkney, but survived hia promotion little more than a year. - Dr. Thomas Jackson, Dean of Peterborough, first held Calvinistic sentiment^ hut afterwards became an Arminian, — a change which recommended him to the tavour and patronage of Archbishop Laud. He was a man of talent, and the author 1637] LETTER CLXXXIX. 371 CLXXXIX.— To John Stuart, Provost of Ayr. [Letter CLXIIL] {HOPE FOR SCOTLAND — SELF-SUBMISSION — CHRIST HIMSELF IS SOUGHT FOR BY FAITH— STABILITY OF SALVATION— HIS WAYS.) [ORTHY SIR, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I long for the time when I shall see the beauty of the Lord in His house ; and would be as glad of it as of any sight on earth, to see the halt, the blind, and the lame, come back to Zion with supplications (Jer. xxxi. 8, 9), " Going and weeping, and seeking the Lord ; asking the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward" (Jer. 1. 4, 5); and to see the Woman travailing in birth, delivered of the man-child of a blessed reformation. If this land were humbled, I would look that our skies should clear, and our day dawn again ; and ye should then bless Christ, who is content to save your travel, and to give Himself to you, in pure ordinances, on this side of the sea. I know the mercy of Christ is engaged by promise to Scotland, notwithstanding He bring wrath, as I fear He will, upon this land. I am waiting on for enlargement, and half content that my faith bow, if Christ, while He bow it, keep it unbroken ; for who goeth through a fire without a mark or a scald ? I see the Lord making use of this fire, to scour His vessels from their rust. Oh that my will were silent, and "as a child weaned from the breasts " ! (Ps. cxxxi.). But, alas ! who hath a heart that will give Christ the last word in flyting, and will hear and not speak again ? Oh ! contestations and quarrelous replies (as a soon- saddled spirit, " I do well to be angry, even to the death ") (Jonah iv. 9) smell of the stink of strong corruption. 0 blessed soul, that could sacrifice his will, and go to heaven, having lost his will and made resignation of it to Christ ! I would seek no more than that Christ were absolute King over my will, and that my will were a sufferer in all crosses, without meeting Christ of various theological works, of which his " Commentary on the Apostles' Creed " ia the most important. Rutherford's book against the Arminians, here referred to, in which he treated Jackson with little ceremony, and which was one cause of his banishment by the High Conmiission Court, is entitled, " Exercitationes Apologeticae pro Diving GratiL" It was publifshed at Amsterdam in the beginning of the year 1636, and gained the author no small reputation abroad. Baillie, in giving an account of Rutherford's trial before the High Commission Court, says : "They were animate also against him for taxing Cameron in his book ; and most, for his indis- creet railing at Jackson" ("Letters and Journals"). 372 LETTER CLXXXIX. [1637. with such a word, " Why is it thus ? " I wish still, that my love had but leave to stand beside beautiful Jesus, and to get the mercy of looking to Him, and burning for Him, suppose that possession of Him were suspended, and fristed till my Lord fold together the leaves and two sides of the little shepherds' tents of clay. Oh, what pain is in longing for Christ, under an over- clouded and eclipsed assurance ! What is harder than to burn and dwine with longing and deaths of love, and then to have blanks and uninked paper for ^ assurance of Christ in real fruition or possession ? Oh how sweet were one line, or half a letter, of a written assurance under Christ's own hand ! But this is our exercise daily, that guiltiness shall overmist and darken assur- ance. It is a miracle to believe ; but, for a sinner to believe, is two miracles. But oh, what obligations of love are we under to Christ, who beareth with our wild apprehensions, in suffering them to nickname sweet Jesus, and to put a lie upon His good name ! If He had not been God, and if long-suffering in Christ were not like Christ Himself, we should long ago have broken Christ's mercies in two pieces, and put an iron bar on our salvation, , that mercy should not have been able to break or overleap. But long-suffering in God is God Himself ; and that is our salvation ; and the stability of our heaven is in God. He knew who said, "Christ in you the hope of glory" (Col. i. 27) (for our hope, and the bottom and pillars of it, is Christ-God !), that sinners are anchor-fast, and made stable in God. So that if God do not change (which is impossible), then my hope shall not fluctuate. Oh, sweet stability of sure-bottomed salvation ! Who could win heaven, if this were not so ? and who could be saved, if God were not God, and if He were not such a God as He is ? Oh, God be thanked that our salvation is coasted, and landed, and shored upon Christ, who is Master of winds and storms ! And what sea-winds can blow the coast or the laud out of its place ? Bulwarks are often casten down, but coasts are not removed : but suppose that were or might be, yet God cannot reel nor remove. Oh that we go from this strong and immoveable Lord, and that we loosen ourselves (if it were in our power) from Him ! Alas ! our green and young love hath not taken with Christ, being unacquainted with Him. He is such a wide, and broad, and deep, and high, and surpassing sweetness, that our love is too little for Him. But oh, if our love, little as it is, could take band with His great and huge sweetness, and ^ For ; x.e. instead of. 1 63 7-] LETTER CXC. 373 transcendent excellency ! Oh, thrice blessed, and eternally blessed are they, who are out of themselves, and above them- selves, that they may be in love united to Him ! I am often rolling up and down the thoughts of my faint and sick desires of expressing Christ's glory before His people. But I see not through the throng of impediments, and cannot find eyes to look higher ; and so I put many things in Christ's way to hinder Him, that I know He would but laugh at, and with one stride set His foot over them all. I know not if my Lord will bring me to His sanctuary or not ; but I know that He hath the placing of me, either within or without the house, and that nothing will be done without Him. But I am often thinking and saying within myself, that my days flee away, and I see no good, neither yet Christ's work thriving ; and it is like that the grave shall prevent ^ the answer of my desires of saving souls as I would. But, alas ! I cannot make right work of His ways ; I neither spell nor read my Lord's providence aright. My thoughts go away that I fear they meet not God ; for it is likely that God will not come the way of my thoughts. And I cannot be taught to crucify to Him my wisdom and desires, and to make Him King over my thoughts ; for I would have a princedom over my thoughts, and would boldly and blindly prescribe to God, and guide myself in a way of my own making. But I hold my peace here ; let Him do His will. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweetest Lord and Master, Abeedeen, 1637. S. H. CXC. — To Causluth {KirJcmahrech). [The name of the peiaou to whom this letter is addressed, was Robert Brown of Carsluth. He was a man of considerable property in the part of the country where Rutherford's lot was cast previous to his imprisonment. He must have died about the beginning of the year 1658, as on the 27th of April, that year, Thomas Brown of Carsluth is retoured heir of Robert Frown of Carsluth, his father, in the 7 mcrkland of Carsluth, etc. ("luq. Retor. Aborev. Kirkcud."). Brown of Carsluth was an ancient family. Gilbert Brown, abbot of New Abbey, near Dumfries, who disputed with John Welsh, was of the family. On the shore of Wigtown Bay, not far from Creetown, you see the old tower- like house, with a farm, well wooded. It is near the modern residence of Kirkdale.] 1 Come before. 374 LETTER CXC. [1637. {NECESSITY OF MAKING SURE OF SALVATION — VANITY OP THE WORLD — NOTHING WORTH HAVING BUT CHRIST — FLIGHT OF TIME.) UCH HONOUEED SIR,— I long to hear how your soul prospereth, I earnestly desire you to try how matters stand between your soul and the Lord. Think it no easy matter to take heaven by violence. Salvation cometh now to the most part of men in a night-dream. Tliere is no scarcity of faith now, such as it is ; for ye shall not now light upon the man who \vill not say he hath faith in Christ. But, alas ! dreams make no man's rights. , Worthy Sir, I beseech you in the Lord to give your soul no rest till ye have real assurance, and Christ's rights confirmed and sealed to your soul. The common faith, and country-holiness, and week-day zeal, that is among people, will never bring men to heaven. Take pains for your salvation ; for in that day, when ye shall see many men's labours and conquests and idol-riches lying in ashes, when the earth and all the works thereof shall be burnt with fire, oh how dear a price would your soul give for God's favour in Christ! It is a blessed thing to see Christ with up-sun, and to read over your papers and soul-accounts with fair day-light. It will not be time to cry for a lamp when the Bridegroom is entered into His chamber, and the door shut. Fy, fy upon blinded and debased souls, who are committing whoredom with this idol - clay, and hunting a poor, wretched, hungry heaven, a hungry breakfast, a day's meat from this hungry world, with the forfeiting of God's favour, and the drinking over their heaven {over the hoard, as men used to speak), for the laughter and sports of this short forenoon ! All that is under this vault of heaven, and betwixt us and death, and on this side of sun and moon, is but toys, night-visions, head-fancies, poor shadows, watery froth, godless vanities at their best, and black hearts, and salt and sour miseries, sugared over and con- fected with an hour's laughter or two, and the conceit of riches, honour, vain, vain court, and lawless pleasures. Sir, if ye look both to the laughing side and to the weeping side of this world, and if ye look not only upon the skin and colour of things, but into their inwards, and the heart of their excellency, ye shall see til at one look of Christ's sweet and lovely eye, one kiss of His fairest face, is worth ten thousand worlds of such rotten stuff, as the foolish sons of men set their hearts upon. Oh, Sir, turn, i637.] LETTER CXC. 375 turn your heart to the other side of things, and get it once free of these entanglements, to consider eternity, death, the clay bed, the grave, awsome judgment, everlasting burning quick in hell, where death would give as great a price (if there were a market, wherein death might be bought and sold) as all the world. Consider heaven and glory. But, alas ! why speak I of con- sidering those things, which have not entered into the heart of man to consider ? Look into those depths (without a bottom) of loveliness, sweetness, beauty, excellency, glory, good- ness, grace, and mercy, that are in Christ ; and ye shall then cry down the whole world, and all the glory of it, even when it is come to the summer-bloom ; and ye shall cry, " Up with Christ, up with Christ's Father, up with eternity of glory ! " Sir, there is a great deal less sand in your glass than when I saw you, and your afternoon is nearer even-tide now than it was. As a flood carried back to the sea, so doth the Lord's swift post, Time, carry you and your life with wings to the grave. Ye eat and drink, but time standeth not still ; ye laugh, but your day fleeth away ; ye sleep, but your hours are reckoned and put by hand. Oh how soon will time shut you out of the poor, and cold, and hungry inn of this life ! And then what will yesterday's short-born pleasures do to you, but be as a snow- ball melted away many years since ? Or worse ! for the memory of these pleasures useth to fill the soul with bitterness. Time and ex- perience will prove this to be true ; and dying men, if they could speak, would make this good. Lay no more on the creatures than they are able to carry. Lay your soul and your weights upon God. Make Him your only, only Best-beloved. Your errand to this life is to make sure an eternity of glory to your soul, and to match your soul with Christ. Your love, if it were more than all the love of angels in one, is Christ's due : other things worthy in themselves, in respect of Christ, are nob worth a windlestraw, or a drink of cold water. I doubt not but in death ye shall see all things more distinctly, and that then the world shall bear no more bulk than it is worth, and that then it shall couch and be contracted into nothing ; and ye shall see Christ longer, higher, broader, and deeper than ever He was. 0 blessed conquest, to lose all things, and to gain Christ ! I know not what ye have, if ye want Christ ! Alas ! how poor is your gain, if the earth were all yours in free heritage, holding it of no man of clay, if Christ be not yours ! Oh, seek all midses, lay all oars in the water, put forth all your power, and 376 LETTER CXCL [1637. bend all your endeavours, to put away and part with all things, that ye may gain and enjoy Christ. Try and search His word, and strive to go a step above and beyond ordinary professors ; and resolve to sweat more and run faster than they do, for salvation. Men's midway, oold, and wise courses in godliness, and their neighbour - like, cold, and wise pace to heaven, will cause many a man to want his lodging at night, and to lie in the fields. I recommend Christ and His love to your seeking ; and yourself to the tender mercy and rich grace of our Lord. Eemember my love in Christ to your wife. I desire her to learn to make her soul's anchor fast upon Christ Himself. Few are saved. Let her consider what joy the smiles of God in Christ will be, and what the love-kisses of sweet, sweet Jesus, and a welcome home to the New Jerusalem from Christ's own mouth will be to her soul, when Christ will fold together the clay tent of her body, and lay it by His hand for a time, till the fair morning of the general resurrection. I avouch before God, man, and angel, that I have not seen, nor can imagine, a lover to be comparable to lovely Jesus. I would not exchange or niffer Him with ten heavens. If heaven could be without Him, what could we do there ? Grace, grace be with you. Your soul's eternal well-wisher, Aberdeen, 1637. ®' -^ CXCI. — To Cassincarrie. [The mansion of Cassincarrie is a mile from Creetowu, in Kirkmabreck parisli. It stands near the road, just after you pass the stone quarries that help to build Liverpool. It is so directly opposite W^igtown, that from the windows we might suppose the godly proprietor looking across, and praying for the martyrs Margaret Wilson and Margaret M'Lachlan, in 1685.^ This correspondent of Rutherford was probably the son of John Mure of Cassincarrie, who was the second son of John Mure of Rowallan. Had he been John Mure of Cassincarrie, elder, he would now have been on the borders of ninety years of age, as his eldest brother, William Mure of Rowallan, died in 1616, aged sixty-nine ; and in that case, Rutherford would doubtless have enforced his solenm admonitions by pointed allusions to his ad- vanced period of life. His son, therefore, is very likely the person to whom this letter is addressed (Robertson's "Ayrshire Families," vol. iii. p. 361).] ^ Tlie exact historical truth of these two martyrdoms is attested beyond denial by the full record, entered only a few years after the event, in the Minutes of the Kirk-Session of Penninghani, with which the martyrs were connected. t637.] I.BTTER CXCI, 377 {EARNESTNESS ABOUT SAL VA TION— CHRIST HIMSELF TO BE SOUGHT.) |UCH HONOURED SIE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I have been too long in writing to you. I am confident that ye have learned to prize Christ, and His love and favour, more than ordinary professors who scarce see Christ with half an eye, because their sight is taken up with eyeing and liking the beauty of this over-gilded world, that promiseth fair to all its lovers, but in the push of a trial, when need is, can give nothing but a fair beguile. I know that ye are not ignoxant that men come not to this world, as some do to a market, to see and to be seen ; or as some come to behold a May-game, and only to behold, and to go home again. Ye come hither to treat with God, and to tryst with Him in His Christ for salvation to your soul, and to seek reconciliation with an angry, wrathful God, in a covenant of peace made to you in Christ ; and this is more than ordinary sport, or the play that the greatest part of the world give their heart unto. And, there- fore, worthy Sir, I pray you, by the salvation of your soul, and by the mercy of God, and your compearance before Christ, do this in sad earnest, and let not salvation be your by-work or your holy- day's talk only, or a work by the way. For men think that this may be done on three days' space on a feather bed, when death and they are fallen in hands together, and that with a word or two they shall make their soul-matters right. Alas ! this is to sit loose and unsure in the matters of our salvation. Nay, the seeking of this world, and of the glory of it, is but an odd ^ and by-errand that we may slip, so being we make salvation sure. Oh, when will men learn to be that heavenly-wise as to divorce from and free their soul of all idol-lovers, and make Christ the only, only One, and trim and make ready their lamps, while they have time and day ! How soon will this house skail, and the inn, where the poor soul lodgeth, fall to the earth ! How soon will some few years pass away ! and then, when the day is ended, and this life's lease expired, what have men of world's glory but dreams and thoughts ? Oh how blessed a thing is it to labour for Christ, and to make Him sure ! Know and try in time your holding of Him, and the rights and charters of heaven, and upon what terms ye have Christ and the Gospel, and what Christ is worth in your estimation, and how lightly ye esteem ^ To be attended to at a leisure moment. 378 LETTER CXCIL [1637. other things, and how dearly Christ ! I am sure, that if ye see Him in His beauty and glory, ye shall see Him to be all things, and that incomparable jewel of gold that ye should seek, howbeit ye should sell, wadset, and forfeit your few years' portion of this life's joys. 0 happy soul for evermore, who can rightly compare this life with that long-lasting life to come, and can balance the weighty glory of the one with the light golden vanity of the other ! The day of the Lord is now near-hand, and all men shall come out in their blacks and whites, as they are ; there shall be no borrowed lying colours in that day, when Christ shall be called Christ, and no longer nicknamed. Now men borrow Christ and His white colour, and the lustre and farding of Christianity ; but how many counterfeit masks will be burned, in the day of God, in the fire that shall burn the earth and the works that are on it ? And howbeit Christ have the hardest part of it now, yet in the presence of my Lord, whom I serve in the spirit, I would not niffer or exchange Christ's prison, bonds, and chains, with the gold chains and lordly rents, and smiling and happy-like heavens of the men of this world. I am far from thoughts of repenting because of my losses and bonds for Christ. I wish that all my adversaries were as I am, except my bonds. Worthy, worthy, worthy for evermore is Christ, for whom we should suffer pains like hell's pains ; far more the short hell that the saints of God have in this life. Sir, I wish that your soul may be more acquainted with the sweetness of Christ. Grace, grace be with you. Yours in his only Lord and Master, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R CXCIT. — To the Lady Cardoness. (GRACE— THE NAME OF CHRIST TO BE EXALTED— EVERYTHING BUT GOD FAILS US.) JISTEESS, — I beseech you in the Lord Jesus to make every day more and more of Christ ; and try your growth in the grace of God, and what new ground ye win daily on corruption. For travellers are day by day either advancing farther on, and nearer home, or else they go Dot right about to compass their journey. I think still the better and better of Christ. Alas ! I know not where to set Him, I would so fain have Him high ! I cannot set heavens above heavens till I were tired with number- I637-] LETTER CXCII. 379 ing, and set Him upon the highest step and storey of the highest of them all ; but I wish I could make Him great through the world, suppose my loss, and pain, and shame were set under the soles of His feet, that He might stand upon me, I request that you faint not ; because this world and ye are at yea and nay, and because this is not a home that laugheth upon you. The wise Lord, who knoweth you, will have it so, because He caste th a net for your love, to catch it and gather it in to Himself. Therefore, bear patiently the loss of children, and burdens, and other discontentments, either within or with- out the house : your Lord in them is seeking you, and seek ye Him. Let none be your love and choice, and the flower of your delights, but your Lord Jesus. Set not your heart upon the world, since God hath not made it your portion ; for it will not fall to you to get two portions, and to rejoice twice, and to be happy twice, and to have an upper heaven, and an under heaven too. Christ our Lord, and His saints, were not so ; and, there- fore, let go your grip of this life, and of the good things of it : I hope that your heaven groweth not hereaway. Learn daily both to possess and miss Christ, in His secret bridegroom-smiles. He must go and come, because His infinite wisdom thinketh it best for you. We shall be together one day. We shall not need to borrow light from sun, moon, or candle. There shall be no complaints on either side, in heaven. There shall be none there, but He and we, the Bridegroom and the bride ; devils, temptations, trials, desertions, losses, sad hearts, pain, and death, shall be all put out of play ; and the devil must give up his office of tempting. Oh, blessed is the soul whose hope hath a face looking straight out to that day. It is not our part to make a treasure here ; anything, under the covering of heaven, which we can build upon, is but ill ground and a sandy founda- tion. Every good thing, except God, wanteth a bottom, and cannot stand its lone ; how then can it bear the v/eight of us ? Let us not lay a load on a windlestraw. There shall nothing find my weight, or found my happiness, but God. I know that all created power would sink under me, if I should lean down upon it ; and, therefore, it is better to rest on God, than to sink or fall ; and we weak souls must have a bottom and a being- place, for we cannot stand our lone. Let us then be wise in our choice, and choose and wale our own blessedness, which is to trust in the Lord. Each one of us hath a whore and idol, besides our Husband Christ ; but it is our folly to divide our 38o LETTER CXCIII. [1637. narrow and little love ; it will not serve two. It is best then to hold it whole and together, and to give it to Christ ; for we get double interest for our love, when we lend it to, and lay it upon Christ ; and we arc sure, besides, that the stock cannot perish. Now I can say no more. Eemember me. I have God's right to that people ; howbeit by the violence of men, stronger than I, I am banished from you, and chased away. The Lord give you mercy in the day of Christ. It may be that God will clear my sky again ; howbeit there is small appearance of my deliverance. But let Him do with me what seemeth good in His own eyes. I am His clay ; let my Potter frame and fashion me as He pleaseth. Grace be with you. Your lawful and loving pastor, Aberdeen, 1637. S. li. CXCIII.— To Sibylla Macadam. [See notice, Letter CXLI.] {CHRIST S BEAUTY AND EXCELLENCE.) jISTEESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I cau bear witness in my bonds, that Christ is still the longer the better ; and no worse, yea, inconceivably better than He is (or can be) called. I think it half a heaven to have my fill of the smell of His sweet breath, and to sleep in the arms of Christ my Lord, with His left hand under my head and His right hand embracing me. There is no great reckoning to be made of the withering of my flower, in comparison of the foul and manifest wrongs done to Christ. Nay, let never the dew of God lie upon my branches again, let the bloom fall from my joy, and let it wither, let the Almighty blow out my candle, so being the Lord might be great among Jews and Gentiles, and His oppressed church delivered. Let Christ fare well, suppose I should eat ashes. I know that He must be sweet Himself, when His cross is so sweet. And it is the part of us all, if we marry Himself, to marry the crosses, losses, and reproaches also, that follow Him. For mercy foUoweth Christ's cross. His prison, for beauty, is made of marble and ivory ; His chains, that are laid on His prisoners, are golden chains ; and the sighs of the prisoners of hope are perfumed with comforts, the like whereof cannot be bred or found on this side of sun and moon. Follow on after His love ; tire not of Christ, but come in, and see His beauty and excellency, and feed your soul upon Christ's sweetness. This world is not yours, 1637.] LETTER CXCIV. 381 neither would I have your heaven made of such metal as mire and clay. Ye have the choice and wale of all lovers in heaven or out of heaven, when ye have Christ, the only delight of God His Father. Climb up the mountain with joy, and faint not ; for time will cut off the men who pursue Christ's followers Our best things here have a worm in them ; our joys, besides God, in the inner half are but woes and sorrows. Christ, Christ is that which our love and desires can sleep sweetly and rest safely upon. Now the very God of peace establish you in Christ. Help a prisoner with your prayers, and entreat that our Lord would be pleased to visit me with a sight of His beauty in His house, as He has sometimes done. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. °* ■"" CXCIV.— To Mr. Hugh Henderson, Minister of Dairy, Ayrshire. ( THE WA YS OF PROVIDENCE—BELIE VI NG PA TIENCE. ) EVEEEND AND DEAE BEOTHEE,— Who knoweth but the wind may turn into the west again, upon Christ and His desolate bride in this land ; and that Christ may get His summer by course again ? For He hath had ill-weather this long time, and could not find law or justice for Himself and His truth these many years. I am sure the wheels of this crazed and broken kirk run all upon no other axle-tree, nor is there any other to roll them, and cog them, and drive them, than the wisdom and good pleasure of our Lord. And it were a just trick and glorious of never-sleeping Providence, to bring our brethren's darts, which they have shot at us, back upon their own heads. Suppose they have two strings to their bow, and can take one as another faileth them, yet there are more than three strings upon our Lord's bow ; and, besides. He cannot miss the white that He shooteth at. I know that He shuffleth up and down in His hand the great body of heaven and earth ; and that kirk and commonwealth are, in His hand, like a stock of cards, and that He dealeth the play to the mourners of Zion, and to those that say, " Lie down, that we may go over you," at His own sovereign pleasure : and I am sure that Zion's adversaries, in this play, shall not take up their own stakes again. Oh how sweet a thing is it to trust in Him! When Christ hath sleeped out His sleep (if I may speak so of Him who is the Watchman of Israel, that neither slumbereth 382 LETTER CXCIV. ' [1637. nor sleepeth), and His own are tried, He will arise as a strong man after wine, and make bare His holy arm, and put on vengeance as a cloak, and deal vengeance, thick and double, amongst the haters of Zion. It may be that we may see Him sow and send down maledictions and vengeances as thick as drops of rain or hail upon His enemies ; for our Lord oweth them a black day, and He useth duly to pay His debts. Neither His friends and followers, nor His foes and adversaries shall have it to say, " That He is not faithful and exact in keeping His word." I know of no bar in God's way but Scotland's guiltiness ; and He can come over that impediment, and break that bar also, and then say to guilty Scotland, as He said, " Not for your sakes " (Ezek. xxxvi. 22, 23), etc. On- waiting had ever yet a blessed issue ; and to keep the word of God's patience, keepeth still the saints dry in the water, cold in the fire, and breathing and blood- hot in the grave. What are prisons of iron walls, and gates of brass, to Christ ? Not so good as fail dykes, fortifications of straw, or old tottering walls. If He give the word, then chains will fall off the arms and legs of His prisoners. God be thanked, that our Lord Jesus hath the tutoring of king, and court, and nobles ; and that He can dry the gutters and the mires in Zion, and lay causeways to the temple with the carcases of bastard lord-prelates and idol shepherds. The corn on the housetops got never the husbandman's prayers, and so is seen ^ on it, for it filleth not the hand of mowers. Christ, and truth, and innocency, worketh even under the earth ; and verily there is hope for the righteous. We see not what conclusions pass in heaven anent all the affairs of God's house. We need not give hire to God to take vengeance of His enemies, for justice worketh without hire. Oh that the seed of hope would grow again, and come to matur- ity ! and that we would importune Christ, and double our knocks at His gate, and oast our cries and shouts over the wall, that He might come out, and make our Jerusalem the praise of the whole earth, and give us salvation for walls and bulwarks ! If Christ bud, and grow green, and bloom, and bear seed again in Scotland, and His Father send Him two summers in one year, and bless His crop, what cause have we to rejoice in the free salvation of our Lord, and to set up our banners in the name of our God ! Oh that He would hasten the confusion of the leprous strumpet, the mother and mistress of abominations in the earth, and take graven images out of the way, and come in with the Jews in * Is left there unreapeJ ; Ps. cxxix. 8. \ 1637.] LETTER CXCV. 383 troops, and agree with His old outcast and forsaken wife, and take them again to His bed of love. Grace be with you. Yours, in our Master and Lord, Abeedeen, 1637. S* -^ CXCV. — To the Lady Largirie. [She was wife of the proprietor of Castermadie, iu the Stewartry of Kirkcud- bright. The place was called also Largero, or Largerie, in the parish of Twynholm, near Kirkcudbright.] {CHRIST THE EXCLUSIVE OBJECT OF LOVE— PREPARATION FOR DEATH.) flSTEESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I ex- hort you in the Lord, to go on in your journey to heaven ; and to be content with such fare by the way as Christ and His followers have had before you ; for they had always the wind on their faces, and our Lord hath not changed the way to us for our ease, but will have us follow- ing our sweet Guide. Alas, how doth sin clog us in our journey, and retard us ! What fools are we, to have a by-good, or any other love, or match, to our souls, beside Christ ! It were best for us, like ill bairns, who are best heard at home, to seek our own home, and to sell our hopes of this little clay inn and idol of the earth, where we are neither well summered nor well wintered. Oh that our souls would so fall at odds with the love of this world, as to think of it as a traveller doth of a drink of water, which is not any part of his treasure, but goeth away with the using ! for ten miles' journey maketh that drink to him as nothing. Oh that we had as soon done with this world, and could as quickly despatch the love of it ! But as a child cannot hold two apples in his little hand, but the one putteth the other out of its room, so neither can we be masters and lords of two loves. Blessed were we, if we could make ourselves master of that invaluable treasure, the love of Christ ; or rather suffer our- selves to be mastered and subdued to Christ's love, so as Christ were our " all things," and all other things our nothings, and the refuse of our delights. Oh let us be ready for shipping, against the time our Lord's wind and tide call for us ! Death is the last thief, that will come without din or noise of feet, and take our souls away, and we shall take our leave of time, and face eternity ; and our Lord will lay together the two sides of this earthly tabernacle, and fold us, and lay us by, as a man 384 LETTER CXCVI. [1637. layeth by clothes at night, and put the one half of us in a house of clay, the dark grave, and the other half of us in heaven or hell. Seek to be found of your Lord in peace, and gather in your flitting, and put your soul in order ; for Christ will not give a nail-breadth of time to our little sand-glass. Pray for Zion, and for me, His prisoner, that He would be pleased to bring me amongst you again, full of Christ, and fraughted and loaden with the blessing of His Gospel. G-race, grace be with you. Yours, in his only Lord and Master, Aberdeen, 1637. S. E, CXCVI. — To Earlston, the Younger. {SUFFERINGS— HOPE OF FINAL DELIVERANCE— THE BELIEVER IN SAFE KEEPING— THE RECOMPENSE MARRED BY TEMP- TATIONS.) ORTHY AND DEARLY BELOVED IN OUR LORD, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I long to hear from you. I remain still a prisoner of hope, and do think it service to the Lord to wait on still with submission, till the Lord's morning sky break, and His summer day dawn. Eor I am persuaded that it is a piece of the chief errand of our life (on which God sent us for some years, down to this earth, among devils and men, the firebrands of the devil, and temptations), that we might suffer for a time here amongst our enemies ; otherwise He might have made heaven to wait on us, at our coming out of the womb, and have carried us home to our country, without letting us set down our feet in this knotty and thorny life. But seeing a piece of suffering is carved to every one of us, less or more, as infinite "Wisdom hath thought good, our part is to harden and habituate our soft and thin- skinned nature to endure fire and water, devils, lions, men, losses, wo hearts, as those that are looked upon by God, angels, men, and devils. Oh, what folly is it, to sit down and weep upon a decree of God, that is both deaf and dumb to our tears, and must stand still as unmoveable as God who made it ! For who can come behind our Lord, to alter or better what He hath decreed and done ? It were better to make windows in our prison, and to look out to God and our country, heaven, and to cry like fettered men who long for the King's free air, " Lord, let Thy kingdom come ! Oh, let the Bridegroom come ! And, 0 day, 1637.] LETTER CXCVL 385 0 fair day, 0 everlasting summer day, dawn and shine out, break out from under the black night sky, and shine ! " I am per- suaded that, if every day a little stone in the prison- walls were broken, and thereby assurance given to the chained prisoner, lying under twenty stone of irons upon arms and legs, that at length his chain should wear into two pieces, and a hole should be made at length as wide as he might come safely over to his long-desired liberty ; he would, in patience, wait on, till time should hole the prison-wall and break his chains. The Lord's hopeful prisoners, under their trials, are in that case. Years and months will take out, now one little stone, then another, of this house of clay ; and at length time shall win out the breadth of a fair door, and send out the imprisoned soul to the free air in heaven. And time shall file off, by little and little, our iron bolts which are now on legs and arms, and outdate and wear our troubles threadbare and holey, and then wear them to nothing ; for what I suffered yesterday, I know, shall never come again to trouble me. Oh that we could breathe out new hope, and new submission every day, into Christ's lap ! For, certainly, a weight of glory well weighed, yea, increasing to a far more exceeding and eternal weight, shall recompense both weight and length of light, and clipped, and short-dated crosses. Our waters are but ebb, and come neither to our chin, nor to the stopping of our breath. I may see (if I would borrow eyes from Christ) dry land, and that near. Why then should we not laugh at adversity, and scorn our short-born and soon-dying temptations ? I rejoice in the hope of that glory to be revealed, for it is no uncertain glory which we look for. Our hope is not hung upon such an un- twisted thread as, " I imagine so," or " It is likely ; " but the cable, the strong towe of our fastened anchor, is the oath and promise of Him who is eternal verity. Our salvation is fastened with God's own hand, and with Christ's own strength, to the strong stoup of God's unchangeable nature, " T am the Lord, I change not ; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed " (Mai. iii. 6). We may play, and dance, and leap upon our worthy and immoveable Eock. The ground is sure and good, and will bide hell's brangling, and devils' brangling, and the world's assaults. Oh, if our faith could ride it out against the high and proud waves and winds, when our sea seemeth to be all on fire ! Oh, how oft do I let my grips go ! I am put to swimming and half sinking. I find that the devil hath the advantage of the ground 2 B 386 LETTER CXCVIL [1637. in this battle ; for he fighteth on known ground, in our corrupt nature. Alas ! that is a friend near of kin and blood to himself, and will not fail to fall foul upon us. And heuce it is, that He who saveth to the uttermost, and leadeth many sons to glory, is still righting my salvation ; and twenty times a-day I ravel my heaven, and then I must come with my ill-ravelled work to Christ, to cumber Him (as it were) to right it, and to seek again the right end of the thread, and to fold up again my eternal glory with His own hand, and to give a right cast of His holy and gracious hand to my marred and spilled salvation. Certainly it is a cumbersome thing to keep a foolish child from falls, and broken brows, and weej)ing for this and that toy, and rash running, and sickness, and bairns' diseases ; ere he win through them all, and win out of the mires, he costeth meikle black cumber and fashery to his keepers. And so is a believer a cumbersome piece of work, and an ill-ravelled hesp (as we use to say), to Christ. But God be thanked ; for many spilled salva- tions, and many ill-ravelled hesps hath Christ mended, since first He entered Tutor to lost mankind. Oh, what could we bairns do without Him ! How soon would we mar all ! But the less of our weight be upon our own feeble legs, and the more that we be on Christ the strong Eock, the better for us. It is good for us that ever Christ took the cumber of us ; it is our heaven to lay many weights and burdens upon Christ, and to make Him all we have, root and top, beginning and ending of our salvation. Lord, hold us here. Now to this Tutor, and rich Lord, I recommend you. Hold fast till He come ; and remember His prisoner. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his and your Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R CXCVIL— To Mr. William Dalqleish. [Letter CXVIL] [THOUGHTS AS TO GOD'S ARRANGEMENTS— WINNING SOULS TO BE SUPREMELY DESIRED— LONGINGS FOR CHRIST.) EVEREND AND DEAR BKOTHER,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I received your letter. I bless our high and only wise Lord, who hath broken the snare that men had laid for you ; and I hope that now He will keep you in His house, in despite of the powers of hell. Who knoweth, but the streets of our Jerusalem shall yet 1637.] LETTER CXCVn. 387 be filled with young men, and with old men, and boys, and women with child ? and that they shall plant vines in the moun- tains of Samaria ? I am sure that the wheels, paces, and motions of this poor church are tempered and ruled, not as men would, but according to the good pleasure and infinite wisdom of our only wise Lord. I am here, waiting in hope that my innocency, in this honour- able cause, shall melt this cloud that men have casten over me. I know that my Lord had His own quarrels against me, and that my dross stood in need of this hot furnace. But I rejoice in this, that fair truth, beautiful truth (whose glory my Lord cleareth to me more and more), beareth me company ; that my weak aims to honour my Master, in bringing guests to His house, now swell upon me in comforts ; that I am not afraid to want a witness in heaven; and that it was my joy to have a crown put upon Christ's head in that country. Oh, what joy would I have, to see the wind turn upon the enemies of the cross of Christ, and to see my Lord Jesus restored, with the voice of praise, to His own free throne again ! and to be brought amongst you, to see the beauty of the Lord's house ! I hope that country will not be so silly as to suffer men to pluck you away from them ; and that ye will use means to keep my place empty, and to bring me. back again to the people to whom I have Christ's right, and His church's lawful calling. Dear brother, let Christ be dearer and dearer to you. Let the conquest of souls be top and root, flower and bloom of your joys and desires, on this side of sun and moon. And in the day when the Lord shall pull up the four stakes of this clay tent of the earth, and the last pickle of sand shall be at the nick of falling down in your watch-glass, and the Master shall call the servants of the vineyard to give them their hire, ye will esteem the bloom of this world's glory like the colours of the rainbow, that no man can put into his purse and treasure. Your labour and pains will then smile upon you. My Lord now hath given me experience (howbeit weak and small) that our best fare here is hunger. We are but at God's by-board in this lower house ; we have cause to long for supper-time, and the high table, up in the high palace. This world deserveth nothing but the outer court of our soul. Lord, hasten the marriage-supper of the Lamb ! I find it still peace to give up with this present world, as with an old decourted and c&'it off lover. My bread and drink in it is not so much worth, 388 LETTER CXCVIIL [1637 that I should not loathe the inns, and pack up my desires for Christ, whom ^ I have sent out to the feckless creatures in it. Grace, grace be with you. Your affectionate brother, and Christ's prisoner, Abekdeen, 1637. S. E. CXCVIII.— ro tU Laird of Callt. [Of John Lennox, Laird of Cally, near Girthon, in the Stewartry of Kirkcud- bright, to whom this letter is addressed, little is now known. He must have died previous to the 26th of .January 1647, as at that date John Lennox of Cally is retoured heir of John Lennox of Cally, his father, "in the 20 pound land of Calieger- town, the 10 merk land of Burley, with mill and fishings of the same, within the parish of Girthon." The modern mansion of Cally may be said, with its woods, to overhang the village of Gatehouse, which also is entirely modern, and got its name from the fact that the lodge, or gatehouse, of Cally was the first house built on that s])ot. The old house has disappeared, any remnant of it being quite hid by the fine old trees of the mansion. It is properly in the parish of Girthon, but borders on Anwoth. The land of " Calie-gerton," mentioned in the above exti-act, is evidently "Cally iu Girthon." GateJiouse is one-half in Anwoth, and one-half in Girthon. The old parish church of Girthon is very like that of Anwoth, and more ivy-covered. It is in shape the same, 64 feet by 20. The martyr Lennox is buried close to the door ; a slab marks the spot. It is 2^ miles from Gatehouse. The Free Church of Anwoth is in Gatehouse, the church being on the Girthon side of the stream (the Fleet), and the niause on the Anwoth side. The Fleet (which is navigable by very small vessels thus far) was formerly called Avon, "the water;" and this is the syllable that appears iu both Girth-ON and An-AVOTH, — the former signifying "the village (or enclosure) on the water ; " and the latter, " the ford of the water ; " unless " woth " be for ^^ worth," village. The meaning of "Cally" seems to be "wood," from the Gaelic, "coille."] {SPIRITUAL SLOTH— DANGER OF COMPROMISE— SELF, THE ROOT OF ALL SIN— SELF-RENUNCIATION.) |UCH HONOUKED SIE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I long to hear how your soul prospereth. I have that confidence that your soul mindeth Christ and salvation, I beseech you, in the Lord, to give more pains and diligence to fetch heaven than the country-sort of lazy professors, who think their own faith and their own god- liness, because it is their own, best ; and content themselves with a coldrife custom and course, with a resolution to summer and winter in that sort of profession which the multitude and the times favour most ; and are still shaping and clipping and carving their faith, according as it may best stand with their summer sun and a whole skin ; and so breathe out hot and cold in God's matters, according to the course of the times. This is their compass which they sail towards heaven by, instead of a better. ^ Pack up for Christ the desires which I used to send out to the worthless things of earth. 1637.] LETTER CXCVIII. 389 Worthy and dear Sir, separate yourself from such, and bend yourself to the utmost of your strength and breath, in running fast for salvation ; and, in taking Christ's kingdom, use violence. It cost Christ and all His followers sharp showers and hot sweats, ere they won to the top of the mountain ; but still our soft nature would have heaven coming to our bedside when we are sleeping, and lying down with us that we might go to heaven in warm clothes. But all that came there found wet feet by the way, and sharp storms that did take the hide off their face, and found tos and fros, and ups and downs, and many enemies by the way. It is impossible that a man can take his lusts to heaven with him ; such wares as these will not be welcome there. Oh, how loath are we to forego our packalds and burdens, that hinder us to run our race with patience ! It is no small work to displease and anger nature, that we may please God. Oh, if it be hard to win one foot, or half an inch, out of our own will, out of our own wit, out of our own ease and worldly lusts (and so to deny our- self, and to say, " It is not I but Christ, not I but grace, not I but God's glory, not I but God's love constraining me, not I but the Lord's word, not I but Christ's commanding power as King in me ! "), oh, what pains, and what a death is it to nature, to turn me, myself, my lust, my ease, my credit, over into, " My Lord, my Saviour, my King, and my God, my Lord's will, my Lord's grace ! " But, alas ! that idol, that whorish creature, my- self, is the master-idol we all bow to. What made Eve miscarry ? and what hurried her headlong upon the forbidden fruit, but that wretched thing herself? What drew that brother-murderer to kill Abel ? That wild ^ himself. What drove the old world on to corrupt their ways ? Who, but themselves, and their own pleasure ? What was the cause of Solomon's falling into idolatry and multiplying of strange wives ? What, but himself, whom he would rather pleasure than God ? What was the hook that took David and snared him first in adultery, but his self-lust ? and then in murder, but his self-credit and self-honour ? What led Peter on to deny his Lord ? Was it not a piece of himself, and self-love to a whole skin ? What made Judas sell his Master for thirty pieces of money, but a piece of self-love, idolizing of avari- cious self? What made Demas to go off the way of the Gospel, to eml)race this present world ? Even self-love and love of gain for himself, Every man blameth the devil for his sins; but the * Untamed, itnraly. 390 LETTER CXCIX. [1637. great devil, the house-devil of every man, the house-devil that eateth and lieth in every man's bosom, is that idol that killetli all, himself. Oh, blessed are they who can deny themselves, and put Christ in the room of themselves ! Oh, would to the Lord that I had not a myself, but Christ ; nor a my lust, but Christ ; nor a my case, but Christ ; nor a my honour, but Christ ! 0 sweet word ! " / live no more, but Christ liveth in me ! " (Gal. ii. 20). Oh, if every one would put away himself, his own self, his own ease, his own pleasure, his own credit, and his own twenty things, his own hundred things, which he setteth up, as idols, above Christ ! Dear Sir, I know that ye will be looking back to your old self, and to your self-lust, and self-idol, which ye set up in the lusts of youth above Christ. Worthy Sir, pardon this my freedom of love ; God is my withess, that it is out of an earnest desire after your soul's eternal welfare that I use this freedom of speech. Your sun, I know, is lower, and your evening sky and sunsetting nearer, than when I saw you last : strive to end your talk before night, and to make Christ yourself, and to acquaint your love and your heart with the Lord. Stand now by Christ and His truth, when so many fail foully, and are false to Him. I hope that ye love Him and His truth : let me have power with you, to confirm you in Him. I think more of my Lord's sweet cross than of a crown of gold, and a free kingdom lying to it. Sir, I remember you in my prayers to the Lord, according to my promise. Help me with your prayers, that our Lord would be pleased to bring me amongst you again, with the Gospel of Christ. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweetest Lord and Master, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R CXCIX. — To John Gobdon of Gardojiess, the Yormger. {DANGERS OF YOUTH— EARLY DECISION.) EAELY BELOVED IN OUR LORD,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I long exceedingly to hear of the case of your soul, which hath a large share both of my prayers and careful thoughts. Sir, remember that a precious treasure and prize is upon this short play that ye are now upon. Even the eternity of well or wo to your soul standeth upon the little point of your well or ill-employed, short, 1637-1 LETTER CXCIX. 391 and swift-posting sand-glass. Seek the Lord while He may be found ; the Lord waiteth upon you Your soul is of no little price. Gold or silver of as much bounds as would cover the highest heaven round about, cannot buy it. To live as others do, and to be free of open sins that the world crieth shame upon, will not bring you to heaven. As much civility and country discretion as would lie between you and heaven will not lead you one foot, or one inch, above condemned nature. And therefore take pains upon seeking of salvation, and give your will, wit, humour, the green desires of youth's pleasures off your hand, to Christ. It is not possible for you to know, till experience teach you, how dangerous a time youth is. It is like green and wet timber. When Christ casteth fire on it, it taketh not fire. There is need here of more than ordinary pains, for corrupt nature hath a good back-friend of youth. And sinning against light will put out your candle, and stupify your conscience, and bring upon it more coverings and skin, and less feeling and sense of guiltiness ; and when that is done, the devil is like a mad horse that hath broken his bridle, and runneth away with his rider whither he listeth. Learn to know that which the apostle knew, the deceitfulness of sin. Strive to make prayer, and reading, and holy company, and holy conference your delight ; and when delight cometh in, ye shall by little and little smell the sweetness of Christ, till at length your soul be over head and ears in Christ's sweetness. Then shall ye be taken up to the top of the mountain with the Lord, to know the ravishments of spiritual love, and the glory and excellency of a seen, revealed, felt, and embraced Christ : and then ye shall not be able to loose yourself off Christ, and to bind your soul to old lovers. Then, and never till then, are all the paces, motions, walkings, and wheels of your soul in a right tune, and in a spiritual temper. But if this world and the lusts thereof be your delight, I know not what Christ can make of you ; ye cannot be metal to be a vessel of glory and mercy. As the Lord liveth, thousand thousands are beguiled with security, because God, and wrath, and judgment are not terrible to them. Stand in awe of God, and of the warnings of a checking and rebuking conscience. Make others to see Christ in you, moving, doing, speaking, and thinking. Your actions will smell of Him, if He be in you. There is an instinct in the new-born babes of Christ, like the instinct of nature that leads birds to build their nests, and bring 392 LETTER CXCIX. [1637. forth their young, and love such and such places, as woods, forests, and wildernesses, better than other places. The instinct of nature maketh a man love his mother-country above all countries ; the instinct of renewed nature, and supernatural grace, will lead you to such and such works, as to love your country above, to sigh to be clothed with your house not made with hands, and to call your borrowed prison here below a borrowed prison, and to look upon it servant-like and pilgrim- like. And the pilgrim's eye and look is a disdainful -like, discontented cast of his eye, his heart crying after his eye, " Fy, fy, this is not like my country." I recommend to you the mending of a hole, and reforming of a failing, one or other, every week ; and put off a sin, or a piece of it, as anger, wrath, lust, intemperance, every day, that ye may more easily master the remnant of your corruption. God hath given you a wife ; love her, and let her breasts satisfy you ; and, for the Lord's sake, drink no waters but out of your own cistern. Strange wells are poison. Strive to learn some new way against your corruption from the man of God, Mr. W. D. [William Dalgleish], or other servants of God. Sleep not sound, till ye find yourself in that case that ye dare look death in the face, and durst hazard your soul upon eternity. I am sure that many ells and inches of the short thread of your life are by-hand since I saw you ; and that thread hath an end ; and ye have no hands to cast a knot, and add one day, or a finger-breadth, to the end of it. When hearing, and seeing, and the outer walls of the clay house shall fall down, and life shall render the besieged castle of clay to death and judgment, and ye find your time worn ebb, and run out, what thoughts will you then have of idol-pleasures, that possibly are now sweet ? What bud or hire would you then give for the Lord's favour ? and what a price would you then give for pardon ? It were not amiss to think, " What if I were to receive a doom, and to enter into a furnace of fire and brimstone ? WJmt if it come to this, that I shall have no portion but utter darkness ? And what if I be brought to this, to be banished from the presence of God, and to be given over to God's Serjeants, the devil and the power of the second death ? " Put your soul, by supposition, in such a case, and consider what horror would take hold of you, and what ye would then esteem of pleasing yourself in the course of sin. Oh, dear Sir, for the Lord's sake awake to live righteously, and love your poor soul ! And after ye have seen this my 1637.] LETTER CC. ' 393 letter, say with yourself, " The Lord will seek an account of this warning which I have received." Lodge Christ in your family. Eeceive no stranger hireling as your pastor. I bless your children. Grace be with you. Your lawful and loving pastor, Aberdeen, 1637. CO.— To Robert Gordon, Bcdlie of Ayr. [Letter CXXIX.] (Tir£ MISERY OF MERE WORLDLY HOPE— EARNESTNESS ABOUT SAL VA TION.) OETHY SIE, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I long to hear from you. Our Lord is with His afflicted kirk, so that this Burning Bush is not consumed to ashes. I know that submissive on- waiting for the Lord will at length ripen the joy and deliverance of His own, who are truly blessed on-waiters. What is the dry and miscarrying hope of all them who are not in Christ, but confusion and wind? Oh, how pitifully and miserably are the children of this world beguiled, whose wine cometh home to them water, and their gold brass and tin ! And what wonder, that hopes builded upon sand should fall and sink ? It were good for us all to abandon the forlorn, and blasted, and withered hope which we have had in the creature ; and let us henceforth come and drink water out of our own well, even the fountain of living waters, and build ourselves and our hope upon Christ our Rock. But, alas ! that that natural love which we have to this borrowed home that we were born in, and that this clay city, the vain earth, should have the largest share of our heart ! Our poor, lean, and empty dreams of confidence in something beside God are no farther travelled than up and down the noughty ^ and feckless creatures. God may say of us, as He said, "Ye rejoice in a thing of nought" (Amos vi. 13). Surely we spin our spider's web with pain, and build our rotten and tottering house upon a lie, and falsehood, and vanity. Oh, when will we learn to have thoughts higher than the sun and moon ! and learn our joy, hope, confidence, and our soul's desires to look up to our best country, and to look down to clay tents, set up for a night's lodging or two in this uncouth land! and laugh at our childish conceptions and imaginations that suck our joy out of creatures — wo, sorrow, losses, and grief ! ' 1 In which there is nothing. Other oditionq read "naughty," i.e. evil. 394 LETTER CC. o(>Z1- O sweetest Lord Jesus ! 0 fairest Godhead ! 0 Flower of men and angels ! why are we such strangers to, and far-off beholders of, Thy glory ? Oh, it were our happiness for evermore, that God would cast a pest, a botch, a leprosy, upon our part of this great whore, a fair and well-busked world, that clay might no longer deceive us ! But oh that God may burn and blast our hope here-away, rather than that our hope should live to burn us ! Alas ! the wrong side of Christ (to speak so). His black side, His suffering side, His wounds, His bare coat. His wants, His wrongs, the oppressions of men done to Him, are turned towards men's eyes ; and they see not the best and fairest side of Christ, nor see they His amiable face and His beauty, that men and angels wonder at. Sir, lend your thoughts to these things, and learn to contemn this world, and to turn your eyes and heart away from be- holding the masked beauty of all things under time's law and doom. See Him who is invisible, and His invisible things. Draw by the curtain, and look in with liking and longing to a kingdom undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved for you in the heaven. This is worthy of your pains, and worthy of your soul's sweating, and labouring, and seeking after, night and day. Fire will fly over the earth and all that is in it ; even destruction from the Almighty. Fy, fy, upon that hope, that shall be dried up by the root ! Fy upon the drunken night-bargains, and the drunken and mad covenants that sinners make with death and hell after cups, and when men's souls are mad and drunken with the love of this lawless life. They think to make a nest for their hopes, and take quarters and conditions of hell and death, that they shall have ease, long life, peace ; and in the morning, when the last trumpet shall awake them, then they rue the block. It is time, and high time, for you to think upon death and your accounts, and to remember what ye are, and where ye will be before the year of our Lord 1700. I hope ye are thinking upon this. Pull at your soul, and draw it aside from the company that it is with and round, and whisper into it news of eternity, death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. ^- ^''- 1637-] LETTER CCI, 395 CCT. — To Alexander Gordon of Earhton. {CHRIST'S KINGDOM TO BE EXALTED OVER ALL; AND MORE PAINS TO BE TAKEN TO WIN FARTHER UNTO HIM.) UCH HONOURED SIR, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — It is Kke, if ye, the gentry and nobility of this nation, be "men in the streets" (as the word speaketh Jer. v. 1) for the Lord, that He will now deliver His flock, and gather and rescue His scattered sheep, from the hands of cruel and rigorous lords that have ruled over them with force. Oh that mine eyes might see the moon-light turn to the light of the sun ! But I still fear that the quarrel of a broken covenant in Scotland standeth before the Lord. However it be, I avouch it before the world, that the tabernacle of the Lord shall again be in the midst of Scotland, and the glory of the Lord shall dwell in beauty, as the light of many days in one, in this land. Oh, what could my soul desire more (next to my Lord Jesus), while I am in this flesh, but that Christ and His kingdom might be great among Jews and Gentiles ; and that the isles, and amongst them overclouded and darkened Britain, might have the glory of a noon-day's sun ! Oh that I had anything (I will not except my part in Christ) to wadset' or lay in pledge, to redeem and buy such glory to my highest and royal Prince, my sweet Lord Jesus ! My poor little heaven were well bestowed, if it could stand a pawn for ever to set on high the glory of my Lord. But I know that He needeth not wages nor hire at my hand ; yea, I know, if my eternal glory could weigh down in weight its lone, all the eternal glory of the blessed angels, and of all the spirits of just and perfect men, glorified and to be glorified, oh, alas ! how far am I engaged to forego it for, and give it over to Christ, so being He might thereby be set on high above ten thousand thousand millions of heavens, in the conquest of many, many nations to His kingdom ! Oh that His kingdom would come ! Oh that all the world would stoop before Him ! 0 blessed hands that shall put the crown upon Christ's head in Scotland ! But, alas ! I can scarce get leave to ware my love on Him. I can find no ways to lay out my heart upon Christ ; and my love, that I with my soul bestow on Him, is like to die upon my hand. And I think it no bairn's play to be hungered with Christ's love. To love Him and to want Him, wanteth little of hell. I am sure that He knoweth how my joy would swell upon me, from a little well to a great 3Q6 letter CCL ' [1637. sea, to have as much of His love, and as wide a soul answerable to comprehend it, till I cried, " Hold, Lord ! no more." But I find that He will not have me to be mine own steward, nor mine own carver. Christ keepeth the keys of Christ (to speak so), and of His own love; and He is a wiser distributor than I can take up. I know that there is more in Him than would make me run over like a coast-full sea. I were happy for ever- more to get leave to stand but beside Christ and His love, and to look in ; suppose I were interdicted of God to come near- hand, touch, or embrace, kiss, or set to my sinful head, and drink myself drunk with that lovely thing. God send me that which I would have ! For now I verily see, more clearly than before, our folly iu drinking dead waters, and in playing the whore with our soul's love upon running-out wells, and broken sherds of crea- tures of yesterday, which time will unlaw with the penalty of losing their being and natural ornaments. Oh, when a soul's love is itching (to speak so) for God ; and when Christ, in His boundless and bottomless love, beauty, and excellency, cometh and riibbeth up and exciteth that love, what can be heaven, if this be not heaven ? I am sure that this bit feckless, narrow, and short love of regenerated sinners was born for no other end, than to breat-he, and live, and love, and dwell in the bosom and betwixt the breasts of Christ. Where is there a bed or a lodging for the saint's love, but Christ ? Oh that He would take our- selves off our hand ! for neither we nor the creatures can be either due conquest, or lawful heritage, to love. Christ, and none but Christ, is Lord and Proprietor of it. Oh, alas, how pitiful is it, that so much of our love goeth by Him ! Oh, but we be wretched masters of our soul's love. I know it to be the depth of bottomless and unsearchable providence, that the saints are suffered to play the whore from God, and that their love goeth a-hunting, when God knoweth that it shall roast nothing of that at supper time (Pro v. xii. 2 7). The renewed would have it otherwise ; and why is it so, seeing our Lord can keep us without nodding, tottering, or reeling, or any fall at all ? Our desires, I hope, shall meet witli perfection ; but God will have our sins an office-house for God's grace, and hath made sin a matter of an unlaw and penalty for the Son of God's blood. And howbp.it sin should be our sorrow, yet there is a sort of acquiescing and resting upon God's dispensation required of us, that there is such a thing in us as sin, whereupon mercy, forgiveness, healing, curing, in our sweet Physician, may lind a field to work upon. 1637.] LETTER ceil. 397 Oh, what a deep is here, that created wit cannot take up ! How- ever matters go, it is our happiness to win new ground daily in Christ's love, and to purchase a new piece of it daily, and to add conquest to conquest, till our Lord Jesus and we be so near each other, that Satan shall not draw a straw or a thread betwixt us. And, for myself, I have no greater joy, in my well-favoured bonds for Christ, than that I know time will put Him and me together ; and that my love and longing hath room and liberty, amidst my bonds and foes (whereof there are not a few here of all ranks), to go to visit the borders and outer coasts of the country of my Lord Jesus, and see, at least afar off and darkly, the country which shall be mine inheritance, which is the due of my Lord Jesus, both through birth and conquest. I dare avouch to all that know God, that the saints know not the length and largeness of the sweet earnest, and of the sweet green sheaves before the harvest, that might be had on this side of the water, if we would take more pains : and that we all go to heaven with less earnest, and lighter purses of the hoped-for sum, than other- wise we might do, if we took more pains to win further in ' jn Christ, in this pilgrimage of our absence from Him. Grace, grace and glory be your portion. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abeedbbn, 1637. S. K. ecu. — To the Laird of Cally. {YOUTH A PRECIOUS SEASON— CHRISTS BEAUTY.) lOETHY SIE, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I have been too long, I confess, in writing to you. My suit now to you, in paper, since I have no access to speak to you as formerly, is, that ye would lay the foundation sure in your youth. When ye begin to seek Christ, try, I pray you, upon what terms ye covenant to follow Him, and lay your account what it may cost you ; that neither summer nor winter, nor well nor woe, may cause you change your Master, Christ. Keep fair to Him, and be honest and faithful, that He find not a crack in you. Surely ye are now in the throng of temptations. When youth is come to its fairest bloom, then the devil, and the lusts of a deceiving world, and sin, are upon horse- back, and follow with upsails. If this were not so, Paul needeth not to have written to a sanctified and holy youth, Timothy (a 398 LETTER CCII. [1637. faithful preacher of the Gospel), to flee the lusts of youth. Give Christ your virgin love ; you cannot put your love and heart into a better hand. Oh ! if ye knew Him, and saw His beauty, your love, your liking, your heart, your desires, would close with Hira, and cleave to Him. Love, by nature, when it seeth, cannot but cast out its spirit and strength upon amiable objects, and good things, and things love-worthy ; and what fairer thing than Christ ? 0 fair sud, and fair moon, and fair stars, and fair flowers, and fair roses, and fair lilies, and fair creatures ; but 0 ten thousand thousand times fairer Lord Jesus ! Alas, I wronged Him in making the comparison this way ! 0 black sun and moon, but 0 fair Lord Jesus ! 0 black flowers, and black lilies and roses, but 0 fair, fair, ever fair Lord Jesus ! 0 all fair things black and deformed, without beauty, when ye are beside that fairest Lord Jesus ! 0 black heaven, but 0 fair Christ ! O black angels, but surpassingly fair Lord Jesus ! I would seek no more to make me happy for evermore, but a thorough and clear sight of the beauty of Jesus, my Lord. Let my eyes enjoy His fairness, and stare Him for ever in the face, and I have all tl. - can be wished. Get Christ rather than gold or silver; seek Christ, howbeit ye should lose all things for Him. They take their marks by the moon,^ and look asquint, in looking to fair Christ, who resolve for the world and their ease, and for their honour, and court, and credit, or for fear of losses and a sore skin, to turn their backs upon Christ and His truth. Alas, how many blind eyes and squint lookers look this day in Scotland upon Christ's beauty, and they see a spot in Christ's fair face ! Alas, they are not worthy of Christ who look this way upon Him, and see no beauty in Him why they should desire Him ! God send me my fill of His beauty, if it be possible that my soul can be full of His beauty here. But much of Christ's beauty needeth not abate the eager appetite of a soul (sick of love for Himself) to see Him in the other world, where He is seen as He is. I am glad, with all my heart, that ye have given your greenest morning-age to this Lord Jesus. Hold on, and weary not ; faint not. Kesolve upon suffering for Christ ; but fear not ten days' tribulation, for Christ's sour cross is sugared with comforts, and hath a taste of Christ Himself. I esteem it to be my glory, my joy, and my crown, and I bless Him for this honour, to be yoked with Christ, and married to Him in suffering, ^ A proverb for being changeable, or for judging by imperfect evidence. 1 63 7. J LETTER CCIII. 399 who therefore was born, and therefore came into the world, that He might bear witness to the truth. Take pains, above all things, for salvation ; for without running, fighting, sweating, wrestling, heaven is not taken. Oh, happy soul, that crosseth nature's stomach, and delighteth to gain that fair garland and crown of glory ! What a feckless loss is it for you to go through this wilderness, and never taste sin's sugared pleasures ! What poorer is a soul to want pride, lust, love of the world, and the vanities of this vain and worthless world ? Nature hath no cause to weep at the want of such toys as these. Esteem it your gain to be an heir of glory. Oh, but this is an eye-look to a fair rent ! The very hope of heaven, under troubles, is like wind and sails to the soul, and like wings, when the feet come out of the snare. Oh, for what stay we here ? Up, up, after our Lord Jesus ! This is not our rest, nor our dwelling. What have we to do in this prison, except only to take meat and house- room in it for a time ? Grace, grace be with you. Your soul's well-wisher, and Christ's prisoner, Aberdeen, 1637. S. E. CCIII. — To William Gordon at Kenmure. [This maybe the same coriespondeut as he to whom Letter LXXII. is addressed. He may have been on a visit to Kenmure.] {TESTIMONY TO CHRIST'S WORTH— MARKS OF GRACE IN CONVICTION OF SIN AND SPIRITUAL CONFLICT.) Sy EAR BROTHEE, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I have been long in answering your letter, which came in good time to me. It is my aim and hearty desire, that my furnace, which is of the Lord's kindling, may sparkle fire upon standers-by, to the warming of their hearts with God's love. The very dust that falleth from Christ's feet, His old ragged clothes. His knotty and black cross, are sweeter to me than kings' golden crowns, and their time-eaten pleasures. I should be a liar and false witness, if I would not give my Lord Jesus a fair testimonial with my whole soul. My word, I know, will not heighten Him : He needeth not such props under His feet to raise His glory higli. But, oh that I could raise Him the height of heaven, and tlie breadth and length of ten heavens, in the estimation of all His young lovers ! for we have all shapen 400 LETTER CCIIl. [1637 Christ but too narrow and too short, and formed conceptions of His love, in our conceit, very unworthy of it. Oh that men were taken and catched with His beauty and fairness ! they would give over playing with idols, in which there is not half room for the love of one soul to expatiate itself. And man's love is but heart- hungered in gnawing upon bare bones, and sucking at dry breasts. It is well wared ^ they want who will not come to Him who hath a world of love, and goodness, and bounty for all. We seek to thaw our frozen hearts at the cold smoke of the short-timed creature, and our souls gather neither heat, nor life, nor light ; for these cannot give to us what they have not in themselves. Oh that we could thrust in through these thorns, and this throng of bastard lovers, and be ravished and sick of love for Christ ! "We should find some footing, and some room, and sweet ease for our tottering and witless souls in our Lord. I wish it were in my power, after this day, to cry down all love but the love of Christ, and to cry down all gods but Christ, all saviours but Christ, all well-beloveds but Christ, and all soul-suitors and love- beggars but Christ. Ye complain that ye want a mark of the sound work of grace and love in your soul. For answer, consider for your satisfac- tion (till God send more) 1 John iii. 14. And as for your com- plaint of deadness and doubtings, Christ will, I hope, take your deadness and you together. They are bodies full of holes, run- ning boils, and broken bones which need mending, that Christ the Physician taketh up : whole vessels are not for the Mediator Christ's art. Publicans, sinners, whores, harlots, are ready market-wares for Christ. The only thing that will bring sinners within a cast of Christ's drawing arm is that which ye write of, some feeling of death and sin. That bringeth forth complaints ; and, therefore, out of sense complain more, and be more acquaint with all the cramps, stitches, and soul-swoonings that trouble you The more pain, and the more night-watching, and the more fevers, the better. A soul bleeding to death, till Christ were sent for, and cried for in all haste, to come and stem the blood, and close up the hole in the wound with His own hand and balm, were a very good disease, when many are dying of a whole heart. We have all too little of hell-pain and terrors that way ; nay,^ God send me such a hell as Christ hath promised to make a heaven of. Alas ! I am not come that far on the way, as to say in sad earnest, " Lord Jesus, great and sovereign Physician, here is a ^ Their poverty is well -deserved who. ^ ' May " God send me ? i637-] LETTER CCIV. 401 pained patient for Thee." But the thing that we mistake is the want of victory. We hold that to be the mark of one that hath no grace. Nay, say I, the want of fighting were a mark of no grace ; but I shall not say the want of victory is such a mark. If my fire and the devil's water make crackling like thunder in the air, 1 am the less feared ; for where there is fire, it is Christ's part, which I lay and bind upon Him, to keep in the coal, and to pray the Father that my faith fail not, if I in the meantime be wrestling, and doing, and fighting, and mourning. For prayer putteth not Paul's devil (the thorn in the flesh, and the messenger of Satan) to the door at first ; but our Lord will have them to try every one, and let Paul fend for himself, by God's help, God keeping the stakes, and moderating the play. And ye do well not to doubt, if the ground-stone be sure, but to try if it be so ; for there is great odds between doubting that we have grace, and trying if we have grace. The former may be sin, but the latter is good. We are but loose in trying our free-holding of Christ, and making sure work of Christ. Holy fear is a searching of the camp, that there be no enemy within our bosom to betray us, and a seeing that all be fast and sure. For I see many leaky vessels fair before the wind, and professors who take their conversion upon trust, and they go on securely, and see not the under- water, till a storm sink them. Each man had need twice a-day, and oftener, to be riped, and searched with candles. Pray for me, that the Lord would give me house-room again, to hold a candle to this dark world. — Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord and Master, Abekdeek, 1637. S. R. CCIV. — To Margaret Follerton. (CHRIST, AND NOT CREATURES, WORTHY OF ALL LOVE— LOVE NOT TO BE MEASURED BY FEELING.) ISTRESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I am glad that ever ye did cast your love on Christ ; fasten more and more love every day on Him. Oh, if I had a river of love, a sea of love that would never go dry, to bestow upon Him ! But, alas, the pity ! Christ hath beauty for me, but I have not love for Him. Oh, what pain is it to see Christ in His beauty, and then to want a heart and love for Him ! But I see that want we must, till Christ lend us, never to be paid again. Oh that He would empty these vaults 2 c 402 LETTER CCV. ' [1637. and lower houses (of these poor souls) of bastard and base lovers, which we follow ! And verily, I see no object in heaven or in earth that I could ware this much of love upon, that I have upon Christ. Alas ! that clay, and time, and shadows, run away with our love, which is ill spent upon any but upon Christ. Each fool at the day of judgment will seek back his love from the creatures, when he shall see them all in a fair fire. But they shall prove irresponsal debtors ; and, therefore, it is best here, that we look ere we leap, and look ere we love. I find now under His cross, tliat I would fain give Him more than I have to give Him, if giving were in my power ; but I rather wish Him my heart, than give Him it. Except He take it, and put Himself in possession of it (for I hope ^ He hath a market-right to me, since He hath ransomed me), I see not how Christ can have me. Oh that He would be pleased to be more homely with my soul's love, and to come into my soul, and take His own ! But when He goeth away and hideth Himself, all is to me that I had of Christ as if it had fallen into the sea- bottom. Oh that I should be so fickle in my love, as to love Him only by the eyes and the nose ! that is, to love Him only in as far as fond and foolish sense carrieth me, and no more ; and when 1 see not, and smell not, and touch not, then I have all to seek. I cannot love 'perqueer, nor rejoice ;pcrqueer. But this is our weakness, till we be at home, and shall have aged men's stomachs to bear Christ's love. Pray for me, that our Lord would bring me back to you, with a new blessing of the Gospel of Christ. I forget not you. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. ° •^• GOV. — For the Right Honourable my Lady Viscountess op Kknmure. {DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY TO THE KINGDOM— CHRISTS LOVE.) %Y VERY NOBLE AND DEAR LADY,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — The Lord hath brought me safely to Aberdeen : I have gotten lodging in the hearts of all I meet with. No face that hath not smiled upon nie ; only the indwellers of this town are dry, cold, and general. They consist of Papists, and men of Gallio's metal, firm in no 1 No doubt Ho hath — q.d. I trust none denies. 1 637-] LETTER CCV. 403 religion ; and it is counted no wisdom here to countenance a confined and silenced prisoner. But the shame of Christ's cross shall not be my shame. Queensberry's attempt seemeth to sleep, because the Bishop of Galloway was pleased to say to the treasurer that I had committed treason ; which word blunted the treasurer's borrowed zeal. So I thank God, who will not have me to anchor my soul upon false ground, or upon flesh and blood ; it is better to be fastened within the vail. I find my old challenges reviving again, and my love often jealous of Christ's love, when I look upon my own guiltiness. And I verily think that the world hath too soft an opinion of the gate to heaven, and that many shall get a blind and sad beo'uile for heaven. For there is more ado than a cold and frozen " Lord, Lord." It must be a way narrower and straiter than we conceive ; for " the righteous shall scarcely be saved." It were good to take a more judicious view of Christianity ; for I have been doubting if ever I knew any more of Christianity than the letters of the name. I will not lie on my Lord. I find often much joy and unspeakable comfort in His sweet presence, who sent me hither ; and I trust, this house of my pilgrimage shall be my palace, my garden of delights, and that Christ will be kind to poor sold Joseph, who is separated from his brethren. I would be some- times too hot, and too joyful, if the heart-breaks at the re- membrance of sin, and fair, fair feast-days with King Jesus, did not cool me, and sour my sweet joys. Oh, how sweet is the love of Christ ! and how wise is that love ! But let faith frist and trust a while ; it is no reason sons should offend, that the father giveth them not twice a-year hire, as he doth to hired servants. Better that God's heirs live upon lioipc, than upon hire. Madam, your Ladyship knoweth what Christ hath done to have all your love ; and that He alloweth not His love ^ upon your dear child. Keep good quarters with Christ in your love. I verily think that Christ hath said, " I must needs-force have Jean Campbell for Myself ; " and He hath laid many oars in the water, to fish and hunt home-over your heart to heaven. Let Him have His prey, He will think you well won, when He hath gotten you. It is good to have recourse often, and to have the door open, to our stronghold. For the sword of the Lord, the sword of the Lord is for Scotland ! And yet two or three berries shall be left in the top of the olive-tree. • ' Does net permit you to give the child that love which belongs to Himself. 404 LETTER CCVL [1637 If a word can do my brother good in his distress, I know your Ladyship will be willing and ready to speak it, and more also. Now the only wise God, and your only, only One, He who dwelt in The Bush, be with you, I write many kisses and many blessings in Christ to your dear child: the blessings of his father's God, the blessings due to the fatherless and the widow, be yours and his. Your Ladyship's in his only, only Lord Jesus, Abeedeen. ^- ^^' POSTSCRIPT. Madam, be pleased at a fit time to try my Lord of Lorn's mind, if his Lordship would be pleased that I dedicate another work against the Arminians, to his honourable name.^ For howbeit I would compare no patron to his Lordship, and though I have sufficient experience of his love, yet it is possible that his Lordship may think it not expedient at this time. But I expect your Ladyship's answer, and I hope that your Ladyship will be plain. CCVI. — F(yr the Right Honourable my Lady Viscountess op Kenmure. {THE USE OF SUFFERINGS— FEARS UNDER THEM— DESIRE THAT CHRIST BE GLORIFIED.) I|ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Ladyship. — I long to hear from you, and that dear child ; and for that cause I trouble you with letters. I am for the present thinking the sparrows and the swallows, that build their nests in Anwoth, blessed birds. The Lord hath made all my congregation desolate. Alas ! I am oft at this, " Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me." 0 earth, earth, cover not the violence done to me. I know it is my faithless jealousy, in this my dark night, to take a friend for a foe ; yet hath not my Lord made any plea with me. I chide with Him, but He giveth me fair words. Seeing my sins and the sins of my youth deserved strokes, how am I obliged to my Lord, who amongst many crosses hath given me a waled and chosen cross, to suffer for the name of my Lord Jesus ! Since I must have chains. He would put golden chains on me, watered over with many consolations. Seeing I must have sorrow (for I ^ " What his Lordship's answer Avas, we are not informed ; but Rutherford did not publish any book at that time, or for some years afterwards, though it is not improbable that, while under confmement, he devoted himself much to theological study " (Murray's " Life of Rutherford "). t637.] LETTER CCVI. 405 have sinned, 0 Preserver of mankind !), He hath v;aled out for me joyful sorrow, — honest, spiritual, and glorious sorrow. My crosses come through mercy and love's fingers, from the kind heart of a Brother, Christ my Lord ; and, therefore, they must be sweet and sugared. Oh, what am I ! such a lump, such a rotten mass of sin, to be counted a bairn worthy to be nurtured, and stricken with the best and most honourable rod in my Father's house, the golden rod, wherewith my eldest Brother, the Lord, Heir of the inheritance, and His faithful witnesses were stricken withal. It would be thought that I should be thankful and rejoice. But my beholders and lovers in Christ have eyes of flesh, and have made my one to be ten, and I am somebody in their books. My witness is above, that there are armies of thoughts within me saying the contrary, and laughing at their wide mistake. If my inner side were seen, my corruption would appear : I would lose and forfeit love and respect at the hands of any that love God : pity would come in the place of these. Oh, if they would yet set me lower, and my well-beloved Christ higher ! I would I had grace and strength of my Lord to be joyful, and con- tentedly glad and cheerful, that God's glory might ride, and openly triumph before the view of men, angels, devils, earth heaven, hell, sun, moon, and all God's creatures, upon my pain and sufferings; providing always, that I felt not the Lord's hatred and displeasure. But I fear that His fair glory be but soiled in coming through such a foul creature as I am. If I could be the sinless matter of glorifying Christ, howbeit to my loss, pain, sufferings, and extremity of wretchedness, how would my soul rejoice ! But I am far from this. He knoweth that His love hath made me a prisoner, and bound me hand and foot ; but it is my pain that I cannot win loose, nor get loose hands and a loosed heart, to do service to my Lord Jesus, and to speak His love. I confess that I have neither tongue nor pen to do it. Christ's love is more than my praises, and above the thoughts of the angel Gabriel, and all the mighty hosts that stand before the throne of God. I think shame, I am sad and cast down, to think that my foul tongue, and my polluted heart, should come in to help others to sing aloud the praises of the love of Christ : all I dow do, is to wish the choir to grow throng,^ and to grow in the extolling of Christ. Wo, wo is me for my guiltiness seen to few ! My 1 Grow into a multitude. 4o6 LETTER CCVL [1637. hidden wounds, still bleeding within me, are before the eyes of no man ; but if my sweet Lord Jesus were not still bathing, washing, balming, healing, and binding them up, they should rot, and break out to my shame. I know not what will be the end of my suffering. I have seen but the one side of my cross ; what will be the other side, He knoweth who hath His fire in Zion. Let Him lead me, if it were through hell. I [thank my Lord, that my on-waiting and holding my peace as I do (to see what more Christ will do to me), is my joy. Oh, if my ease, joy, pleasure for evermore, were laid in wadset and in pledge, to buy praises to Christ ! But I am far from this. It is easy for a poor soul, in the deep debt of Christ's love, to spit farther ^ than he dow leap or jump, and to feed upon broad wishes that Christ may be honoured ; but in performance I am stark nought. I have nothing, nothing to give Christ but poverty. Except He would comprise and arrest my soul and my love (oh, oh, if He would do that !), I have nothing for Him. He may indeed seize upon a dyvour's person, soul and body ; but he hath no goods for Christ to meddle with. But how glad would my soul be, if He would forfeit my love and never give it me again ! Madam-, I would be glad to hear that Christ's claim to you were still the more, and that you were still going forward, and that you were nearer Him. I do not honour Christ myself ; but I wish all others to make sail to Christ's house. I would I could invite you to go into your Well-beloved's house-of-wine, and that upon my word ; you would then see a new mystery of love in Christ that you never saw before. I am somewhat encouraged in that your Ladyship is not dry and cold to Christ's prisoner, as some are. I hope it is put up in my Master's count-book. I am not much grieved that my jealous Husband break in pieces my idols, that either they dare not or will not do for me. My Master needeth not their help, but they had need to be that serviceable as to help Him. Madam, I have been that bold as to put you and that sweet child into the prayers of Mr. Andrew Cant, Mr. James Martin, the Lady Leyes, and some others in this country that truly love Christ. Be pleased to let me hear how the child is. The blessings that came " upon the head of Joseph, and on the top of the head of him who was separated from his brethren," and the " good- will of Him who dwelt in The Bush," be seen upon * To show a wish to get at more than he can accomplish, 1637.] LETTER CCVII. 40? him and you. Madam, I can say, by some little experience, more now than before of Christ to you. I am still upon this, that if you seek, there is a pose, a hidden treasure, and a gold mine in Christ, you never yet saw. Then come and see. Thus recommending you to God's dearest mercy, I rest, your own, in his sweet Lord Jesus, at all obedience, S. R. My Lady Marischall ^ is very kind to me, and her son also. Aberdeen, Junt 17, 1637. CCVII. — To John Henderson, in Rusco. [He was probably tenant in the farm of Rusco, which is at the foot oX the hill Castramont, a farm on the property of Gordon of Rusco.] {PRACTICAL HINTS.) OVING FRIEND, — I earnestly desire your salvation. Know the Lord and seek Christ. You have a soul that cannot die : see for a lodging to your poor soul ; for that house of clay will fall. Heaven or nothing ! either Christ or nothing ! Use prayer in your house, and set your thoughts often upon death and judgment. It is dangerous to be loose in the matter of your salvation. Few are saved ; men go to heaven in ones and twos, and the whole world lieth in sin. Love your enemies, and stand by the truth which I have taught you, in all things. Fear not men, but let God be your fear. Your time will not be long : make the seeking of Christ your daily task. Ye may, when ye are in the fields, speak to God. Seek a broken heart for sin ; for without that there is no meeting with Christ. I speak this to your wife, as well as to yourself. I desire your sister, in her fears and doubtings, to 1 Lady Marischall, whose maiden name was Margaret Erskine, being the eldest daughter of John Erskine, seventh Earl of Mar, by Lady Margaret Stewart daughter to Esme, Duke of Lennox, was the wife of William, sixth Earl ot Marischall. In 1635 she became a widow, his Lordsliip having died on the 28th of October that year, aged about fifty. She had to him seven children, four sons and three daughters (Douglas' "Peerage"). Lady Marischall's son, whose kmdness also Rutherford gratefully records, was William, who succeeded his father. He was a devoted adherent of Charles II. ; and entering with zeal into the engagement in 1648 for the King's liberation, commanded a re<^iment of horse at the battle of Preston, where the Scottish army was routed by the "English. When he and others of the King's friends, who had assembled at Alyth in 1650 for the support of the royal cause, were surprised by a large body of English horse, the Earl and some of his friends were sent prisoners to the Tower of London by sea, where he was kept for a long time. He died in 1670, at his house of Inverrinaie. 4o8 LETTER CCVIIl [1637. fasten her grips on Christ's love. I forbid her to doubt ; for Christ loveth her, and hath her name written in His book. Her salvation is fast coming. Christ her Lord is not slow in coming, nor slack in His promise. Grace be with you. Your loving pastor, Aberdeen. ^' l^* CCVIIl.— To Mr. Alexander Colvillb of Blair. [Letter XCIX.] {REGRETS FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO PREACH— LONGINGS FOR CHRIST.) UCH HONOUEED SIR,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I would desire to know how my Lord took my letter, which I sent him, and how he is. I desire nothing, but that he may be fast and honest to my royal Master and King. I am well every way, all praise to Him in whose books I must stand for ever as His debtor ! Only my silence paineth me. I had one joy out of heaven, next to Christ my Lord, and that was to preach Him to this faithless generation ; and they have taken that from me. It was to me as the poor man's one eye, and they have put out that eye. I know that the violence done to me, and His poor bereft bride, is come up before the Lord ; .and, suppose that I see not the other side of my cross, or what my Lord will bring out of it, yet I believe that the vision shall not tarry, and that Christ is on His journey for my deliverance. He goeth not slowly, but passeth over ten moun- tains at one stride. In the meantime, I am pained with His love, because I want real possession. When Christ cometh, He stayeth not long ; but certainly, the blowing of His breath upon a poor soul is heaven upon earth ; and when the wind turneth into the north, and He goeth away, I die, till the wind change into the west, and He visit His prisoner. But He holdeth me not often at His door. I am richly repaid for suffering for Him. Oh, if all Scotland were as I am, except my bonds ! Oh, what pain I liave, because I cannot get Him praised by my sufferings ! Oh that heaven (v,dthin and without) and the earth were paper, and all the rivers, fountains, and seas were ink, and I able to write all the paper (within and without) full of His praises, and love, and excellency, to be read by man and angel ! Nay, this is little ; I owe my heaven to Christ ; and do desire, liowbeit I 1 63 7-] LETTER CCIX, 409 should never enter in at the gates of the new Jerusalem, to send my love and my praises over the wall to Christ. Alas, that time and days lie betwixt Him and me, and adjourn our meeting ! It is my part to cry, " Oh, when will the night be past, and the day dawn, that we shall see one another ! " Be pleased to remember my service to my Lord, to whom I wrote ; and show him that, for his affection to me, I cannot but pray for him, and earnestly desire that Christ miss him not out of the roll of those who are His witnesses, now when His kingly honour is called in question. It is his honour to hold up Christ's royal train, and to be an instrument to hold the crown upon Christ's head. Show him, because I love his true honour and standing, that this is my earnest desire for him. Now I bless you ; and the prayers of Christ's prisoner come upon you; and His sweetest presence, whom ye serve in the Spirit, accompany you. Yours, at all obliged obedience in Christ, Aberdeen, June 23, 1637. ^' ^' tiS^k CCIX. — To his Reverend and Dear Brother, Mr. John Nevay. [Letter CLXXIX.] CHRIST S SURPASSING EXCELLENCY— HIS CAUSE IN SCOTLAND.) Y EEVEREND AND DEAE BEOTHER,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I have exceedingly many whom I write to, else I would be kinder in paper. I rejoice that my sweet Master hath any to back Him. Thick, thick may my royal King's court be. Oh that His kingdom might grow ! It were my joy to have His house full of guests. Except that I have some cloudy days, for the most part I have a king's life with Christ. He is all perfumed with the powders of the merchant ; He hath a king's face, and a king's smell. His chariot, wherein He carrieth His poor prisoner, is of the wood of Lebanon ; it is paved with love. Is not that soft ground to walk or lie on ? I think better of Christ than ever I did ; my thoughts of His love grow and swell on me. I never write to any of Him, so much as I have felt. Oh, if I could write a book of Christ, and of His love ! Suppose I were made 410 LETTER CCX.- [1637. white ashes, and burnt for this same truth that men count but as knots of straw, it were my gain, if my ashes could proclaim the worth, excellency, and love of my Lord Jesus. There is much telling of Christ : I give over the weighing of Him ; heaven would not be the beam of a balance to weigh Him in. What eyes be on me, or what wind of tongues be on me, I care not : let me stand in this stage in the fool's coat, and act a fool's part to the rest of this nation. If I can set my Well-beloved on high, and witness fair for Him, a fig for their hosanna. If I can roll myself in a lap of Christ's garment, I shall lie there, and laugh at the thoughts of dying bits of clay. Brother, we have cause to weep for our harlot-mother ; her Husband is sending her to Eome's brothel-house, which is the gate she liketh well. Yet I persuade you that there shall be a fair after-growth for Christ in Scotland, and that this church shall sing the Bridegroom's welcome home again to His own house. The worms shall eat them first, ere they cause Christ to take good-night at Scotland. I am here assaulted with the Doctors' guns ; ^ but I bless the Father of lights, that they draw not blood of truth. I find no lodging in the hearts of natural men, who are cold friends to my Master. I pray , you, remember my love to that gentleman, A. C. My heart is knit to him, because he and I have one Master. Eemember my bonds, and present my service to my Lord and my Lady .2 I wish that Christ may be dearer to them than He is to many of their place. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, July 5, 1637. ^- -'^^• CCX.— To my Lady Boyd. {HIS^SOUL FAINTING FOR CHRIST S MATCHLESS BEAUTY- PRAYER FOR A REVIVAL.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — Few, I believe, know the pain and torment of Christ's fristed love: fristing with Christ's presence is a matter of torment. I know a poor soul that would lay all oars in the water for a banquet or feast of Christ's love. T cannot think but it must be uptaking and sweet, to see the white and ^ The Aberdecu Doctors. "^ The Earl of Loudon and his lady. 1637.] LETTER CCX. 411 red of Christ's fair face ; for He is white and ruddy, and the chiefest among ten thousand (Cant. v. 1 0). I am sure that must be a well-made face of His : heaven must be in His visage ; glorj, glory for evermore must sit on His countenance. I dare not curse the mask and covering that are on His face ; but oh, if there were a hole in it ! Oh, if God would tear the mask ! Fy, fy upon us ! we were never ashamed till now, that we do nob proclaim our pining and languishing for Him. I am sure that never tongue spake of Christ as He is. I am still of that mind, and still will be, that we wrong and undervalue that holy, holy One, in having such short and shallow thoughts of His weight and worth. Oh, if I could but have leave to stand beside and see the Father weigh Christ the Son, if it were possible ! But how every one of them comprehendeth another, we, who have eyes of clay, cannot comprehend. But it is a pity for evermore, and more than shame, that such an one as Christ should sit in heaven His lone for us. To go up thither once-errand and on purpose to see, were no small glory. Oh that He would strike out windows, and fair and great lights, in this old house, this fallen-down soul, and then set the soul near-hand Christ, that the rays and beams of light and the soul-delighting glances of the fair, fair Godhead might shine in at the windows, and iill the house ! A fairer, and more near, and direct, sight of Christ would make room for His love ; for we are but pinched and straitened in His love. Alas, it were easy to measure and weigh all the love that we have for Christ, by inches and ounces ! Alas, that we should love by measure and weight, and not rather have floods and feasts of Christ's love ! Oh that Christ would break down the old narrow vessels of these narrow and ebb souls, and make fair, deep, wide, and broad souls, to hold a sea and a full tide (flowing over all its banks) of Christ's love ! Oh that the Almighty would give me my request ! that I might see Christ come to His temple again, as He is minting, and, it is like, minding to do. And if the land were humbled, the judg- ments threatened are with this reservation (I know), " If ye will turn and repent." Oh, what a heaven should we have on earth, to see Scotland's moon like the light of the sun, and Scotland's sun- light sevenfold, like the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound ! (Isa. xxx. 26). Alas, that we will not pull and draw Christ to His old tents again, to come and feed among the lilies, till the day break, and the shadows flee away ' Oh that 4" LETTER CCXL- [1637. the nobles would go on, in the strength and courage of the Lord, to bring our lawful King Jesus home again ! I am persuaded that He shall return again in glory to this land ; but happy were they, who would help to convoy Him to His sanctuary, and set Him again up upon that mercy-seat, betwixt the cherubim. 0 sun, return to darkened Britain ! 0 fairest among all the sons of men, 0 most excellent One, come home again ! come home, and win the praises and blessings of the mourners in Zion, the prisoners of hope, that wait for Thee ! I know that He can also triumph in suffering, and weep and reign, and die and triumph, and remain in prison and yet subdue His enemies ; but how happy were I to see the coronation-day of Christ, to see His mother, who bare Him, put the crown upon His head again, and cry with shouting, till the earth should ring, " Let Jesus, our King, live and reign for evermore ! " Grace, grace be with your Ladyship. Your Ladyship's, at all obedience in Christ, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R. CCXL — To a Christian Gentleivoman. {GOD'S SKILL TO BLESS BY AFFLICTION— UNKINDNESS OF MEN— NEAR THE DAY OF MEETING THE LORD.) ISTEESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — Though not acquainted, yet at the desire of a Christian brother, I have thought good to write a line unto you, entreat- ing you, in the Lord Jesus, under your trials to keep an ear open to Christ, who can speak for Himself, howbeit your visitations,^ and your own sense, should dream hard things of His love and favour. Our Lord never getteth so kind a look of us, nor our love in such a degree, nor our faith in such a measure of stedfastness, as He getteth out of the furnace of our tempting fears and sharp trials. I verily believe (and two sad proofs in me say no less), that if our Lord would grind our whorish lusts into powder, the very old ashes of our corruption would take life again, and live, and hold us under so much bondage, that may humble us, and make us sad, till we be in that country where we shall need no physic at all. Oh, what violent means doth our Lord use to gain us to Him, as if indeed we were a prize worthy His fighting for ! And be sure, if leading would do the turn, He would not use pulling of the hair, and drawing : but ^ The ufflictious wherewith you have been visited, and your feeliujio. 1 637- J LETTER CCXI. 413 the best of us will bide a strong pull of our Lord's right arm ere we follow Him. Yet I say not this, as if our Lord always measured afflictions by so many ounce-weights, answerable to the grain-weights of our guiltiness. I know that He doth in many (and possibly in you) seek nothing so much as faith, that can endure summer and winter in their extremity. Oh, how precious to the Lord are faith and love, that when threshed, beaten, and chased away, and hosted as it were by God Himself, doth yet look warm-like, love-like, kind-like, and life-like, home-over to Christ, and would be in at Him, ill and well as it may be. Think it not much that your husband, or the nearest to you in the world, proveth to have the bowels and mercy of the ostrich, hard, and rigorous, and cruel ; for the Lord taketh up such fallen ones as these (Ps. xxvii. 10). I could not wish a sweeter life, or more satisfying expressions of kindness, till I be up at that Prince of kindness, than the Lord's saints find, when the Lord taketh up men's refuse, and lodgeth this world's outlaws, whom no man seeketh after. His breath is never so hot, His love casteth never such a flame, as when this world, and those who should be the helpers of our joy, cast water on our coal. It is a sweet thing to see them cast out, and God taken in ; and to see them throw us away as the refuse of men, and God take us up as His jewels and His treasure. Often He maketh gold of dross, as once He made the cast-away stone, " the stone rejected by the builders," the head of the corner. The princes of this world would not have our Lord Jesus as a pinning in the wall, or to have any place in the building ; but the Lord made Him the master-stone of power and place. God be thanked, that this world hath not power to cry us down so many pounds, as rulers cry down light gold, or light silver. We shall stand for as much as our master-coiner Christ, whose coin, arms, and stamp we bear, will have us. Christ hath no miscarrying balance. Thank your Lord, who chaseth your love through two kingdoms, and followeth you and it over sea, to have you for Himself, as He speaketh (Hos. iiL 3). For God layeth up His saints, as the wale and the choice of all the world, for Himself ; and this is like Christ and His love. Oh, what in heaven, or out of heaven, is comparable to the smell of Christ's garments ! Nay, suppose that our Lord would manifest His art, and make ten thousand heavens of good and glorious things, and of new joys, devised out of the deep of infinite wisdom, He could not make the like of Christ ; for Christ is God, and God cannot be made. And therefore, let us hold 414 LETTER CCXIL [1637. with Christ, howbeit we might have our wale and will of a host of lovers, as many as three heavens could contain. Oh that He and we were together ! Oh, when Christ and ye shall meet about the utmost march and borders of time, and the entry into eternity, ye shall see heaven in His face at the first look, and salvation and glory sitting in His countenance, and betwixt His eyes. Faint not ; the miles to heaven are but few and short. He is making a green bed (as the word speaketh. Cant. i. 16) of love, for Himself and you. There are many heads lying in Christ's bosom, but there is room for yours among the rest ; and, therefore, go on, and let hope go before you. Sin not in your trials, and the victory is yours. Pray, wrestle, and believe, and ye shall overcome and prevail with God, as Jacob did. No windlestraws, no bits of clay, no temptations, which are of no longer life than an hour, will then be able to withstand you, when once you have prevailed with God. Help me with your prayers, that it would please the Lord to give me house-room again, to speak of His righteousness in the great congregation, if it may seem good in His sight. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, ABERDEEir, July 6, 1637. S. E. CCXIL— To William Glendinning. [Letter CXXXVIL] {SEARCH INTO CHRIST S LOVELINESS— WHAT HE WOULD SUFFER TO SEE IT— CHRIST'S COMING TO DELIVER.) EAR BEOTHEE, — Ye are heartily welcome to that honour that Christ hath made common to us both, which is to suffer for His name. Verily I think it my garland and crown; and if the Lord should ask of me my blood and life for this cause, I would gladly, in His strength, pay due debt to Christ's honour and glory, in that kind. Acquaint yourself with Christ's love, and ye shall not miss to find new golden mines and treasures in Christ. Nay, truly, we but stand beside Christ, we go not in to Him to take our fill of Him. But if He would do two things, — (1) Draw the curtains, and make bare His holy face ; and then (2) Clear our dim and bleared eyes, to see His beauty and glory. He should find many lovers. I would seek no more happiness than a sight of Him so near-hand, as to see, hear, smell, and touch, and embrace Him. But oh i637-] LETTER CCXII. 415 closed doors, and vails, and curtains, and thick clouds hold me in pain, while I find the sweet burning of His love, that many waters cannot quench ! Oh, what sad hours have I, when I think that the love of Christ scaureth at me, and bloweth by me ! If my Lord Jesus would come to bargaining for His love, I think He might make the price Himself. I should not refuse ten thousand years in hell, to have a wide soul enlarged and made wider, that I might be exceedingly, even to the running-over, filled with His love. Oh, what am I, to love such a One, or to be loved by that high and lofty One ! I think the angels may blush to look upon Him ; and what am I, to fyle such infinite brightness with my sinful eyes ! Oh that Christ would come near, and stand still, and give me leave to look upon Him ! for to look seemeth the poor man's privilege, since he may, for nothing and without hire, behold the sun. I should have a king's life, if I had no other thing to do, than for evermore to behold and eye my fair Lord Jesus : nay, suppose I were holden out at heaven's fair entry, I should be happy for evermore, to look through a hole in the door, and see my dearest and fairest Lord's face. 0 great King, why standest Thou aloof ? "Why remainest Thou beyond the mountains ? 0 Well-beloved, why dost Thou pain a poor soul with delays ? A long time out of Thy glorious presence is two deaths and two hells to me. We must meet, I must see Him, I dow not want Him. Hunger and longing for Christ hath brought on such a necessity of enjoying Christ, that, cost me what it will, I cannot but assure Christ that I will not, I dow not want Him ; for I cannot master nor command Christ's love. Nay, hell (as I now think), and all the pains in it, laid on me alone, would not put me from loving. Yea, suppose that my Lord Jesus would not love me, it is above my strength or power to keep back or imprison the weak love which I have, but it must be out to Christ. I would set heaven's joy aside, and live upon Christ's love its lone. Let me have no joy but the warm- ness and fire of Christ's love ; I seek no other, God knoweth. If this love be taken from me, the bottom is fallen out of all my happiness and joy ; and, therefore, I believe that Christ will never do me that much harm, as to bereave a poor prisoner of His love. It were cruelty to take it from me ; and He, who is kindness itself, cannot be cruel. Dear brother, weary not of my sweet Master's chains ; we are so much the sibber to Christ that we suffer. Lodge not a hard thought of my royal King. Eejoice in His cross. Your 4i6 LETTER CCXIII. [1637. deliverance sleepeth not. He that will come is not slack of His promise. Wait on for God's timeous salvation ; ask not when, or how long ? I hope He shall lose nothing of you in the furnace, but dross. Commit your cause in meekness (forgiving your oppressors) to God, and your sentence shall come back from Him laughing. Our Bridegroom's day is posting fast on ; and this world, that seemeth to go with a long and a short foot, shall be put into two ranks. Wait till your ten days (Rev. ii. 10) be ended, and hope for the crown. Christ will not give you a blind in the end. Commend me to your wife and father, and to Bailie M. A. ; and send this letter to him. The prayers of Christ's prisoner be upon you, and the Lord's presence accompany you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, July 6, 1637. S. K. CCXIII. — To Robert Lennox 0/ Bisdove. [Disdove, or Disdow, is a farm about two miles from Gatehouse and a mile from Girthon Manse, a single mansion among trees. Lennox's name often occurs in the "Minute-book of Comm. of Covenanters." Was lie connected with Lennox of Gaily n {.MEN'S FOLLY IN UNDERVALUING CHRIST— IT IS HE THAT SA TISFIE TH— A DM IRA TION OF HIM. ) EAE BROTHER, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I beseech you in the Lord Jesus, make fast and sure work of life eternal. Sow not rotten seed: every man's work will speak for itself, what his seed hath been. Oh, how many see I, who sow to the flesh ! Alas, what a crop will that be, when the Lord shall put in His hook to reap this world that is ripe and white for judgment ! I recommend to you holiness and sanctilication, and that you keep yourself clean from this present evil world. We delight to tell our own dreams, and to flatter our own flesh with the hope which we have. It were wisdom for us to be free, plain, honest, and sharp with our own souls, and to charge them to brew better, that they may drink well, and fare well, when time is melted away like snow in a hot summer. Oh, how hard a thing is it, to get the soul to give up with all things on this side of death and doomsday! We say that we are removing and going from 1637.] LETTER CCXIII. 417 this world ; but our heart stirreth not one foot off its seat. Alas ! I see few heavenly-minded souls, that have nothing upon the earth but their body of clay going up and down this earth, because their soul and the powers of it are up in heaven, and there their hearts live, desire, enjoy, rejoice. Oh ! men's souls have no wings ; and, therefore, night and day they keep their nest, and are not acquainted with Christ. Sir, take you to your one thing, to Christ, that ye may be acquainted with the taste of His sweetness and excellency ; and charge your love not to dote upon this world, for it will not do your business in that day, when nothing will come in good stead to you but God's favour. Build upon Christ some good, choice, and fast work ; for when your soul for many years hath taken the play, and hath posted, and wandered through the creatures, ye will come home again with the wind.^ They are not good, at least not the soul's good. It is the infinite Godhead that must allay the sharpness of your hunger after happiness, otherwise there shall still be a want of satisfaction to your desires : and if He should cast in ten worlds into your desires, all shall fall through, and your soul will still cry, "Eed hunger! black hunger!" But I am sure there is sufficient for you in Christ, if ye had seven souls and seven desires in you. Uh, if I could make my Lord Jesus market-sweet, lovely, desirable, and fair to all the world, both to Jew and Gentile ! Oh, let my part of heaven go for it, so being He would take my tongue to be His instrument, to set out Christ in His whole braveries of love, virtue, grace, sweetness, and matchless glory, to the eyes and hearts of Jews and Gentiles ! But who is sufficient for these things ? Oh, for the help of angels' tongues, to make Christ eye-sweet and amiable to many thousands ! Oh, how little doth this world see of Him, and how far are they from the love of Him, seeing there is so much loveliness, beauty, and sweetness in Christ, that no created eye did ever yet see ! I would that all men knew His glory, and that I could put many in at the Bridegroom's chamber-door, to see His beauty, and to be partakers of His high, and deep, and broad, and boundless love. Oh, let all the world come nigh and see Christ, and they shall then see more than I can say of Him ! Oh, if I had a pledge or pawn to lay down for a seaful of His love ! that I could come by so much of Christ, as would satisfy greening and longing for Him, or rather increase it, till I were in full posses- sion ! I know that we shall meet ; and therein I rejoice. ^ Like a ship running before the wind. 2 D 4i8 LETTER CCXIV. [1637. Sir, stand fast in the truth of Christ that ye have received Yield to no winds, but ride out, and let Christ be your anchor, and the only He, whom ye shall look to see in peace. Pray for me. His prisoner, that the Lord would send me among you to feed His people. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. °- ■"* CCXIV.— To Mr. James Hamilton. [James Hamilton was educated for the ministry in Scotland, but going over to Ireland, he continued for some time to act as steward or agent for his uncle, Lord Claneboy. He commenced his labours as a preacher of the Gospel in 1624, and in the following year was settled at Ballywater, in the county of Dov.'n, in which charge, says Robert Blair, "he was painful, successful, and constant, notwithstanding he had many temptations to follow promotion, which he might easily have obtained " (Blair's "Life "). In August 1636, he and several of his brethi'en in the ministry were deposed by Henry Leslie, Bishop of Down, for refusing to subscribe the canons then imposed on ministers in Ireland. He was one of those who that year embarked for New England, but Avho were forced to return by the adverse state of the weather. After his coming over to Scotland, he became minister of Dumfries, and subse- quently of Edinburgh, where he continued to labour for fifteen years. He was a member of the famous Assembly held at Glasgow in 1638. In March 1644, he and Mr. Weir, minister of Dalserf, were appointed to administer the Solemn League and Covenant in Ireland. On their return to Scotland, falling in with the noted Alaster Macdonnell, the two ministers, with several others (including Hamilton's father-in- law, Mr. Wat Property. 488 LETTER CCXLVIIL [1637. It is a wonder that men deny not that there is a heaven, as they deny there is a way to it but of men's making. You have learned of Christ that there is a heaven : contend for it, and contend for Christ. Bear well and submissively the hard cross of this step-mother world, that God will not have to be yours. I confess it is hard, and I would I were able to ease you of your burden ; but believe me, that this world (which the Lord will not have to be yours) is but the dross, the refuse, and scum of God's creation, the portion of the Lord's hired servants ; the movables, not the heritage ; a hard bone casten to the dogs holden out of the New Jerusalem, whereupon they rather break their teeth than satisfy their appetite. It is your Father's bless- ing, and Christ's birthright, that our Lord is keeping for you. And I persuade you, that your seed, also, shall inherit the earth (if that be good for them), for that is promised to them ; and God's bond is as good, and better, than if men would give every one of them a bond for a 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 blessings of the earth shall be at Christ's back. I see many professors for the fashion follow on, but they are professors of glass ; I would cause a little knock of persecution ding them in twenty pieces, and so the world would laugh at the shreds. Therefore, make fast work. See that Christ lay the ground-stone of your profession ; for wind, and rain, and spaits will not wash away His building. His works liave no shorter date than to stand for evermore. I should twenty times have perished in my affliction, if I had not leaned my weak back, and laid my pressing burden both, upon the stone, the Foundation- stone, the Corner-stone laid in Zion : and I desire never to rise off this stone. Now, the very God of peace confirm and establish you unto the day of the blessed appearance of Christ Jesus. God be with you. Yours, in his dearest Lord Jesus, Abekuken. ^. iv 1637.] LETTER CCXLIX. 489 CCXLIX.— ro James Bautie. [James Bautie, in 1637, seems to have been preparing for the ministry. He became chaplain to the regiment of the Lord of Ards, in Ireland, and was ordained minister over the Presbyterian congregation at Ballywater, in tlie county of Down, in 1642. He was clerk to the Presbytery in 1644. Piefusing to take the oath of fidelity to the Commonwealth in 1650, he was first imprisoned, and then banished out of the kingdom. We know nothing of his after history. Another person is found occupying his charge in 1661. The name "Bautie" is now unknown. It may, however, be the same as Beatie," or "Beattie,"a name very common in Dumfriesshire. But see note in the Index.] {SPIRITUAL DIFFICULTIES SOLVED.) OVING BKOTHER, — Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. — I received your letter, and render you thanks for the same ; but I have not time to answer all the heads of it, as the bearer can inform you. 1. Ye do well to take yourself at the right stot ^ when ye wrong Christ by doubting and misbelief. For this is to nickname Christ, and term Him a liar, which being spoken to our prince, would be hanging or beheading. But Christ hangeth not always for treason. It is good that He may registrate ^ a believer's bond a hundred times, and more than seven times a day have law against us ; and yet He spareth us, as a man doth the son that serveth him. No tender-hearted mother, who may have law to kill her sucking child, would put in execution that law. 2ndly, For your failings, even when ye have a set tryst with Christ, and when ye have a fair, seen advantage, by keeping youi appointment with Him, and salvation cometh to the very passing of the seals, I would say two things. — 1. Concluded and sealed salvation may go through and be ended, suppose you write your name to the tail of the covenant with ink that can hardly be read. Neither think I ever any man's salvation passed the seals, but there was an odd trick or slip, in less or more, upon the fool's part who is infested in heaven. In the most grave and serious work of our salvation, I think Christ had ever good cause to laugh at our silliness, and to put us on His merits, that we might bear weight. 2. It is a sweet law of the New Covenant, and a privilege of the new burgh, that citizens pay according to their means. For the New Covenant saith not, " So much obedience by ounce-weights, and no less, under the pain of dam- nation." Christ taketh as poor men may give. Where there is a mean portion. He is content with the less, if there be sincerity ; ^ The rebound of a ball. Ye do well to recall your thoughts ere they have gone too far. * A bond " registered " means kept on record, so that it cannot be taken out. 490 LETTER CCXLIX. [1637. broken suras, and little, feckless obedience will be pardoned, and hold the foot with Ilim. Know ye not that our kindly Lord retaineth His good old heart yet ? He breaketh not a bruised reed, nor quencheth the smoking flax ; if the wind but blow, He holdeth His hand about it till it rise to a flame. The law cometh on with three 0-yeses, " with all the heart, with all the soul, and with all the strength ; " and where would poor folks, like you and me, furnish all these sums ? It feareth me (nay, it is most certain), that, if the payment were to come out of our purse, when we should put our hand into our bag, we should bring out the wind, or worse. But the New Covenant seeketh not heap- mete, nor stented obedience, as the condition of it ; because forgiveness hath always place. Hence I draw this conclusion : that to think matters betwixt Christ and us go back for want of heaped measure, is a piece of old Adam's pride, who would either be at legal payment, or nothing. We would still have God in our common, and buy His kindness with our merits. For beggarly pride is devil's honesty, and blusheth to be in Christ's common, and scarce giveth God a grammercy, and a lifted cap (except it be the Pharisee's unlucky, " God, I thank Thee "), or a bowed knee to Christ. It will only give a " Good-day " for a " Good-day " again ; and if He dissemble His kindness, as it were in jest, and seem to misken it, it in earnest spurneth with the heels, and snuffeth in the wind, and careth not much for Christ's kindness. " If He will not be friends, let Him go,' saith pride. Beware of this thief, when Christ offereth Himself. 3rdly, No marvel, then, of whisperings, Whether you be in the covenant or not ? for pride maketh loose work of the cove- nant of grace, and will not let Christ be full bargain-maker. To speak to you particularly and shortly : — 1. All the truly re- generated cannot determinately tell you the measure of their dejections ; because Christ beginneth young with many, and stealeth into their heart, ere they wit of themselves, and be- cometh homely with them, with little din or noise. I grant that many are blinded, in rejoicing in a good-cheap conversion, that never cost them a sick night. Christ's physic wrought in a dream upon them. But for that ; I would say, if other marks be found that Christ is indeed come in, never make plea with him because he will not answer, " Lord Jesus, how camest Thou in ? whether in at door or window ? " Make Him welcome, since He is come. " The wind bloweth where it listeth ; " all the world's wit cannot perfectly render a reason why the wind 1637.] LETTER CCXLIX. 491 should be a month in the east, six weeks possibly in the west, and the space of only an afternoon in the south or north. Ye will not find out all the nicks and steps of Christ's way with a soul, do what ye can ; for sometimes He will come in stepping softly, like one walking beside a sleeping person, and slip to the door, and let none know He is there. 2. Ye object : The truly regenerate should love God for Himself ; and ye fear that ye love Him more for His benefits (as incitements and motives to love Him) than for Himself. I answer : To love God for Himself, as the last end, and also for His benefits as incitements and motives to love Him, may stand well together; as a son loveth his mother, because she is his mother, howbeit she be poor : and he loveth her for an apple also. I hope ye will not say, that benefits are the only reason and bottom of your love ; it seemeth there is a better foundation for it. Always,^ if a hole be in it, sew it up shortly. 3. Ye feel not such mourning in Christ's absence as ye would. I answer : That the regenerate mourn at all times, and all in like measure, for His absence, I deny. There are different degrees of mourning, less or more, as they have less or more love to Him, and less or more sense of His absence ; but, some they must have. Sometimes they miss not the Lord, and then they cannot mourn ; howbeit, it is not long so ; at least, it is not always so. 4. Ye challenge yourself that some truths find more credit with you than others. Ye do well ; for God is true in the least, as well as in the greatest, and He must be so to you. Ye must not call Him true in the one page of the leaf, and false in the other ; for our Lord, in all His writ- ings, never contradicted Himself yet. Although the best of the regenerate have slipped here, always labour ye to hold your feet. 4thly, Comparing the state of one truly regenerate, whose heart is a temple of the Holy Ghost, and yours, which is full of uncleanness and corruption, ye stand dumb and discouraged, and dare not sometimes call Christ heartsomely your own. I answer : 1. The best regenerate have their defilements, and, if I may speak so, their draff-poke, that will clog behind them all theii days ; and, wash as they will, there will be filth in their bosom. But let not this put you from the well. I answer : 2. Albeit there be some ounce-weights of carnality, and some squint look, or eye in our neck to an idol, yet love in its own measure may be found. For glory must purify and perfect our love, it never will till then be absolutely pure. Yefc, if the idol reign, and have ' Notwithstanding. 492 LETTER CCXLIX. [1637. the whole of the heart, and the keys of the house, and Christ only be made an underling to run errands, all is not right ; there- fore, examine well. 3. There is a twofold discouragement : one of unbelief, to conclude (and make doubt of the conclusion) for a mote in your eye, and a by-look to an idol ; this is ill. There is another discouragement of sorrow for sin, when ye find a by-look to an idol ; this is good, and matter of thanksgiving. Therefore, examine here also. 5thly, The assurance of Jesus's love, ye say, would be the most comfortable news that ever ye heard. Answer : That may stop twenty holes, and loose many objections. That love hath telling in it, I trow. Oh that ye knew and felt it, as I have done ! I wish you a share of my feast ; sweet, sweet hath it been to me. If my Lord had not given me this love, I should have fallen through the causeway of Aberdeen ere now ! But for you, hing on ; your feast is not far off ; ye shall be filled ere ye go. There is as much in our Lord's pantry as will satisfy all His bairns, and as much wine in His cellar as will quench all their thirst. Hunger on, for there is meat in hunger for Christ. Never go frond Him, but fash Him (who yet is pleased with the importunity of hungry souls) with a dish-full of hungry desires till He fill you ; and if He delay, yet come not ye away, albeit ye should fall aswoon at His feet. 6thly, Ye crave my mind, whether sound comfort may be found in prayer, when conviction of a known idol is present. I answer : (1st), An idol, as an idol, cannot stand with sound com- forts ; for that comfort that is gotten at Dagon's feet is a cheat or blaflume. Yet sound comfort, and conviction of an eye to an idol, may as well dwell together as tears and joy. But let this do you no ill ; I speak it for your encouragement, that ye may make the best of our joys ye can, albeit you find them mixed with motes. (2ndly), Sole conviction (if alone, without remorse and grief) is not enough ; therefore, lend it a tear if ye dow win at it. Tthly, Ye question ; when ye win to more fervency some- times with your neighbour in prayer than when you are alone, whether hypocrisy be in it or not ? I answer, if this be always, no question a spice of hypocrisy is in it, which should be taken heed to. But possibly desertion may be in private, and presence in public, and then the case is clear. A fit of applause may occasion by accident a rubbing of a cold heart, and so heat and life may come ; but it is not the proper cause of that heat. Hence God, of His free grace, will ride His errands upon our 1637.] LETTER CCXLIX, 493 stinking corruption. But corruption is but a mere occasion and accident ; as the playing on a pipe removed anger from the prophet, and made him fitter to prophesy (2 Kings iii, 15). 8thly, Ye complain of Christ's short visits, that He will not bear you company one night ; but when ye lie down warm at night, ye rise cold at morning. Answer : I cannot blame you (nor any other that knoweth that sweet Guest), to bemoan His withdrawings, and to be most desirous of His abode and com- pany ; for He would captivate and engage the affection of any creature that saw His face. Since He looked on me, and gave me a sight of His fair love. He gained my heart wholly, and got away with it. Well, well may He brook it ! He shall keep it long, ere I fetch it from Him. But I shall tell you what ye should do ; treat Him well, give Him the chair and the board- head, and make Him welcome to the mean portion ye have. A good supper and kind entertainment maketh guests love the inn the better. Yet sometimes Christ hath an errand elsewhere, for mere trial ; ^ and then, though ye give Him king's cheer. He will away ; as is clear in desertions for mere trial and not for sin. 9thly, Ye seek the difference betwixt the motions of the Spirit in their least measure, and the natural joys of your own heart. Answer : As a man can tell if he joy and delight in his wife, as his wife ; or if he delight and joy in her for satisfaction of his lust, but hating her person, and so loving her for her flesh, and not grieving when ill befalletli her : so will a man's joy in God, and his whorish natural joy, be discovered. If he be sorry for anything that may offend the Lord, it will speak the single- ness of his love to Him. lOthly, Ye ask the reason why sense overcometh faith, Answer : Because sense is more natural, and near of kin to our selfish and soft nature. Ye ask, If faith, in that case, be sound ? Answer : If it be chased away, it is neither sound nor unsound, because it is not faith. But it might be and was faith, before sense did blow out the act of believing. Lastly, Ye ask what to do, when promises are borne-in upon you, and sense of impenitency for sins of youth hindereth appli- cation. I answer, if it be living sense, it may stand with appli- cation ; and in this case, put to your hand, and eat your meat in God's name. If false, so that the sins of youth are not repented of, then, as faith and impenitency cannot stand together, so neither that sense and application can consist. ^ Merely for the purpose of trying the soul, Christ goes away elsewhere. 494 LETTER CCL. [1637. Brother, excuse my brevity ; for time straiteneth me, that E get not my mind said in these things, but must refer that to a new occasion, if God offer it. Brother, pray for me. Grace be with you. Yours, in his dearest Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. E. CCL.— To the Lady Largirie. [Letter CXCV.] {PART WITH ALL FOR CHRIST— NO UNMIXED JOY HERE.) ISTKESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you, — I hope ye know what conditions passed betwixt Christ and you, at your first meeting. Ye remember that He said, your summer days would have clouds, and your rose a prickly thorn beside it. Christ is unmixed in heaven, all sweetness and honey. Here we have Him with His thorny and rough cross ; yet I know no tree that bearetli sweeter fruit than Christ's cross, except I would raise a lying report on it. It is your part to take Christ, as He is to be had in this life. Suffer- ings are like a- wood planted round about His house, over door and window. If we could hold fast our grips of Him, the field were won. Yet a little while, and Christ shall triumph. Give Christ Hi's own short time to spin out these two long threads of heaven and hell to all mankind, for certainly the thread will not break ; and when He hath accomplished His work in Mount Zion, and hath refined His silver, He will bring new vessels out of the furnace, and plenish His house, and take up His house again. I counsel you to free yourself of clogging temptations, by overcoming some, and contemning others, and watching over all. Abide true and loyal to Christ, for few now are fast to Him. They give. Christ blank paper for a bond of service and attend- ance, now when Christ hath most ado. To waste a little blood with Christ, and to put our part of this drossy world in pawn over in His hand, as willing to quit it for Him, is the safest cabinet to keep the world in. But those who would take the world and all their flitting on tlieir back, and run away from Christ, shall fall by the way, and leave their burden behind them, and be taken captive themselves. Well were my soul to have put all I have, life and soul, over into Christ's hands. Let Him be forthcoming for all. If any ask how I do ? I answer. None can be but well that are in Christ : and if I were not so, my sufferings had melted 1637.1 LETTER CCLI. 495 me away in ashes and smoke. I thank my Lord, that He hath something in me that His fire cannot consume. Remember my love to your husband ; and show him from me, that I desire he may set aside all things, and make sure work of salvation, that it be not a-seeking when the sand-glass is run out, and time and eternity shall tryst together. There is no errand so weighty as this. Oh that he would take it to heart ! Grace be with you. Yours, in Christ Jesus his Lord, Aberdeen. ^* ■'^• Ml CCLI.— To the Lady Dungubich. [Lady Dungetjch, or Dungueich, was sister to Marion M' Naught , for her own name was Sarah M' Naught, and she is mentioned in the Registers as "second heir to her father, John M' Naught of Kilquhannady" [or Kilquhanatie (Letter V.)], "on 31st March 1646, in the three merk lands of Dumgeuich, in Lanarkshire." She married Samuel Lockhart, merchant burgess in Edinburgh. Near the Bridge of Deach, two miles from Carsphairn, not far from Earlston, there is the poor ruin of an old Dundeuch castle on the roadside, mentioned in the life of John Semple. But that is not the same place, though resembling it in sound. The Oordons of Dengeuch (a branch of the Lochinvar family) were no doubt connected.] {JESUS OR THE M^ORLD— SCOTLAND'S TRIALS AND HOPES.) ISTEESS, — I long to hear from you, and how you go on with Christ. I am sure that Christ and you once met. I pray you to fasten your grips. There is holding and drawing, and much sea-way to heaven, and we are often sea-sick ; but the voyage is so needful, that we must on any terms take shipping with Christ. I believe it is a good country which we are going to, and there is ill lodging in this smoky house of the world, in which we are yet living. Oh, that we should love smoke so well, and clay that holdeth our feet fast ! It were our happiness to follow after Christ, and to anchor ourselves upon the Eock in the upper side of the vail. Christ and Satan are now drawing to parties. And they are blind who see not Scotland divided into two camps, and Christ coming out with His white banner of love ; and He hangeth that over the heads of His soldiers. And the other captain, the Dragon, is coming out with a great black flag, and crieth, " The world, the world ! ease, honour, and a whole skin, and a soft couch." And there lie they, and leave Christ to fend for Himself ! My counsel is, that ye come out and leave the multitude, 496 LETTER CCLIl. [1637, and let Christ have your compauy. Let them take clay and this present world who love it. Christ is a more worthy and noble portion : blessed are those who get Him. It is good, ere the storm rise, to make ready all, and to be prepared to go to the camp with Christ, seeing He will not keep the house, nor sit at the fireside with couchers. A shower for Christ is little enough. Oh, I find all too little for Him ! Wo, wo, wo is me, that I have no propine for my Lord Jesus. My love is so feckless, that it is a shame to offer it to Him ! Oh, if it were as broad as heaven, as deep as the sea, I would gladly bestow it upon Him ! I persuade you, that God is wringing grapes of red wine for Scotland ; and that this land shall drink, and spue and fall. His enemies shall drink the thick of it, and the grounds^ of it. But Scotland's withered tree shall blossom again ; and Christ shall make a second marriage with her, and take home His wife out of the furnace. But, if our eyes shall see it. He knoweth who hath created time. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen', 1637. S. K. CCLII. — To JoNET Macculloch. [See Letter CI] {CA/?ES TO BE CAST ON CHRIST— CHRIST A STEADY FRIEND.) OVIISTG SISTER, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — Hold on your course, for, it may be, that I shall not soon see you. Venture through the thick of all things after Christ, and lose not your Master, Christ, in the throng of this great market. Let Christ know how heavy, and how many a stone- weight you and your cares, burdens, crosses, and sins are. Let Him bear all. Make the heritage sure to yourself : get charters and writs passed and through ; and put on arms for the battle, and keep you fast by Christ. And then, let the wind blow out of what airth it will, your soul shall not be blown into the sea. I find Christ the most steadable friend and companion in the world to me now. The need and usefulness of Christ are seen best in trials. Oh, if He be not well worthy of His room ! Lodge Him in house and heart ; and stir up your husband to seek the Lord. I wonder that he hath never written to me : I do not forget him. I taught you the whole counsel of God, and delivered it to * The dregs. 1637-] LETTER CCLIII. 497 you. It will be inquired for at your hands ; have it in readi- ness against the time that the Lord ask for it. Make you ready to meet the Lord ; and rest and sleep in the love of that Fairest among the sons of men. Desire Christ's beauty. Give out all your love to Him, and let none fall by. Learn in prayer to speak to Him. Help your mother's soul ; and desire her, from me, to seek the Lord and His salvation. It is not soon found : many miss it. Grace be with you. Your loving pastor, Aberdeen, 1037. S. E. CCLIII. — To his Beverend and very dear Brother, Mr. George Gillespie. {CHRIST THE TRUE GAIN.) Y VERY DEAR BROTHER,— I received yours. I am still with the Lord. His cross hath done that which I thought impossible once. Christ keepeth tryst in the fire and water with His own, and cometh ere our breath go out, and ere our blood grow cold. Blessed are they whose feet escape the great golden net that is now spread. It is happiness to take the crabbed, rough, and poor side of Christ's world, which is a lease of crosses and losses for Him. For Christ's incomes and casualties that follow Him are many ; and it is not a little one that a good conscience may be had in following Him. This is true gain, and must be laboured for and loved. Many give Christ for a shadow ; because Christ was rather heside their conscience, in a dead and reprobate light, than in their conscience. Let us be ballasted with grace, that we be not blown over, and that we stagger not. Yet a little while, and Christ and His redeemed ones shall fill the field, and come out victorious. Christ's glory of triumphing in Scotland is yet in the bud, and in the birth; but the birth cannot prove an abortion. He shall not faint nor be discouraged, till He hath brought forth judgment unto victory. Let us still mind our Covenant ; and the very God of peace be with you. Your brother in Christ, Abekdeen, Sept. 9, 1637. S. R. 2 I 498 LETTER CCLIV [1637 CCLIV. — To his Reverend and dear Brother, Mr. Robert Blair. {PERSONAL UNWORTHINESS—GOD'S GRACE— PRAYER FOR OTHERS.) EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,— The reason ye give for not writing to me affecteth me much, and giveth me a dash, when such an one as ye conceive an opinion of me, or of anything in me. The truth is, when I come home to myself, oh, what penury do I find, and how feckless is my supposed stock, and how little have I ! He to whom I am as crystal, and who seeth through me, and perceiveth the least mote that is in me, knoweth that I speak what I think and am convinced of : but men cast me through a gross and wide sieve. My very dear brother, the room of the least of all saints is too great for the like of me. But lest this should seem art to fetch home reputation, I speak no more of it. It is my worth to be Christ's ransomed sinner and sick one. His relation to me is, that I am sick, and He is the Physician of whom I stand in need. Alas ! how often play I fast and loose with Christ ! He bindeth, I loose ; He buildeth, I cast down ; He trimmeth up a salvation for me, and I mar it ; I cast out with Christ, and He agreeth with me again, twenty times a-day ; I forfeit my king- dom and heritage, I lose what I had ; but Christ is at my back, and following on, to stoop and take up what falleth from me. Were I in heaven, and had the crown on my head, if free-will were my tutor, I should lose heaven. Seeing I lose myself what wonder I should let go, and lose Jesus, my Lord ? Oh, well to me for evermore, that I have cracked my credit with Christ, and cannot by law at all borrow from Him, upon my feckless and worthless bond and faith ! Eor my faith and re- putation with Christ is, that I am a creature that God will not put any trust into. I was, and am, bewildered with temptations, and wanted a guide to heaven. Oh what have I to say of that excellent, surpassing, and supereminent thing, they call. The, grace, of God, the way of free redemption in Christ ! And when poor, poor I, dead in law, was sold, fettered, and imprisoned in justice's closet-ward, which is hell and damnation ; when I, a wretched one, lighted upon noble Jesus, eternally kind Jesus, tender- hearted Jesus (nay, when He lighted upon me first, and knew me), I found that He scorned to take a price, or anything like hire, of angels, or seraphim, or any of His creatures. And, therefore, I would praise Him for this, that the whole army of 1637] LETTER CCLIV. 499 the redeemed ones sit rent-free in heaven. Our holding is better than blench : we are all freeholders. And seeing that our eternal feu-duty is but thanks, oh wof ul me ! that I have but spilled thanks, lame, and broken, and miscarried praises, to give Him. And so my silver is not good and current with Christ, were it not that free merits have stamped it, and washen it and me both ! And for my silence I see somewhat better through it now. If my high and lofty One, my princely and royal Master, say, " Hold, hold thy peace, I lay bonds on thee, thou must speak none," I would fain be content, and let my fire be smothered under ashes, without light or flame ! I cannot help it. I take laws from my Lord, but I give none. As for your journey to T.,^ ye do well to follow it. The camp is Christ's ordinary bed. A carried bed is kindly to the Beloved, down in this lower house. It may be (and who knoweth but) our Lord hath some centurions, whom ye are sent to. See- ing your angry mother denieth you lodging and house-room with her, Christ's call to unknown faces must be your second wind, seeing ye cannot have a first.^ Oh that our Lord would water again with a new visit this piece-withered and dry hill of our widow, Mount Zion, My dear brother, I shall think it comfort, if ye speak my name to our Well-beloved. Wherever ye are, I am mindful of you. Oh that the Lord would yet make the light of the moon in Scotland as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun seven- fold brighter. For myself, as yet I have received no answer whither to go. I wait on. Oh that Jesus had my love ! Let matters frame as they list, I have some more to do with Christ ; yet I would fain we were nearer. Now the great Shepherd of the sheep, the very God of peace, establish and confirm you till the day of His coming. Yours, in his lovely and sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Sep. 9, 1637. S. R. ^ This probably means France, as Mr. Blair at this time resolved to go to that country as chaplain in Colonel Hepburn's regiment. He embarked at Leith, but seeing the excessive wickedness of some of the men, abandoned the enterprise, and returned to Edinburgh (How's " Continuation of Blair's Life," pp. 151-153). 2 Iq jjjg «< Christ Dying and Drawing," p. 534 (1727), he uses the same figura- tive language : "Compelled to arrive with a second wind, as a crossed seaman — who should have had the west wind, but finds the east wind is blowing, and so must jus,t make the best of this second wind." You cannot get the favour of your mother, the church, which would have been a first wind to you, according to your desire ; therefore, sail with this other wind, to wit, this call in Providence to visit foreign lands. 500 LETTER CCLV. [1637. CCLV.— To tlie Lajdy Carleton. [Letter XV.] {SUBMISSION TO GOD'S WILL— WONDERS IN THE LOVE OF CHRIST— NO DEBT TO THE WORLD.) ISTKESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — ]\Iy soul longeth once again to be amongst you, and to behold that beauty of the Lord, that I would see in His house ; but I know not if He, in whose hands are all our ways, seeth it expedient for His glory. I owe my Lord, I know, submission of the spirit, suppose He would turn me into a stone, or pillar of salt. Oh that I were he in whom my Lord could be glorified ! suppose my little heaven were forfeited, to buy glory to Him before men and angels ; suppose my want of His presence, and separation from Christ, were a pillar as high as ten heavens for Christ's glory to stand upon, above all the world. What am I to Him ? How little am I (though my feathers stood out as broad as the morning light) to such a high, to such a lofty, to such a never-enough-admired and glorious Lord ! My trials are heavy, because of my sad Sabbaths ; but I know that they are less than my high provocations. I seek no more than that Christ may be the gainer, and I the loser ; that He may be raised and heightened, and I cried down, and my worth made dust before His glory. Oh that Scotland, all with one shout, would cry up Christ, and that His name were high in the land ! I find the very utmost borders of Christ's high excellency and deep sweetness, heaven and earth's wonder. Oh, what is He ? If I could but win in to see His inner side ! Oh, I am run dry of loving, and wondering, and adoring of that greatest and most admirable One ! Wo, wo is me, I have not half love for Him ! Alas, what can my drop do to His great sea ! What gain is it to Christ, that I have casten my little sparkle into His great fire ! What can I give to Him ? Oh that I had love to fill a thousand worlds, that I might empty my soul of it all upon Christ ! I think I have just reason to quit my part of any hope or love that I have to this scum (and the refuse of the dross of God's workmanship), this vain earth. I owe to this stormy world (whose kindness and heart to me have been made of iron, or a piece of wild sea-island that never a creature of God lodged in) not a look : I owe it no love, no hope ; and, therefore, oh, if my love were dead to it, and my soul dead to it ! What am I obliged to this house of my pilgrimage ? A straw for all that God hath made, to my soul's liking, except God, and that lovely 1637.] LETTER CCLVI. ^o\ One, Jesus Christ! Seeing I am not this world's debtor, I desire that I may be stripped of all confidence in anything but my Lord, that He may be for me, and I for my only, only, only Lord ! that He may be the morning and evening tide, the top and the root of my joys, and the heart and flower and yolk of all my soul's delights ! Oh, let me never lodge any creature in my heart and confidence! Let the house be for Him. I rejoice, that sad days cut off a piece of the lease of my short life ; and that my shadow, even while I suffer, weareth long, and my even- ing hasteneth on. I have cause to love home with all my heart, and to take the opportunity of the day to hasten to the end of my journey, before the night come on, wherein a man cannot see to walk or work ; that once, after my falls, I may at night fall in, weary and tired as I am, into Christ's bosom, and betwixt His breasts. Our prison cannot be our best country. This world looketh not like heaven and the happiness that our tired souls would be at ; and, therefore, it were good to seek about for the wind, and hoist up our sails towards our New Jerusalem, for that is our Christ. Eemember a prisoner to Christ. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his only Lord and Master, Aberdeen, 1637. ^' ^' CCLVI. — To William Rigge of Athernie. {THE LAW— GRACE— CHALKING OUT PROVIDENCES FOR OUR- SELVES—PRESCRIBING TO HIS LOVE.) UCH HONOUEED AND WOETHY SIE,— Your letter, full of complaints, bemoaning your guiltiness, hath humbled me. But give me leave to say that ye seem to be too far upon the law's side. Ye will not gain much to be the law's advocate. I thought ye had not been the law's but grace's man ; nevertheless, I am sure that ye desire to take God's part against yourself. Whatever your guiltiness be, yet, when it falleth into the sea of God's mercy, it is but like a drop of blood fallen into the great ocean. There is nothing here to be done, but to let Christ's doom light on " the old man," and let him bear his condemnation, seeing in Christ he was con- demned ; for the law hath but power over your worst half. Let the blame, therefore, lie where the blame should be ; and let the new mail be sure to say, " I am comely as the tents of Kedar, howbeit I be black and sunburnt, by sitting neighbour beside a 502 LETTER CCLVI. [1637. body of sin." I seek no more here than room for grace's defence, and Christ's white throne, whereto a sinner, condemned by the law, may appeal. But the use that I make of it is, I am sorry that I am not so tender and thin-skinned ; ^ though I am sure that Christ may find employment for His calling in me, if in any living, seeing, from my youth upward, I have been making up the blackest process that any minister in the world, or any other, can answer to. And, when I had done this, I painted a provi- dence of my own, and wrote ease for myself, and a peaceable ministry, and the sun shining on me, till I should be in at heaven's gates ; such green and raw thoughts had I of God ! I thought also of a sleeping devil, that would pass by the like of me, lying in muirs and outfields ; so I bigged the gowk's nest, and dreamed of dying at ease, and living in a fool's paradise. But since I came hither, I am often so as they would have much rhetoric that could persuade me, that Christ hath not written wrath on my dumb and silent Sabbaths ; which is a persecution of the latest edition, being used against none in this land, that I can learn of, besides me. And often I lie under a non-entry, and would gladly sell all my joys to be confirmed free tenant of the King Jesus, and to have sealed assurances : but I see often blank papers. And my greatest desires are these two: — 1. That Christ would take me in hand to cure me, and undertake for a sick man. I know that I should not die under His hand. And yet in this, while I still doubt, I believe through a cloud that sorrow (which hath no eyes) hath but put a vail on Christ's love. 2. It pleaseth Him often, since I came hither, to come with some short blinks of His sweet love. And then, because I have none to help me to praise His love, and can do Him no service in my own person (as I once thought I did in His temple), I die with wishes and desires to take up house and dwell at the well-side, and to have Him praised and set on high. But, alas ! what can the like of me do, to get a good name raised upon my well-beloved Lord Jesus, suppose I could desire to be suspended for ever of my part of heaven, for His glory ? I am sure, if I could get my will of Christ's love, and could once be over head and ears in the believed, apprehended, and seen love of the Son of God, it were the fulfilling of the desires of the only happiness I would be at. But the truth is, I hinder my communion with Him, because of the want of both fnith and repentance, and because I will make * The use I iiiako of your letter is, it humbles me that I am not so tender as you, and " thin-skin7ied," i.e. easily made to feel. 1637.] LETTER CCLVIL 5^3 an idol of Christ's kisses. I will neither lead nor drive,^ except I see Christ's love run in my channel ; and when I wait and look for Him the npper way, I see His wisdom is pleased to play me a slip, and come the lower way. So that I have not the right art of guiding Christ ; for there is art and wisdom required in guiding of Christ's love aright when we have gotten it. Oh, how far are His ways above mine ? Oh, how little of Him do I see ! And when I am as dry as a burnt heath in a drouthy summer, and when my root is withered, howbeit I think then that I would drink a sea-full of Christ's love, ere ever I would let the cup go from my head, yet I get nothing but delays, as if He would make hunger my daily food. I think myself also hungered of hunger. The rich Lord Jesus satisfy a famished man. Grace be with you. Your own, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Scft. 10, 1637. '^- ■^'• CCLVIT.— To the Lady Ceaighall. [Letter LXXXVL] {THE COMFORTS OF CHRISTS CROSS— DESIRES FOR CHRIST.) ONOUEABLE AND CHRISTIAN LADY,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I cannot but write to your Ladyship of the sweet and glorious terms I am in with the most joyful King that ever was, under this well-thriving and prosperous cross. It is my Lord's salvation, wrought by His own right hand, that the water doth not suffocate the breath of hope, and joyful courage, in the Lord Jesus ; for His own person is still in the camp with His poor soldier. I see that the cross is tied, with Christ's hand, to the end of an honest profession. We are but fools to endeavour to loose Christ's knot. When I consider the comforts of God, I durst not consent to sell or wadset my short liferent of the cross of the Lord Jesus. I know that Christ bought with His own blood a right to sanctified and blessed crosses, in so far as they blow rae over the water to my long-desired home : and it were not good that Christ should be the buyer and I the seller. I know that time and death shall take sufferings fairly off my hand. I hope we shall have an honest parting at night, when this cold and frosty afternoon-tide of my evil and rough day shall be over. Well is my soul of either sweet or sour, that Christ hath any part or portion in : if He be at the one end of it, it shall be well with me. I shall 1 Be forced aloug ; "drive," as a neuter verb. 504 LETTER CCLVIII. [1637. die ere I libel faults against Christ's cross. It shall have my testimonial under my hand, as an honest and saving mean of Christ for mortification and faith's growth. I have a stronger assurance, since I came over the Forth, ^ of the excellency of Jesus, than I had before. I am rather about Him than in Him, while I am absent from Him in this house of clay. But I would be in heaven, for no other cause than to essay and try what boundless joy it must be to be over head and ears in my well- beloved Christ's love. Oh that fair One hath my heart for ever- more ! But alas, it is over-little for Him ! Oh, if it were better and more worthy for His sake ! Oh, if I might meet with Him, face to face, on this side of eternity, and might have leave to plead, with Him, that I am so hungered and famished here with the niggardly portion of His love that He giveth me ! Oh that I might be carver and steward myself, at mine own will, of Christ's love (if I may lawfully wish this !) ; then would I enlarge my vessel (alas ! a narrow and ebb soul), and take in a sea of His love. My hunger for it is hungry and lean, in believing that ever I shall be satisfied with that love : so fain would I have what I know I cannot hold. 0 Lord Jesus, delightest Thou, delightest Thou, to pine and torment poor souls with the want of Thy incomparable love ? Oh, if I durst call Thy dispensation cruel ! I know that Thou Thyself art mercy, without either brim or bottom ; I know that Thou art a God bank-full of mercy and love ; but, oh, alas ! little of it cometh my way. I die to look afar off to that love, because I can get but little of it. But hope saith, " This Providence shall ere long look more favourably upon poor bodies," and on me also. Grace be with your Ladyship's spirit. Your Ladyship's, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Se'pt. 10, 1637. ^- ^• CCLVIII. — To the Eight Honourable my Lord Loudon. {TI/E WISDOM OF ADHERING TO CHRIST S CAUSE.) 'iGHT HONOUBtABLE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Lordship. — I rejoice exceedingly to hear that your Lordship hath a good mind to Christ, and His now borne-down truth. My very dear Lord, go on, in the strength of the Lord, to carry your honours and worldly glory to the New Jerusalem. For this cause your Lordship ' He was banished to the north of the Firth of Forth. 1637.] LETTER CCLVITI. 505 received these of the Lord. This is a sure way for the establish- ment of your house, if ye be of those who are willing, in your place, to build Zion's old waste places in Scotland. Your Lord- ship wanteth not God's and man's law both, now to come to the streets for Christ : and suppose the bastard laws of man were against you, it is an honest and zealous ^ error, if here you slip against a point or punctilio of standing policy. When your foot slippeth in such known ground, as is the royal prerogative of our high and most truly dread Sovereign (who hath many crowns on His head), and the liberties of His house. He will hold you up. Blessed shall they be who take Babel's little ones, and dash their heads against the stones. I wish your Lordship may have a share of that blessing, with other worthy nobles in our land. It is true that it is now accounted wisdom for men to be partners in pulling up the stakes, and loosing the cords, of the tent of Christ. But I am persuaded, that that wisdom is cried down in heaven, and shall never pass for true wisdom with the Lord, whose word crieth shame upon wit against Christ and truth ; and, accordingly, it shall prove shame and confusion of face in the end. Our Lord hath given your Lordship light of a better stamp, and learning also, wherein ye are not behind the disputer and the scribe. Oh what a blessed thing is it to see nobility, learning, and sanctification, all concur in one ! For these ye owe yourself to Christ and His kingdom. God hath bewildered and bemisted the wit and the learning of the scribes and disputers of this time ; they look asquint to the Bible. This blinding and bemisting world blindfoldeth men's light, that they are afraid to see straight out before them ; nay, their very light playeth the knave, or worse, to truth. Your Lordship knoweth that, within a little while, policy against truth shall blush, and the works of men shall be burned up, even their spider's- web who spin out many hundred ells and webs of indifference in the Lord's worship ; more than ever Moses, who would have ^ a hoof material (Exod. X. 26), and Daniel, who would have a look out at a window a matter of life and death, than ever, I say, these men of God dreamed of. Alas ! that men dare to shape, carve, cut, and clip our King's princely testament in length and breadth, and in all dimensions, answerable to the conception of such policy, as a head- of-wit thinketh a safe and trim way of serving God ! How have men forgotten the Lord, that they dare to go against even that truth which once they preached themselves, howbeit their sermons ' Arisine from zeal. ^ Would reckon. 5o6 LETTER CCLVIII. [1637. now be as thin sown as strawberries in a wood or wilderness ! Certainly the sweetest and safest course is, for this short time of the afternoon of this old and declining world, to stand for Jesus. He hath said it, and it is our part to believe it, that ere it be long, " Time shall be no more, and the heaven shall wax old, as a garment." Do we not see it already an old holie and thread- bare garment. Doth not cripple and lame nature tell us, that the Lord will fold up the old garment, and lay it aside ; and that the heavens shall be folded together as a scroll, and this pest- house shall be burnt with fire, and that both plenishing and walls shall melt with fervent heat ? For at the Lord's coming, He will do with this earth, as men do with a leper-house ; He will burn, the walls with fire, and the plenishing of the house also (2 Pet. iii. 10, 12). My very dear Lord, how will ye rejoice in that day, to have Christ, angels, heaven, and your own con- science to smile upon you ? I am persuaded that one sick night, through the terrors of the Almighty, would make men, whose conscience hath such a wide throat that an image like a cathedral church, would go down it, have other thoughts of Christ and His worship, than now they please themselves with. The scarcity of faith in the earth saith, " We are hard upon the last nick of time : " blessed are those who keep their garments clean against the Bridegroom's coming. There shall be spotted clothes, and many defiled garments, at His last Coming ; and, therefore, few found worthy to walk with Him in white. I am persuaded, my Lord, that this poor travailing Woman, our pained church, is with child of victory, and shall bring forth a Man-child all lovely and glorious, that shall be caught up to God and to His throne, howbeit the dragon, in his followers, be attending the childbirth pain, as an Egyptian midwife, to receive the birth and strangle it. But they shall be disappointed who thirst for the destruction of Zion. " They shall be as when a hungry man dreameth that he eateth, but, behold, he awake th, and his soul is empty ; or when a thirsty man dreameth that he drinketh, but, behold, he awaketh, and is faint, and his soul is not satisfied : so shall it be," I say, " with the multitude of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion " (Isa. xxix. 8). There- fore, the weak and feeble, those that are " as signs and wonders in Israel," have chosen the best side, even the side that victory is upon. And I think this is no evil policy. Verily, for myself, I am so well pleased with Christ, and His noble and honest-borne cross, this cross that is come of Christ's 1637.] LETTER CCLIX. 507 house and is of kin to Himself, that I should weep if it should come to niftering and bartering of lots and condition with those that are "at ease in Zion." I hold still my choice, and bless myself in it. I see and I believe that there is salvation in this way, which is everywhere spoken against. I hope to go to eternity, and to venture on the last evil to the saints (even upon death), fully persuaded that this only, even this, is the saving way for racked consciences, and for weary and laden sinners to find ease and peace for evermore in. And, indeed, it is not for any worldly respect that I speak so of it. The weather is not so hot that I have great cause to startle in my prison, or to boast of that entertainment that my good friends, the prelates, intend for me (which is, banishment), if they shall obtain their desire, and effectuate what they design. But let it come ; I rue not that I made Christ my wale and my choice ; I think Him aye the longer the better. My Lord, it shall be good service to God, to hold your noble friend and chiefs upon a good course for the truth of Christ. Now the very God of peace establish your Lordship in Christ Jesus unto the end. Your Lordship's, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Sept. 10, 1637. S. R. CCLIX.— To Mr. David Dickson. {DANGER OF WORLDLY EASE— PERSONAL OCCURRENCES.) EVEREND AND WELL-BELOVED BEOTHER IN THE LORD, — I bless the Lord, who hath so wonder- fully stopped the ongoing of that lawless process against you.^ The Lord reigneth, and has a saving eye upon you and your ministry ; and, therefore, fear not what men can do. I bless the Lord, that the Irish ministers find employment, and the professors comfort of their ministry. Believe me, I durst not, as I am now disposed, hold an honest brother out of the pulpit. I trust that the Lord will guard you, and hide you in the shadow of His hand. I am not pleased with any that are against you in that. I see this, that, in prosperity, men's conscience will not start 1 The Earl of Argyle. 2 This is probably an allusion to a threat of the Archbishop of Glasgow, to prosecute Dickson for employing Blair, Livingstone, and Cunningham, after they harl been silenced and ejected by the Irish prelates. 5o8 LETTER CCLX. [1637. at small sins ; but if some had been where I have been since I came from you, a little more would have caused their eyes to water, and trouble their peace. Oh how ready are we to incline to the world's hand ! Our arguments, being well examined, are often drawn from our skin ; the whole skin, and a peaceable tabernacle, is a topic-maxim in great request in our logic. I find a little brairding of God's seed in this town, for the which the doctors have told me their mind, that they cannot bear with it, and have examined and threatened the people that haunt my company. I fear I get not leave to winter here ; and whither I go I know not; I am ready at the Lord's call. I would I could make acquaintance with Christ's cross, for I find comforts lie to, and follow upon, the cross. I suffer in my name, by them ; but I take it as a part of the crucifying of the old man. Let them cut the throat of my credit, and do as they like best with it. When the wind of their calumnies hath blown away my good name from me, in the way to heaven, I know that Christ will take my name out of the mire, and wash it, and restore it to me again. I would have a mind (if the Lord would be pleased to give me it) to be a fool for Christ's sake. Sometimes, while I have Christ in my arms, I fall asleep in the sweetness of His presence, and He, in my sleep, stealeth away out of my arms ; and when I awake, I miss Him. I am much comforted with my Lady Pitsligo, a good woman, and acquainted with God's ways. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Sept. 11, 1637. S. K. CCLX. — To Alexander Gordon of Earlston. {ALL CROSSES WELL ORDERED—PROVIDENCES.) UCH HONOURED SIR,— Howbeit I should have been glad to have seen you ; yet, seeing that our Lord hath been pleased to break the snare of our adversaries, I heartily bless our Lord on your behalf. Our crosses for Christ are not made of iron ; tliey are softer and of more gentle metal. It is easy for God to make a fool of the devil, the father of all fools. As for me, I but breatlie out what my Lord breatheth in. The scum and froth of my letters I father upon my own unbelieving heart. I know tliat your Lord 1637-] LETTER CCLX. 509 hath something to do with you, because Satan and malice have shot sore at you ; but your bow abideth in its strength. Ye shall not, by my advice, be a halver with Christ, to divide the glory of your deliverance betwixt yourself and Him, or any other second mean whatsoever. Let Christ (as it setteth Him well) have all the glory and triumph His lone. The Lord set Himself on high in you. 1. I see that Christ can borrow a cross for some hours, and set His servants beside it, rather than under it, and win the plea too ; yea, and make glory to Himself, and shame to His enemies, and comfort to His children out of it. But whether Christ buy or borrow crosses, He is King of crosses, and King of devils, and King over hell, and King over malice. When He was in the grave, He came out, and brought the keys with Him. He is Lord Jailor ; nay, what say I ? He is Captain of the castle, and He hath the keys of death and hell. And what are our troubles but little deaths ? and He who commandeth the great castle commandeth the little also. 2. I see that a hardened face, and two skins upon our brows against the winter hail and stormy wind, is meetest for a poor traveller, in a winter journey to heaven. Oh, what art is it to learn to endure hardness, and to learn to go barefooted either through the devil's fiery coals, or his frozen waters ! 3. I am persuaded that a sea-venture with Christ maketh great riches : is not the ship of our Kling Jesus coming home, and shall not we get part of the gold ? Alas ! we fools miscount our gain when we seem losers. Believe me, I have no challenges against this well-borne cross : for it is come of Christ's house, and is honourable, and is His propine. " To you it is given to suffer." — Oh, what fools are we, to undervalue His gifts, and to lightly that which is true honour ! For if we could be faithful, our tackling shall not loose, or our mast break, or our sails blow into the sea. The bastard crosses, the kinless and base-born crosses of worldings for evil-doing, must be heavy and grievous ; but our afflictions are light and momentary. 4. I think myself happy that I have lost credit with Christ, and that in this bargain I am Christ's sworn dyvour,^ to whom He will lippen nothing,' no, not one pin in the work of my salvation. Let me stand in black and white in the dyvour-book, before Christ. I am happy that my salvation is concredited^ to 1 Admitted bankrupt ; and in the next sentence, ' ' dyvour-book " is the bankrupt- roll. 2 Entrusted fully. 5IO LETTER CCLXI. [1637 Christ's mediation. Christ oweth no faith to me, to lippen any- thing to me ; but oh what faith and credit I owe to Him ! Let my name fall, and let Christ's name stand in honour with men and angels, Alas ! I have no room to spread out my affection before God's people ; and I see not how I can shout out and cry out the loveliness, the high honour, and the glory of my fairest Lord Jesus, Oh that He would let me have a bed to lie on, to be delivered of my birth, that I might paint Him out in His beauty to men, as I dow, 5, I wondered once at providence, and called white provi- dence black and unjust, that I should be smothered in a town where no soul will take Christ off my hand. But providence hath another lustre with God than with my bleared eyes. I proclaim myself a blind body, who knoweth not black and white, in the unco course of God's providence. Suppose that Christ should set hell where heaven is, and devils up in glory beside the elect angels (which yet cannot be), I would I had a heart to acquiesce in His way, without further dispute. I see that infinite wisdom is the mother of His judgments, and that His ways pass finding out, , 6. I cannot learn, but I desire to learn, to bring my thoughts, will, and lusts, in-under Christ's feet, that He may trample upon them. But, alas ! I am still upon Christ's wrong side. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Styt. 12, 1637. S. R. CCLXI.— To iU Lady Kilconquhair. [See Letter CCXXVI.] {THE KINGDOM TO BE TAKE :r BY VIOLENCE.) ISTPiESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I re- ceived your letter, I am heartily content, that ye love and own this oppressed and wronged cause of Christ ; and that now, when so many have miscarried, ye are in any measure taken with the love of Jesus. Weary not, but come in and see if there be not more in Christ than the tongue of men and angels can express. If ye seek a gate to heaven, the way is in Him, or He is it. Wlmt ye want is treasured up in Jesus ; and He saith, all His are yours. Even His kingdom, He is content to divide it betwixt Him and you : 1637.] LETTER CCLXL 511 yea, His throne and His glory (Luke xxii. 29, 30 ; John xvii. 21 ; Rev. iii. 21). And, therefore, take pains to climb up to that besieged house to Christ ; for devils, men, and armies of temptations are lying about the house, to hold out all that are out, and it is taken with violence. It is not a smooth and easy way, neither will your weather be fair and pleasant ; but who- soever hath seen the invisible God, and the fair City, makes no reckoning of losses or crosses. In ye must be, cost you what it will. Stand not for a price, and for all that ye have, to win the castle. The rights to it are won to you, and it is disponed to you in the testament of your Lord Jesus (and see what a fair legacy your dying Friend, Christ, hath left you !), and there wanteth nothing but possession. Then get up in the strength of the Lord ; get over the water to possess that good land. It is better than a land of olives and wine-trees ; for the Tree of Life, that beareth twelve manner of fruits every month, is there before you ; and a pure river of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, is there. Your time is short ; therefore lose no time. Gracious and faithful is He who hath called you to His kingdom and glory. The city is yours by free conquest, and by promise ; and, therefore, let no unco lord- idol put you from your own. The devil hath cheated the simple heir of his paradise, and, by enticing us to taste of the forbidden fruit, hath as it were, bought us out of our kindly heritage. But our Lord Christ Jesus hath done more than bought the devil by ;^ for He hath redeemed the wadset, and made the poor heir free to the inheritance. If we knew the glory of our Elder Brother in heaven, we would long to be there to see Him, and to get our fill of heaven. "We children think the earth a fair garden ; but it is but God's outfield, and wild, cold, barren ground. All things are fading that are here. It is our happiness to make sure of Christ to ourselves. Thus remembering my love to your husband, and wishing to him what I write to you, I commit you to God's tender mercy. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Sein. 13, 1637. S. R. ^ Set aside. 512 LETTER CCLXII. [1637. CCLXIL— To Robert Lennox of Bisdove. [See Letter CCXIIL] (INCREASING EXPERIENCE OF CHRISTS LOVE— SALVATION TO BE MADE SURE.) ORTHY AND DEAE BROTHER,— I forget you not in my bonds. I know that you are looking to Christ ; and I beseech you to follow your look. I can say more of Christ now by experience (though He be in- finitely above and beyond all that can be said of Him), than when I saw you. I am drowned over head and ears in His love. Sell, sell, sell all things for Christ. If this whole world were the balk of a balance, it would not be able to bear the weight of Christ's love ; men and angels have short arms to fathom it. Set your feet upon this piece of blue and base clay of an over-gilded and fair plastered world. An hour's kissing of Christ's is worth a world of worlds. Sir, make sure work of your salvation : build not upon sand ; lay the foundation upon the rock of Zion. Strive to be dead to this world, and to your will and lusts ; let Christ have a commanding power and a king's throne in you. Walk with Christ, howbeit the world should take the hide off your face : I promise you that Christ will win the field. Your pastors cause you to err. Except you see Christ's word, go not one foot with them. Countenance not the reading of that Romish service-book. Keep your garments clean, as ye would walk with the Lamb clothed in white. The wrongs which I suffer are upon record in heaven. Our great Master and Judge will be upon us all, and bring us before the sun in our blacks and whites : blessed are they who watch and keep themselves in God's love. Learn to discern the Bridegroom's tongue, and to give yourself to prayer and reading. Ye were often a hearer of me. I would put my heart's blood on the doctrine which I taught, as the only way to salvation : go not from it, my dear brother. What I write to you, I write to your wife also. Mind heaven and Christ, and keep the spunk of the love of Christ which you have gotten. Christ will blow on it if ye entertain it; and your end shall be peace. There is a fire in our Zion, but our Lord is but seeking a new bride, refined and purified, out of the furnace. I assure you, howbeit we be nicknamed Puritans, that all the powers of the world shall not prevail against us. Remember, though a sinful man write it to you, that those people shall be in Scotland as a green olive-tree, and a field blessed of the Lord ; and that 1637] LETTER CCLXJIL 513 it shall be proclaimed, " Up, up with Christ, and down, down with all contrary powers." Sir, pray for me (I name you to the Lord), for further evil is determined against me. Eemember my love to Christian Murray and her daughter. I desire her, in the edge of her evening, to wait a little ; the King is coming, and He hath something that she never saw with Him. Heaven is no dream. " Come and see " will teach her best. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Sept. 13, 1637. S- K. CCLXIII.— To Marion M'Naught. {HOPE IN TRIAL— PRAYER AND WATCHFULNESS.) EAEEST IN OUK LOED JESUS,— Count it your honour, that Christ hath begun at you to refine you first. " Eear not," saith the Amen, the True and Faithful Witness. I write to you, as my Master liveth, upon the word of my royal King, continue in prayer and in watching, and your glorious deliverance is coming ! Christ is not far off. A fig, a straw, for all the bits of clay that are risen against us ! Ye shall thresh the mountains, and fan them like chafif (Isa. xli. 15, 16). If ye slack your hands at your meetings, and your watching to prayer, then it would seem that our Eock hath sold us ; but be diligent, and be not discouraged. I charge you in Christ, to rejoice, give thanks, believe, be strong in the Lord. That burning bush in Galloway and Kirkcudbright shall not be burnt to ashes, for the Lord is in the bush. Be not discouraged that banishment is to be procured, by the King's warrant to the Council, against me : the earth is my Lord's. I am filled with His sweet love, and running over. I rejoice to hear that ye are on your journey. Such news as I hear, of all your faith and love, rejoice my sad heart. Pray for me, for they seek ray hurt ; but I give myself to prayer. The blessing of my Lord, and the blessing of a prisoner of Christ be with you. 0 chosen and greatly beloved woman, faint not. Ey, fy ; if ye faint now, ye lose a good cause. Double your meetings ; cease not for Zion's sake, and liold not your peace till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Yours, in Christ Jesus his Lord, Aberdeen, 1637. S. E. 2 K 514 LETTER CCLXIV, [1637 CCLXIV. — To Thomas Corbet. [One of his Anwoth parishioners.] (GODLY COUNSELS— FOLLOWING CHRIST,) EAR FEIEND, — I forget you not. It will be my joy that ye follow after Christ till ye find Him. My conscience is a feast of joy to me, that I fought in singleness of heart, for Christ's love, to put you upon the King's highway to our Bridegroom, and our Father's house. Thrice blessed are ye, my dear brother, if ye hold the way. I believe that ye and Christ once met ; I hope ye wall not sunder with Him. Follow the counsel of the man of God, Mr. William Dalgleish. If ye depart from what I taught you in a hair-breadth, for fear or favour of men, or desire of ease in this world, I take heaven and earth to witness that ill shall come upon you in the end. Build not youf nest here. This world is a hard, ill-made bed ; no rest is in it for your soul. Awake, awake, and make haste to seek that Pearl, Christ, that this world seeth not. ' Your night and your Master Christ will be upon you within a clap ; your hand-breadth of time will not bide you. Take Christ, howbeit a storm follow Him. Howbeit this day be not yoiirs and Christ's, the morrow will be yours and His. I would not exchange the joy of my bonds and imprisonment for Christ, with all the joy of this dirty and foul-skinned world- I have a love-bed with Christ, and am filled with His love. I desire your wife to do what I write to j^ou. Let her remember how dear Christ will be to her, when her breath turneth cold, and the eye-strings shall break. Oh, how joyful should my soul be, to know that I had brought on a marriage betwixt Christ and that people, few or many ! If it be not so, I shall be wo to be a witness against them. Use prayer : love not the world : be humble, and esteem little of yourself. Love your enemies, and pray for them. Make conscience of speaking truth, when none knoweth but God. I never eat, but I pray for you all. Pray for me. Ye and I shall see one another up in our Father's house. I rejoice to hear that your eye is upon Christ. Follow on, hing on, and quit Him not. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Your affectionate brother, in our Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637 S- ^- 1637.] LETTER CCLXV, 515 CCLXV.— To Mr. George Dunbar. [George Dunbar was minister of Ayr. Adhering with zeal to Presbytery, he was summoned before the High Commission Court in the beginning of the year 1622. On appearing, he gave in a paper declining its authority ; but the Court passed sentence of deprivation upon him, and condemned him to be confined within Dumfries. He was ejected from this charge also. When the messenger of the Court came to his house on this last occasion, either to summon him or to intimate his sentence, a young daughter of his said, " And Pharaoh's heart is still hardened ! " while all that Dunbar said was to bid his wife "prepare her creels again ; " for, on the former occasion, the children, being young, behoved to be carried away on horseback in creels (Livingstone's "Characteristics"). He was for a long time prisoner at Blackness ; but at length, being banished by the Privy Council, he removed to Ireland. He first preached at Carriekfergus, and ultimately settled at Larne, ^^here he discharged his ministry with diligence and success. On being deposed by the Bishop of Down, in 1634, for nonconformity, he came over to Scotland, and after the triumph of Presbytery, in 1638, became minister of the parish of Caldcr, in Lothian, where he died.] {CHRISrS LOVE IN AFFLICTION— THE SAINTS SUPPORT AND FINAL VICTORY.) EVEREND AND DEAELY BELOVED IN THE LORD, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — Be- cause your words have strengthened many, I was silent, expecting some lines from you in my bonds ; and this is the cause why I wrote not to you. But now I am forced to break off and speak. I never believed, till now, that there was so much to be found in Christ on this side of death and of heaven. Oh, the ravishments of heavenly joy that may be had here, in the small gleanings of comforts that fall from Christ ! What fools are we who know not, and consider not the weight and the telling that is in the very earnest-penny, and the first- fruits of our hoped-for harvest ! How sweet, how sweet is our infeftment ! oh, what then must personal possession be ! I find that my Lord Jesus hath not miscooked or spilled this sweet cross; He hath an eye on the fire and the melting gold, to separate the metal and the dross. Oh how much time would it take me to read my obligations to Jesus my Lord, who will neither have the faith of His own to be burnt to ashes, nor yet will have a poor believer in the fire to be half raw, like Ephraim's unturned cake ! This is the wisdom of Him who hath His fire in Zion, and furnace in Jerusalem. I need not either bud or flatter temptations and crosses, nor strive to buy the devil or this malicious world by, or redeem their kindness with half a hair- breadth of truth. He who is surety for His servant for good doth powerfully overrule all that. I see my prison hath neither 5i6 LETTER CCLXV. [1637. lock nor door : I am free in my bonds, and my chains are made of rotten straw ; they shall not bide one pull of faith. I am sure that there are those in hell who would exchange their torments with our crosses, suppose they should never be delivered, and give twenty thousand years' torment to boot, to be in our bonds for ever. And, therefore, we wrong Christ who sigh, and fear, and doubt, and despond in them. Our sufferings are washen in Christ's blood, as well as our souls ; for Christ's merits brought a blessing to the crosses of the sons of God. And Jesus hath a back-bond of all our temptations, that the free-warders shall come out by law and justice, in respect of the infinite and great sum that the Eedeemer paid. Our troubles owe us a free passage through them. Devils, and men, and crosses, are our debtors, death and all storms are our debtors, to blow our poor tossed bark over the water fraught-free, and to set the travellers on their own known ground. Therefore we shall die, and yet live. We are over the water some way already. We are married, and our tocher-good is paid. We are already more than conquerors. If the devil and the world knew how the court with our Lord shall go, I am sure they would hire death to take us off their hand. Our sufiferings are only the wreck and ruin of the black kingdom ; and yet a little, and the Anti- christ must play himself with bones and slain bodies of the Lamb's followers ; but withal we stand with the hundred forty and four thousand, who are with the Lamb, upon the top of Mount Zion, Antichrist and his followers are down in the valley ground : we have the advantage of the hill ; our tempta- tions are always beneath. Our waters are beneath our breath : ^ " as dying, and behold we live." I never heard before of a living death, or a quick death, but ours : our death is not like the common death. Christ's skill. His handywork, and a new cast of Christ's admirable art, may be seen in our quick death. I bless the Lord, that all our troubles come through Christ's fingers, and that He casteth sugar among them, and casteth in some ounce-weights of heaven, and of the Spirit of glory that resteth on suffering believers, into our cup, in which there is no taste of hell. My dear brother, ye know all these better than L I send water to the sea, to speak of these things to you ; but it easeth me to desire you to help me to pay my tribute of praise to Jesus. Oh what praises I owe Him ! I would I were in my free heritage, that I might begin to pay my debts ^ Our Load is high enough above the waters to let us hreathe. 1637.] LETTERS CCLXVI., CCLXVII. 517 to Jesus. I entreat for your prayers and praises. I forget not you. Your brother and fellow-sufferer in and for Christ, Aberdeen, 8^pt. 17, 1637. S. E. CCLXVI. — To John Fleming, Bailie of Leith. {COMFORT ABOUNDING UNDER TRIALS.) ORTHY SIR, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — The Lord hath brought me safe to this strange town. Blessed be His holy name, I find His cross easy and light, and I hope that He will be with His poor sold Joseph, who is separated from his brethren. His comforts have abounded towards me, as if Christ thought shame (if I may speak so) to be in the common of such a poor man as I am, and would not have me lose anything in His errands. My enemies have, beside their intention, made me more blessed, and have put me in a sweeter possession of Christ than ever I had before ; only the memory of the fair days I had with my Well-beloved, amongst the flock intrusted to me, keepeth me low, and soureth my unseen joy (1 Cor. ii. 9). But it must be so, and He is wise who tutoreth me in this way. For ^ that which my brethren have, and I want, and others of this world have, I am content ; my faith will frist God my happiness. No son is offended that his father give him not hire twice a-year ; for he is to abide in the house, when the inheritance is to be divided. It is better that God's children live upon hope, than upon hire. Thus remembering my love to your worthy and kind wife, I bless you and her, and all yours, in the Lord's name. Yours, in his only, only Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Sept. 20, 1637. S- ■^' CCLXVIL — To William Glendinninq, Bailie of Kirkcudbright. {THE PAST AND THE FUTURE— PRESENT HAPPINESS.) ORTHY SIR, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I am well, honour be to God ! as well as a rejoicing prisoner of Christ can be, hoping that one day He, for whom I now suffer, will enlarge me, and put me above the threatenings of men. ^ As for that which. 5i8 LETTER CCLXVII. [1637. I am sometimes sad, heavy, and casten down, at the memory of the fair days I had with Christ in Anwoth, Kirkcudbright, etc. The remembrance of a feast increaseth hunger in a hungry man. But who knoweth, but our Lord will yet cover a table in the wilderness to His hungry bairns, and build the old waste places in Scotland, and bring home Zion's captives ? I desire to see no more glorious sight, till I see the Lamb on His throne, than to see Mount Zion all green with grass, and the dew lying upon the tops of the grass, and the crown put upon Christ's head in Scotland again. And I believe it shall be so, and that Christ will mow down His enemies, and fill the pits with their dead bodies. I find people here dry and unco. A man pointed at for suffering dare not to be countenanced ; so that I am like to sit my lone upon the ground. But my Lord payeth me well home again ; for I have neither tongue, nor pen, nor heart to express the sweetness and excellency of the love of Christ. Christ's honeycombs drop honey and floods of consolation upon my soul. My chains are gold : Christ's cross is all over-gilded and perfumed : His prison is the garden and orchard of my delights. I would go through burning quick to my lovely Christ, I sleep in His arms all the night, and my head betwixt His breasts. My Well- beloved is altogether lovely. This is all nothing to that which my soul hath felt. Let no man, for my cause, scaur at Christ's cross. If my stipend, place, country, credit, had been an earldom, a kingdom, ten kingdoms, and a whole earth, all were too little for the crown and sceptre of my royal King. Mine enemies, mine enemies have made me blessed ! They have sent me to the Bridegroom's chamber. Love is His banner over me. I live a king's life; I want nothing but heaven, and possession of the crown. My earnest is great ; Christ is no niggard to me. Dear Brother, be for the Lord Jesus, and His heart-broken bride. I need not, I hope, remember my distressed brother to your care. Eemember my love to your wife. Let Christ want nothing of us ; His garments shall be rolled in the blood of the slain of Scotland. Grace, grace be with you. Pray for Christ's prisoner. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberkeen, Se^pt. 21, 1637. S- -^ 1637.] LETTER CCLXVIII. 519 CCLXVIII.— To the Earl op Cassillis. [Letter CXXVIII.] {ANXIETY FOR THE PROSPERITY OF ZION— ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THE NOBLES TO SUPPORT IT— THE VANITY OF THIS WORLD, AND THE FOLLY AND MISERY OF FORSAKING CHRIST— THE ONE WAY TO HEAVEN.) Y VERY HONOUEABLE AND NOBLE LORD,— - Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Lordship. — Pardon me to express my earnest desire to your Lordship, for Zion's sake, for whom we should not hold our peace. I know that your Lordship will take my pleading on this behalf in the better part, because the necessity of a falling and weak church is urgent. I believe that your Lordship is one of Zion's friends, and that by obligation. For when the Lord shall count and write up the people, it shall be written, " This man was born there ; " therefore, because your Lordship is a born son of the house, I hope your desire is, that the beauty and glory of the Lord may dwell in the midst of the city, whereof your Lordship is a son. It must be, without all doubt, the greatest honour of your place and house, to kiss the Son of God, and for His sake to be kind to His oppressed and wronged Bride, who now, in the day of her desolation, beggeth help of you that are the shields of the earth. I am sure many kings, princes, and nobles, in the day of Christ's Second Coming, would be glad to run errands for Christ, even barefooted, through fire and water. But in that day He will have none of their service. Now, He is asking if your Lordship will help Him against the mighty of the earth, when men are setting their shoulders to Christ's fair and beauti- ful tent in this land, to loose its stakes and to break it down. And certainly such as are not with Christ are against Him : and blessed shall your Lordship be of the Lord, blessed shall your house and seed be, and blessed shall your honour be, if ye empawn and lay in Christ's hand the Earldom of Cassillis (and it is but a shadow in comparison of the city made without hands !), and lay it even at the stake, rather than Christ and borne-down truth want a witness of you, against the apostacy of this land. Ye hold your lands of Christ ; your charters are under His seal ; and He who hath many crowns on His head, dealeth, cutteth, and carveth pieces of this clay-heritage to men, at His pleasure. It is little your Lordship hath to give Him ; He will not sleep long in your common, but shall surely pay home your losses for His cause. It is but our bleared eyes that look through a false 520 LETTER CCLXVIII. [1637. glass to this idol-god of clay, and think something of it. They who are past with their last sentence to heaven or hell, and have made their reckoning, and departed out of this smoky inn, have now no other conceit of this world, but as a piece of beguiling well-lustred clay. And how fast doth time (like a flood in motion) carry your Lordship out of it ! And is not eternity coming with wings ? Court goeth not in heaven as it doth here. Our Lord (who hath all you, the nobles, lying in the shell of His balance) esteemeth you according as ye are the Bridegroom's friends or foes. Your honourable ancestors, with the hazard of their lives, brought Christ to our land ; ^ and it shall be cruelty to the posterity if ye lose Him to them. One of our tribes, Levi's sons, the watchmen, are fallen from the Lord, and have sold their mother, and their father also, and the Lord's truth, for their new velvet-world and their satin-church. If ye, the nobles, play Christ the slip now, when His back is at the wall (if I may so speak), then may we say that the Lord hath casten water upon Scotland's smoking coal. But we hope better things of you. It is no wisdom (however it be the state- wisdom now in request) to be silent; when they are casting lots for a better thing than Christ's coat. All this land, and every man's part of the play for Christ, and the tears of poor and friendless Zion (now going dool-like in sackcloth), are up in heaven before our Lord ; and there is no question, but our King and Lord shall be master of the fields at length. And we would all be glad to divide the spoil with Christ, and to ride in triumph with Him ; but oh how few will take a cold bed of straw in the camp with Him ! How fain would men have a well-thatched house above their heads, all the way to heaven ! And many now would go to heaven the land-way (for they love not to be sea-sick), riding up to Christ upon foot-mantles, and rattling coaches, and rubbing their velvet with the princes of the land, in the highest seats. If this be the way Christ called strait and narrow, I quit all skill of the way to salvation. Are they not now rouping Christ and the Gospel ? Have they not put our Lord Jesus to the market, and he who outbiddeth his fellow shall get Him ? 0 my dear and noble Lord, go on (howbeit the wind be in your face) to back our princely Captain. Be courageous for Him. Fear not those who have no subscribed lease of days. The worms shall eat kings. Let the Lord Jehovah be your fear, and then, as the Lord liveth, the victory is yours. It is true, many are striking up a new 1 It is "liaTids" in old editious. 1637] LETTER CCLXIX. 521 way to heaven ; but, my soul for theirs, if they find it, and if this be not the only way, whose end is Christ's Father's house. And my weak experience, since the day I was first in bonds, hath confirmed me in the truth and assurance of this. Let doctors and learned men cry the contrary, I am persuaded that this is the way. The bottom hath fallen out of both their wit and conscience at once ; their book hath beguiled them, for we have fallen upon the true Christ. I dare hazard, if I alone had ten souls, my salvation upon this Stone that many now break their bones upon.^ Let them take this fat world. Oh, poor and hungry is their paradise ! Therefore let me entreat your Lord- ship, by your compearance before Christ, now while this piece of the afternoon of your day is before you (for ye know not when your sun will turn, and eternity shall benight you), let your worldly glory, honour, and might, be for our Lord Jesus. And to His rich grace, and tender mercy, and to the never-dying comforts of His gracious Spirit, I recommend your Lordship and noble house. Your Lordship's, at all obedience, Aberdeen, Sept. 9, 1637. S. K. CCLXIX. — To his Parishioners at Anwoth. {EXHORTATION TO ABIDE IN THE TRUTH, IN PROSPECT OP CHRIST S COMING— SCRIPTURAL MODE OF OBSERVING OR- DINANCES SUCH AS THE SABBATH, FAMILY PRAYER, AND THE LORD'S SUPPER— JUDGMENTS ANTICIPATED.) EARLY BELOVED IN OUE LORD,— Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, be multiplied upon you. I long exceedingly to hear of your on-going and advancement in your journey to the kingdom of God. My only joy, out of heaven, is to hear that the seed of God sown among you is growing and coming to a harvest. For I ceased not, while I was among you, in season and out of season (according to the measure of grace given unto me), to warn and stir up your minds : and I am free from the blood of all men, for I have communicated to you the whole counsel of God. And I now again charge and warn you, in the great and dreadful name, and in the sovereign authority of the King of kings, and Lord of lords, and I beseech you also by the mercies of God, and by the bowels of Christ, by your appearance before Christ Jesus our Lord, by ^ Alluding to Matt. xxi. 44, 52 2 LETTER CCLXIX. [1637. all the plagues that are written in God's book, by your part of the holy city, the New Jerusalem, that ye keep the truth of God, as I delivered it to you, before many witnesses, in the sight of God and His holy angels. For now the last days are come and coming, when many forsake Christ Jesus ; and He saith to you, Will ye also leave Me ? Eemember that I forewarned you to forbear the dishonouring of the Lord's blessed name, in swearing, blaspheming, cursing, and the profaning of the Lord's Sabbath ; willing you to give that day, from morning to night, "to praying, praising, hearing of the word, conferring, and speaking not your own words but God's words, thinking and meditating on God's nature, word, and work ; and that every day, at morning and at night (at least), ye should sanctify the Lord by praying in your houses, publicly in the hearing of all. That ye should in any sort forbear the receiving of the Lord's Supper but after the form that I delivered it to you, according to the example of Christ our Lord, that is, that ye should sit as banqueters, at one table with our King, and eat, and drink, and divide the elements, one to another. (The timber and stones' of the church- wall shall bear witness, that my soul was refreshed with the comforts of God in that supper !) And that crossing in baptism was unlawful, and against Christ's or- dinance. And that no day besides the Sabbath (which is of His own appointment) should be kept holy, and sanctified with preaching and the public worship of God, for the memory of Christ's birth, death, resurrection, and ascension ; seeing such days so observed are unlawful, will-worship, and not warranted in Christ's word. And that everything, in God's worship, not warranted by Christ's Testament and word, was unlawful. Also, that Idolatry, worshipping of God before hallowed creatures, and adoring of Christ by kneeling before bread and wine, was unlawful. And that ye should be humble, sober, modest, for- bearing pride, envy, malice, wrath, hatred, contention, debate, lying, slandering, stealing, and defrauding your neighbours in grass, corn, or cattle, in buying or selling, borrowing or lending, taking or giving, in bargains or covenants ; that ye should work with your own hands, and be content with that which God hath given you. That ye should study to know God and His will, and keep in mind the doctrine of the Catechism, which I taught you carefully, and speak of it in your houses, and in the fields, when ye lie down at night, and when ye rise in the morning ; and that ye should believe in the Son of God, and obey His i637-] LETTER CCLXIX. 523 commandments, and learn to make your accounts in time w ith your Judge, because death and judgment are before you. And if ye have now penury and want of that word, which I delivered to you in abundance (yea to God's honour I speak it, without arrogating anything to myself, who am but a poor empty man, ye had as much of the word in nine years, while I was among you, as some others have had in many), mourn for your loss of time, and repent. My soul pitieth you, that ye should suck dry breasts, and be put to draw at dry wells. Oh that ye would esteem highly the Lamb of God, your well-beloved Christ Jesus, whose virtues and praises I preached unto you with joy, and whicli He did countenance and accompany with some power ; and that ye would call to mind the many fair days, and glorious feasts in our Lord's house-of-wine, that ye and I have had with Christ Jesus ! But if there be any among you that take liberty to sin be- cause I am removed from amongst you, and forget that word of truth which ye heard, and turn the grace of God into wanton- ness, I here, under my hand, in the name of Christ my Lord, write to such persons all the plagues of God, and the curses that ever I preached in the pulpit of Anwoth, against the children of disobedience! And, as the Lord liveth, the Lord Jesus shall make good what I write unto you. Therefore, dearly beloved, fulfil my joy. Fear the great and dreadful name of the Lord. Seek God with me. Scotland's judgment sleepeth not : awake and repent. The sword of the Lord shall go from the north to the south, from the east to the west, and through all the corners of the land, and that sword shall be drunk with your blood amongst the first ; and I shall stand up as a witness against you, if you do not amend your ways and your doings, and turn to the Lord with all your heart. I beseech you also, my beloved in the Lord, my joy, and my crown, be not offended at the sufferings of me, the prisoner of Jesus Christ. I am filled with joy and with the comforts of God. Upon my salvation, I know and am persuaded it is for God's truth, and the honour of my King and royal Prince Jesus, I now suffer. And howbeit this town be my prison, yet Christ hath made it my palace, a garden of pleasures, a field and orchard of delights, I know likewise, albeit I be in bonds, that yet the word of God is not in bonds. My spirit also is in free ward. Sweet, sweet have His comforts been to my soul : my pen, tongue, and heart have not words to express the kindness, 5H LETTER CCLXX. [1637. love, and mercy of my Well-beloved to me, in this house of my pilgrimage. I charge you to fear and love Christ, and to seek a house not made with hands, but your Father's house above. This laughing and white-skinned world beguileth you ; and if ye seek it more than God, it shall play you a slip, to the endless sorrow of your heart. Alas ! I could not make many of you fall in love with Christ, howbeit I endeavoured to speak much good of Him and to commend Him to you ; which as it was your sin, so it is my sorrow ! Yet, once again suffer me to exhort, beseech, and obtest you in the Lord, to think of His love, and to be de- lighted with Him, who is altogether lovely. I give ye the word of a King, that ye shall not repent it. Ye are in my prayers night and day. I cannot forget you : I do not eat, I do not drink, but I pray for you all. I entreat you all and every one of you, to pray for me. Grace, grace be with you. Your lawful and loving pastor, Aberdeen, Se'pt. 23, 1637. S. R. CCLXX.— To thA Lady Busbie. [Letter CXXXIII.] {HIS EXPERIENCE OF CHRIST'S LOVE— STATE OF THE LAND AND CHURCH— CHRIST NOT DULY ESTEEMED — DESIRES AFTER HIM, AND FOR A REVIVAL.) ISTRESS, — Although not acquaint, yet because we are Father's children, I thought good to write unto you. Howbeit my first discourse and communing with you of Christ be in paper, yet I have cause, since I came hither, to have no paper thoughts of Him. For, in my sad days. He is become the flower of my joys ; and I but lie here living upon His love, but cannot get so much of it as fain I would have ; not because Christ's love is lordly, and looketh too high, but because I have a narrow vessel to receive His love, and I look too low. But I give, under my own hand-write, to you a testimonial of Christ and His cross, that they are a sweet couple, and that Christ hath never yet been set in His own due chair of honour amongst us all. Oh, I know not where to set Hira ! Oh, for a high seat to that royal princely One ! Oh that my poor withered soul had once a running-over flood of that love to put sap into my dry root, and that that flood would spring out to the tongue and pen, to utter great things, to the 1637.] LETTER CCLXX. 525 high and due commendation of such a fair One I 0 holy, holy, holy One ! Alas, there are too many dumb tongues in the world, and dry hearts, seeing there is employment in Christ for them all, and ten thousand worlds of men and angels more, to set on high and exalt the greatest Prince of the kings of the earth ! Woe is me that bits of living clay dare come out to rush hard- heads with Him ; ' and that my unkind mother, this harlot-kirk, hath given her sweet half-marrow such a meeting. For this land hath given up with Christ, and the Lord is cutting Scotland in two halves, and sending the worst half, the harlot-sister, over to Eome's brothel-house, to get her fill of Egypt's love. I would my sufferings (nay, suppose I were burnt quick to ashes) might buy an agreement betwixt His fairest and sweetest love, and His gaddy (Jer. ii. 36) lewd wife. Fain would I give Christ His welcome-home to Scotland again, if He would return. This is a black day, a day of clouds and darkness ; for the roof -tree of the fair temple of my Lord Jesus is fallen, and Christ's back is towards Scotland. Oh, thrice blessed are they who would hold Christ with their tears and prayers ! I know ye will help to deal with Him ; for He shall return again to this land. The next day shall be Christ's, and there shall be a fair green young garden for Christ in this land, and God's summer-dew shall lie on it all the night, and we shall sing again our new marriage-song to our Bridegroom, concerning His vineyard. But who kuoweth whether we shall live and see it ? I hear the Lord hath taken pains to afflict and dress you, as a fruitful vine for Himself. Grow and be green, and cast out your branches, and bring forth fruit. Fat and green and fruitful may ye be, in the true and sappy root. Grace, grace, free grace be your portion. Remember my bonds with prayers and praises. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R. ^ Perhaps refeiTing to Job xv. 26, though some have referred to a game where- in "Hard-heads," a small Scotch coin, was used. In his "Christ Dying and Drawing," p. 178, he writes, " Is it wisdom to knock hard-heads with God ? " So in Sermon on Zech. xiii. 7, 8. 526 LETTER CCLXXI. [1637. CCLXXI.-roEAHLRTON, Younger. [PROSPERITY UNDER THE CROSS— NEED OF SINCERITY, AND BEING FOUNDED ON CHRIST.) |UCH HONOUEED SIK,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I am well. Christ triumpheth in me, blessed be His name. I have all things. I burden no man. I see that this earth and the fulness thereof is my Father's. Sweet, sweet is the cross of my Lord. The blessing of God upon the cross of my Lord Jesus ! My enemies have contributed (beside their design) to make me blessed. This is my palace, not my prison ; especially, when my Lord shineth and smileth upon His poor afflicted and sold Joseph, who is separated from his brethren. But often He hideth Himself ; and there is a day of law, and a court of challenges within me ; I know not if fenced in God's name. But, oh, my neglects ! oh, my unseen guiltiness ! I imagined that a sufferer for Christ kept the keys of Christ's treasure, and might take out his heart- full of comforts when he pleased ; but I see, a sufferer and a witness shall be holden at the door, as well as another poor sinner, and be glad to eat with the bairns, and to take the by-board. This cross hath let me see that heaven is not at the next door, and that it is a castle not soon taken. I see, also, that it is neither pain nor art to play the hypocrite. We have all learned to sell ourselves for double price ; and to make the people (who call ten twenty, and twenty an hundred) esteem us half gods, or men fallen out of the clouds. But, oh, sincerity, sincerity, if I knew what sincerity meaneth ! Sir, lay the foundation thus, and ye shall not soon shrink, nor be shaken. Make tight work at the bottom, and your ship shall ride against all storms, if withal your anchor be fastened on good ground ; I mean within the vail. And verily I think this is all, to gain Christ. All other things are shadows, dreams, fancies, and nothing. Sir, remember my love to your mother, I pray for mercy and grace to her ; I wish her on-going toward heaven. As I promised to write, so shew her that I want nothing in my Lord's service. Christ will not be in such a poor man's common as mine. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Sept. 22, 1637. ^- ^ 1637-] LETTER CCLXXII, 547 CCLXXII.— To John Gordon. [Letter CXLVII.] (^CHRIST ALL WORTHY— THIS WORLD A CLAY PRISON— DESIRE FOR A REVIVAL OF CHRIST S CAUSE.) jORTHY AND DEAR BROTHER,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I have been too long in writing to you, but multitude of letters taketh much time from me. I bless His great name whom I serve in the spirit, that if it come to voting, amongst angels and men, how excellent and sweet Christ is, even in His reproaches and in His cross, I cannot but vote with the first that all that is in Him, both cross and crown, kisses and glooms, embracements, and frownings, and strokes, is sweet and glorious. God send me no more happiness in heaven, or. out of heaven, than Christ ! for I find this world, when I have looked upon it on both sides, within and without, and when I have seen even the laughing and lovely side of it, to be but a fool's idol, a clay prison. Lord, let it not be the nest that my hope buildeth in. I have now cause to judge my part of this earth not worth a blast of smoke, or a mouthful of brown bread. I wish that my hope may take a running-leap, and skip over time's pleasure, sin's plastering and gold-foil, this vain earth, and rest upon my Lord. Oh, how great is our night-darkness in this wilderness ! To have any conceit at all of this world is, as if a man should close his handful of water, and, holding his hand m the river, to say that all the water of the flood is his ; as if it were, indeed, all within the compass of his hand. Who would not laugh at the thoughts of such a crack-brain ? Verily, they have but an handful of water, and are but like a child clasping his two hands about a night-shadow, who idolize any created hope, but God. I now lightly, and put the price of a dream, or fable, or black nothing, upon all things but God, and that desirable and love-worthy One, my Lord Jesus. Let all the world be nothing (for nothing was their seed and mother), and let God be all things. My very dear brother, know that ye are as near heaven as ye are far from yourself, and far from the love of a bewitching and whorish world. For this world, in its gain and glory, is but the great and notable common whore, that all the sons of men have been in fancy and lust withal these 5000 years. The children that they have begotten with this uncouth and lustful 528 LETTER CCLXXII. [1637. lover are bub vanity, dreams, gold imaginations, and night- thoughts. There is no good ground here, under the covering of heaven, for men and poor wearied souls to set down their foot upon. Oh, He who is called God, that One whom they term Jesus Christ, is worth the having indeed, even if I had given away all without, my eye-holes, my soul, and myself, for sweet Jesus my Lord ! Oh, let the claim be cancelled that the creatures have to me, — except that claim my Lord Jesus hath to me ! Oh that He would claim poor me, my silly, light, and worthless soul ! Oh that He would pursue His claim to the utmost point, and not want me ! for it is my pain and remediless sorrow to want Him. I see nothing in this life but sinks, and mires, and dreams, and beguiling ditches, and ill ground for us to build upon. I am fully persuaded of Christ's victory in Scotland ; but I fear that this land be not yet ripe and white (John iv. 35) for mercy. Yet I dare be halver (upon my salvation) with the losses of the Church of Scotland, that her foes, after noon, shall sing dool and sorrow for evermore, and that her joy shall once again be cried up,' and her sky shall clear. But vengeance and burning shall be to her adversaries, and the sinners of this land. Oh that we could be awakened to prayers and humiliation ! Then should our sun shine like seven suns in the heaven ! then should the temple of Christ be builded upon the mountain-tops, and the land, from coast to coast, should be filled with the glory of the Lord. Brother, your day-task is wearing short ; your hour-glass of this span-length and hand-breadth of life will quickly pass ; and, therefore, take order and course with matters betwixt you and Christ, before it come to open pleading. There are no quarters to be had of Christ, in open judgment. I know, that ye see your thread wearing short, and that there are not many inches to the thread's end ; and, therefore, lose not time. Eemember me. His prisoner, that it would please the Lord to bring me again amongst you with abundance of the Gospel. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abbkdebn, 1637. S. K, [637.] LETTER CCLXXIIL 529 CCLXXIII.— To William Eigqe of Athernie. {COMFORT IN TRIALS FROM THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST S POWER AND WORK— THAT WILL SOON BE OVER— CORRUP- TION—FREE GRACE.) OETHY AND MUCH HONOUEED SIE,— Grace mercy, and peace be to you. — How sad a prisoner should I be, if I knew not that my Lord Jesus had the keys of the prison Himself, and that His death and blood have bought a blessing to our crosses, as well as to ourselves ! I am sure that troubles have no prevailing right over us, if they be but our Lord's Serjeants to keep us in His ward, while we are on this side of heaven. I am persuaded, also, that they shall not go over the bound-road, nor enter into heaven with us. For they find no welcome there, where "there is no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither any more pain ; " and, therefore, we shall leave them behind us. Oh, if I could get as good a gate of sin,^ even this woful and wretched body of sin, as I get of Christ's cross ! Nay, indeed, I think the cross beareth both me and itself, rather than I it, in comparison of the tyranny of the lawless flesh, and wicked neighbour, that dwelleth beside Christ's new creature. But, oh ! this is that which presseth me down, and paineth me. Jesus Christ in Hi's saints sitteth neighbour with an ill second, corruption, deadness, coldness, pride, lust, worldliness, self-love, security, falsehood, and a world of more the like, which I find in me, that are daily doing violence to the new man. Oh, but we have cause to carry low sails, and to cleave fast to free grace, free, free grace ! Blessed be our Lord that ever that way was found out. If my one foot were in heaven and my soul half in, if free-will and corruption were absolute lords of me, I should never win wholly in. Oh, but the sweet, new, and living way, that Christ hath struck up to our home, is a safe way ! I find now, presence and access a greater dainty than before ; but yet the Bridegroom locketh through the lattice, and through the hole of the door. Oh, if He and I were on fair dry land together, on the other side of the water ! Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Sept. 30, 1637. S. E. * Manner of dealing with sin. 2 L 530 LETTER CCLXXIV. [1637. CCLXXTV.— To James Murray. [This may be James Murray of whom Livingstone, in his "Characteristics," writes, "An Israelite indeed, in whom was no guile." He was a writer in Edinburgh ; hence, perhaps, the expectation of newa as to what Goyernment waa doing, iu the close of the letter.] {THE CHRISTIAN LIFE A MYSTERY TO THE WORLD— CHRISTS KINDNESS.) EAE BEOTHER, — I received your letter. I am in good health of body, but far better in my soul. I find my Lord no worse than His word. " I will be with him in trouble," is made good to me now. He heareth the sighing of the prisoner. Brother, I am comforted in my royal Prince and King. The world knoweth not our life ; it is a mystery to them. We have the sunny side of the world, and our paradise is far above theirs ; yea, our weeping is above their laughing, which is but like the crackling of thorns under a pot. And, therefore, we have good cause to fight it out, for the day of our laureation is approaching. I find my prison the sweetest place that ever I was in. My Lord Jesus is kind to me, and hath taken the mask off His face, and is content to quit me all bygones. I dare not complain of Him. And for my silence, I lay it before Christ : I hope it will be a speaking silence. He who knoweth what I would, knoweth that my soul desireth no more than that King Jesus may be great in the north of Scotland, in the south, and in the east and west, through my sufferings for the freedom of my Lord's house and kingdom. If I could keep good quarters, in time to come, with Christ, I would fear nothing. But, oh, oh, I complain of my woful outbreakings ! I tremble at the remembrance of a new outcast betwixt Him and me ; and I have cause, when I consider v'hot sickness and sad days I have had for His absence who is now come ! I find that Christ dow not be long unkind : our Joseph's bowels yearn within Him ; He cannot smother love long ; it must break out at length. Praise, praise with me, brother, and desire my acquaintance to help me. I dare not conceal His love to my soul. I wish you all a part of my feast, that my Lord Jesus may be honoured. I allow you not to hide Christ's bounty to me, when ye meet with such as know Christ. Ye write notliing to me. What are the cruel mercies of the prelates towards me ? The ministers of this town, as I hear, I637-] LETTER CCLXXV. 531 intend that I shall be more strictly confined, or else transported, because they find some people affect me. Grace be with you. Yours, in the sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdbbn, Nov. 21, 1637. S. E. CCLXXV.— To Mr. John Fergushill. [Letter CXII.] {SPIRITUAL LONGINGS UNDER CHRIST S CROSS— HOW TO BEAR IT— CHRIST PRECIOUS, AND TO BE HAD WITHOUT MONEY — THE CHURCH.) EVEREND AND WELL-BELOVED IN OUE LORD JESUS, — I must still provoke you to write by my lines. Whereat ye need not wonder, for the cross is full of talk, and speak it must, either good or bad : neither can grief be silent. I have no dittay nor indictment to bring against Christ's cross, seeing He hath made a friendly agreement betwixt me and it, and we are in terms of love together. If my former mis- carriages, and my now silent Sabbaths, seem to me to speak wrath from the Lord, I dare say it is but Satan borrowing the use and loan of my cowardly and feeble apprehensions, which start at straws. I know that faith is not so faint and foolish as to tremble at every false alarm. Yet I gather this out of it: Blessed are they who are graced of God to guide a cross well, and, that there is some art required therein. I pray God that I may not be so ill friendstead, as that Christ my Lord should leave me to be my own tutor, and my own physician. Shall I not think that my Lord Jesus, who deserveth His own place very well, will take His own place upon Him as it becometh Him, and that He will fill His own chair ? For in this is His office,' to comfort us, and those that are casten down, in all their tribulations (2 Cor. i. 4). Alas ! I know that I am a fool to seek a hole or defect in Christ's way with my soul. If I have not a stock to present to Christ at His appearance, yet I pray God that I may be able, with joy and faith and constancy, to shew the Captain of my salvation, in that day, a bloody head ^ which I received in His service. Howbeit my faith hang by a small tack and thread, I hope that the tack shall not break ; and, howbeit my Lord got no service of me but broken wishes, yet I trust that those will be accepted upon Christ's account. I have ^ Any wound. 532 LETTER CCLXXV. [1637. nothing to comfort me, but that I say, " Oh ! will the Lord disappoint an hungry on-waiter ? " The smell of Christ's wine and apples (which surpass the uptaking of dull sense) bloweth upon my soul, and I get no more for the meantime. I am sure, that to let a famishing body see meat and give him none of it, is a double pain. Our Lord's love is not so cruel as to let a poor man see Christ and heaven, and never give him more, for want of money to buy : nay, I rather think Christ to be such fair market wares, as buyers may have without money and without price. And thus I know that it shall not stand upon my want of money ; for Christ upon His own charges must buy my wedding-garment, and redeem the inheritance which I have forfeited, and give His word for one the like of me, v/ho am not law-biding of myself. Poor folks must either borrow or beg from the rich ; and the only thing that commendeth sinners to Christ is extreme necessity and want. Christ's love is ready to make and provide a ransom, and money for a poor body who hath lost his purse. " Ho, ye that have no money, come and buy " (Lsa.,lv. 1), that is the poor man's market. Now, brother, I see that old crosses would have done nothing to me ; and, therefore, Christ hath taken a new, fresh rod to me, that seemeth to talk with my soul ^ and make me tremble. I have often more ado now with faith, when I lose my compass and am blown on a rock, than those who are my beholders, standing upon the shore, are aware of. A counsel to a sick man is sooner given than taken. Lord, send the wearied man a borrowed bed from Christ ! I think often that it is after supper with me, and I am heavy. Oh, but I would sleep soundly with Christ's left hand under my head, and His right hand embracing me. The devil could not spill that bed. When I consider how tenderly Christ hath cared for me in this prison, I think that He hath handled me as the bairn that is pitied and bemoaned. I desire no more till I be in heaven, but such a feast and fill of Christ's love as I would have ; this love would be fair and adorning passments which would beautify and set forth my black, unpleasant cross. I cannot tell, my dear brother, what a great load I would bear, if I had a hearty fill of the love of that lovely One, Christ Jesus. Oh, if ye would seek and pray for tliat to me ! I would give Christ all His love-styles and titles of honour, if Pie would give me but this; nay, I W(nild sell myself, if I could, for that love. ^ See the first paragraph in this letter. 1637.] LETTER CCLXXV. 533 I have been waiting to see what friends of place and power would do for us. But when the Lord looseneth the pins of His own tabernacle, He will have Himself to be acknowledged as the only builder-up thereof; and, therefore, I would take back again my hope that I lent and laid in pawn in men's hands, and give it wholly to Christ. It is no time for me now to set up idols of my own. It were a pity to give an ounce-weight of hope to any besides Christ. I think Him v/ell worthy of all my hope, though it were as weighty as both heaven and earth. Happy were I if I had anything that Christ would seek or accept of ; but now, alas ! I see not what service I can do to Him, except it be to talk a little, and babble upon a piece of paper, concerning the love of Christ. I am often as if my faith were wadset, so that I cannot command it ; and then, when He hideth Himself, I run to the other extreme, in making each wing and toe of my case as big as a mountain of iron ; and then misbelief can spin out an hell of heavy and desponding thoughts. Then Christ seeketh law-borrows of my unbelieving apprehensions, and chargeth me to believe His daylight at midnight. But I make pleas with Christ, though it be ill my common ^ so to do. It were my happiness, when I am in this house-of-wine and when I find a feast-day, if I could " hearken, and hear for the time to come" (Isa. xlii. 23). But I see that we must be off our feet in wading a deep water ; and then Christ's love findeth timeous employment, at such a dead-lift as that ; and, besides, after broken^ brows, bairns learn to walk more circumspectly. If I come to heaven any way, howbeit like a tired traveller upon my Guide's shoulder, it is good enough for those who have no legs of their own for such a journey. I never thought there had been need of so much wrestling to win to the top of that steep mountain, as now I find. Wo is me for this broken and backsliding church ! It is like an old bowing wall, leaning to the one side, and there are none of all her sons who will set a prop under her. I know that I need not bemoan Christ ; for He careth for His own honour more than I can do ; but who can blame me to be wo (if I had grace so to be) to see my Well-beloved's fair face spitted upon, and His own crown plucked off His head, and the ark of God taken and carried in the Philistines' cart, and the kine put to carry it, which will let it fall to the ground ? The Lord put to His own helping hand ! I would desire you to prepare your- ^ Perhaps we should read : "though it ill becometh me." 534 LETTER CCLXXVL [1637. self for a fight with beasts (1 Cor. xv. 32) : ye will not get leave to steal quietly to heaven, in Christ's company, without a conflict and a cross. Kemember my bonds ; and praise my Second, and Fellow - prisoner, Christ. Grace be with you. Yours, in Christ Jesus his Lord, Aberdeen, 1637. S* ■^•• CCLXXVL— To William Glendinning. [Letter CXXXVIL] {SWEETNESS OF TRIAL— SWIFTNESS OF TIME— PREVALENCE OF SIN.) EAR BEOTHER, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — Your case is unknown to me, whether ye be yet our Lord's prisoner at Wigtown, or not. However it be, I know that our Lord Jesus hath been inquir- ing for you ; and that He hath honoured you to bear His chains, which is the golden end of His cross ; and so hath waled out a chosen and- honourable cross for you. I wish you much joy and comfort of it ; for I have nothing to say of Christ's cross but much good. I hope that my ill word shall never meet either Christ or His sweet and easy cross. I know that He seeketh of us an outcast with this house of clay, this mother prison, this earth, that we love full well. And verily, when Christ snuffeth my candle, and causeth my light to shine upward, it is one of my greatest wonders, that dirt and clay hath so much court with a soul not made of clay ; and that our soul goeth out of kind so far as to make an idol of this earth, such a deformed harlot, as that it should wrong Christ of our love. How fast, how fast doth our ship sail ! and how fair a wind hath time, to blow us off these coasts and this land of dying and perishing things ! Alas ! our ship saileth one way, and fleeth many miles in one hour, to hasten us upon eternity, and our love and hearts are sailing close backover and swimming towards ease, lawless pleasure, vain honour, perishing riches ; and to build a fool's nest I know not where, and to lay our eggs within the sea-mark, and fasten our bits of broken anchors upon the worst ground in the world, this fleeting and perishing life ! And in the meanwhile, time and tide carry us upon another life, and there is daily less and less oil in our lamps, and less and less sand in our watch- glass. Oh what a wise course were it for us to look away from 1637.1 LETTER CCLXXVL 535 the false beauty of our borrowed prison, and to mind, and eye, and lust for our country ! Lord, Lord, take us home ! And for myself : I think, if a poor, weak, dying sheep seek for an old dyke, and the lee-side of an hill, in a storm, I have cause to long for a covert from this storm, in heaven. I know none will take my room over my head there. But, certainly sleepy bodies would be at rest and a well-made bed, and an old crazed bark at a shore, and a wearied traveller at home, and a breathless horse at the rink's end. I see nothing in this life but sin, and the sour fruits of sin : and, oh, what a burden is sin ! And what a slavery and miserable bondage is it, to be at the nod, and yeas and nays, of such a lord-master as a body of sin ! Truly, when I think of it, it is a wonder that Christ maketh not fire and ashes of such a dry branch as I am. I would often lie down under Christ's feet, and bid Him trample upon me, when I consider my guiltiness. But seeing He hath sworn that sin shall not loose His unchangeable covenant, I keep house-room amongst the rest of the ill-learned bairns, and must cumber the Lord of the house with the rest, till my Lord take the fetters off legs and arms, and destroy this body of sin, and make a hole or breach in this cage of earth, that the bird may fly out, and the imprisoned soul be at liberty. In the meantime, the least intimation of Christ's love is sweet, and the hope of marriage with the Bridegroom holdeth me in some joyful on-waiting, that, when Christ's summer-birds shall sing upon the branches of the Tree of Life, I shall be tuned by God Himself to help them to sing the home-coming of our Well-beloved and His bride to their house together. When I think of this, I think winters and summers, and years and days, and time, do me a pleasure that they shorten this untwisted and weak thread of my life, and that they put sin and miseries by-hand, and that they shall carry me to my Bridegroom in a clap. Dear brother, pray for me, that it would please the Lord of the vineyard to give me room to preach His righteousness again to the great congregation. Grace, grace be with you. Eemember me to your wife. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Abekdeen, 1637, •^' *^ 536 LETTER CCLXXVII. [1637. CCLXXVIL— To my Lady Bovd. {SENSE OF UNWORTHINESS— OBLIGATION TO GRACE— CHRISTS ABSENCE— STATE OF THE LAND.) jADAM, — I would have written to your Ladyship ere now, but people's believing there is in me that which I know there is not, hath put me out of love with writing to any. For it is easy to put religion to a market and public fair ; but, alas ! it is not so soon made eye- sweet for Christ. My Lord seeth me a tired man, far behind. I have gotten much love from Christ, but I give Him little or none again. My white side cometh out on paper to men ; but at home and within I find much black work, and great cause of a low sail, and of little boasting. And yet, howbeit I see challenges to be true, the manner of the tempter's pressing of them is unhonest, and, in my thoughts, knavish-like. My peace is, that Christ may find outing and sale of His wares, in the like of me ; I mean for saving grace. I wish /ill professors to fall in love with grace. All our songs should be of His free grace. We are but too lazy and careless in seeking of it ; it is all our riches we have here, and glory in the bud. I wish that I could set out free grace. I was the law's man, and under the law, and under a curse ; but grace brought me from under that hard lord, and I rejoice that I am grace's freeholder. I pay tribute to none for heaven, seeing my land and heritage holdeth of Christ, my new King. Infinite wisdom hath devised this excellent way of free-holding for sinners. It is a better way to heaven than the old way that was in Adam's days. It hath this fair advantage, that no man's emptiness and want layeth an inhibition upon Christ, or hindereth His salvation ; and that is far best for me. But our new Land- lord putteth the names of dyvours, and Adam's forlorn heirs, and beggars, and the crooked and blind, in the free charters. Heaven and angels may wonder that we have got such a gate of sin and hell. Such a back-entry out of hell as Christ made, and brought out the captives by, is more than my poor shallow thoughts can comprehend. I would think sufferings glory (and I am some- times not far from it), if my Lord would give me a new alms of free grace. I hear that the prelates are intending banishment for me ; but, for more grace, and no other hire, T would make it welcome. 1637.] LETTER CCLXXVII. 537 The bits of this clay house, the earth, and the other side of the sea, are my Father's. If my sweet Lord Jesus would bud my sufierings with a new measure of grace, I were a rich man. But I have not now, of a long time, found such high spring-tides as formerly. The sea is out, the wind of His Spirit calm ; and I cannot buy a wind, or, by requesting the sea, cause it to flow again ; only I wait on upon the banks and shore-side, till the Lord send a full sea, that with upsails I may lift up Christ. Yet sorrow for His absence is sweet ; and sighs, with " Saw ye Him whom my soul loveth ? " have their own delights. Oh that I may gather hunger against His long-looked-for return ! Well were my soul, if Christ were the element (mine own element), and that I loved and breathed in Him, and if I could not live without Him. I allow not laughter upon myself when He is away ; yet He never leaveth the house, but He leaveth drink- money behind Him, and a pawn that He will return. Wo, wo to me, if He should go away and take all His flitting with Him ! Even to dream of Him is sweet. To build a house of pining wishes for His return, to spin out a web of sorrow, and care, and languishing, and sighs, either dry or wet, as they may be (because He hath no leisure, if I may speak so, to make a visit, or to see a poor friend), sweeteneth and refresheth the thoughts of the heart. A misty dew will stand for rain, and do some good, and keep some greenness in the herbs, till our Lord's clouds rue upon the earth, and send down a watering of rain. Truly I think Christ's misty dew a welcome message from heaven till my Lord's rain fall. Wo, wo is me for the Lord's vineyard in Scotland ! Howbeit the Father of the house embrace a child, and feed him, and kiss him ; yet it is sorrow and sadness to the children that our poor mother hath gotten her leave, and that our Father hath given up house. It is an unheartsome thing to see our Father and mother agree so ill ; yet the bastards, if they be fed, care not. 0 Lord, cast not water on Scotland's smoking coal. It is a strange gate the saints go to heaven. Our enemies often eat and drink us, and we go to heaven through their bellies and stomachs, and they vomit the church of God undigested among their hands. And even while we are shut up in prisons by them, we advance in our journey. Eemember my service to my lord your son, who was kind to me in my bonds, and was not ashamed to own me. I would be glad that Christ got the morning service of his life, now in liis 533 LETTER CCLXXVIIL [1637. young years. It would suit him well to give Christ his young and green love. Christ's stamp and seal would go far down in a young soul, if he would receive the thrust of Christ's stamp. I would desire him to make search for Christ ; for nobles are now but dry friends to Christ. The grace of God our Father, and the good-will of Him who dwelt in the bush, be with your Ladyship. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. ^- ^^- CCLXXVIII.— To the Earl of Cassillis. {AMBITION— CHRIST S ROYAL PREROGATIVE— PRELACY.) IGHT HONOURABLE AND VERY GOOD LORD,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Lordship. — I hope that your Lordship will be pleased to pardon my boldness, if, upon report of your zealous and forward mind, which I hear our Lord hath given you in this His honour- able cause, when Christ and His Gospel are so foully wronged, I speak to ycJur Lordship on paper, entreating your Lordship to go on in the strength of the Lord, toward, and against a storm of antichristian wind, that bloweth upon the face of this your poor mother-church, Christ's lily among the thorns. It is your Lord- ship's glory and happiness, when ye see such a blow coming upon Christ, to cast up your arm to prevent it. Neither is it a cause that needeth to blush before the sun, or to flee the sentence or censure of impartial beholders, seeing the question, indeed (if it were rightly stated), is about the prerogative- royal of our princely and royal Lawgiver, our Lord Jesus, whose ancient march-stones and land-bounds, our bastard lords and earthly generation of tyrannizing prelates have boldly and shamefully removed. And they who have but half an eye may see, that it is the greedy desires of time-idolizing Demases, and the itching scab of ambitious and climbing Diotrepheses (who love the goat's life, to climb till they cannot find a way to set their soles on ground again), that hath made such a wide breach in our Zion's beautiful walls. And these are the men who seek no hire for the crucify- ing of Christ, but His coat. Oh, how forlorn and desolate is the bride of Christ made to all passers-by ! Who seeth not Christ buried in this land, His prophets hidden in caves, silenced, banished and imprisoned ? truth weeping in sackcloth before the judges, Parliament, and the 1637.] LETTER CCLXXVIII. 539 rulers of the land ? But her bill is cast by them, and holiness hideth itself, fearing in the streets for the reproaches and per- secution of men. Justice is fallen aswoon in the gate ; and the long shadows of the evening are stretched out upon us. Wo, wo to us, for our day flietli away ! What remaineth, but that Antichrist set down his tent in the midst of us, except that your Lordship, and others with you, read Christ's supplication, and give Him that which the most lewd and scandalous wretches in this land may have before a judge, even the poor man's due, law and justice for God's sake ? Oh, therefore, my noble and dear Lord, as ye have begun, go on, in the mighty power and strength of the Lord, to cause our Lord, in His Gospel, and afflicted members, to laugh, and to cause the Christian churches (whose eyes are all now upon you) to sing for joy when Scotland's moon shall shine like the light of the sun, and the sun like the light of seven days in one. Ye can do no less than run and bear up the head of your swooning and dying mother-church, and plead for the production of her ancient charters. They hold out and put out, they hold in and bring in, at theii' pleasure, men in God's house. They stole the keys from Christ and His church, arid came in like the thief and the robber, not by the door, Christ ; and now their song is, " Authority, authority ! obedience to church-governors ! " When such a bastard and lawless pretended step-dame, as our Prelacy, is gone mad, it is your place, who are the nobles, to rise and bind them. At least, law should fetter such wild bulls as they are, who push all who oppose themselves to their domination. Alas ! what have we lost, since prelates were made master-coiners, to change our gold into brass, and to mix the Lord's wine with water ! Blessed for ever shall ye be of the Lord, if ye help Christ against the mighty, and shall deliver the flock of God, scattered upon the mountains in the dark and cloudy day, out of the hands of these idol- shepherds. Fear not men who shall be moth-eaten clay, that shall be rolled up in a chest, and casten under the earth : let the Holy One of Israel be your fear, and be courageous for the Lord and His truth. Eemember, that your accounts are coming upon you, with wings, as fast as time posteth. Eemember, what " peace with God " in Christ, and the presence of the Son of God (the revealed and felt sweetness of His love), will be to you, when eternity shall put time to the door, and ye shall take good-night of time, and this little shepherd's tent of clay, this inn of a borrowed 540 LETTER CCLXXIX. [1637. earth. I hope that your Lordship is now and then sending out thoughts to view this world's naughtiness/ and vanity, and the hoped-for glory of the life to come ; and that ye resolve that Christ shall have yourself, and all yours, at command for Him, His honour and Gospel. Thus trusting that your Lordship will pardon my boldness, I pray that the only wise God, the very God of peace, may preserve, strengthen, and establish you to the end. Your Lordship's, at all command and obedience in Christ, Aberdeen, 1637. S. K. CCLXXIX.— For Marion M'Naught. {A SPRING-TIDE OF CHRIST S LOVE.) Y DEAR AND WELL-BELOVED SLSTER,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I am well ; honour to God. I have been before a court set up within me of terrors and challenges ; but my sweet Lord Jesus hath taken the mask off His face, and said, " Kiss thy fill ! " and I will not smother nor conceal the kindness of my King Jesus. He hath broken in upon the poor prisoner's soul, like the swelling of Jordan. I am bank and brim full ; a great, high spring-tide of the consolations of Christ have overflowed me. I would not give my weeping for the fourteen prelates' laughter. They have sent me here to feast with my King. His spikenard casteth a sweet smell. The Bridegroom's love hath run away with my heart. 0 love, love, love ! Oh, sweet are my royal King's chains ! I care not for fire nor torture. How sweet were it to me to swim the salt sea for my new Lover, my second Husband, my first Lord ! I charge you in the name of God, not to fear the wild beasts that entered into the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts. The false prophet is the tail. God shall cut the tail from Scotland, Take your comfort and droop not, despond not. Pray for my poor flock : I would take a penance on my soul for their salvation. I fear that the entering of a hireling upon my labours there will cut off my life with sorrow. There I wrestled with the Angel and prevailed. Wood,^ trees, meadows ^ Some editions read nutliinrjness. ^ Pcrliaps specially retelling to the wood adjoining Busliy Bield, the spot still called "Rutherford's Walk." 1637.] LETTER CCLXXX. 541 and hills are my witnesses, that I drew on a fair meeting betwixt Christ and Anwoth. My love to your husband, to dear Carleton, to my beloved brother Knockbrex.^ Forget not Christ's prisoner. I long for a letter under your own hand. Your friend and Christ's prisoner, Abeedeen, Nov. 22, 1637. S. E. CCLXXX.— To John Gordon, at Rusco.^ [Letter CCLXXII.] {HEAVEN HARD TO BE WON— MANY COME SHORT IN ATTAIN- ING—IDOL SINS TO RE RENOUNCED— LIKENESS TO CHRIST.) lEAR BROTHEE, — I earnestly desire to know the case of your soul, and to understand that ye have made sure work of heaven and salvation. 1. Eemember, salvation is one of Christ's dainties He giveth but to a few. 2. That it is violent sweating and striving that taketh heaven. 3. That it cost Christ's blood to purchase that house to sinners, and to set mankind down as the King's free tenants and freeholders. 4. That many make a start toward heaven who fall on their back, and win not up to the top of the mount. It plucketh heart and legs from them, and they sit down and give it over, because the devil setteth a sweet-smelled flower to their nose (this fair busked world), wherewith they are bewitched, and so forget or refuse to go forward. 5. Eemember, many go far on and reform many things, and can find tears, as Esau did ; and suffer hunger for truth, as Judas did ; and wish and desire the end of the righteous, as Balaam did ; and profess fair, and fight for the Lord, as Saul did ; and desire the saints of God to pray for them, as Pharaoh and Simon Magus did ; and prophesy and speak of Christ, as Caiaphas did ; and walk softly and mourn for fear of judgments, as Ahab did ; and put away gross sins and idolatry, as Jehu did ; and hear the 1 Gordon of Knockbres. , * This seems to have been the letter referred to by Mrs. Veitch, wife of Mr. William Veitch, minister of Dumfries, when she says : "One day, having been at prayer, and coming into the room, where one was reading a letter of Mr. Ruther- ford's (then only in MS.), directed to one Jolm Gordon of Rusco, giving an account how far one might go, and yet prove a hypocrite and miss heaven, it occasioned great exercise to me" ("Memoir of the Life of Mrs. William Veitch," p. 1). 542 LETTER CCLXXX. [1637. word of God gladly, and reform their life in many things accord- ing to the word, as Herod did ; and say to Christ, " Master, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest," as the man who offered to be Christ's servant (Matt. viii. 19); and may taste of the virtues of the life to come, and be partaker of the wonderful gifts of the Holy Spirit, and taste of the good word of God, as the apostates who sin against the Holy Ghost (Heb, vi.). And yet all these are but like gold in clink and colour, and watered brass, and base metal. These are written that we should try ourselves, and not rest till we be a step nearer Christ than sun- burnt and withering professors can come. 6. Consider, it is impossible that your idol-sins and ye can go to heaven together ; and that they who will not part with these can, indeed, love Christ at the bottom but only in word and show, which will not do the business. 7. Eemember, how swiftly God's post time flieth away ; and that your forenoon is already spent, your afternoon will come, and then your evening, and at last night, when ye cannot see to work. Let your heart be set upon finishing of your journey, and summing and laying your accounts with your Lord. Oh how blessed shall ye be to have a joyful welcome of your Lord at night ! How blessed are they who, in time, take sure course with their souls ! Bless His great name for what you possess in goods and children, ease and worldly contentment, that He hath given you ; and seek to be like Christ in humility and loveliness of mind. And be not great and entire ^ with the world. Make it not your god, nor your lover that ye trust unto, for it will deceive you. I recommend Christ and His love to you, in all things ; let Him have the flower of your heart and your love. Set a low price upon all things but Christ, and cry down in your thoughts clay and dirt, that will not comfort you when ye get summons to remove, and compear before your Judge to answer for all the deeds done in the body. The Lord give you wisdom in all things. T beseecli you sanctify God in your speaking, for holy and reverend is His name ; and be temperate and sober. Com- panionry with the bad is a sin, that holdeth many out of heaven. I will not believe that you will receive the ministry of a stranger, who will preach a new and uncouth doctrine to you. Let my salvation stand for it, if I delivered not the plain and whole counsel of God to you in His word. Read this letter to ^ As in Letter CXIX., "Your heart wholly there." 1638.] LETTER CCLXXXI. 543 your wife, and remember my love to her, and request her to take heed to do what I write to you. I pray for you and yours. Remember me in your prayers to our Lord, that He would be pleased to send me amongst you again. Grace be with you. Your lawful and loving pastor, Aberdeen, 1637. S. R. CCLXXXI. — To my Lord Loudoun. {TRUE HONOUR IN MAINTAINING CHRIST'S CAUSE— PRELACY —LIGHT OF ETERNITY.) IGHT HONOURABLE AND VERY WORTHY LORD, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — Hearing of your Lordship's zeal and courage for Christ our Lord in His honourable cause, I am bold (and plead pardon for it) to speak in paper by a line or two to your Lordship, since I have not access any other way, beseeching your Lordship, by the mercies of God, and by the everlasting peace of your soul, and by the tears and prayers of our mother- church, to go on, as ye have worthily begun, in purging of the Lord's house in this land, and plucking down the sticks of Anti- christ's filthy nest, this wretched Prelacy, and that black kingdom whose wicked aims have ever been, and still are, to make this fat world the only compass they would have Christ and religion to sail by, and to mount up the Man of Sin, their godfather the Pope of Rome, upon the highest stair of Christ's throne, and to make a velvet church (in regard of Parliament grandeur and worldly pomp, whereof always their stinking breath smelleth), and to put Christ and truth in sackcloth and prison, and to eat the bread of adversity and drink the water of affliction. Half an eye of any, not misted with the darkness of antichristian smoke, may see it thus in this land. And now our Lord hath begun to awaken the nobles and others to plead for borne-down Christ and His weeping Gospel. My dear and noble Lord, the eye of Christ is upon you ; the eyes of many noble, many holy, many learned and worthy ones, in our neighbouring churches about, are upon you.^ This poor ' AVe have already seen (note to Letter CXVL) that John, Earl of Loudon, was one of the Scottish nobles who most zealously espoused the cause of the Second Reformation. In all the measures of the Covenanters for promoting the cause of the Covenant, he took a leading part ; and from his high character, as well as his distinguished talents, his party reposed in him with the utmost confidence. Wod- row describes him as " a nobleman of excellent endowments, great learning, singular wisdom and conduct, bewitching eloquence, joined with remarkable resolution and couratje." 544 LETTER CCLXXXL [1638. church, your mother and Christ's spouse, is holding up her hands and heart to God for you, and doth beseech you with tears to plead for her Husband, His kingly sceptre, and for the liberties that her Lord and King hath given to her, as to a free kingdom that oweth spiritual tribute to none on earth, as being the free- born princess and daughter to the King of kings. This is a cause that, before God, His angels, the world, before sun and moon, needeth not to blush. Oh, what glory and true honour is it to lend Christ your hand and service, and to be amongst the repairers of the breaches of Zion's walls, and to help to build the old waste places, and stretch forth the curtains, and strengthen the stakes of Christ's tent in this land ! Oh, blessed are they who, when Christ is driven away, will bring Him back again, and lend Him lodging ! And blessed are ye of the Lord ! Your name and honour shall never rot nor wither (in heaven at least), if ye deliver the Lord's sheep, that have been scattered in the dark and cloudy day, out of the hands of strange lords and hire- lings, who with rigour and cruelty have caused them to eat the pastures trodden upon with their foul feet, and to drink muddy water ; and who have spun out such a world of yards of indiffer- ences in God's worship, to make and weave a web for the Anti- christ (which shall not keep any from the cold) ; as they mind nothing else, but that, by the bringing in of the Pope's foul tail first upon us (their wretched and beggarly ceremonies), they may thrust in after them the Antichrist's legs and thighs, and his belly, head, and shoulders ; and then cry down Christ and the Gospel, and up the merchandise and wares of the great whore. Fear not, my worthy Lord, to give yourself, and all ye have, out for Christ and His Gospel. No man dare say (who did ever thus hazard for Christ), that Christ paid him not his hundred -fold in this life duly, and, in the life to come, life everlasting. This is His own truth that ye now plead for ; for God and man cannot but com- mend you to beg justice from a just prince for oppressed Christ, and to plead that Christ, who is the King's Lord, may be heard in a free court to speak for Himself, when the standing and established laws of our nation can strongly plead for Christ's crown in the pulpits, and His chair as Lawgiver in the free government of His own house. But Christ will never be content and pleased with this land, neither shall His hot, fiery indigna- tion be turned away, so long as the prelate (the man that lay in Antichrist's foul womb, and the Antichrist's lord-bailiff) shall sit lord-carver in the courts of the Lord Jesus. Tlie prelate is both 1638.] LETTER CCLXXXIL 545 the egg and the nest to cleck and bring forth Popery. Plead, therefore, in Christ's behalf, for the plucking down of the nest, and the crushing of the egg ; and let Christ's kingly office suffer no more unworthy indignities. Be valiant for your royal King, Jesus ; contend for Him : your adversaries shall be moth-eaten worms, and die as men. Christ and His honour now lie on your shoulders, let Him not fall to the ground. Cast your eye upon Him who is quickly coming to decide all the controversies in Zion. And remember that the sand in your night-glass will run out ; time with wings will flee away. Eternity is hard upon you ; and what will Christ's love- smiles, and the light of His lovely and soul-delighting countenance, be to you in that day, when God shall take up in His right hand this little lodge of heaven (like as a shepherd lifteth up his little tent), and fold to- gether the two leaves of His tent, and put the earth and all the plenishing of it into a fire, and turn this clay-idol, the god of Adam's sons, into smoke and white ashes ! Oh, what hire and how many worlds would many then give to have a favourable decreet of the Judge ! Oh, what moneys would they not give, to buy a mountain to be a grave above both soul and body, to hide them from the awesome looks of an angry Lord and Judge ! I hope that your Lordship thinketh upon this, and that ye mind loyalty to Christ, and to the King both. Now the very God of peace, the only wise God, establish and strengthen you upon the rock laid in Zion. Your Lordship's at all obedience in Christ, Abekdekn, Jan, 4, 1638. S. E. CCLXXXII. — To the Lady Rosertland. [This is probably the Lady Kobertland (her own name was Fleming) mentioned in Livingstone's "Chaiacteristios"as " one deeply exercised in mind, who often got as rare outgates." She was a great help to the poor people of Stewarton, dnring the time of the awakening there. One of her sayings was, "With God, the most of mosts is lighter than nothing ; and without God, the least of leasts is heavier than any burden."] {AFFLICTIONS PURIFY—THE WORLLfS VANITY— CHRIST S WISE LOVE.) I STRESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I shall be glad to hear that your soul prospereth, and I that fruit groweth upon you, after the Lord's hus- bandry and pains, in His rod that hath not been a stranger to you from your youth. It is the Lord's kindness that 546 LETTER CCLXXXIL [1638. He will take the scum off us in the fire. Who knoweth how needful winnowing is to us, and what dross we must want ere we enter into the kingdom of God ? So narrow is the entry to heaven, that our knots, our bunches and lumps of pride, and self-love, and idol-love, and world-love, must be hammered off us, that we may thring in, stooping low, and creeping through that narrow and thorny entry. And now for myself, I find it the most sweet and heavenly life to take up house and dwelling at Christ's fireside, and set down my tent upon Christ, that Foundation-stone, who is sure and faithful ground and hard under foot. Oh if I could win to it, and proclaim myself not the world's debtor, nor a lover obliged to it, and that I mind not to hire or bud this world's love any longer ; but defy both the kindness and feud of God's whole creation whatsomever ! especially the lower vault and clay part of God's creatures, this vain earth ! For what hold I of His world ? A borrowed lodging and some years' house-room, and bread, and water, and fire, and bed and candle, are all a part of the pension of my King and Lord ; to whom I owe thanks, and not to a creature. I thank God that God is God, and Christ is Christ, and the earth the earth, and the devil the devil,, and the world the world, and that sin is sin, and that everything is what it is ; because He hath taught me in my wilderness not to shuffle my Lord Jesus, nor to intermix Him with creature-vanities, nor to spin or twine Christ or His sweet love in one web, or in one thread, with the world and the things thereof. Oh, if I could hold and keep Christ all alone, and mix Him with nothing ! Oh, if I could cry down the price and weight of my cursed self, and cry up the price of Christ, and double, and triple, and augment, and heighten to millions the price and worth of Christ ! I am (if I durst speak so, and might lawfully complain) so hungredly tutored by Christ Jesus my liberal Lord, that His nice love, which my soul would be in hands with, flieth me ; and yet I am trained on to love Him, and lust, and long, and die foi His love whom I cannot see. It is a wonder to pine away with love for a covered and hid lover, and to be hungered with His love, so as a poor soul can- not get his fill of hunger for Christ. It is hard to be hungered of hunger,^ whereof such abundance for other things is in the world. But sure, if we were tutors, and stewards, and masters, and lord-carvers of Christ's love, we should be more lean and * Not to get even enougli of liunger for Cluist. 1638.] LETTER CCLXXXII. 54) worse fed than we are. Our meat doeth us the more good, that Christ keepeth the keys, and that the wind and the air of Christ's sweet breathing, and of the influence of His Spirit, is locked up in the hands of the good pleasure of Him who " bloweth where He listeth." I see there is a sort of impatient patience required in the want of Christ as to His manifestations, and waiting on. They thrive who wait on His love, and the blowing of it, and the turning of His gracious wind ; and they thrive who, in that on- waiting, make haste and din and much ado for their lost aud hidden Lord Jesus. However it be, God feed me with Him any way. If He would come in, I shall not dispute the matter, where He get a hole, or how He opened the lock. I should be content that Christ and I met, suppose He should stand on the other side of hell's lake and cry to me, " Either put in your foot and come through, or else ye shall not have Me at all." But what fools are we in the taking up of Him and of His dealing ! He hath a gate of His own beyond the thoughts of men, that no foot hath skill to follow Him. But we are still ill scholars, and will go in at heaven's gates wanting the half of our lesson ; and shall still be bairns, so long as we are under time's hands, and till eternity cause a sun to arise in our souls that shall give us wit. We may see how we spill and mar our own fair heaven and our salvation, and how Christ is every day putting in one bone or other, in these fallen souls of ours, in the right place again ; and that on this side of the New Jerusalem, we shall still have need of forgiving and healing grace. I find crosses Christ's carved work that He marketh out for us, and that with crosses He figureth and portrayeth us to His own image, cutting away pieces of our ill and corruption. Lord cut, Lord carve, Lord wound. Lord do anything that may perfect Thy Father's image in us, and make us meet for glory. Pray for me (I forget not you) that our Lord would be pleased to lend me house-room to preach His righteousness, and tell what I have heard and seen of Him. Forget not Zion that is now in Christ's caums, and in His forge. God bring her out new work. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Jan, i, 1638. S. B. 548 LETTER CCLXXXIII. [1638. CCLXXXIII. — To his Reverent and Respected Friend, Thomas Macculloch of Nether Ardwell. [See " Ardwell" in notice at Letter CI.] [This letter is given from the "Christian Instructor" for January 1839, fur- nished by one who had the MS. Why Rutherford calls his correspondent "reverent," we do not know. It seems to mean " revered," as in the address of Letter CCLXXXIV.]! {EARNEST CALL TO DILIGENCE— CIRCUMSPECT WALKING.) EVERENT AND MUCH RESPECTED, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I long to hear how your soul prospereth, and I expected you would have written to me. My earnest desire to you is, that you would seek the Lord and His face. I know that you are not ignorant that your daylight is going fast away, and your sun declining. I beseech you by the mercies of God, and by the wounds of your redeeming Lord, and your dreadful compearance before the awesome Judge of quick and dead, make your account clear and plain with your Judge and Lord, while ye have fair daylight, for your night is coming on. Therefore, I pray you, judge more of the worth of your soul, and know that if you are in Christ, and secure your own soul, you are blessed for ever. Eew, few, yea very few, are saved. Grace is not casten down at every man's door ; therefore speed yourself and others upon seeking Christ and salvation ; and learn to overcome, in the bitterness of your soul, your sins in time. It is not easy to take heaven, as the word saith, " by violence." Keep your tongue from cursing and swearing ; refrain from wrath and malice ; forgive all men for Christ's sake, as you would have your Lord forgive you. I pray you, seeing your time is short, make speed in your journey to heaven, that you may secure a lodging to your soul against night. Remember my love to your wife, William your son, and the rest of your children. Grace be with you. Yours, at all hours, in Christ. Aberdeen, Jan. 5, 1638. ^- R" ^ The contributor who furnishes this letter to the " Christian Instructor " says : " The jjaper is small and dingy, and the mode oi folding is not exactly in modern Btyle. But the wax and the imprtm^ion on it are entire." 1638.] LETTER CCLXXXIV, 549 CCLXXXIV. — To the Honourable, Reverend, and Well-heloved Professors of Christ and His truth in sincerity, in Ireland. [At the date of this letter tlie Presbyterian Church of Ireland was in a very- depressed condition. In 1634 Robert Blair, with some other ministers, were deposed for nonconformity ; in the autumn of 1636 five more were dealt with in the same manner, for the same cause ; and all of them were ultimately forced to leave the country. The Presbyterians in Ireland were thus left to a great extent destitute of the ministry of the Word, which had been so eminently blessed of God. This letter was intended to confirm them in their adherence to the cause for which their ministers and themselves were suffering. ] {T//E WAY TO HEAVEN OFTTIMES THROUGH PERSECUTION- CHRIST S WORTH— MAKING SURE OUR PROFESSION— SELF- DENIAL— NO COMPROMISE— TESTS OF SINCERITY— HIS OWN DESIRE FOR CHRIST S GLORY.) EAELY BELOVED IN OUE LOED, AND PAE- TAKEES OF THE HEAVENLY CALLING,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you, and from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. I always, but most of all now in my bonds (most sweet bonds for Christ my Lord), rejoice to hear of your faith and love, and to hear that our ELing, our Well-beloved, our Bridegroom, with- out tiring, stayeth still to woo you as His wife ; and that per- secutions, and mockings of sinners, have not chased away the Wooer from the house. I persuade you in the Lord, that the men of God, now scattered and driven from you, put you upon the right scent and pursuit of Christ : and, my salvation on it (if ten heavens were mine), if this way, this way that I now suffer for, this way that the world nicknameth and reproacheth, and no other way, be not the King's gate to heaven ! And I shall never see God's face (and, alas, I were a beguiled wretch if it were so !) if this be not the only saving way to heaven. Oh that you would take a prisoner of Christ's word for it (nay, I know you have the greatest King's word for it), that it shall not be your wisdom to speer out another Christ, or another way of worshipping Him, than is now savingly revealed to you. There- fore, though I never saw your faces, let me be pardoned to write to you (ye honourable persons, ye faithful pastors, yet amongst the flocks, and ye sincere professors of Christ's truth, or any weak, tired strayers, who cast but half an eye after the Bride- groom), if possibly I could, by any weak experience, confirm and strengthen you in this good way, everywhere spoken against. I can with the greatest assurance (to the honour of our 550 LETTER CCLXXXIV. [1638. highest, and greatest, and dearest Lord, let it be spoken !) assert (though I be but a child in Christ, and scarce able to walk but by a hold, and the meanest, and less than the least of saints), that we do not come nigh, by twenty degrees, to the due love and estimation of that fairest among the sons of men. For if it were possible that heaven, yea, ten heavens, were laid in the balance with Christ, I would think the smell of His breath above them all. Sure I am that He is the far best half of heaven, yea. He is all heaven, and more than all heaven ; and my testimony of Him is, that ten lives of black sorrow, ten deaths, ten hells of pain, ten furnaces of brimstone, and all exquisite torments, were all too little for Christ, if our suffering could be a hire to buy Him. Therefore, faint not in your sufferings and hazards for Him. I proclaim and cry, hell, sorrow, and shame upon all lusts, upon all by-lovers, that would take Christ's room over His head, in this little inch of love of these narrow souls of ours, that is due to sweetest Jesus. 0 highest, 0 fairest, 0 dearest Lord Jesus, take Thine own from all bastard lovers. Oh that we could wadset and sell all our part of time's glory, and time's good things, for a lease and tack of Christ for all eternity ! Oh how are we misted and mired with the love of things that are on this side of time, and on this side of death's water ! Where can we find a match to Christ, or an equal, or a better than He, among created things ? Oh this world is out of all conceit, and all love, with our Well-beloved. Oh that I could sell my laughter, joy, ease, and all for Him ; and be content with a straw bed, and bread by weight, and water by measure, in the camp of our weeping Christ ! I know that His sackcloth and ashes are better than the fool's laughter, which is like the crackling of thorns under a pot. But, alas ! we do not harden our faces against the cold north storms which blow upon Christ's fair face. We love well summer-religion, and to be that which sin has made us, even as thin-skinned as if we were made of white paper ; and would fain be carried to heaven in a close-covered chariot, wishing from our hearts that Christ would give us surety, and His handwrite, and His seal, or nothing but a fair summer until we be landed in at heaven's gates ! How many of us have been here deceived, and have fainted in the day of trial ! Amongst you there are some of this stamp. 1 shall be sorry if my acquaintance A. T. hath left you : I will nut believe that he dare to stay away from Christ's side. I desire that ye shew him this from me ; for I loved him once in 1638.] LETTER CCLXXXIV. 551 Christ, neither can I change my mind suddenly of him. But the truth is, that many of you, and too many also of your neighbour Church of Scotland, have been like a tenant that sitteth mail-free and knoweth not his holding whill his rights be questioned. And now I am persuaded, that it will be asked at every one of us, on what terms we brook Christ ; for we have sitten long mail-free. We found Christ without a wet foot ; and He and His Gospel came upon small charges to our doors : but now we must wet our feet to seek Him. Our evil manners, and the bad fashions of a people at ease from our youth, and like Moab not casten from vessel to vessel (Jer. 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 ^ 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 ' It requires skill. 552 LETTER CCLXXXIV. [1638. (that man without law^), 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 anS light money? They are now crying down Christ some grain-weights, and some pounds or shillings ; and they will have Him lie ^ 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 ' Alluding to 2 Thess. ii. 8. ""Avo/ia.-." that Lawless one. =* Stand for. 1638.] LETTER CCLXXXIV. 553 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 advan- tage 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. 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 con- science. 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 1 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, tliey shall never be Christ's martyrs and faithful witnesses. Oh, if T could be master of that house-idol, 554 LETTER CCLXXXIV. [1638. myself, my own mind, my owu 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. 0 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. 1 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 llower 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, how- beit 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 tliat now, so that He would hew 1638.] LETTER CCLXXXV. 555 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, Aberdeen, Feb. 4, 1638. S. E. CCLXXXV. — To Egbert Gordon of Knockbrex. {NOT OUR CROSS, BUT CHRIST, THE OBJECT OF ATTRACTION— TOO LITTLE EXPECTED FROM HIM— SPIRITUAL DEAD- NESS.) JY VEEY DEAK BEOTHEE,— 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 ^ (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 ' The tree. 556 LETTER CCLXXXV. [1638. 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 con- sent 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 ^lay, and sport with a daft bairn. 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 maj 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, " 0 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 ray 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 cusliion, 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 ])ut Christ ! Hold your tongue off lovers, where He cometh out. 0 all tlesh, 0 dust and ashes, 0 angels, 0 glorified spirits, 0 all the shields of the world, be silent before Him ! Come hither, 1638.] LETTER CCLXXXV. 557 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* last, aud 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 j)en in His hand, and subscribe my writs. 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 trans- gressor. 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 com- plaining. 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 558 LETTER CCLXXXV. [1638. 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,^ 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 heart- some 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 ! Now, grace, grace be with you. Remember my love to youi wife and daughter, and brother John. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, June 11, 1638. S. xt, * Will not have got from us all Ho claims. 1639.] LETTER CCLXXXVI. 559 CCLXXXVI. — To the Parishioners of Kilmalcolm.^ {SPIRITUAL SLOTH— ADVICE TO BEGINNERS— A DEAD MINI- STRY—LANGUOR— OBEDIENCE —WANT OF CHRIST S FELT PRESENCE— ASSURANCE IMPORTANT— PRA YER-MEETINGS.) OETHY, AND WELL - BELOVED IN" CHKIST JESUS OUE LOED, — 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 ^ 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." 56o LETTER CCLXXXVI. [1639. a fever past the cool. And the quietness and the cairns 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. Pull 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 guilti- ness 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. Weak- ness 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. 1639-] LETTER CCLXXXVI. 561 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. 0 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 painful- ness. 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 2 N 562 LETTER CCLXXXVL [1639 to perform that which is good I know not " (Eom. vii. 1 8). 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. Ill 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 obedi- ence 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 with- drawing 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 willing- ness ; 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 1639] LETTER CCLXXXVI. 563 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). Protesta- tions 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,^ I fear that ye must go your lone. He knoweth our dross and defects ; and sweet Jesus pitieth us, when weak- ness and deadness in our obedience is our cross, and not our darling. 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,^ 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 atone- ment 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. 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 ^ Halting of any kind. ' To anticipate Satan by jealously searching into it yourselves. 564 LETTER CCLXXXVL [1639. till they come to the rink's end ; and that our wise Lord thiuketh 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 assur- ance, 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 use J, 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 ^ 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 meet- ings; for warrant whereof, see Isa. ii. 3 ; Jer. 1. 4, 5 ; Hos. ii. 1, 2; Zech. viii. 20-23; Mai. 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. 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 - and removal from this 1 Some read "ridges," ^.d., tlieir acres of land. * My being transfeiTed to another part of the land. 1639] LETTER CCLXXXVII. 565 place, which I fear at this Assembly/ aud 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, Anwoth, Aug. 5, 1639. °' ■^• CCLXXXVII.— To tlie, Viscountess of Kenmurb. {^ON THE DEA TH OF HER CHILD— CHRIST SHARES IN HIS PEOPLE'S SORROWS.) ADAM, — 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 wilder- ness lot. I know, dear and noble Lady, that this loss of your dear child 2 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. Madam, subscribe to the Almighty's will ; put your hand to the pen, and let the cross of your Lord Jesus have your submis- sive and resolute Amen. If ye ask and try whose this cross is, ^ About this time Eutlierford (who, it will bo 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. * John, second Viscount Kenmure who died i in 1639. 5^6 LETTER CCLXXXVIL [1639. 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 suffer- ings" (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. Ixiii. 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 wiU 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 teacli 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 1639-] LETTER CCLXXXVII. 567 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 ^ 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. I would gladly plead for the Comforter's part of it, not against you, Madam (for I am sure ye are not his party ^), 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. 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. ' The brightness of glowing heat - An opposing party to him. 568 LETTER CCLXXXVIIL [1639. 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, KiRKCTJDBEIGHT, Oct. 1, 1639. S. K CCLXXXVIII. — To the persecuted Church in Ireland.^ {CHRISrS LEGACY OF TROUBLE— GOD'S DEALINGS WITH SCOT- LAND IN GIVING PROSPERITY— CHRIST TAKES HALF OF ALL SUFFERINGS ~ STEDFASTNESS FOR HIS CROWN— HIS LOVE SHOULD LEAD TO HOLINESS.) UCH HONOUEED, EEVEEEND, AND DEAELY BELOVED IN QUE LOED,— 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 ' When the National Covenant had been solemnly renewed throughont 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. Tlie oath is as follows : — " I, , do faithfully swear, profess, and promise, that 1 will hononr and obey my sovereign Lord, King Charles, and will bear faith and true allegiance nnto 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 liis 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 1 have herein sworn, professed, and promised. So lielp 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 lake it, the highest penalties of the law, short of deatli, were inflicted on lliem, and that, too, under circnmstanees 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 perse- cution, and to encourage thoir stedfastness (Reid's "History of the Presbyterian Church in Ii'eland "). 1639] LETTER CCLXXXVIII. 569 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 oflficers shall yet be peace, and your exactors righteousness (Isa. Ix. 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,^ 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 ^ Weiitworth, Earl of Straflbrd, 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 kingdon . • His violent and unconstitutional proceedings at length issued in his being arraigned for high treason before the English Parliament, and beheaded od Tower Hill, May 12, 1641, in the forty-ninth year of his age. 570 LETTER CCLXXXVIII. [1639 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. 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. Ixii. 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, 0 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 1639-] LETTER CCLXXXVIIL 571 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. Ixxii. 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. Ixix. 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 572 LETTER CCLXXXVIIL [1639. (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, Iviii. 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-devour- ing 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 1639] LETTER CCLXXXVIII. 573 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. Ixvi. 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. 0 black angels, in comparison of Him ! 0 dim, and dark, and lightless sun, in regard of that fair Sun of righteous- ness ! 0 feckless and worthless heaven of heavens, when they stand beside my worthy, and lofty, and high, and excellent Well- beloved ! 0 weak and infirm clay -kings ! 0 soft and feeble mountains of brass, and weak created strength, in regard of our mighty and strong Lord of armies ! 0 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. 0 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 574 LETTER CCLXXXVIII. [1639. 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 of 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 fiesh, 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. 1639.] LETTER CCLXXXIX. 575 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.^ Now the very God of peace sanctify you throughout. Grace be with you all. Your brother and companion, in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, Anwoth, 1639. S. E. CCLXXXIX. — To his Reverend and much honoured Brother, Dk. 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 L, and the commencement of that of Charles L, 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 Parlia- ment ; 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 oS his body ; but the Star Chamber condemned the afilicted 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. Wlien 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.) Ieveeend and much honouked peisoner 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 ^ See note, Letter CCLXXXVL The decision of the Commission was, to trans- late him from Anwoth to the professorship at St. Andrews. 5^6 LETTER CCLXXXIX. [1639. 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 neighbour- ing 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 pubhc cross so long, for the 1639-] LETTER CCLXXXIX. 577 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 com- parison, 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 rain- drops, 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 incompar- able 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 thou- sand degrees more perfect than these that now are ; and again, 2 o 57^ LETTER CCXC. [1640. make a new creation ten thousand thousand degrees in perfec- tion beyond that new creation ; and again, still for eternity multiply new heavens, they should never be a perfect resem- blance 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, St. Andrews, Nov. 22, 1639. S. R CCXC— ^ To a Person unknown, anent Private Worship in time and place of puhHc.^ ^SiEVEEEND AND DEAR BROTHER, — I do not know a private worship, set and intended, compatible with a public worship set and intended. Ejacula- tions are fruits of public worship and breathings of the spirit in public speaking, but they are aliquid culius puUici, non culius pnUicus (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 pi-aising 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 ^ From a copy among tlio Wodrow 5ISS., vol. xxix. 4to, No. 13. 1640.] LETTER CCXCr. 579 in iiahira operis (in regard to the nature of the work), I think them more pharisaical tlian the other case is Brownish.^ 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,^ 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 v/nrships. And thus recommending you to the grace of God, I rest, January 16, 1640. S. K. CCXCI. — To Mr. Henry Stuart, Ms Wife, and hoo 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 cit'?"^ allegiance, but that he could not take the latter part, which he conceived bound the swearer to yield unlimited ecclesiantical 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 Stratford'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 ho 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 vScottish Parliament did so, but the result of their application is unknown (Reid's " History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland," vol. i.).] ' Savours of the sect called " Brownists." ' While at the same time I may add. 58o LETTER CCXCI. [1640. {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 sufiFer," etc. — Rev. ii. 10. Iruly honoueed, 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, 0 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 bro^^d 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 tlie 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 i64o.] LETTER CCXCI. 581 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 your- selves the streams of the river oi 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 befgrehand 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 foi 582 LETTER CCXCI. [1640. 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 tliese 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; Eev. 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 concep- tions according to some created portraiture ! 0 angels, lend in your help to make love-books and songs of our fair, and white, and ruddy Standard-bearer amongst ten thousand ! 0 heavens ! 0 heaven of heavens ! 0 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 ! 0 indwellers of earth and heaven, sea and air, and 0 all ye created beings within the bosom of the utmost circle of thi,^ great world, oh come help to set on high the praises of our Lord ! 0 fairness of creatures, blush before His uncreated beauty ! 0 created strength, be amazed to stand before your strong Lord of hosts ! 0 created love, think shame of thyself before this unparalleled 1640.] LETTER CCXCL 583 love of heaven ! 0 angel-wisdom, hide thyself before our Lord, whose understanding passeth finding out ! 0 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 ! 0 death, do thy utmost against us ! 0 torments, 0 malice of men and devils, waste your strength on the witnessess of our Lord's Testament ! 0 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 Ptenown, groweth. 0 cruel time, that tormenteth us, and suspendeth our deareat enjoyments that we wait for, when we shall be bathed and steeped, soul and body, down in the depths of this Love of Loves ! 0 time, I say, run fast ! 0 motions, mend your pace ? 0 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 ^ in keeping till your Lord make ^ the King's keys, and open your graves. There- fore, 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 ^ A security of clay or earth. Often, in his sermon on Dan. vi. 26, befoie the House of Commons, 1644, he uses such expressions as, " Clay triunipheth over angels and hell, through the strength of Jesus" (p. 8) ; "Men are but pieces of breathing, laughing, and then dying, clay " (p. 41), * Is it not "toAe.?" 584 LETTER CCXCI. [1640. room, and possess you of your eternal happiness. Keep your love to Chiist, 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 trans- ported, 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. 0 victorious, 0 royal, 0 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, 0 Tliou Maker of kings, and make but one stride, or one step of the whole earth, and travel in the greatness of Thy strengtli (Isa. Ixii. 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. 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,^ 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. Ixxvii. 8). For it was a man, and not God, that said it, ^ Dejnity, or Lord Lieuteuant of Ireland. 1640.] LETTER CCXCII. 5S5 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. 0 sweet, 0 stout word of faith, " Though He may slay me, yet will I trust in Him ! " (Job xiii. 15). 0 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 (Tsa. xxx. 33). "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 pro- fessed 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, St. Andeews, 1640. S. E. CCXCII. — To Mrs. Pont, Prisoner at DuUm. [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 nnscriptural 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 opposi- tion to Prelacy, and her frequenting these more private assemblies. John Leslie, Bishop of Kaphoe, 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 S86 LETTER CCXCIl. [1640. 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 neaily 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 commit- ting her to prison, and chai'ging 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 jyrcemunire ; 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 Presby- terian 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,) ORTHY AND DEAE 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 Ixix. 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, Ixxvi. 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. 1640.] LETTER CCXCII. 587 The seals of a controlled ^ 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 dis- penseth 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 gTeat, 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 re- proached 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 ^ TI19 Gospel, the preaching of which men are seeking to hinder. 588 LETTER CCXCIII. [1640. that abideth you, ye are paid aud more, in your own hand. Therefore, 0 prisoner of hope, wait on ; posting, hasting salva- tion 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. Your brother, in the patience and kingdom of Jesus Christ, St. A>-dkews, 1640. ^- -'^• CCXCIII.— To Mr. James Wilson. [There was a cotemporary of that name, the minister of Inch, in the Presby- tery of Stranraer. There was also a James Wilson who was a friend of Blair, and minister of Dysart in 1653. (See Eow'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 IN- TEREST IN GOD'S LO VE~TEMPTA TION— PERPLEXITY ABOUT PR A YE R— WANT OF FEELING.) IEAE brother, — Grace, mercy, and peace be multi- plied 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-chirur- geons cannot do anything for putting in order the wheels, paces, and goings of a marred ^ 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. 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 ^ A soul that has been put out of order. The edition of 1675, and some others, has "married souL" 1640.] LETTER CCXCIIT. 589 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, 0 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 con- quest. 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 ^ 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 com- parison 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. 1 3). I hope ye dare say, " 0 fairest sight of heaven ! 0 boundless mass of crucified and slain love for me, give me leave to wish to love Thee ! 0 Flower and Bloom of heaven and earth's love ! 0 angels' Wonder ! 0 Thou, the Father's eternal, ^ Jesus, wheu He puts us to trial (Gen. xxii. ). 590 LETTER CCXCIII. [1640. sealed Love ! and 0 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 ? " 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. 2 7). And faith answered Christ's " What shall I say ? " with these words : " 0 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^ of prayer. " 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 ' The incidental accompaniments. i64o.] LETTER CCXCIV. 591 who augbteth 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 hard- ness. 2. I change 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 propriuyn quarto modo 1 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. But, alas ! dear brother, it is easy for me to speak words and syllables of peace ; but Isaiah telleth you, " I create peace " (Isa. Ivii. 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, St. Andrews, Jan. 8, 1640. S. E. CCXCIV.— To my Lady Boyd. {SINS OF THE LAND— DWELLING IN CHRIST— FAITH AWAKE SEES ALL WELL.) ADAM, — 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 ^ This is a term of logic, and refers to tlie fourth kind of categorical proposition, in which some particular point is proved in the negative. 59* LETTER CCXCIV. [1640. 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 Eeformation 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 seek- ing 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 fetcli 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 ! 1640.] LETTER CCXCV. 593 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 horse- back, 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. 0 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 world- lings, 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, St, Andrews. S. R. CCXCV, — To his very dear Friend, John Fenwick. [Mr. John Fenwick was an Englishman, who suffered considerably for non- conformity. He 13 mentioned in Row's " Life of R. Blair," where it is said that John J^enwick was one of the best of the Commissioners sent by Cromwell to visit the Universities." He was a Puritan and Nonconformist ] I^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.) [UCH HONOUEED AND DEAR FRIEND,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — The necessary impedi- ments 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 2 p 594 LETTER CCXCV. [1640. cistern is dry. A difference there must be betwixt Christ's well and your borrowed water ; and why but ye have need of empti- ness 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 thristy 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, ilov/ing 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 apprehen- sion 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 i64o.] LETTER CCXCV. 595 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 believ- ing dead man, breathing out and making a hole in death's broad- side, 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, false- hood, 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 596 LETTER CCXCV. [1640. oif 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, there- fore, 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 com- pared ; 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 tlie sweetness of His love. I know what it is to sin in that kind. It is to sin (if it were possible) the uuchangeableness of a Godhead Qut of Christ, and 1640.] LETTER CCXCV 597 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 ^ 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 ^ Ps. xcvii. 11. 598 LETTER CCXCV. [1640. 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 pro- fessors 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 nothiug. 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. 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. ]?emember my love to your wife. Yours, in Christ Jesus, St. Andrews, Feb. 13, IG-IO. S. R i64o.] LETTER CCXCVI. 599 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 Good trees, wi-ote " Naphtali ; " or to John Stirling, minister of H-dmburgh, one who suffered much, and is referred to in the notice to Letter XCL] {BELIEVERS' GRACES ALL FROM CHRIST— ASPIRATION AFTER MORE LOVE TO HIM— HIS REIGN DESIRED.) UCH HONOUEED AND WOETHY SIE,— I re- ceived yours, and cannot but be ashamed that mistaken love hath brought me into court ^ 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 sliare 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 ! 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 ' Favour. 6oo LETTER CCXCVII. [1640. 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, St. Andrews, March 6. 1640. S. R, CCXCVII.— To the Ladt Fingask. [This lady has been supposed to be Lady Anne Moncrieff, wife of Sir John Dundas of Fingask in Perthshire. She was daughter of AVilliam Moncrieff of that ilk, and her mother was one of the Murrays of Abercarnie. See notice pre- fixed to the letter to " The Laird of Moncrieff." At the same time, it is not im- possible that Rutherford, who was then at St. Andrews, may be wi'iting 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 regali- tate Sanctse Andrese."] {FAITHS MISGIVINGS— SPIRITUAL DARKNESS NOT GRACE- CHRIST S LOVE INIMITABLE.) ADAM, — 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 saitli is not Scrip- ture. 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 them- selves, but because they are neighboured with faith and love. 1640.] LETTER CCXCVIL 601 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. 0 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. Eemember 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 6o2 LETTER CCXCVIII. [1640. 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 bound- less and bottomless love I recommend your Ladyship, and am, Your Ladyship's, in Christ Jesus, St. Andrews, March 27, 1640. S. E. 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 DY AFFLICTION.) IeVEREND 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 exalta- tion 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 I640-] LETTER CCXCIX. 605 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 ^ 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. Eead 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. 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. Eemember my love to your wife, to Mr. John,^ 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. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, St. Andrews, May 28, 1640. S. R CCXCIX.— To my Lady Boyd, on the loss of several Friends. {TRUST EVEN- THOUGH SLA IN-SECOND CAUSES NOT TO BE REGARDED— GOD'S THOUGHTS OF PEACE THEREIN— ALL IN MERCY.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — Impute it not to a disrespective forgetfulness of your Lady- ship, 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 it is ^£iu^. "'"''^ ""*'" *^^* '"' ^^"^ "*"* ^* ^^' ^°^'' ^^^""^ ^« f""y a^ake to what » Dickson's eldest son, who became Clerk to the Exchequer of Scotland. 6o4 ' LETTER CCXCIX. [1640. 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 know- ledge." He answereth none of our courts,^ 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. 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 ! " " t)h 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 1 When we summon Him into our court to explain. I 1640.] LETTER CCXCIX. 605 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). Eead 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 hatli 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-duriug 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,^ the mighty and strong 1 Zech. vi. I. 6o6 LETTER CCXCIX. [1640. 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. 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 vv^ould 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 Eedeemer, is a precious part of obedience. Oh what glory to Hira to lay over the burden of our heaven upon Him that pur- chased for us an eternal kingdom! 0 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, St. Anuhews, Oct. 15, 1640. S. E. 1640.] LETTER CCC. 607 CCC. — To Agnes Macmath, on the Death of a Cliild, [Agnes Maumath was the daughter of Mr. Macmath, a merchant Id Edinburgh, and the sister of Rutherford's second wife.] {REASON FOR RESIGNATION.) ^jEAE SISTEE,^ — If our Lord hath taken away your child, your lease of him is expired ; and seeing that ^1 Christ would want him no longer, it is your part to hold your peace, and worship and adore the sove- reignty 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 6o8 LETTER CCCI. [1640. am alive" (Rev. L 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 sufifering 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. " 0 vain world ! " 2. " 0 bitter sin ! " 3. " 0 short and uncertain time ! " 4. " 0 fair eternity that is above sickness and death ! " 5. " 0 kingly and princely Bridegroom, hasten glory's marriage, shorten time's short-spun and soon-broken thread, and conquer sin ! " 6. " 0 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, St. Andrews, Oct. 15, 1640. S. R. CCCI. — To Mr. Matthew Mow at, {WORTHINESS OF GOD'S LOVE AS MANIFESTED IN CHRIST- HEAVEN WITH CHRIST.) EVEREND 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 i640.] LETTER CCCIl. 609 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 con- ceptions 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 ever- more. 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, St. Andrews, 1640. S. E. CCCII. — To my Lady Kenmure, on her Hushand^s Death. {GOD'S METHOD IN AFFLICTION— FUTURE GLORY.') [ADAM, — 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.^ I know your Ladyship long ago made acquaintance with that wherein Christ will have you ' Hon. Sir Henry Montgomery of Giffen, her Ladyship's second husband, died about this time. See Letter IIL 2 Q 6io LETTER CCCII. [1640. to be joiued in a fellowship with Himself (oveu 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 af 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 Lady- ship 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. Ixii. 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. 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, St. Andrews. *^' ^- I 1640.] LETTER CCCIII. 611 CCOIII. — Fw the Right Honourable, my Lady Botd. {S/N OF THE LAND— READ PRAYERS— BROWNISM.) ADAM, — I doubt not but the debt of mauy 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, pro- mise, 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 accept- able in Thy sight, 0 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,* 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 ^ 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 nam« of Brownists was merged in that of CongregationaliBts or Independents. 6i2 LETTER CCCIV. [1640. them.i The Lord lay it not to their charge, who depart from the covenant of God with this land to follow such lying vanities. I did see lately your daughter, the Lady Ardross.^ The Lord hath given her a child and deliverance. Now, recommending your Ladyship to the rich grace of Christ, I rest yours at all respectful observance in Christ, St. Andrews. S. R. CCCIV.— To James Murray's Wife. [See Letter CCLXXIV.] {HEAVEN A REALITY— STEDFASTN ESS TO BE GROUNDED ON CHRIST.) Y 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 sub- missively 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 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." ' See notice on this lady prefixed to a subsequent Letter. 1640.] LETTER CCCV. 613 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 an^ 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, St. Andbews. S. E. CCCV. — ¥ov the Eight Honourable Lady, my Lady Kenmubb. {S/JVS OF THE TIMES— PRACTICAL ATHEISM.) ADAM, — 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 ^ 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 ^ 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 ^ Must eveu here be in possession of a lil'e far superior to the things tliat at present attract us. " Huge" may mean " vast as to number" (Isa, xlviii. 19), and »l80, great in other respects. ' If we are making this living above the world sure. 6i4 LETTER CCCVL [1643. world, and raising a hard report of Him. " He is good, and doeth good," and all His ways are equal. 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 God- head 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, St. Andrews, July 24. ^* ■"* CCCVI. — To Mr. Thomas Wylie, Minister of Borgue. Mr. Thomas Wylib 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 Kirk- cudbright. 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 Presby- tery 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.) EVEREND 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, T .see not how I shall make a reckoning for one soul, far less for multitudes ; only it is God's 1643.] LETTER CCCVIL 615 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.^ 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," 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. Grace be with you. Yours in Christ, St. Andrkws, 20fA Oct. 1643. S. E. 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.) OETHY SIK, — 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 ^ 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 fonn 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. Eobert Baillie, and Mr. George Gillespie, ministers ; John Earl of Cassillis, John Lord Maitland, and Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston, elders. '■^ A push ; but probably we should read " shout." 6i6 LETTER CCCVIII. [1644. 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. Eemember my heart's love and respect to your mother and sister. Grace be with you. Your sometime pastor and still friend in God, St. Andrews. S. R. CCCVIII. — Forr the Right Honourable^ my Lady Viscountess op Kenmure. {WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY— RELIGIOUS SECTS.) ADAM, — 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 Eock. 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 aud Assembly ; ^ for beside Brownists and Independents ^ (who, of all that differ fiom us, come nearest to walkers with God), there are ' The Assembly of Divines at Westminster. ^ 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 congiegation went from Loyden 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. i644.] LETTER CCCVIII. 617 many other sects here, of Anabaptists,^ Libertines who are for all opinions in religion, fleshly and abominable Antinomians,^ and Seekers,^ 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.* 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.^ 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. 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, London, March 4, 1644. S. Ii. ^ 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. ^ The Antiuomians professed to hold doctrinal sentiments rigidly Calvinistic ; but they deduced from them conclusions deeply injurious to the interests of religion and morality. * 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 tnem 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). * Thomas Edwards, in his "Gangraena," enumerates sixteen sorts of sectaries of that time. 1. Independents ; 2. Brownists ; 3. Chiliasts, or MiUennaries ; 4. Antiuomians ; 5. Anabaptists ; 6. Mauifcstariaus, or Arminians ; 7. Liber- tines; 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 iu matters of religion. In these different sects there were many subdivisions. ^ In the contest between Charles L 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 tliey found it impracticable to come to any agreement. He alludes to this in his sermon before the House of Lords. 6i8 LETTER CCCIX, [1644. CCCIX. — Far the Right Honourable, my Lady Boyd. {PROCEEDINGS OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBIY,') ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I re- ceived 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,^ Jeremiah Burroughs,^ 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 ex- communicate, 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. ^ Thomas Goodwin, a distinguished Puritan divine, and latterly pastor of ft church iu London, styled by Anthony Wood "one of the Atlasses and patriarchs of Independency." He was in high favour with Cromwell. He was born at Kolesby, in Noi-folk, 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. ' 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. 1 644-] LETTER CCCIX. 619 Multitudes of Anabaptists, Antinomians, Familists,^ Separat- ists,^ 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,^ as His members are here, I should be in a sad and heavy condition. The House of Peers are rotten men, and hate our Com- missioners 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 New- castle,* 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. 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. ^ 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 Baslo, 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, ti-anslated out of Dutch into English several of the books of Henry Nicholas, among which was his ' ' Evangelium Kegni. " The claims of Nicholas were those of a fanatic, and his system was a lie. (Pagitt's " Heresio- graphy," pp. 81-91.) * The "Separatists" were a kind of Anabaptists, so called because they pre- tended 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 Cove- nants. (Pagitt's "Heresiography," p. 30.) ^ Strange. * In the end of the year 1643, the Scottish army raised by the Convention of Estates for the assistance of the Englisli Parliament marched into England, and, havinjg joined the Parliamentary forces, blockaded Newcastle, as Rutherford here describes. 620 LETTER CCCX. [1645. Your son Lindsay ^ is well : I receive letters from him almost every week. Yours at all obedience in God, London, May 25, 1644. S. R CCCX. — To Mistress Taylor, on her son's death. [Her son was a parishioner of Mr. Blair.] {SUGGESTIONS FOR COMFORT UNDER SORROW.) ISTEESS, — 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 sinall 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 there- fore, 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 ^ Afterwards Earl of Crawford. See notice of, Letter CCXXXI. 1645.] LETTER CCCX. 63 1 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 Hi^ 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 com- passionate 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 shaU be in It ; and His servants shall serve Him " (Eev. 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 con- dition ; I had but two children, and both are dead since I came hither.i 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 ^He had lost two children before goiiitr to London unrl ¥ha .v.,^ • • reference to the death of other two after hfcaie thither ^°^' '' '° 622 LETTER CCCX. [1645. 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. And dying in another land, where his mother could not close his eyes, is not much. Wlio 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, London, 1645. S. E. 1645-1 LETTER CCCXl. CCCXI. — To Barbara Hamilton. 623 _ [Barbara Hamilton was the wife of Mr. Jolm Meiii, merchant, Edinburgh noticed before (see Letter CLL), and sister to the first wife of the famous Mr Robert Bkir. 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 "^5,?* "P ' "P°^ ^'^^°^ ^^® convened a considerable number of the religious matrons ot 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 Ti-easurer, and "did with her strong arm and big hand fast grip his gardie" (i e ai-m), 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 tome? "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 endeavoui-, and what I can in it " Ihe 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 maiTied to her daughter Barbara Mein. (See Letter CCCXIL)] {ON DEATH OF HER SON-IN-LAW— GOUS PURPOSES.) [OETHY FEIEND,— Grace be to you. I do unwill- ingly write unto you of that which God hath done concerning your son-in-law ; only, I believe ye look not below Christ, and the highest and most supreme act of Providence, which moveth all wheels. And certainly, what came down enacted and concluded in the great book before the throne, and signed and subscribed with the hand which never did wrong, should be kissed and adored by us. We see God's decrees when they bring forth their fruits, all actions, good and ill, sweet and sour, in their time ; but we see not presently the after-birth of God's decree, namely, His blessed end, and the good that He briugeth out of the womb of His holy and spotless counsel. We see His working, and we sorrow ; the end of His counsel and working lieth hidden, and underneath the ground, and therefore we cannot believe. Even amongst men, we see hewn stones, timber, and an hundred scattered parcels and pieces of an house, all under-tools, hammers, and axes, and saws ; yet the house, the beauty and use ' of so many lodgings and ease-rooms, we neither see nor understand for the ^ ' ' E(M«, " in older editions. 6*4 LETTER CCCXI. [1645 present ; these are but in the mind and head of the builder, as yet. We see red earth, unbroken clods, furrows, and stones; but we see not summer, lilies, roses, the beauty of a garden. If ye give the Lord time to work (as often ^ he that believeth maketh haste, but not speed). His end is under ground, and ye shall see it was your good, that your son hath changed dwelling-places, but not his Master. Christ thought good to have no more of his service here ; yet, " His servants shall serve Him " (Eev. xxii, 3), He needeth not us nor our service, either on earth or in heaven. But ye are to look to Him who giveth the hireling both his leave and his wages, for his naked aim and purpose to serve Christ, as well as for his labours. It is put up in Christ's account, that such a labourer did sweat forty years in Christ's vineyard ; howbeit he got not leave to labour so long, because He who accepteth of the will for the deed counteth so. None can teach the Lord to lay an account. He numbereth the drops of rain, and knoweth the stars by their names ; it would take us much studying to give a name to every star in the firmament, great or small. See Lev. x, 3, " And Aaron held his peace," Ye know his two sons were slain, whilst they offered strange fire to the Lord, Command your thoughts to be silent. If the soldiers of New- castle had done this, ye might have stomached ; but the weapon was in another hand. Hear the rod what it preacheth, and see the name of God (Micah vi. 9), and know that there is some- what of God and heaven in the rod. The majesty of the un- searchable and bottomless ways and judgments of God is not seen in the rod ; and the seeing of them requireth the eyes of the man of wisdom. If the sufferings of some other with you in that loss could ease you, ye want them not. But He can do no wrong. He cannot halt; His goings are equal who hath done it, I know our Lord aimeth at more mortification ; let Him not come in vain to your house, and lose the pains of a merciful visit. God, the Founder, never melteth in vain ; how- beit to us He seemeth often to lose both fire and metal. But I know ye are more in this work than I can be. There is no cause to faint or be weary, Grace be with you ; and the rich consolations of Jesus Christ sweeten your cross, and support you under it, I rest, Yours, in his Lord and Master, London, Oct. 15, 1645. S. E. ^ Q.d., You need this advice, as too ofteu even believers make haste. 1^45] LETTER CCCXII. 625 CCCXII.— To Mistress Hume, on her Husband's Death. [This lady it is highly probable, was Barbara Mein. the dauf'hter of Barbara Hamilton noticed above and tlie wife of Mr. William Hume, minister who had gone to England with the Covenanters' army, and who died at NewcasTle pio bably from wounds inflictexi by tlie army. In the ludex of the unprfnted Act of the General Assembly of 1645, there is an Act entitled, '' Recommendation of Barbara Mems Petition to the Parliament ; » and in the Index of the unprinted Acts of the General Assembly of 1646, tLere is an Act entitled, "Act in favours of Barbara Mem, relict of umwhile Mr. William Hume, minister.'" The object of thU letter is to comfort Mrs. Hume under that painful bereavement] {GOD'S VOICE IN THE ROD.) jOVINa SISTEE,— Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — If ye have anything better than the husband of your youth, ye are Jesus Christ's debtor for it. Pay not then your debts with grudging. Sorrow may diminish from the sweet fruit of righteousness; but quietness silence, submission, and faith, put a crown upon your sad losses' Ye know whose voice the voice of a crying rod is (Micah vi. 9)' The name and majesty of the Lord is written on the rod ; read and be instructed. Let Christ have the room of the husband He hath now no need of you, or of your love ; for he enjoyeth as much of the love of Christ as his heart can be capable of. I confess that it is a dear-bought experience, to teach you to undervalue the creature; yet it is not too dear if Christ think It so. I know that the disputing of your thoughts against his going thither, the way and manner of his death, the instruments, the place, the time, wiU not ease your spirits ; except ye rise higher than second causes, and be silent because the Lord hath done it. If we measure the goings of the Almighty, and His ways (the bottom whereof we see not), we quite mistake God. Oh, how little a portion of God do we see ! He is far above our ebb and narrow thoughts. He ruled the world in wisdom, ere we, creatures of yesterday, were born ; and will rule it when we shall be lodging beside the worm and corruption. Only learn heavenly wisdom, self-denial, and mortification, by this sad loss. I know that it is not for nothing (except ye deny God to be wise in all He doeth) that ye have lost one on earth. There hath been too Uttle of your love and heart in heaven, and there- fore the jealousy of Christ hath done this. It is a mercy that He contendeth with you and all your lovers. I should desire no greater favour for myself than that Christ laid a necessity, and took on such bonds upon Himself: " Such a one I must have 2 R 626 LETTER CCCXIII. US^S- and such a soul I caunot live in heaven without" (John x. 16). And, believe it ; it is incomprehensible love that Christ saith, " If I enjoy the glory of My Father and the crown of heaven, far above men and angels, I must use all means, though ever so violent, to have the company of such a one for ever and ever." If, with the eyes of wisdom, as a child of wisdom, ye justify your mother, the Wisdom of God (whose child ye are), ye will kiss and embrace this loss, and see much of Christ in it. Believe and submit ; and refer tlie income of the consolations of Jesus, and the event of the trial, to your heavenly Father, who numbereth all your hairs. And put Christ into His own room in your love ; it may be He hath either been out of His own place, or in a place of love inferior to His worth. Eepair Christ in all His wrongs done to Him, and love Him for a Husband ; and He that is a Husband to the widow will be that to you which He hath taken from you. Grace be with you. Your sympathizing brother, London, Oct. 15, 1645. S. R. CCCXIII.— To the Viscountess Kenmure. {CHRISI^S DESIGNS IN SICKNESS AND SORROW.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Ladyship. — Though Christ lose no time, yet, when sinful men drive His chariot, the wheels of His chariot move slowly. The woman, Zion, as soon as she travailed, brought forth her children ; yea, " before she travailed, she brought forth ; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man- child " (Isa. Ixvi. 7) : yet the deliverance of the people was with the woman's going with child seventy years. That is more than nine months. There be many oppositions in carrying on the work ; but I hope that the Lord will build His own Zion, and evidence to us that it is done, " not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord." Madam, I have heard of your infirmities of body, and sick- ness. I know the issue shall be mercy to you, and that God's purpose, which lieth hidden under ground to you, is to commend the sweetness of His love and care to you from your youth. And if all the sad losses, trials, sicknesses, infirmities, griefs, heaviness, and inconstancy of the creature, be expounded (as sure I am they are) the rods of the jealousy of an Husband in heaven, r645.] LETTER CCCXIV. 627 contending with all your lovers on earth, though there were millions of them, for your love, to fetch more of your love home to heaven, to make it single, unmixed, and chaste, to the Fairest in heaven and earth, to Jesus the Prince of ages, ye will forgive (to borrow that word) every rod of God, and " not let the sun go down on your wrath " against any messenger of your afflicting and correcting Father. Since your Ladyship cannot but see that the mark at which Christ hath aimed these twenty-four years and above, is, to have the company and fellowship of such a sinful creature in heaven with Him for all eternity ; and, because He will not (such is the power of His love) enjoy His Father's glory, and that crown due to Him by eternal generation, without you, by name (John xvii. 24, x. 16, xiv. 3), therefore. Madam, believe no evil of Christ : listen to no hard reports that His rods make of Him to you. He hath loved you, and washed you from your sins ; . and what would ye have more ? Is that too little, except He adjourn all crosses, till ye be where ye shall be out of all capacity to sigh or be crossed ? I hope that ye can desire no more, no greater, nor more excellent suit, than Christ and the fellowship of the Lamb for evermore. And if that desire be answered in heaven (as I am sure it is, and ye cannot deny but it is made sure to you), the want of these poor accidents, of a living husband, of many children, of an healthful body, of a life of ease in the world, without one knot in the rush, are nobly made up, and may be comfortably borne. Grace, grace be with your Ladyship. Your Ladyship's, at all obedience in Christ, London, Oct. 16, 1645. S. R CCCXIV. — To Barbara Hamilton, on her Son-in-law slain in hattle. [Letter CCCXII.] {GOD DOES ALL THINGS WELL, AND WITH DESIGN.) j OVING SISTEE, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I have heard with grief that Newcastle hath taken one more in a bloody account than before, even your son-in-law and my friend. But I hope you have learned that much of Christ as not to look to wheels rolled round about on earth. Earthen vessels are not to dispute with their Former. Pieces of shining clay may, by reasoning and contend- ing with the potter, mar the work of Him " who hath His fire in 628 LETTER CCCXIV. [1645. Zion, and His furnace in Jerusalem ; " as bullocks sweating and wrestling in the furrow make their yoke more heavy. In quiet- ness and rest ye shall be saved. If men do anything contrary to your heart, we may ask both, " Who did it ? " and " What is done ? " and " Why ? " When God hath done any such thing, we are to inquire, " Who hath done it ? " and to know that this Cometh from the Lord, who is " wonderful in counsel ; " but we are not to ask, " What ? " or " Why ? " If it be from the Lord (as certainly there is no evil in the city without Him (Amos iii 6), it is enough ; the fairest face of His spotless way is but coming, and ye are to believe His works as well as His word. Violent death is a sharer with Christ in His death, which was violent. It maketh not much what way we go to heaven : the happy home is all, where the roughness of the way shall be for- gotten. He is gone home to a Friend's house, and made welcome, and the race is ended : time is recompensed with eternity, and copper with gold. God's order is in wisdom ; the husband goeth home before the wife. And the throng of the market shall be over ere it be long, and another generation be where we now are, and at length an empty house, and not one of mankind shall be upon the earth, within the sixth part of an hour after the earth and works that are therein shall be burnt up with fire. I fear more that Christ is about to remove, when He carrieth home so much of His plenishing beforehand. We cannot teach the Almighty knowledge. When He was directing the bullet against His servant to fetch out the soul, no wise man could cry to God, " Wrong, wrong, Lord, for he is Thine own ! " There is no mist over His eyes who is " wonderful in counsel." If Zion be builded with your son-in-law's blood, the Lord (deep in counsel) can glue together the stones of Zion with blood, and with that blood which is precious in His eyes. Christ hath fewer labourers in His vineyard than He had, but more witnesses for His cause and the Lord's covenant with the three nations. What is Christ's gain is not your loss. Let not that, which is His holy and wise will, be your unbelieving sorrow. Though I really judge that I had interest in His dead servant, yet, because he now liveth to Christ, I quit the hopes which I had of his successful labouring in the ministry, I know he now praiseth the grace that he was to preach ; and if there were a better thing on his head now in heaven than a crown, or any- thing more excellent than heaven, he would cast it down before 1645.] LETTER CCCXV. 629 His feet who sitteth on the throne. Give glory, therefore, to Christ, as he now doeth, and say, " Thy will be done." The grace and consolation of Christ be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, London, Nov. 15, 1645. S. R CCCXV. — To a Christian Friend, upon the death of his Wife. {GOD THE FIRST CAUSE— THE END OF AFFLICTION.) OETHY FEIEND, — I desire to suffer with you, in the loss of a loving and good wife, now gone before (ac- cording to the method and order of Him of whose understanding there is no searching out) whither ye are to follow. He that made yesterday to go before this day, and the former generation, in birth and life, to have been before this present generation, and hath made some flowers to grow and die and wither in the month of May, and others in June, cannot be challenged in the order He hath made of things without souls ; and some order He must keep also here, that one might bury another. Therefore I hope ye shall be dumb and silent, because the Lord hath done it. What creatures or under-causes do, in sinful mistakes, is ordered in wisdom by your Father, at whose feet your own soul and your heaven lieth ; and so the days of your wife. If the place she hath left were any other than a prison of sin, and the home she is gone to any other than where her Head and Saviour is King of the land, your grief had been more rational. But I trust your faith of the resurrection of the dead in Christ to glory and immortality, will lead you to suspend your longing for her, till the morning and dawning of that day when the archangel shall descend with a shout, to gather all the prisoners out of the grave, up to Himself. To believe this is best for you ; and to be silent, because He hath done it, is your wisdom. It is much to come out of the Lord's school of trial wiser, and more experienced in the ways of God ; and it is our happi- ness, when Christ openeth a vein, that He taketh nothing but ill blood from His sick ones. Christ hath skill to do ; and (if our corruption mar not) the art of mercy in correcting. We cannot of ourselves take away the tin, the lead, and the scum that remaineth in us ; and if Christ be not Master-of-work, and if the furnace go its lone (He not standing nigh the melting of 630 LETTER CCCXVl. [1646. His own vessel), the labour were lost, and the li'ounder should melt in vain. God knoweth some of us have lost much fire, sweating, and pains, to our Lord Jesus ; and the vessel is almost marred, the furnace and rod of God spilled, " the daylight ^ burnt, and the reprobate metal not taken away," so as some are to answer to the Majesty of God for the abuse of many good crosses, and rich afflictions lost without the quiet fruit of right- eousness. It is a sad thing when the rod is cursed, that never fruit shall grow on it. And except Christ's dew fall down, and His summer-sun shine, and His grace follow afflictions to cause them to bring forth fruit to God, they are so fruitless to us, that our evil ground (rank and fat enough for briers) casteth up a crop of noisome weeds. " The rod " (as the prophet saith) " blossometh, pride buddeth forth, violence riseth up into a rod of wickedness" (Ezek. vii. 10, 11). And all this hath been my case under many rods since I saw you. Grace be with you. Yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, London, 1645. S. K. CCCXVl. — To a Christian Brother, on the death of his Daughter. (CONSOLATION IN HER HAVING GONE BEFORE— CHRIST THE BEST HUSBAND.) fEVEREND AND BELOVED IN THE LORD,— It may be that I have been too long silent, but I hope that ye will not impute it to forgetfulness of you. As I have heard of the death of your daughter with heavi- ness of mind on your behalf, so am I much comforted that she hath evidenced to yourself and other witnesses the hope of the resurrection of the dead. As sown corn is not lost (for there is more hope of that which is sown than of that which is eaten) (1 Cor. XV. 42, 43), so also is it in the resurrection of the dead: the body " is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory." I hope that ye wait for the crop and harvest ; " for if we believe that Jesus died and ' The allusion is to Jer. vi. 29, and in that passage "daylight" is a variation from our common version. Could Rutherford have been reading Jeremiah in the Septuagint Greek version ? There the word is (pvffn-Trip, "blowpipe," or *^ bellows;" but we might suppose that his eye mistook the word for ^utrTyip, "lightgiver," "window-light." The Scotch phrase, "to bum daylight," means to waste time and opportunity. i 1646.] LETTER CCCXVI. 631 rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him" (1 Tliess. iv. 14). Then they are not lost who are gathered into that congregation of the first-born, and the general assembly of the saints. Though we cannot outrun nor overtake them that are gone before, yet we shall quickly follow them ; and the difference is, that she hath the advantage of some months or years of the crown before you and her mother. As we do not take it ill if our children outrun us in the life of grace, why then are we sad if they outstrip us in the attainment of the life of glory ? It would seem that there is more reason to grieve that children live behind us, than that tliey are glorified and die before us. All the difierence is in some poor hungry accidents of time, less or more, sooner or later. So the godly child, though young, died an hundred years old ; and ye could not now have bestowed her better, though the choice was Christ's, not yours. And I am sure. Sir, ye cannot now say that she is married against the will of her parents. She might more readily, if alive, fall into the hands of a worse husband ; but can ye think that she could have fallen into the hands of a better ? And if Christ marry with your house, it is your honour, not any cause of grief, that Jesus should portion any of yours, ere she enjoy your portion. Is it not great love? The patrimony is more than any other could give ; as good a husband is impossible ; to say a better is blasphemy. The King and Prince of ages can keep them better than ye can do. While she was alive, ye could entrust her to Christ, and recommend her to His keeping ; now, by an after-faith, ye have resigned her unto Him in whose bosom do sleep all that are dead in the Lord. Ye would have lent her to glorify the Lord upon earth, and He hath borrowed her (with promise to restore her again) (1 Cor. xv. 53 ; 1 Thess. iv. 15, 16) to be an organ of the immediate glorifying of Himself in heaven. Sinless glorifying of God is better than sinful glorifying of Him. And sure your prayers concerning her are fulfilled. I shall desire, if the Lord shall be pleased the same way to dispose of her mother, that ye have the same mind. Christ cannot multiply injuries upon you. If the fountain be the love of God (as I hope it is), ye are enriched with losses. Ye knew all I can say better, before I was in Christ, than I can express it. Grace be with you. Yours, in Christ Jesus, London, Jan. 6, 1646. S. R 632 LETTER CCCXVIL [1646 CCCXVII. — To a Christian Gentlewoman. ( VIE IVS OF DEA Til AND HE A VEN—ASPIRA TIONS.) ISTEESS, — Grace, mercy, and peace Le to you. — If death, which is before you and us all, were any other thing than a friendly dissolution, and a change, not a destruction of life, it would seem a hard voyage to go through such a sad and dark trance,^ so thorny a valley, as is the wages of sin. But I am confident the way ye know, though your foot never trod in that black shadow. The loss of life is gain to you. If Christ Jesus be the period, the end, and lodging- home, at the end of your journey, there is no fear ; ye go to a friend. And since ye have had communion with Him in this life, and He hath a pawn or pledge of yours, even the largest share of your love and heart, ye may look death in the face with joy. If the heart be in heaven, the remnant of you cannot be kept the prisoner of the second death. But though He be the same Christ in the other life that ye found Him to be here, yet He is so far in His excellency, beauty, sweetness, irradiations, and beams of majesty, above what He appeared here, when He is seen as He is, that ye shall misken Him, and He shall appear a new Christ. And His kisses, breathings, embracements, the perfume, the ointment of His name poured out on you, shall appear to have more of God, and a stronger smell of heaven, of eternity, of a Godhead, of majesty and glory, there than here ; as water at the fountain, apples in the orchard and beside the tree, have more of their native sweetness, taste, and beauty, than when transported to us some hundred miles. I mean not that Christ can lose any of His sweetness in the carrying, or that He, in His Godhead and loveliness of presence, can be changed to the worse, betwixt the little spot of the earth that ye are in, and the right hand of the Father far above all heavens. But the change will be in you, when ye shall have new senses, and the soul shall be a more deep and more capacious vessel, to take in more of Christ ; and when means (the chariot, the Gospel, that He is now carried in, and ordinances that convey Him) shall be removed- Sure ye cannot now be said to see Him face to face ; or to drink of the wine of the highest fountain, or to take in seas and tides of fresh love immediately, without ^ Passage. 1646.] LETTER CCCXVII. 633 vessels, midses, or messengers, at the fountain itself, as ye will do a few days hence, when ye shall be so near as to be with Christ (Luke xxiii. 43; John xvii. 24; Phil. i. 23 ; 1 Thess. iv. 17). Ye would, no doubt, bestow a day's journey, yea, many days journey on earth, to go up to heaven, and fetch down anything of Christ ; how much more may ye be willing to make a journey to go in person to heaven (it is not lost time, but gained eternity) to enjoy the full Godhead ! And then, in such a manner as He is there ! not in His week-day's apparel, as He is here with us, in a drop or the tenth part of a night's dewing of grace and sweetness ; but He is there in His marriage-robe of glory, richer, more costly, more precious, in one hem or button of that garment of Fountain majesty than a million of worlds. Oh, the well is deep ! Ye shall then think that preachers, and sinful ambas- sadors on • earth, did but spill and mar His praises, when they spoke of Him and preached His beauty. Alas ! we but make Christ black and less lovely, in making such insignificant, and dry, and cold, and low expressions of His highest and transcendent super-excellency to the daughters of Jerusalem. Sure I have often, for my own part, sinned in this thing, No doubt angels do not fulfil their task, according to their obligation, in that Christ keeps their feet from falling with the lost devils ; though I know they are not behind in going to the utmost of created power. But there is sin in our praising, and sin in the quantity, besides other sins. But I must leave this ; it is too deep for me. Go and see, and we desire to go with you ; but we are not masters of our own diet,^ If, in that last journey, ye tread on a serpent in the way, and thereby wound your heel, as Jesus Christ did before you, the print of the wound shall not be known at the resurrection of the just. Death is but an awesome step, over time and sin, to sweet Jesus Christ, who knew and felt the worst of death, for death's teeth hurt Him. "We know death hath no teeth now, no jaws, for they are broken. It is a free prison ; citizens pay nothing for the grave. The jailor who had the power of death is destroyed : praise and glory be to the First-begotten of the dead. The worst possible that may be is, that ye leave behind you children, husband, and the church of God in miseries. But ye cannot get them to heaven with you for the present. Ye shall not miss them, and Christ cannot miscount one of the poorest of ^ Diet, used for fixed time. 634 LETTER CCCXVII. [1646 His lambs. No lad, no girl, no poor one shall be a-missing, ere ^ ye see them again, in the day that the Son shall render up the kingdom to His Father. The evening and the shadow of every poor hireling is coming. The sun of Christ's church in this life is declining low. Not a soul of the militant company will be here within a few genera- tions ; our Husband will send for them all. It is a rich mercy that we are not married to time longer than the course be finished. Ye may rejoice that ye go not to heaven till ye know that Jesus is there before you ; that when ye come thither, at your first entry ye may feel the smell of His ointments. His myrrh, aloes, and cassia. And this first salutation of His will make you find it is no uncomfortable thing to die. Go and enjoy your gain ; live on Christ's love while ye are here, and all the way. As for the church which ye leave behind you, the govern- ment is upon Christ's shoulders, and He will plead for the blood of His saints. The Bush hath been burning above five thousand years, and we never yet saw the ashes of this fire. Yet a little while, and the vision shall not tarry : it will speak, and not lie. I am more afraid of my duty, than of the Head Christ's govern- ment. He cannot fail to bring judgment to victory. Oh that we could wait for our hidden life ! Oh that Christ would remove the covering, draw aside the curtain of time, and rend the heavens, and come down ! Oh that shadows and night were gone, that the day would break, and that He who feedeth among the lilies would cry to His heavenly trumpeters, " Make ready, let us go down and fold together the four corners of the world, and marry the bride ! " His grace be with you. Now, if I have found favour with you, and if ye judge me faithful, my last suit to you is that ye would leave me a legacy ; and that is, that my name may be, at the very last, in your prayers : as I desire also, it may be in the prayers of those of your Christian acquaintance with whom ye have been intimate. Your brother, in his own Lord Jesus, London, Jan. 9, 1646. S. R. ^ None shall be longer missed than just till the time when ye shall see them again. t646.] LETTER CCCXVIII. ' 635 CCCXVIII.— ro my Lady Kenmure. {CHRIST NEVER IN OUR DEBT— RICHEST OF CHRIST— EXCEL- LENCE OF THE HEAVENLY STATE.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — It is the least of the princely and royal bounty of Jesus Christ to pay a king's debts, and not to have His servants at a loss. His gold is better than yours, and His hundred-fold is the income and rent of heaven, and far above your revenues. Ye are not the first who have casten up your accounts that way. Better have Christ your factor than any other ; for He tradeth to the advantage of His poor servants. But if the hundred-fold in this life be so well told (as Christ cannot pay you with miscounting or deferred hope), oh, what must the rent of that land be which rendereth (every day and hour of the years of long eternity) the whole rent of a year, yea, of more than thousand thousands of ages, even the weighty income of a rich kingdom, not every summer once, but every moment ! That sum of glory will take you and all the angels telling.^ To be a tenant to such a Landlord, where every berry and grape of the large field beareth no worse fruit than glory, fulness of joy, and pleasures that endure for evermore ! I leave it to yourself to think what a summer, what a soil, what a garden must be there ; and v/hat must be the commodities of that highest land, where the sun and the moon are under the feet of the inhabit- ants ! Surely the land cannot be bought with gold, blood, banishment, loss of father and mother, husband, wife, children. We but dwell here because we can do no better. It is need, not virtue, to be sojourners in a prison ; to weep and sigh, and, alas ! to sin sixty or seventy years in a land of tears. The fruits that grow here are all seasoned and salted with sin. Oh how sweet is it that the company of the first-born should be divided into two great bodies of an army, and some in their country, and some in the way to their country ! If it were no more than once to see the face of the Prince of this good land, and to be feasted for eternity with the fatness, sweetness, dainties of the rays and beams of matchless glory, and incomparable fountain- love, it were a well-spent journey to creep hands and feet through seven deaths and seven hells, to enjoy Him up at the well-head. Only let us not weary : the miles to that land are fewer and ' "Will require all your power, and that of angels too, to unfold. 636 LETTER CCCXIX. [1646. shorter than when we first believed. Strangers are not wise to quarrel with their host, and complain of their lodging. It is a foul way, but a fair home. Oh that I had but such grapes and clusters out of the land as I have sometimes seen and tasted in the place whereof your Ladyship maketh mention ! But the hope of it in the end is a heartsome convoy in the way. If I see little more of the gold ^ till the race be ended, I dare not quarrel. It is the Lord ! I hope His chariot will go through these three kingdoms, after our sufferings shall be accomplished. Grace be with you. Your Ladyship's, in Jesus Christ, London, Jan. 26, 1646. S. E, CCCXIX.— To Mr. J. G.» (PROSPECTS FOR SCOTLAND— HIS OWN DARKNESS— ABILITY OF CHRIST.) EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,— I shall with my soul desire the peace of these kingdoms, and I do believe it will at last come, as a river and as the mighty waves of the sea ; but oh that we were ripe and in readiness to receive it ! The preserving of two or three, or four or five berries, in the utmost boughs of the olive-tree, after the vintage, is like to be a great matter ere all be done ; yet I know that a cluster in both kingdoms shall be saved, for a blessing is in it. But it is not, I fear, so near to the dawning of the day of salvation but the clouds must send down more showers of blood to water the vineyard of the Lord, and to cause it to blossom. Scotland's scum is not yet removed ; nor is England's dross and tin taken away ; nor the iilth of our blood " purged by the spirit of judgment, and the spirit of burning." But I am too much on this sad subject. As for myself, I do esteem nothing out of heaven, and next to a communion with Jesus Christ, more than to be in the hearts and prayers of the saints. I know that He feedeth there among the lilies, tiU the day break ; but I am at low ebb, as to any sensible communion with Christ ; yea, as low as any soul can be, and do scarce know where I am ; and do now make it a question, ^ In a sermon preached at Kircudbright, in 1634, on Heb. xii. 1-3, he says, " Tliis condemns those who will not run one foot in the race except the gold be in their hand." ^ Perhaps Mr. James Guthrie, minister of Stirling ; afterwards beheaded in 1661, at the Cross of Edinburgh, and his head fixed on the Nether Bow. 1646.] LETTER CCCXIX. 637 if any can go to Him, who dwelleth in light inaccessible, through nothing but darkness. Sure, all that come to heaven have a stock in Christ ; but I know not where mine is. It cannot be enough for me to believe the salvation of others, and to know Christ to be the Honeycomb, the Eose of Sharon, the Paradise and Eden of the saints, and First-born written in heaven, and not to see afar the borders of that good land. But what shall I say ? Either this is the Lord, making grace a new creation, where there is pure nothing and sinful nothing to work upon, or I am gone. I should count my soul engaged to yourself, and others there with you, if ye would but carry to Christ for me a letter of cyphers and nonsense (for I know not how to make language of my condition), only showing that I have need of His love ; for I know many fair and washen ones stand now in white before the throne, who were once as black as I am. If Christ pass His word to wash a sinner, it is less to Him than a word to make fair angels of black devils ! Only let the art of free grace be engaged. I have not a cautioner to give surety, nor doth a Mediator, such as He is in all perfection, need a mediator. But what I need. He knoweth ; only, it is His depth of wisdom to let some pass millions of miles over score in debt, that they may stand between the winning and the losing, in need of more than ordinary free grace. Christ hath been multiplying grace by mercy above these five thousand years ; and the later born heirs have so much greater guiltiness, that Christ hath passed more experiments and multi- plied essays of heart-love on others, by misbelieving (after it is past all question, many hundreds of ages), that Christ is the undeniable and now uncontro verted treasurer of multipKed redemptions. So now He is saying, " The more of the disease there is, the more of the physician's art of grace and tenderness there must be." Only, I know that no sinner can put infinite grace to it,^ so as the Mediator shall have difficulty, or much ado, to save this or that man. Millions of hells of sinners cannot come near to exhaust infinite grace. I pray you (remembering my love to your wife, and friends there), let me find that I have solicitors there amongst your acquaintance ; and forget not Scotland. Your brother in Jesus Christ, London, Jan. 30, 1646. ^' -^• 1 " T'o jmt one to it," is a phrase equivalent to, "Cause him to be at a loss how to act," 638 LETTER CCCXX. [1646. CCCXX. — To my Lady Kenmurb. {TRIALS CANNOT INJURE SAINTS— BLESSEDNESS IN SEEING CHRIST.) I ADAM, — It is too like that the Lord's controversy with these two nations is but yet beginning, and that we are ripened and white for the Lord's sickle. For the particular condition your Ladyship is in, another might speak (if they would say all) of more sad things. It there was not a fountain of free grace to water dry ground, and an uncreated wind to breathe on withered and dry bones, we were gone. The wheels of Christ's chariot (to pluck us out of the womb of many deaths) are winged like eagles. All I have is, to desire to believe that Christ wiU show all good-will to save ; and as for your Ladyship, I know that our Lord Jesus carrieth on no design against you, but seeketh to save and re- deem you. He lieth not in wait for your falls, except it be to take you up. His way of redeeming is ravishing and taking. There are more miracles of glorified sinners in heaven than can be on earth. Nothing of you, Madam, nay, not even your leaf, can wither. Verily, it is a king's life to follow the Lamb. But when ye see Him in His own country at home, ye will think ye never saw Him before : " He shall be admired of all them that believe " (2 Thess. i. 10). Ye may judge how far all your now sad days, and tossings, changes, losses, wants, conflicts, shall then be below you. Ye look to the cross : now it is above your head, and seemeth to threaten death, as having a dominion ; but it shall then be so far below your thoughts, or your thoughts so far above it, that ye shall have no leisure to lend one thought to old-dated crosses, in youth, in age, in this country or in that, from this instrument or from another, except it be to the height- ening of your consolation, being now got above and beyond all these. Old age, and " waxing old as a garment," is written on the fairest face of the creation (Ps. cii. 26). Death, from Adam to the Second Adam's appearance, playeth the king and reigneth over all. The prime Heir died ; His children, whom the Lord hath given, follow Him. And we may speak freely of the life which is here ; were it heaven, there were not much gain in godliness. But there is a rest for the people of God. Christ- 1 646. J LETTER CCCXXI. 639 man possesseth it now one thousand six hundred years before many of His members ; but it weareth not out. Grace be with you. Your Ladyship's, in Christ Jesus, London, Feh. 16, 1646. • S. E. CCCXXI. — To the Laby Aedross, in Fife. [There is an Ardross near Ferintosh in Ross-shire.] [Lady Ardross, whose maiden name was Helen Lindsay, was tlie daughter of Lady Christian Hamilton, eldest daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Haddington, by her first husband Robert, ninth Lord Lindsay of Byres. She was married to Sir William Scott of Ardross, son of Sir W. Scott of Elie. Her daughter, Euphemia, Countess of Dundonald, some thirty years after this, attended the field conventicles, and entertained the field preachers at her house. (Douglas' "Peerage," vol. i. p. 386. ) Tliis letter was written to her on the occasion of the death of her mother, who was then Lady Boyd, having married for her second husband, Eobert, sixth Lord Boyd. (See notice of Lady Boyd, Letter LXXVII. )] {ON HER MOTHER'S DEATH— HAPPINESS OF HEAVEN, AND .BLESSEDNESS OF DYING IN THE LORD.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — It hath seemed good, as I hear, to Him that hath appointed the bounds for the number of our months, to gather in a sheaf of ripe corn, in the death of your Christian mother, into His garner. It is the more evident that winter is near, when apples, without the violence of wind, fall of their own accord off the tree. She is now above the winter, with a little change of place, not of a Saviour ; only she enjoyeth Him now without messages, and in His own immediate presence, from whom she heard by letters and messengers before. I grant that death is to her a very new thing ; but heaven was prepared of old. And Christ (as enjoyed in His highest throne, and as loaded with glory, and incomparably exalted above men and angels, having such a heavenly circle of glorified harpers and musicians above, compassing the throne with a song) is to her a new thing, but so new as the first summer-rose, or the first fruits of that heavenly field ; or as a new paradise to a traveller, broken and worn out of breath with the sad occurrences of a long and dirty way. Ye may easily judge, Madam, what a large recompense is made to all her service, her walking with God, and her sorrows, with the first cast of the soul's eye upon the shining and admir- ably beautiful face of the Lamb, that is in the midst of that fair and white army which is there, and with the first draught and taste of the fountain of life, fresh and new at the well-head ; to 640 LETTER CCCXXIJ. [1646. say nothing of the enjoying of that face without date, for more than this term of life which we now enjoy. And it cost her no more to go thither, than to suffer death to do her this piece of service : for by Him who was dead, and is alive, she was delivered from the second death. What, then, is the first death to the second ? Not a scratch of the skin of a finger to the endless second death. And now she sitteth for eternity mail-free, in a very considerable land, which hath more than four summers in the year. Oh, what spring-time is there ! Even the smelling of the odours of that great and eternally blooming Eose of Sharon for ever and ever ! What a singing life is there ! There is not a dumb bird in all that large field ; but all sing and breathe out heaven, joy, glory, dominion to the high Prince of that new-found land. And, verily, the land is the sweeter that Jesus Christ paid so dear a rent for it. And He is the glory of the land : all which, I hope, doth not so much mitigate and allay your grief for her part (though truly this should seem sufficient), as the unerring expectation of the dawning of that day upon yourself, and the hope you have of the fruition of that same King and kingdom to your own. soul. Certainly the hope of it, when things look so dark-like on both kingdoms, must be an exceedingly great quickening to languishing spirits, who are far from home while we are here. What misery, to have both a bad way all the day, and no hope of lodging at night ! But He hath taken up your lodging for you. I can say no more now ; but I pray that the very God of peace may establish your heart to the end. I rest, Madam, Your Ladyship's, at all respective obedience in the Lord, London, Feb. 24, 1646. S. R. CCCXXII.— 2o M. O. [Perhaps, aa Letter CXLIX., some one of Provost Osb urn's family in Ireland.] {GLOOMY PROSPECTS FOR THE BACKSLIDING CHURCH— THE MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF BELIEVERS CAUSE OF GREAT GRIEF— THE DA Y OF CHRIST.) IE, — I can write nothing for the present concerning these times (wliatever others may think), but that which speaketh wrath and judgment to these kingdoms. If ever ye, or any of that land, received the Gospel in truth (as I am confident ye and they did), there is here a great 1646.] LETTER CCCXXII. 641 departure from that faith, and our sufferings are not yet at an end. However, I dare testify and die for it, that once Christ was revealed in the power of His excellency and glory to the saints there, and in Scotland, of which I was a witness. I pray God that none deceive you, or take the crown from you. Hell, or the gates of hell, cannot ravel, mar, nor undo what Christ hath once done amongst you. It may be that I am incapable of new light, and cannot receive that spirit whereof some vainly boast ; but that " which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled " (John i. 1), even " the word of life," hath been declared to you. Thousands of thousands, walking in that light and that good old way, have gone to heaven, and are now before the throne. Truth is but one, and hath no numbers. Christ and Antichrist are both now in the camp, and are come to open blows, Christ's poor ship saileth in the sea of blood ; the passengers are so sea-sick of a high fever, that they miscall one another. Christ, I hope, will bring the broken bark to land. I had rather swim for life and death on an old plank, or a broken .board, to land with Christ, than enjoy the rotten peace we have hitherto had. It is like that the Lord will take a severe course with us, to cause the children of the family to agree together. I conceive that Christ hath a great design of free grace to these lands ; but His wheels must move over mountains and rocks. He never yet wooed a bride on earth, but in blood, in fire, and in the wilderness. A cross of our own choosing, honeyed and sugared with consolations, we cannot have. I think not much of a cross when all the children of the house weep with me and for me ; and to suffer when we enjoy the communion of the saints is not much ; but it is hard when saints rejoice in the suffering of saints, and redeemed ones hurt (yea, even go nigh to hate) redeemed ones. I confess I imagined there had no more been such an afflic- tion on earth, or in the world, as that one elect angel should fight against another; but, for contempt of the communion of saints, we have need of new-born crosses, scarce ever heard of before. The saints are not Christ : there is no misjudging in Him ; there is much in us ; and a doubt it is, if we shall have fully one heart till we shall enjoy one heaven. Our star-light hideth us from ourselves, and hideth us from one another, and Christ from us all. But He will not be hidden from us. I shall wish that all the sons of our Father in that land were of 2 S 64* LETTER CCCXXIII. [1646. one mind, and that they be not shaken nor moved from the truth once received. Christ was in that Gospel, and Christ is the same now that He was in The Prelates' time. That Gospel can- not sink ; it will make you free, and bear you out. Christ, the subject of it, is the chosen of God ; and cometh from Bozrah, with garment'- dyed in blood. Ireland and Scotland both must be His field, in which He shall feed and gather lilies. Suppose (which yet is impossible) that some had an eternity of Christ in Ireland, and a sweet summer of the Gospel, and a feast of fat things for evermore in Ireland, and that one should never come to heaven, it should be a desirable life ! The King's spikenard, Christ's perfume. His apples of love, His ointments, even down in this lower house of clay, are a choice heaven. Oh ! what then is the King in His own land, where there is such a throne, so many King's palaces, ten thousand thousands of crowns of glory that want heads yet to fill them ? Oh, so much leisure as shall be there to sing ! Oh, such a tree as groweth there in the midst of that Paradise, where the inhabitants sing eternally under its branches ! To look in at a window, and see the branches burdened with the apples of life, to be the last man that shall come in thither, were too much for me. I pray you to remember me to the Christians there ; and re- member our private covenant. Grace be with you. Your friend in the Lord Jesus, London, April 17, 1646. S. B. CCCXXIII.— To Earlston, Eld&r. {CHRISrS WAY OF AFFLICTING THE BEST— OBLIGATION TO FREE GRACE— ENDURING THE CROSS.) I IE, — I know that ye have learned long ago, ere I knew anything of Christ, that if we had the cross at our own election, we would either have law-surety for freedom from it, or then we would have it honeyed and sugared with comforts, so as the sweet should overmaster the gall and wormwood. Christ knoweth how to breed the sons of His house, and ye will give Him leave to take His own way of dispensation with you ; and, though it be rough, forgive Him. He defieth you to have as much patience to Him as He hath borne to you. I am sure that there cannot be a dram-weight of gall less in your cup ; and ye would not desire He should 1646.1 LETTER CCCXXIII. 643 both afflict you and hurt your soul. When His people cannot have a providence of silk and roses, they must be content with such an one as He carveth for them. Ye would not go to heaven but with company ; and ye may perceive that the way of those who went before you was through blood, sufferings, and many afflictions. Nay, Christ, the Captain, went in over the door-threshold of Paradise bleeding to death. I do not think but ye have learned to stoop (though ye, as others, be naturally stiff), and that ye have found that the apples and sweet fruits, which grow on that crabbed tree of the cross, are as sweet as it is sour to bear it ; especially considering that Christ hath borne the whole complete cross, and that His saints bear but bits and chips ; as the Apostle saith, " the remnants," or " leavings," of the cross (Col. i. 24). I judge you ten thousand times happy, that ever ye were grace's debtor ; for certainly Christ hath engaged you over head and ears- to free grace. And take the debt with you to eternity, Immanuel's highest land, where ye find before you a houseful of Christ's everlasting debtors ; the less shame to you. Yea, and this lower kingdom of grace is but Christ's hospital, and guest- house of sick folks, whom the brave and noble Physician, Christ, hath cured, upon a venture of life and death. And, if ye be near the water-side (as I know ye are), all that I can say is this, Sir, that I feel by the smell of that land which is before you, that it is a goodly country, and it is well paid for to your hand. And He is before you who will heartily welcome you. Oh, to suck those breasts of full consolation above, and to drink Christ's new wine up in His Father's house, is some greater matter than is believed ; since it was brewed from eternity for the Head of the house, and so many thousand crowned kings. Eubs in the way, where the lodging is so good, are not much. He that brought again from the dead the Great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, establish you to the end. Your friend and servant in Christ Jesus, London, May 15, 1646. ^' -^' 644 LETTER CCCXXIV. [1648. CCCXXIV. — To his Reverend and worthy Brother, Mr. George Gillespie.^ {PROSPECT OF DEATH— CHRIST THE TRUE SUPPORT IN DEATH.) EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER, — I cannot speak to you. The way ye know ; the passage is free and not stopped ; the print of the footsteps of the Forerunner is clear and manifest; many have gone before you. Ye will not sleep long in the dust, before The Daybreak. It is a far shorter piece of the hinder-end of the night to you than to Abraham and Moses. Beside all the time of their bodies resting under corruption, it is as long yet to their day as to your morning-light of awaking to glory, though their spirits, having the advantage of yours, have had now the fore-start of the shore before you. I dare say nothing against His dispensation. I hope to follow quickly. The heirs that are not there before you are posting with haste after you, and none shall take your lodging over your head. Be not heavy. The life of faith is now called for ; doing was never reckoned in your accounts, though Christ in and by you hath done more than by twenty, yea, an hundred grey-haired and godly pastors. Believing now is your last.- Look to that word, " Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (GaL ii. 20). Ye know the /that liveth, and the / that liveth not ; it is not single Ye that live. Christ by law liveth in the broken debtor ; it is not a life by doing or holy walking, but the living of Christ in you. If ye look to yourself as divided from Christ, ye must be more than heavy. All your wants, dear brother, be upon Him : ye are His debtors ; grace must sum and subscribe your accounts as paid. Stand not upon items, and small or little sanctification. Ye know that inliermt holiness must stand by, when imputed is all. I fear the clay house is a-taking down and undermining: but it is nigh the dawning. Look to the east, the dawning of the glory is near. Your Guide is good company, and knoweth all the miles, and the ups and downs in the way. The nearer the morning, the darker. Some travellers see the city twenty miles o3, and at a distance ; and yet within the eighth part of a mile they cannot see it. It is all keeping that ye would now have, till ye need it ; and ^ Gillespie was lying on his deathbed when this letter was written to him by Rutherford, who had heard of the dangerous illness of his friend. He died on the 17th of December following. * Your believing now is your last believing ; closing the whole course. 1 649-] LETTER CCCXXV, 645 if sense and fruition come both at once, it is not your loss. Let Christ tutor you as He thinketh good ; ye cannot be marred, nor miscarry, in His hand. Want is an excellent qualification ; and " no money, no price," to you (who, I know, dare not glory in your own righteousness) is fitness warrantable enough to cast yourself upon Him who justifieth the ungodly. Some see the gold ^ once, and never again till the race's end. It is coming all in a sum together, when ye are in a more gracious capacity to tell it than now. " Ye are not come to the mount that burneth with fire, or unto blackness, darkness, and tempest ; but ye are come to Mount Zion, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and churcb of the first-born which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling," etc. Ye must leave the wife to a more choice Husband, and the children to a better Father. If ye leave any testimony to the Lord's work and Covenant, against both Malignants and Sectaries (which I suppose may be needful), let it be under your hand, and subscribed before faithful witnesses.^ Your loving and afflicted brother, St. Andkews, Sept. 27, 1648. S. R. CCCXXV. — To Sir James Stewart, Lord. Provost of Edinburgh.^ [Sir James Stewart of KirkfielJ and Cultness, to whom this letter is addressed, was a man of high Christian excellence. "Sir James Stewart," said the celebrated George Gillespie, "has more sterling religion in ready cash than any man ever I knew ; he is always agreeably composed and recollected, in a permanent devout frame of spirit, and such as I should wish to have in my last moments" ("Colt- ncss Collections," p. 15). He was a zealous Covenanter, and suffered considerably for his principles during the persecution of Charles II. He died March 31, 1681, at his own house at Edinburgh, in the seventy-third year of his age, in the full assur- ance of faith. Rutherford wi'ote this letter on occasion of his own election to be Professor of Divinity in the College of Edinburgh.] 1 See Letter CCCXVIII. 2 In this matter Gillespie complied with Paitherford's advice, having left behind him a testimony against both Malignants and Sectaries, subscribed by his own hand, on the 15th of December, only two days before he died. ^ As an accurate facsimile of this letter from the original, among the papers of the Town Council of Edinburgh, is inserted here, it has been thought proper, in this instance, to retain Rutherford's orthography. 646 LETTER CCCXXVL [1649. ; Richt honorablee HE mater of my transportation is so poor a contraversie, I truely not beeing desyrous to be the subject of any dine^ in the Generall Assemblie of the Kirk of Scotland whoe have greater bussines to doe, and haveing suffered once the paine of transportation, moist humbly intreat your w. [worships] that favour as to cast yo' thoughts vpon some fitter man ; for as it is vnbeseemeing me to lie or dissemblee, so I must friely show you it will but mak me the subject of suffereing and passive obedience, and I trust your w. [worships] intend not that hurt to me, and I am persuaded it is not yo' mind, it shall be my prayer to God, to send that worthie societie an hable^ and pious man, Grace be with you. Yours at all humblee S Andrews the , • , i t 1 LastofJunii observance m the Lord 1648 Samuel Eutherfurd for the richt honorable my varie good lord, Sr James Steuart proveist of Edinbrugh and remanent magistrats Counsellers of the Citie. CCCXXVI. — To Mistress Gillespie, Widow of George Gillespie. {ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD— GOD AFFLICTS IN ORDER TO SAVE US FROM THE WORLD.) EAR SISTER, — I have heard how the Lord hath visited you, in removing the child Archibald. I hope ye see that the setting down of the weight of your confidence and affection upon any created thing, whether husband or child, is a deceiving thing ; and that the creature is not able to bear the weight, but sinketh down to very nothing under your confidence. And, therefore, ye are Christ's debtor for all providences of this kind, even in that He buildeth an hedge of thorns in your way : for so ye see that His gracious intention is, to save you (if I may say so) whether ye will or not. It is a rich mercy that the Lord Christ will be Master of your will and of your delights, and that His way is so fair, for * Din, noise. The superfluous "e," at the end of several of these words, may possibly have been a dash in the writing. ' ' Dine, " for ' ' din " ; " whoe, " for ' ' who " ; " humblee, " for "Immble." Compare " lionorable," on the address of the letter with the same word in the commencement. (A kind friend, reading this letter care- fully over, maintains that ^' dine," or "din," is not the word in the autograpL, but that it is " drane," which would mean that ho did not wish to he a drain on the time of the Assembly, who had greater business to attend to than this personal affair of his. But, so far as we are aware, that phrase, " to be a drain," never occurs else- where in Rutherford's writings. What if the writer, in the agitation of the moment, allowed his pen to ^vrite " drane," though he meant it to be " dine " ?) ' From French, "habile," iu which we see the etymology of "able." (f>t .^, ^/xn- W ..^ T^? ^-^^^p*^^»^ 1649] LETTER CCCXXVI. 647 landing of husband and children before-hand in the country whitherto ye are journeying. No matter how little ye be engaged to the world, since ye have such experience of cross-dealing in it. Had ye been a child of the house, the world would have dealt more warmly with its own. There is less of you out of heaven, in that the child is there and the husband is there ; but much more that your Head, Kinsman, and Eedeemer doth fetch home such as are in danger to be lost. And from this time forward, fetch not your comforts from such broken cisterns and dry wells. If the Lord pull at the rest, ye must not be the creature that will hold when He draweth. Truly, to me your case is more comfortable than if the fire- side were well plenished with ten children. The Lord saw that ye were able, by His grace, to bear the loss of husband and child ; and that ye are that weak and tender as not to be able to stand under the mercy of a gracious husband, living and flourishing in esteem with authority, and in reputation for godliness and learn- ing. For He knoweth the weight of these mercies would crush you and break you. And as there is no searching out of His understanding, so He hath skill to know what providence will make Christ dearest to you ; and let not your heart say, " It is an ill-waled dispensation." Sure Christ, who hath seven eyes, had before Him the good of a living husband and children for Margaret Murray, and the good of a removed husband and children translated to glory. Now that He hath opened His decree to you, say, " Christ hath made for me a wise and gracious choice, and I have not one word to say to the contrary." Let not your heart charge anything, nor unl^elief libel injuries upon Christ because He will not let you alone, nor give you leave to play the adulteress with such as have not that right to your love that Christ hath. I should wish that, at the reading of this, ye may fall down and make a surrender of those that are gone, and of those that are yet alive, to Him. And for you, let Him have all ; and wait for Himself, for He will come, and will not tarry. Live by faith, and the peace of God guard your heart. He cannot die whose ye are. My wife suffereth with you,^ and remembereth her love to you. Your brother in Christ, St. Andrews, Aug. 14, 1649. ^' -'^• ^ Rutherford was married a second time on 24th March 1649, abont five months previous to the date of this Letter, to Jean M'Math. 6-1 8 J.ETJ'EK CCCXXVII. [1649 CCCXXVII.— 7V //„• Kaim, ok 1Ut,cai!Has. [Al/RXANDKU LiNDBAV, Koooiul IjOkI IkluaiTaH, nnd Hint, Karl of lialciuniH, to wliiim tbi.s lot.ttir is adtlidSHcd, w.mh a man of Hiincrior laloiilM, and os])ouhw1 tlin cause t»r tint < '(i\(^ii;iiil-. Ilo coimiiniidiid a t.iy whom ho wiis advan(Hi(l to tho dignity of Karl of Halcjirras. Illntld 1ii(5 Iv'oyal i^ause against, ('romwoll. liis ostato, atler this, liein}^se(jnos( rated, \\w witlidi(iw' ti) the (^lutincutr. His l,ordslii|) di. sinful engagement. And thi'refori\. my Lord, 1 (Mitreat you to forgot that business; for sineo your Lordshi}) said of mo. in your letter to ]\lr. Daxid Forrot/ nioie than 1 ilosorvo, 1 shall bo satisTaHl with it as an oxjiiation, ' Mr. David l<\)in rrehicy in ItUiV!, but wa.s not ojceied, and diod l'\'bruury 'Jii, Ui?-. 1650] LETTER CCCXXVIIL 649 more than any disoountenancing of luo can aiiUMinl unl.o by millions of degrees. And therefore entreat your Lordship to accept of this for anything that any conld say to your TiOrdship of that business. If 1 had thought so nnich of myself as the discountenancing of me had been a sinful neglect (whereas I know there is little ground for the contiary), I should have spoken to your Lordsliip myself. So trusting your Lordship will rest satisfied, I am, your Lordship's, at power in the Lord, St. Anuiucws, Dtc. 21, 1649. S. 1^. CCCXXVIIT. — To the worthy and much honoured Coi.onkIj (3ii,nicRT Kkh. [Colonel Gii-itiniT Kkk was a leading man ainoii/i; tho Covciiaiilt is. llo was one of tho oUicors of tlie west country aniiy, and adlioied with gn^nt zoal to llio Wostoru Ronionstniuoo, sont by that army to tlic Comniittno ot Ksta-t«s, whidh, anion^ other tilings, condeninoil tht^ trwity witli tlio Kinji;, nwuHcd many of tho Conimittoe of ICsUitos of covotouanosa and opi>roMsion, and opjJOHod tlio invasion of Kn{,dand, or forcing a king upon tli;it kingdom. In the year H\t)[> lie was named .Instice of Peace for Roxburghshire, but deelined to accept ; stalingas his reasons, that he considered the cmployniont sinfnl, not aHowed by (lie word of (!od, contrary to tho Solonni TiOague and Covenant, and an incroachniont on tlie liboi'ty of Olirist'.s elimnh. At tlio restoration of Charles II., when those concerned in the Western Kemoii- straiice were particularly marked out for the vengeiiance of ihe (JovermiKdit, he left tlio country, but was allow(Hl by tho Privy Council to return in tho bej^inniiiL; of tho year 1()71. lie must have died i)reviou.s to October r>, l(i77 ; for at (hat date Mr. .lames How, merchant in l'',diiibiirgh, his son iiidaw, ])resents a ]ieti(i()M to the I'rivy C'ounc.il, praying that ho might, obiaiu the remission of a fine of five liiiudied iiunks, imposed on the deceased Colonel Uilbort Ker upon account of a convtMitit^lo, and for the |iaynient of which tho petitioner had bocoino cautioner. This fino was reniitteil. (" Register of Acts of Privy Council.")] {SINGLENESS OF AIM— JUDGMENT IN RJiGAKD TO ADVEJiSAKJES.) UCJU HONOUKED AND TRULY WORTllY,— I hoiie 1 shall not need to show yon that ye are in great(!r hazard from yourself, anil your own spirit (which should be watched over, that your actings for Hod may be clean, s])iritual, purely for God, for the Prince of tlie kings of the earth), than ye can be in danger from your enemies. Oh how hard is it to get the intentions so cut oil' from and raised above the creature, as to be without mixture of creature and carnal interest, and to have the soul, in heavenly actings, only, only eyeing Himself, and acting from love to God, reveided to us in Jesus Christ 1 Ye will find yourself, your delights, your solid glory (far above the air and breathings of mouths, and the thin, short, poor applauses of men), before you in God. All the creatures, all the swords, all tho hosts in J-5ritaiii, and in this [looi- globe of the habitable world, are but 650 LETTER CCCXXVIII. [1650 under Him single cyphers making no number ; the product being nothing but painted men, and painted swords in a brod, without influence from Him. And oh what of God is in Gideon's sword, when it is " The sword of the Lord ! " I wish a sword from heaven to you, and orders from heaven to you to go out ; and as much peremptoriness of a heavenly will as to say, and abide by it, " I will not, I shall not go out, unless Thou goest with me." I desire not to be rash in judging ; but I am a stranger to the mind of Christ, if our adversaries, who have unjustly invaded us, be not now in the camp of those that make war with the Lamb. But the Lamb shall overcome them at length ; for He is the Lord of lords, and King of kings, and they who are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful. And though ye and I see but the dark side of God's dispensations this day towards Britain, yet the fair, beautiful, and desirable close of it must be the confederacy of the nations of the world with Britain's Lord of armies. And let me die in the comforts of the faith of this, that a throne shall be set up for Christ in this island of Britain (which is, and shall be, a garden more fruitful of trees of righteousness, and which payeth and shall pay more thousands to the Lord of the vineyard than is paid in thrice the bounds of Great Britain upon earth), and there can be neither Papist,. Prelate, Malignant, nor Sectary, who dare draw a sword against Him tliat sitteth upon the throne. Sir, I shall wish a clean ^ army, so far as may be, that the shout of a King who hath many crowns may be among you ; and that ye may fight in faith, and prevail with God first. Think it your glory to have a sword to act, and suffer, and die (if it please Him), so being ye may add anything to the declarative glory of Christ, the Plant of Eenowu, Immanuel, God with us. Happy and thrice blessed are they by whose actings, or blood, or pain, or loss, the diadems and rubies of His highest and most glorious crown (whose ye are) shall glister and shine in this quarter of the habitable world. Though He need not Gilbert Ker, nor his sword, yet this honour have ye with His redeemed soldiers, to call Christ High Lord-General, of whom ye hope for pay and all arrears well told. Go on, worthy Sir, in the courage of faith, following the Lamb. Make not haste unbelievingly ; but in hope and silence keep the watch-tower, and look out. He will come in His own time ; His salvation shall not tarry. He will place salvation in Britain's Zion for Israel's glory. ^ Free from raalignants. Soe uote, Letter CCOXXX. 1650.] LETTER CCCXXIX. 651 His good-will who dwelt in The Bush and it burned not, be yours, and with you. I am yours, in his sweet Lord Jesus, St. Andrews, Aug. 10, 1650" S. R. CCCXXIX. — To the worthy and much honoured Colonel Gilbert Ker. {COURAGE IN DAYS OF REBUKE— GOD'S ARRANGEMENTS ALL WISE.) UCH HONOURED AND WORTHY SIR,— What I wrote to you before, I spake not upon any private warrant. I am where I was. Cromwell and his army (I shall not say but there may be, and are, several sober and godly among them, who have either joined through misinformation, or have gone alongst with the rest in the simplicity of their hearts, not knowing anything) fight in an unjust cause, against the Lord's secret ones. And now to the trampling of the worship of God, and persecuting the people of God in England and Ireland, he hath brought upon his score the blood of the people of God in Scotland. I entreat you, dear Sir, as ye desire to be serviceable to Jesus Christ, whose free grace prevented you when ye were His enemy, go on without fainting, equally eschewing all mixtures with Sectaries ^ and Malignants. ^ Neither of the two shall ever be instrumental to save the Lord's people, or build His house. And without prophesying, or speak- ing further than He, whose I am and whom I desire to serve, in the Gospel of His Son, shall warrant, I desire to hope and to believe there is a glory and a majesty of the Prince of the kings of the earth, that shall shine and appear in Great Britain, which shall darken all the glory of men, confound Sectaries and Malignants, and rejoice the spirits of the followers of the Lamb, and dazzle the eyes of the beholders. Sir, I suppose that God is to gather Malignants and Sectaries, ere all be done, as sheaves in a barn-floor ; and to bid the daughters of Zion arise, and thresh. I hope that ye will mix with none of them. I am abundantly satisfied, that our army, through the sinful miscarriage of men, hath fallen ; and dare say it is a better and a more comfortable dispensation, than if the Lord had given us the victory and the necks of the * The Independents. - The Cavaliers, 652 LETTER CCCXXX. [iC.t,o. reproachers of the way of God ; because He hath done it. For, 1. More blood, blasphemies, cruelty, treachery, must be upon the accounts of the men whose land the Lord forbade us to invade. 2. Victory is such a burdening and weighty mercy, that we have not strength to bear it as yet. 3. That was not the army, nor Gideon's three hundred, by whom He is to save us ; we must have one of our Lord's carving. 4. Our enemies on both sides are not enough hardened, nor we enough mortified to multitude, valour, and creatures, Grace, grace be with you. Your friend and servant, in his sweet Lord Jesus, St. Andrews, Sept. 5, 1650. S- ^« CCCXXX. — To Mr. William Guthrie, when the army was at Stirling, after the defeat at Dunbar,^ and the godly in the West were falsely branded with intended compliance with the usurpers, about the time when those debates and that difference concerning the Public Resolutions arose.'^ [William Guthkie was bom at Pitforthy, in the shire of Angus, in the year 1620. He was the eldest son of the Laird of Pitforthy, a cadet of tlie old family of Guthrie, and by his mother's side was descended from the ancient house of Easter- Ogle. He attended the literary and philosophical classes at the University of St. Andrews, and studied theology under Rutherford. On the 7th of November 1644, he was ordained minister of Fenwick. There he continued successfully to discharge his ministry till the 24th of July 1664, when, for nonconformit}', he was suspended from and discharged to exercise his ministry, and his church declared vacant, by order of Bishop Burnet. He died at Brechin on the 10th of October 1665. It may be mentioned here that William Guthrie of Fenwick was cousin to the famous James Guthrie, and was brought to Christ by Samuel Rutherford's ministry at St. Andrews, being one of his first fruits there. ("Life" by Wodrow.) It was he who wrote " The Trial of a Saving Interest in Christ," so well known.] ' The battle was fought between Cromwell and the Scots, and the latter were completely defeated, with great loss. It was fought on the 3rd September 1650. ^ After the battle of Dunbar, it was proposed that the rcstrauits by which such as liad, by various Acts of Parliament, been excluded from places of power and trust in the army and state, on account of their Malignancy, or opposition to the Cove- nant and liberties of the nation, should be removed. This was at first refused ; but after the defeat at Hamilton, the Commission agreed to certain resolutions, for admitting into places of power and trust in the Army and State such as had been excluded by the Acts of Parliament referred to. These were called "Public Resolutions," and they became a source of much dissension in the church. At last they were formally approved of by the General Assembly held in July 1651, at St. Andrews, and adjourned to Dundee. At the last sederunt at St. Andrews, Rutherford, who was strongly o;)posed to the Resolutions, gave in a protestation against the lawfulness of that Assembly. It was subscribed by twenty-one besides himself Hence those o])posed to the Public Resolutions were called "Protesters," and those friondly to them, " Rcsolutioners." 1650.] LETTER CCCXXX. 653 {DEPRESSION UNDER DARK TRIALS— DANGER OF COM- PLIANCE.) EVEREND BEOTHER,— I did not dream of such shortness of breath, and fainting in the way toward our country. I thought that I had no more to do than die in my nest, and bow down my sinful head, and let Him put on the crown, and so end. I have suffered much ; but this is the thickest darkness, and the straitest step of the way I have yet trodden. I see more suffering yet behind, and, I fear, from the keepers of the vine. Let me obtain of you, that you would press upon the Lord's people that they would stand far off from these merchants of souls who have come in amongst you. If the way revealed in the word be that way, we then know that these soul-cowpers and traffickers show not the way of salvation. Alas, alas ! poor I am utterly lost, my share of heaven is gone, and my hope is poor ; I am perished, and I am cut off from the Lord, if hitherto out of the way ! But I dare not judge kind Christ; for, if it may be but per- mitted (with reverence to His greatness and highness be it spoken), I will, before witnesses, produce His own hand that He said, " This is the way, walk thou in it." And He cannot except against His own seal. I profess that I am almost broken and a little sleepy, and would fain put off this body. But this is my infirmity, who would be under the shadow and covert of that Good Land, once ^ to be without the reach and blast of that terrible One. But I am a fool : there is none that can overbid, or take my lodging over my head, since Christ hath taken it for me. Dear brother, help me, and get me the help of their prayers who are with you in whom is my delight. You are much sus- pected of intended compliance ; I mean, not of you only, but of all the people of God with you. It is but a poor thing the fulfilling of my joy ; but let me obtest all the serious seekers of His face, His secret sealed ones, by the strongest consolations of the Spirit, by the gentleness of Jesus Christ, that Plant of Renown, by your last accounts and appearing before God, when the White Throne shall be set up, be not deceived with their fair words. Though my spirit be astonished at the cunning distinctions which are found out in the matters of the Covenant, that help may be had against these men ; yet my heart ^ Once for all ; completely. 654 LETTER CCCXXXI. [1650. trembleth to entertaiu the least thought of joining with those deceivers. Grace, grace be with you. Amen. Your own brother, in our common Lord and Saviour, St. Andkews. S. E. CCCXXXI. — To the worthy and much honoured Colonel Gilbert Ker. {COUHAGE IN THE LORD'S CAUSE— DUTY IN REGARD TO PRO- VIDENCE TO BE OBSERVED— SAFETY IN THIS.) |UCH HONOURED AND WOETHY SIR,— It is con- siderable that the Lord may, and often doth call to a work and yet hide Himself, and try the faith of His own. If I conceive aright, the Lord hath called you to act against that enemy ; and the withdrawers of their sword (in my weak apprehension) add their zeal unto, and take upon them the guilt of that unjust invasion of this land made by Cromwell's army, and of the blood of the Lord's people in this kingdoCa ; since the sword, put into the hand of His chil- dren, is to execute wrath and vengeance upon evil-doers. The Lord's time of appearing for His broken land is reserved to the breathings of the Spirit of the Lord, such as came upon Gideon and Samson ; and that is an act of princely and royal sove- reignty in God. Ye are. Sir, to lay hold on opportunities of Providence, and to wait for Him. As for your particular treating by yourselves with the invaders of our land, I have no mind to it, and do look upon their way as a carrying on of the mystery of iniquity ; for Babylon is a seat of many names. Sir, let^ this controversy stand undecided till the Second Appearance of Jesus Christ, and our appeal lie before the throne undiscussed till that day, I hope to lie down in the grave in the faith of the justness of our cause. I speak nothing of the maintaining the greatness of men, not subordinate to the Prince of the kings of the earth. I judge that the blood of the witnesses of Jesus is found upon the skirts of this society, as well as in Babylon's skirts. I believe that the way of the Lord is Colonel Gilbert Ker's strength and glory ; and I should be content to want my part of him (which is, I confess, precious and dear in Christ), so that he be spent in the service of Him who will anon make ^ Supposing that this controversy remains undecided. 1650.] LETTER CCCXXXl. 655 inquisition for the blood of the truly godly ; which these men have shed, after fair warning that they were the godly of Scotland. Worthy Sir, believe ; faint not. Set your shoulder under the glory of Jesus that is misprised in Scotland, and give a testimony for Him. He hath many names in Scotland, who shall walk with Him in white. This despised Covenant shall ruin Malignants, Sectaries, and Atheists. Yet a little while, and behold He cometh, and walketh ^ in the greatness of His strength, and His garments dyed with blood. Oh, for the sad and terrible day of the Lord upon England, their ships of Tarshish, their fenced cities, etc., because of a broken covenant ! A conference with the enemy, not to hinder acting (Oh that the Lord would thereby, or by some other way, remove the cloud that is over you !), if authority should concur, were to be desired ; but it can hardly be expected. However, in the way of duty, and in the silence of faith, go on. If ye perish, ye are the first of the creation with whom the Lord hath taken that dispensation. I should humbly desire you. Sir, to look to that : " Dying, and, behold, we live ; killed all the day long, and yet more than conquerors." There shall be the heat and warmness of life in your graves and buried bones. But look not for the Lord's coming the higher way only, for He may come the lower way. Oh, how little of God do we see, and how mysterious is He ! Christ known is amongst the greatest secrets of God. Keep yourself in the love of God ; and, in order to that, as far in obedience and subjection to the King (whose salvation and true happiness my soul desireth), and to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, and to the fundamental laws of this kingdom, as your Lord requireth. Sir, ye are in the hearts and prayers of the Lord's people in this kingdom, and in the other two.^ The Lord hath said, " There is blessing in the cluster of grapes ; destroy it not." Grace, grace be upon the head of him that is separated from his brethren ; and the good-will of Him that dwelt in The Bush be with you. Your servant, in his sweet Lord Jesus, Perth, iVov. 23, 1650. S. E. * The Hebrew of Isa. Ixiii. 1 is alluded to (nv'v) '• " ''^arching on in the great- ness of His strength." Rutherford, in the latter part of his life, studied Isaiah very closely. See Sketch of his Life. ^ England and Ireland. 656 LETTER CCCXXXII. [165 1 CCCXXXII. — To the much honoured and truly worthy Colonel Gilbert Ker. {CHRIST S CAUSE DESERVES SERVICE AND SUFFERING FROM US.) " For the vision is yet for an appointed time ; but at the end it shall speak, and not lie : though it tarry, wait for it." — Hab. ii. 3, 4. UCH HONOURED AND WORTHY SIR,— Your chains now shine as much for Christ (the cause being His) as your sword was made famous in acting for that cause ; and blessed are such as can willingly tender to Christ both action and blood, doing and suffering. Resisting unto blood is little for that precious and never-enough exalted Redeemer, who, when ye were a-buying, gave blood somewhat dearer than ye gave for Him, even the blood of God (Acts xx. 28). I know a man, who, upon the receipt of a letter that ye were killed and the people of God destroyed, wished that he might be quickly under the wall of the higher palace from under the dint ^ of the storm, and who longed to have the weather-beaten and crazy bark safely landed in that harbour of eternal quietness. What further service Christ hath for you, I know not ; it is enough that in your captivity ^ ye offer your service to Christ. But if I see anything, it looketh like a merciful defeat. I see the nobles and the state falling off from Christ, and the night coming upon the prophets ; which we should pray to prevent, because it is a rare thing to see a fallen star ever win up again to the firmament to shine. And what if this be the thick darkness going before the break of day ? Sure, Sir, the sun shall rise upon Scotland ; but if I shall see it, or how near is it to that day, I leave that to Him, even unto Jehovah, who " createth upon every dwelling-place in Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and a smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night." But, Sir, " the wilderness shall rejoice and blossom as a rose : " and happy he who hath a bone, or an arm, to put the crown upon the head of our highest King, whose chariot is paved with love. Were there ten thousand millions of heavens created above these highest heavens, and again as many above them, and as many above them till angels were wearied with counting, it were but too low a seat to fix the ^ The blow, Zachary Boyd (" Last Battle ") speaks of "the dint of God's judgment- stroke." ■■*■ On the 1st of December 16.')0, being Sabbath, the west country forces of the Covenanters were scattered at Hamilton by a ]>arty of English, under the conduct of Lambert. Several of them were killed, and Colonel Ker was wounded and taken. (Lauiout's "Diary," p. 24.) 1 65 1.] LETTER CCCXXXIL 657 princely throne of that Lord Jesus (whose ye are) above thein all. Created heavens are too low a seat of majesty for Him. Since, then, there is none equal to your Master and Prince who hath chosen out for you (amongst many sufferings for sin) that only cross which cometh nearest in likeness to His own cross, watered with consolation, take courage, and comfort yourself in Him who hath chosen you to glory hereafter and to conformity with Him here. We fools would have a cross of our own choosing, and would have our gall and wormwood sugared, our fire cold, and our death and grave warmed with heat of life ; but He who hath brought many children to glory, and lost none, is our best Tutor. I wish that, when I am sick, He may be keeper and comforter. I judge it a blessed Fall that we are forfeited heirs, broken and out of credit, and that Christ is become a Tutor in the place of free-will, and that we are no more our own. I am broken and wasted with the wrath that is on the land, and have been much tempted with a design to have a pass from Christ ; which, if I had, I would not stay to be a witness of our defection for any man's intreaty. But I know it is my softness and weakness, who would ever be ashore when a fit of sea-sickness cometh on ; though I know I shall come soon enough to fchat desirable country, and shall not be displaced : none shall take my lodging. Sir, many eyes are upon you, and the godly are exceedingly refreshed that ye listen not to the ways of many about you, who with fair words make merchandise of souls. Sir, if the way you are in be not the way of Christ, then wo to me, for I am eternally lost. But truly, the Lord Christ's dealings with Colonel Gilbert Ker hath proven to me, that the New Testament and the covenant of grace is a piece that a solemn meeting and assembly of all created angels (join all their wits together) could not have devised. Since, Sir, ye paid nothing for the change that Christ made, and ye will take that debt of free grace to heaven with you (for what was Christ Jesus indebted to you, more than to all your kindred and name !), therefore, since ye are made His own, follow no other way. What is my salvation, though I should lay it in pawn (it is but a poor pledge), that this, this only is the way ! But Christ is surety Himself that it is the way. The Forerunner went before you, and He is safely landed : and there is a fair company before you of such as " have come out of great tribulation, and have washed their garments, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," to 2 T 658 LETTIiR CCCXXXIII. [165 1 whom these promises are now performed : " He that overcometh shall eat of the tree of life, that is in the midst of the paradise of God;" and, "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain " — " He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them ; they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat ; for the Lamb tliat is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters." I may, Sir, possibly keep you from better work. The God of peace, that brought again from the dead the Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the eternal covenant, make you perfect. Yours, in Jesus Christ, St. Andrews, Jan. 7, 1651. ^. K. CCCXXXIII. — To the much honoured and truly worthy Colonel Gilbert Ker, lohen taketi, prisoner. {COMFORTING THOUGHTS TO THE AFFLICTED— DARKNESS OF THE TIMES— FELLOWSHIP IN CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS — SATISFACTION WITH HIS PROVIDENCES.) UGH HONOUEED AND WORTHY SIE,— T have heard of your continued captivity in England, as well as in this afflicted land. But, go where ye will, ye cannot go from under your Shadow, which is broader than many kingdoms. Ye change lodging and countries ; but the same Lord is before you, if ye were carried away captive to the other side of the sun, or as far as the rising of the morning star. It is spoken to your mother (who hath yet received no bill of divorce), which was written to Judah, " Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, 0 daugliter of Zion, like a woman in travail : for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon ; there slialt thou be delivered ; there the Lord shall redeem thee from the liand of thine enemies" (Micah iv. 10). England shall be accountable for you, to render you back : " I will say to the north, * Give up ; ' and to the south, ' Keep not back ' " (Isa. vliii. 6). It is a sermon that flesh and blood laugheth at : * Prophesy upon these dry bones, and say unto them, ' 0 ye dry bones, hear the word of tlie Lord ! ' " It is a preaching to the 1 65 1.] LETTER CCCXXXIIL 659 cold grave : " Thus saith the Lord uiito tlie bones, ' Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live ; and 1 will lay sinews upon you, and bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live ' " (Ezek. xxxvii. 4, 5, 6). " And the sea gave up the dead that were in it" (llev. XX. 13). Berwick must render back the Scottish captives, and Colonel Gilbert Ker with them. " For thus saith the Lord, your Eedeemer, the Holy One of Israel, For your sake 1 have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans whose cry is in the ships" (Isa. xliii. 14). " If any of thine be driven out to the utmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will He fetch thee " (Deut. xxx. 4). " Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Beliold, I will save My people from the east country and from the west country, and I will bring them, and they shall dwell in. the midst of Jerusalem, and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, in truth and in righteousness " (Zech viii. 7, 8). Sir, ye are both booked by the Lord who writeth up the people (Ps. Ixxxvii. 5, 6), and counted to tlie Lord as one of the house and stock (Ps. xxii. 30). Fear not, faint not ; all your hairs are numbered. It is the desire of the people of God, that, as your bonds hitherto have been exemplary to the strengthening of the feeble and to the stopping of the mouth of the adversary, without any declining to the right or left hand ; so your sufferings in the place ye now go to, may be (as we are confident in the Lord of you, and in humility boast of His grace in you) savoury, convinc- ing, and like unto this honourable cause, that will prevail in Britain, contrary to all the machinations and counsels of devils and men. And though there were no other ink in the pen I now write with but some dewing of my last cooling blood, this I purpose (His grace, whose I am, enabling me) to stand to. Sir, we desire to adore no instruments ; yet we conceive the shining and rays of grace from the Fountain, Jesus Christ, the fulness of the Godhead, bestowed on sinful men, hold forth the good thoughts of Christ to this pour land, whose multiplied graves, and whose souls under the altar, slain by Sectaries and Malignants, cry aloud to heaven. I see nothing, Sir, if the Lord be not near (though I dare not say how soon) to awake for the year of Zion's controversy " For my sword shall be bathed in heaven " (Isa. xxxiv. 5) Behold, it shall come down upon England, and on the residue of 66o LETTER CCCXXX/II. [1651. His enemies in Scotland. Wo is me for England ! That land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness ; that pleasant land shall be a wilderness, and the dust of their land pitch ; a judgment upon their walled towns, their pleasant fields, their strong ships, etc., if they do not repent. Ye have not, I conceive, seen such searching and trying times as now these are. And yet the question will be drawn to a more narrow state, and multitudes will yet leave the cause ; for we took all into the covenant that oflered to build with us. But Christ must have but a small remnant (few nobles, if any ■ few ministers ; few professors), though our way standeth un > changed. " By honour and dishonour, by good report and evil report : as deceivers and yet true ; as unknown, yet well known ; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed" (2 Cor. vi. 8, 9). Neither is this your condition alone, but the experienced lot of all the saints that have gone before you. It is one and the same cross of Christ ; but there be sundry faces and diverse circumstances in the same remnant (Col. i. 24), the sufferings of Christ and yours. Sir, to be delivered to soldiers, and in captivity, looketh like His suffering of whom Isaiah saith, " He was taken from prison, and from judgment " (Isa. liii. 8) : yea, and taken bound (John xviii. 12). When the cause is the truth of God, the lustre and face of suffering is so much the more lovely that it hath the hue and colour of Christ's sufferings, who endured contradiction of sinners and despised the shame. Oh it is a great word, " Christ shamed, and Christ abased ! " But thus was the Head, and so are the members, dealt with in the world ; and truly anything of Christ, even the worst of Him (to speak so). His reproach and shame, are lovely. Though superstitious love to the material cross He suffered upon be foolery, and doting upon the holy grave ^ be cursed idolatry ; yet is there a communion with Him in His sufferings most desirable. " But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings" (1 Pet. iv. 13): in which sense, the cup that His lip touched hath the sweeter taste, even though death were in it ; the grave, because He did lie in it, is so much the softer and the more refreshful a bed of rest ; and that part of the sky and clouds that the Beloved shall break through, and come to judg- ment, is as lovely a piece of the created heaven as any is, if we may love the ground He goetli on the better. But all this is to be understood in a spiritual manner. The Lord calleth you, ^ Tlie Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, i6si.] LETTER CCCXXXIII. 66i Sir, upon whom the Spirit of God aud His glory resteth, to put your soul's Amen to this dispensation ; and requireth of us, that our desires follow the now- declared decree of God concerning the desolation of our sinful land, so many ways guilty of a despised Gospel, and a broken Covenant ; and that with all submission. Certainly, no man hath failed more in this thing, than he who writeth to you. For I have brought my health into great hazard, and tormented my spirit with excessive grief, for our present provocations, and the rendings of our kirk ; and I see it is a challenging of, and a bold pleading against, Him upon whose shoulder the government is (Isa. xxii. 22). The Father hath put a glorious trust upon Christ: "And I will fasten Him as a nail in a sure place, and He shall be for a glorious throne to His Father's house ; and they shall hang upon Him all the glory of His Father's house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups even to all the vessels of flagons " (Isa. xxii. 23, 24). Our unbelieving apprehensions do so quarrel at the prosperity of enemies in an evil cause, that we wrestle with defeats, spoiling, captivity of the godly, killing of His people, the wasting of our land, starving aud famishing of the kingdom, which is worse than the sword. But this is a sinful contradicting of the Lord's revealed decree. His wisdom saith, " Spoiling and desolation is best for Scotland ; " and we say, " Not," and so accuse Christ of misgovernment, and of not being true to the trust put upon Him. But since He doth not drag the government at His heels, but hath it upon His shoulder, and since the Kail fastened in a sure place cannot be broken,^ nor can the smallest vessel fail to find sweet security in dependence upon Him, since all the weight of heaven aud earth, of redeemed saints and confirmed angels, is upon His shoulder, I am a fool, and brutish to imagine that I can add anything to Christ's special care of and tenderness to His people. He who keepeth the basins and knives of His house, and bringeth the vessels again to the second temple (Ezra i. 8-10), must have a more tender care of His redeemed ones than of a spoon, or of Peter's old shoes (Acts xii. 8), which yet must not be lost in His captivity. Oh for grace to suffer Christ to tutor His own minors and young heirs • But we cannot endure to be under the actings of His government ; we love too much to be our own. Oh, how sweet to be wholly Christ's, and wholly in Christ ! to ^ Isa. xxii. 25 is alluded to, where the Hebrew word means either "broken," or cut down. See uote, p. 65i. 662 LETTER CCCXXXIV. [1651. be out of the creature's owning, and made complete in Christ ! to live by faith in Christ, and to be, once for all, clothed with the uncreated majesty and glory of the Son of God, wherein He maketh all His friends and followers sharers ! to dwell in Immanuel's high and blessed land, and live in that sweetest air where no wind bloweth but the breathings of the Holy Ghost, no seas nor floods flow but the pure water of life, that proceedeth from under the throne and from the Lamb ! no planting but the Tree of Life that yieldeth twelve manner of fruits every month ! What do we here but sin and suffer ? Oh, when shall the night be gone, the shadows flee away, and the morning of that long, long day, without cloud or night, dawn ? The Spirit and the bride say, " Come." Oh, when shall the Lamb's wife be ready, and the Bridegroom say, " Come ! " Worthy Sir, I mind you to the Hearer of prayer. Oh help me in that kind. The Spirit of Jesus be with your spirit. Yours, in his only Lord Jesus, St. Andrews, May 14, 1651. S, R. CCCXXXIV. — To the worthy and much honoured Colonel Gilbert Ker. {COMFORT UNDER THE CLOUD HANGING OVER SCOTLAND- DISSUASION FROM LEA VING SCOTLAND.) UCH HONOUEED AND WOETHY SIE,— I know not -why the people of God should not take notice of the bonds of any who have blood in readiness to be let out for His cause ; and I judge it was not of you that ye died not in the undecided controversy which the Lord of tlie whole earth hath with the men whom He hath sent against us. Dear and much honoured in the Lord, let me entreat you to be far from the thouglits of leaving this land. I see it, and find it, that the Lord hath covered the whole land with a cloud in His anger. But though I have been tempted to the like, I had rather be in Scotland beside angry Jesus Christ, knowing that He mindeth no evil to us, than in Eden or any garden in the earth ; if we can i-emain united with the Lord's remnant in the land.* He layeth up wrath for all sorts of adversaries in Britain. ^ Rutlierford here refers to a call wliich lie had received (on tlie death of De Maets, or Dematius) to fill the Chair of Divinity in the University of Utrecht, to which he was elected without being consulted. He, how(>ver, declined to accept the invitation. The call was conveyed to him first verbally, by his brother James, then an ofificei' in a regiment lying at Grave in Brabant ; au^ next formally in writing. i65r.] LETTER CCCXXXV. 663 Though I should never see the glory of His glittering sword in Britain, I would be solaced in the innocent thought (far from revenge) that the saints shall dip their feet in the blood of the slain of the Lord, And truly, Sir, I suppose that ye cannot but come to these thoughts and weak desires before the Hearer of prayer, for as little as ye think of and value yourself. For me, if I could mind you in your bonds, I purpose not to stand to the account you give, or thoughts ye have of yourself ; though I know ye are not a whit, more or less, before Him who weigheth His own according to the weight of imputed righteousness, for my apprehensions. Christ cannot mistake you, men may ; and the calculation and esteem of free grace maketh you to be what you are. I hope to see you an everlastingly obliged debtor to Him whom ye shall praise but never pay. And truly ye have no riches but that debt : and I know that ye love to be engaged to Jesus Christ, the most excellent of creditors. Much joy and sweetness may ye have, in standing written in His book. I desire to do it myself, and I would have you also highly to esteem the design of Christ, who hath raised the riches of the glory of so much grace above the circle of the heaven of heavens, out of very nothings ; and contrived His thoughts of love, so that lumps of glorified clay should stand before Him, for all ages, the burdened and loaden debtors of free, eternally free grace. Sir, ye cannot cast the count of the rents of your so great inheritance of glory. Grace be with you. Your servant, in his own Lord Jesus, Edinburgh, May 18, 1651. S. R CCCXXXV.— To i)iy Ladt Kenmure. {DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT IS MANS AND CHRIST'S, AND BETWEEN CHRIST HIMSELF AND HIS BLESSINGS.) I'ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — We are fallen in winnowing and trying times. I am glad that your breath serveth you to run to the end, in the same condition and way wherein ye have walked these twenty years past. It is either the way of peace, or we are yet in our sins, and have missed the way. The Lord, it is true, hath stained the pride of all our glory ; and now, last of 664 LETTER CCCXXXV. [1651. all, the sun hath gone down upon many of the prophets. But stumble not ; men are but men, and God appeareth more and more to be God, and Christ is still Christ. Madam, a stronger than I am had almost stumbled me and cast me down. But oh what mercy is it to discern between what is Christ's and what is man's, and what way the hue, colour, and lustre of gifts of grace dazzle and deceive our weak eyes ! Oh to be dead to all things that are below Christ, were it even a created heaven and created grace ! Holiness is not Christ ; nor are the blossoms and flowers of the Tree of Life the tree itself. Men and creatures may wind themselves between us and Christ ; and, therefore, the Lord hath done much to take out of the way all betwixt Him and us. There are not in our way now, kings, nor armies, nor nobles, nor judicatories, nor strongholds, nor watchmen, nor godly professors. The fairest things, and most eminent in Britain, are stained, and have lost their lustre ; only, only Christ keepeth His greenness and beauty, and remaineth what He was. Oh, if He were more and more excellent to our apprehensions than ever He was (whose excellency is above all apprehensions), and still more and more sweet to our taste ! I care for nothing, if so be that I were nearer to Him. And yet He fleeth not from me: I flee from Him, but He pursueth. I hear that your Ladyship hath the same esteem of the despised cause and covenant of our Lord that ye had before. Madam, hold you there. I dare and would gladly breathe out my spirit in that way, with a nearer communion and fellowship with the Father and the Son, and would seek no more but that I might die believing. And also I would hope, that the earth should not cover the blood of the godly, slain in Scotland, but that the Lord will make inquisition for their blood when the sufferings of the saints in these lands shall be fulfilled. The good-will of Him that dwelt in Tlio Bush be with you. Your Ladyship's, at all observance, in the Lord Jesus, Glasgow, Sept. 28, 1651, '^' i^ [6s I.] LETTER CCCXXXVI. 665 CCGXXXVI.— To Lady Ralston.^ [Lady Ralston, whose maiden name was Ursula Mure, was daughter to William Mure of Glanderston, a respectable family in the county of Renfrew, and wife of William Ralston of that ilk. Mr. Alexander Dunlop, minister of Paisley, was married to one of her sisters, and Mr. John Carstairs to another. Lady Ral- ston was a woman of distinguished piety. Mr. Dunlop, who "was most impartial in his judgm^t of persons of worth," spoke in the highest terms of her Christian character. One day, commending her to Mrs. Hastie, wife of Mr. Alexander Hastie, minister of Glasgow, he spoke so much to her commendation that Mr. Hastie said to him, " I wonder to hear you speak so much to the praise of that lady ; I think you speak more of her than of your own wife." He answered, " Sanders, I love truly to be just to everybody. I think my wife is truly a good woman, and all the rest of the sisters are good women ; but I must say. Lady Ralston is a person more than ordinary. I know very few come her length ; yea, Sanders, I truly think shamo to even myself to be a Christian beside her, when I look to her carriage. She is a very odd [singular] woman" (Wodrow's "Analecta"). Mr. John Carstairs also bears testimony to her Christian excellence, and to the kindness she had shown to him and his family, particularly after his ejection from his church in Glasgow, in 1662, for conscience' sake.] {DUTY OF PREFERRING TO LIVE RATHER THAN DIE— WANT OF UNION IN THE JUDGMENTS OF THE GODLY.) SIGHT WORTHY ESTEEMED IN YOUR EXCEL- LENT LORD JESUS,— With much desire I have longed to hear how you were, since I heard of your being so near the harbour, as seemed ; and now, to my great satisfaction, I am informed of your recovery. As for yourself, I grant, to have entered in at the ports of the mansions of glory had been best by far ; but, yet to stay a little longer here is much more comfortable to yours. Therefore, Mistress, dearly respected in the Lord, you are even heartily welcome, though to share yet further with Zion in her manifold tribula- tions. Yea, I believe yourself thinks it no disadvantage, but rather one great addition of honour, to come back and bear His reproach yet more, in a world of opposition to Him. Eor (to speak so) it is an advantage that is not to be had in heaven itself ; for, although the inhabitants of that land agree in one to sing the song of the Lamb's praise and commendation, so it is here-away, and here only, where we have occasion to endure shame and contradiction for His worthy sake. Considering, therefore, the honour of the cross with the glory of the life to come, the saints are hereby rendered completely happy and honourable. It's much selfishness (as I judge it when I get seen best into the mystery of our Lord's cross) to make post haste to be in the land 1 Wodrow MSS. vol. xlv. 8vo, No. 13. " This letter," says Wodrow, "is taken from a copy ; but is certainly Mr. Rutherford's to Lady Ralston of that ilk, which I have from her grandchild, and, as far as I can see, is not printed." 666 LETTER CCCXXXVI. [1651 of rest, when a storm of persecution is rising for Christ ; for the sluggard and peevish spirit loves rest upon any terms, though never so dishonourable. It is in effect, then, far more honourable to seek conformity to Christ in His cross, than to ^ precipitate in desiring to be like Him in glory, and despise and tiy away from His sufferings. We use to say they are very evil-worthy of the sweet who will not endure the sour. I think Christ's pilgrim weeds (He being a Man of sorrows and griefs) are more honour- able than ever it became the like of us to wear ; especially considering our poor base descent, whom He will have honoured with conformity to Himself. Woe's me that I, and many the like of me within the land, look so frowardly on Christ's cross, as though it were not His love-allowance to all His followers ! It's plainly our gross ignorance that is the cause thereof. Faith, I grant, would suffer affliction for Him with good-will, rather than the least iniquity should be committed ; but sense loves no bands. For faith, keeping the sway, puts oft-times the carnal man in bondage, and that occasions strife betwixt the flesh and the spirit. The spirit smells no freedom or deliverance but that which comes from above ; the flesh would aye have deliverance, without examination of the terms, or wherefrom it comes. As it is the mark of Christ's sheep, that they will hear His voice, and will not acknowledge a stranger, so it is the mark of faith, that it will only receive orders from heaven. When He declares His mind for bands, it submits to bands, not replying objections to the contrary ; and again, when He says, " Show yourselves, ye prisoners of hope," it discovers time and way, and obeys to come forth, but not till then. But the flesh maketh ever haste, and the first and nearest ease is aye its best choice. The Lord keep His dear people from wanting of any exercise that is measured out by Him to them, now when He hides His face, lest we be turned aside to strange gods ! And when He shows Himself again (as He will assuredly do), we ken our change." It is far safer to dwell a little in faith's prison than in sense's fairest liberty. I see nothing so comfortable an evidence of God's staying into, and healing of, this broken and poor land, than that faithful testimony of His precious servants (and strengthened only by Him) against the late and sore defection.^ Yet, if the Lord had not left us a remnant, we had been as Sodom and like 1 Too ? ^ Como to know liow much we are changed. * Rutherford alludes to the opposition made by the Protesters to the Public Resolutions. 1651.] LETTER CCCXXXVI. 667 to Gomorrah. And exalted be our God, only wise and free in His love, that ever any testimony was given ! for the hour of temptation was very dark to all once. But to some He showed much light, and helped them with a little help. Others, also, able and dear to Him, He hath letten, as yet, remain under the cloud. But the mystery of His wisdom is so high in this, that I profess it may render all flesh humble in the dust, and to glory henceforth in nothing but in His upholding strength and free love. Always,^ when His due time comes. He will make His servants see that which they do not now see. But, alas ! in the meantime, there is no harder matter of our trouble to be looked to than the grievous differences of judgments and affections among the Lord's servants ; which I know is much pondered by you. And I trust that all our worthy dear friends will labour to the utmost, according to Christ's command, to have the breach made up again, that Satan get not advantage therethrough ; for I think nothing makes more for his ends than the defacing of union amongst the Lord's dear ones. I think it should be amongst our many requests to Him " in whom all the building useth to be fitly framed together in love ; " yea, the obtaining of this request were a great advantage to the poor kirk. And if the Lord take pleasure in us, there is yet hope in Israel concern- ing this thing ; but if not, it is like to prove a probable token, amongst some others, of Christ's taking down His tabernacle in this land : which, if He do, we will have sad days. But the consideration of His pitiful compassion holds forth ground to believe otherwise ; upon which ground it is like that He will give us a door of hope, though He do not give full deliverance yet. For our hope is not perished yet from the Lord, because men and carnal reason say so ; for none of these are bands or rules to the Almighty ! Yea, Zion's lowest ebb shall be the first step to her rise. I have no other reason to give but " the zeal of the Lord of hosts [will] perform it " (Isa. ix. 7) ; and in confidence of it, T remain, Yours in all trouble, October 1651. S. E. Tender my respects to your dear husband, who is indeed precious in the account of the honest here, for his faithfulness in the hour of temptation. ^ Nevertheless, 668 LETTER CCCXXXVII. [1651 CCCXXXVII.— To a Minister of Glasgow.^ [Wodrow annexes to this letter the following note : — " To one of the ministers of Glasgow, who probably was deposed by the Resolutionists, or at least a sufferer for the protestation, — Mr. M'Ward perhaps, or Mr. Patrick Gillespie." The letter bears internal evidence of having been wiitten to a minister of Glasgow who had been censured by the General Assembly which met at Dundee in 1651, for his opposition to the public resolutions. By that Assembly three ministers, Mr. James Guthrie of Stirling, Mr. Patrick Gillespie of Glasgow, and Mr. James Simpson of Airth, were deposed, and one, Mr. James Nasmith of Hamilton, suspended, on the ground of their having protested against the lawfulness of that Assembly. (" Life of Robert Blair," p. 278. ) There seems, then, little doubt that Mr. Patrick Gillespie is the person to whom this letter was addressed. It could not have been Mr. Robert M'Ward, for he was licensed only in 1655, and did not become a minister of Glasgow till 1656, when he succeeded Mr. Andrew Gray in the Outer High Kirk ; nor, though he enlisted himself on the side of the Protesters, does he appear to have suifered on that account. Mr. Patrick Gillespie was the son of Mr. John Gillespie (second minister of the collegiate charge of Kirkcaldy), and brother of the celebrated George Gillespie. He was born at Kirkcaldy in 1617, and was for some time minister of that parish, previous to his translation to Glasgow. After the death of Charles I. he favoured the Commonwealth, and was appointed by Cromwell Principal of the University of Glasgow, into which office he was installed after encountering much opposition. At the Restoration he was ejected from the Principalship, in which he was succeeded by the celebrated Robert Baillie. He was also imprisoned successively in the Castles of Edinburgh and Stirling ; and upon the sitting of the Parliament in 1661, was impeached of high treason, on the alleged ground of his having compiled "The Western Remonstrance," approved the pamphlet entitled "The Causes of God's Wrath," and kept correspondencg with Cromwell. But, having made concessions, he was shortly after liberated, and confined to Ormistou and six miles around it. " His works speak for him," says Wodrow, " and evidence him a person of great learning, solidity, and piety, particularly his excellent treatises upon ' The Covenants of Grace and Redemption.' "] {ENCOURAGING WORDS TO A SUFFERING BROTHER— WHY MEN SHRINK FROM CHRIST S TESTIMONY.) !R, — I long to see you, since you gave a public testi- mony for your Master, and are become a sufferer for Him. Until I shall be able to see you, I thought it duty to write to you that I remember you as I am able. Your zeal and faithfulness for our Master and your mother church have made your name honourable and precious among many here ; yea, have exceedingly refreshed the bowels of the saints. Upon my word. Sir, I say the truth, you have their hearts and their approbation to what you have done ; and that you are approven of God, I doubt not : the seal whereof, I liope, shall be in your heart, to feast your conscience with peace, and to cause your face shine in innocenc}-. What you have done with your fellow-witnesses, companions in tribulation, shall turn to you for a testimony. Sir, when this General Assembly are 1 From a copy among the Wodrow MSS. vol. xlv. 8vo, No. 14. "I had it," says Wodrow, "from the T,aird of Ralston. It's a double, onlj' written on tlie same sheet with the former to Ijady Ralston, perhaps about the same time," 1 65 1.] LETTER CCCXXXVII. 669 gathered together to their fathers, and you wearing your crown up at the throne, and following the Lamb, your name shall be precious and have a savour of life amongst the saints. You shall have your mother's blessing, I mean the Church of Scotland, when you are dead and rotten. Though now you seem to be a man of strife and contention, yet you are no otherways for strife and contention than your Master before you, who came not to send peace, but rather division and contention (Luke xii. 51) with the malignant party. Union in judgment, with men not tender of our Lord's interest, is a conjunction and union I hope you shall never think desirable. Sectarian separation, I am confident, you never loved ; though men, who are become transgressors in destroying what they have formerly been build- ing, give it forth so. Woe's me. Sir, that amongst so many hundred ministers in the Church of Scotland, so few are like to be found willing to give or approve of your and others' faithful testimony. 1 think that, besides the evil of blindness that is in the mind of some, and the idolizing of man's interest by others, an uncrucified world and over-loved stipends shall hinder many from coming your length. We are debtors to you, and to our Lord Jesus Christ, that hath given to you to care for "Zion, whom no man seeks after" (Jer. xxx. 17); not caring for your own things, but the things of God. Fair fall you that have quit all things to follow Him. To you, and to others that will continue with Christ, in this hour of tribulation, is appointed a kingdom. Sir, you had more credit and worldly greatness to lose than many honest ministers ; and thanks be to God that you have so learned Christ [as] to be made a man for Christ of no reputation, for Him. Your despised Master, who made Himself while Lie was amongst us a man of no reputation, is now exalted in glory. There is none now to gibe Him by bowing the knee, none now to spit in His face, none now to bring Him under mocking of the purple robe, none to put on His head a crown of thorns. And as you now partake of His sufferings, so shall you hereafter of His glory. You shall sit honourably on thrones ; and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you shall receive the crown. I am convinced that it is for conscience toward God that you suffer. The bottom of your testimony and suffering is not so narrow as some think, who study more to decline the cross than to be tender for every truth. School-heads talk of fundamentals and non-fundamentals ; and, say they, " The present controversy is not about fundamentals : ministers may keep their places, peace, 670 LETTER CCCXXXVII [165 1. and stipends, and make less din." But are non-fundamentala nothing ? I would choose rather not be brought up at school, than to grow so subtile and wily by school distinctions, [as] to decline the cross. Sir, you divide not from others for nothing ; you contend not for nothing ; you suffer not for nothing. They that will be unfaithful in little will be unfaithful in much. Mis- take me not, as if I thought the ground of your testimony a little thing and a trifle. I think you, and all that be faithful to God, are bound to follow it to bonds and to blood. That Christ ought to be a King in Scotland, and the people ought to employ ^ the liberty that Christ hath bought to them with His blood, is among fundamentals with me ; and whether the way man gives and allows to men that have fought against the truth be not naturally, and by interpretation, against this, judge. Sir, your Master did put you in His vineyard. You have a testimony from many of a faithful and diligent labourer. I hear that you are now violently thrust out. I think the Spirit of Christ would teach men sobriety and forbearance. I wish (and know you will join with me) that men's violent dealing with you provoke not the Lord, to make this the last General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Always, I acknowledge you one of the stars which the Lord hath in His hand, one of the angels of the Church of Scotland, a faithful minister of the Gospel at Glasgow. You have given a testimony for your Master ; you shall get a meeting when He comes in the clouds. And though there should not be a General Assembly henceforth in the Church of Scotland, judicially to acknowledge you His minister, yet, in the General Assembly of angels and men, that your Master in the latter day shall call in the clouds, you shall get a testimony of a minister of the Gospel ; and from the Shepherd and the Lord, the righteous Judge, you shall receive the crown, I think there is a necessity laid on you to preach the Gospel, and to call people to the covenant of grace, wherever you can safely do it. I know there are many that will yet receive you as an angel of God, and yet will be followers of you and of Christ, " receiving the word in much affliction, with joy in the Holy Ghost." The Lord give you in all things to " approve yourself as the minister of God, in much patience and affliction, in necessities, distresses, in stripes, in imprisonment, in labour, and watching, and fasting, — by honour and dishonour, in good report and ill report " (2 Cor. vi. 4-6). For, now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord. And the ^ Enjoy? 1 653-] LETTER CCCXXXVIII. 671 God of all peace, who hath called you to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you have suffered awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, and settle you. Eemember me to those that are your companions in tribulation, and in the king- dom and patience of Jesus Christ, and to your wife, that will be a faithful helper to you in this time of your nftliction. Because I am not able to see you yet, and fearing that when I come to Glasgow I shall not find you there, I thought good to write. CCCXXXVIII. — For the Eight Hc/tiourahh and Christian Lady, the Lady Kenmure. {A WOJiD TO CHEER IN TIMES OF DARKNESS.) jjADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — The Lord is gracious who keepeth your Ladyship in the furnace, when many put out their hand to iniquity one way or other. "We are now shouldering and casting down one another in the dark, and the godly are hidden from the godly. We make our own chains heavier by joining with the Lord's enemies ; hence new sufferings to all that dare not say " a confederacy to those to whom this people say a con- federacy, nor fear their fear. (Isa. 8, 12.) As that is my exercise now, who am not very far from being my lone (though I know in whom I have believed, at least I should know) in this place ; so I am afraid that the godly there comply with those declared enemies of God. It will be our strength to walk between enemies and malignants on either side. This is the day of Jacob's trouble ; yet these dry bones can, and must live. I know not if I shall see it, but I hope to take this quietness and silence of faith, in the midst of the noises of the alarm for war, to the grave with me, that the Lord will build upon the church of Britain and Ireland a palace of silver, inclosed with boards of cedar. Dear Madam, faint not ; the night is almost gone ; " for the vision is yet for an appointed time ; but at the end it shall speak, and not lie : though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, and not tarry." Madam, weary not ; none can outbid your lodging in heaven ; there is more given for it, by Him who hath bespoken it for Jean Campbell, and taken it for her, than any can offer. The ransom of blood standeth. 672 LETTER CCCXXXJX. [1653. My wife remciubereth her respects to your Ladyship. The child is well. Mrs. Gillespie is well, we hear, but is not here. Grace, grace be with you. Yours, in his own Lord Jesus Christ, St. Andrews, Jan. 28, 1653. S. R CGCXXXIX.— J^'or Grizzel Fullerton. [Letter V.] \EXHORTAriON TO FOLLOW CHRIST FULLY WHEN OTHERS ARE COLD.) ISTRESS, — Remembering well what relation I had to your dear mother (now blessed and perfected with glory),^ and being confident that yourself looketh that way (which, except I be eternally lost, is the way of peace and of life), I should be ungrateful to forget those, whom, by the covenant of the Lord, I cannot but remember to God. I shall speak nothing to you of the present sad differences;^ but if I have, or ever had, any nearness to God, that other way (which I trust I shall never follow) is the way of man. And for the present powers,^ I suffer from them, and look for more. God hath a controversy with them ; and, my soul, enter not into their secrets ! Only, I would beseech, request, and obtest you in the Lord, and by your appearance before Christ, to follow the way of the Lord and the steps trod by the gracious in that place, which the Lord followed with life and power. My heart is filled with sorrow, considering what communion with God some of that country had, and how much they were in edifying and helping one another, in His way ; and how little of that there is now in that country. Your mother kept in life, in that place, and quickened many about her to the seeking of God. My desire to you is, that you should succeed her in that way, and be letting a word fall to your brethren and others, that may en- courage them to look toward the way of God. You will have need of it ere it be long. See how you may have a gracious minister, and uf) neutral there, to succeed and follow the servant of God ' Marion M 'Naught, her mother, died 1643. ' The ditFerenceson acrount of tlie Public llesohitioiis. Letter CCCXXIX., note. ' The GoveiTinicnt of Croiiuvcll. 1 65 3-] LETTER CCCXL. 673 now asleep in the Lord.^ There is a great and wide difference between a name of godliness and the power of godliness. That is hottest when there are fewest witnesses. The deadness upon many, and the defection of the land, is great. Blessed are they who seek the Lord and His face. I shall entreat you to remember me to your husband, and all friends. I desire to forget none who are in Christ. Your brother in the Lord, Edinburgh, March 14, 1653. S. E. CCCXL.— 2'o Mr. Thomas Wylie.' {REGARDING A LETTER OF EXPLANATION.) IGHT KEVEREND, — I look on it as a significant ex- pression of your respect to me, and above all deserv- ing in me, that you take notice of any appearance of clouds, or alienation of mind among brethren ; and am glad of your testimony of my brother. I had no interest but brotherly advice, and hearty desire of the real prospering of the work of the Gospel. Nor was it either necessary or ex- pedient, that your w[isdoms] should be troubled and put to any presbyterial testimony, upon the ground of a private missive letter, written by misinformation. I give credit to your testimony, ^ Eefers probably to J. M'Lellan, who had come from Ireland, and been admitted minister in Kirkcudbright in 1638, where he continued to live and labour till his death in 1650. He was a man early acquainted with God and His ways, a most upright and zealous Protestant, and one who knew not what it was to be afraid in the cause of God. Livingstone says that he was thought by many to have had somewhat of the spirit of prophecy ; he foretold many sad events that would come on England. A little before his death he composed the following epitaph on himself : — "Come, stingless death, have o'er; lo ! here's my pass, In blood character'd, by His hand who was, And is, and shall be. Jordan, cut thy stream, Make channels dry ; I bear my Father's name Stamped on my brow. I'm ravished with my crown ; I shine so bright, down with all glory, down, That world can give. I see the peerless Port (Rev. xxi. 21), The Golden Street, the blessed soul's Resort, The Tree of Life. Floods gushing from the Throne, Call me to joys. Begone, short woes begone ; I lived to die, but now I die to live ; I do enjoy more than I did believe. The Promise me into Possession sends Faith in fruition, hope in having ends." — Livingstone's "Characteristics," and Nicholson's "Galloway," vol. ii. 2 From the original, among the AVodrow MSS. vol. xxix. 4to, No. 66. This letter is addressed on the back, " For his Reverend and dear Brother, Mr. Thomas Wylie, Minister of the Gospel at Kirkcudbright, and Moderator of the Presbytery there. " 8 U 674 LETTER CCCXLL [1653. and judge much ought to be laid upou it, and shall think myself obliged to your w[isdoms], and look on it as a testimony of your affectionate zeal to the work of God. The Lord of the harvest thrust out labourers to His vineyard, and bless His work in your hands ! Excuse me, dear and reverend, for my troubling you with any private misunderstanding. I am not a little refreshed to hear of your care and zeal for the house of God. The Lord be with your spirit. Your unworthy brother and fellow-labourer in the Gospel, St. Andrews, March 23, 1653. S. E. CCCXLL — To my Lady Kenmure. {PRESENT NEED HELPED BY PAST EXPERIENCE.) ADAM, — Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. — I know that ye think of an outgoing, and that your quarter- ing in time, and your abode in this life, is short ; " for we flee away as a shadow." The declining of the sun, and the lengthening of the shadow, say that our journey is short and near the end. I speak it, because I have warnings of my removal. Madam, I know not any against whom the Lord is not : for He is against " the proud and lofty ; the day of the Lord is upon all the cedars, upon all the high mountains, upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall, upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures " (Isa. ii. 12-16). I know not anything comparable to a nearness and spiritual communion with the Father and the Son Christ. There is much deadness and witheredness upon many spirits sometime near to God ; and I wish the Lord have not more to say and to do against the land. Ye have, Madam, in your accounts, mercies, deliverances, rods, warnings, plenty of means, consolations (when "refuge failed, when ye looked on the right hand, and behold no man would know you, nor care for your soul," when young and weak), manifestations of God, the outgoings of the Lord for you, ex- periences, answers from the Lord ; by all which, ye may be com- forted now, and confirmed in the certain hope, that grace, free grace, in a fixed and established Surety, shall perfect that good work in you. Happy they who see not and yet believe. Grace, grace, eternally in our Lord Jesus be with you. Yours, in the Lord Jesus, Edinburgh, May 27, 1653. '^- -^- i6s3.] LETTER CCCXLIL 675 CCCXLII. — For the Right Honourable and truly worthy Colonel Gilbert Kkr. {DEADNESS— HOPES OF REFRESHMENT— DISTANCE FROM GOD— NEARNESS DELIGHTED IN.) UCH HONOUEED IN THE LOKD,— How it is with you may appear by your letters to some with us ; but it is the complaint of not a few of such as were iu Christ before me, that most of us inhabit and dwell in a parched land. The people of the Lord are like a land not rained upon. Though some dare not deny that this is the garden of the Beloved, and the vineyard that the Lord doth keep and water every moment, yet, oh ! where are the sometime quicken- ing breathings and intiuences from heaven that have refreshed His hidden ones ? The causes of His withdrawings are unknown to us. One thing cannot be denied, but that ways of high sovereignty and dominion of grace are far out of the sight of angels and men ; yea, and so above the lixed way of free promises (such as, " This do, and He shall breathe and blow upon His garden "), as He hath put forth a declaration to His hidden ones in Scotland, that smarting, wrestlings, prayings, complaining, gracious missing, cannot earn the visits from on high, nor fetch down showers upon the desert. It may be, when we are saying in our graves, " Our bones are dry, and our hope gone," that temporal and spiritual deliverance may come both together ; and that He will cause us feel, both the one way and the other, the good of His reign who shortly cometh to the throne. " He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth." " In His days shall the righteous flourish ; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth." " He shall deliver the needy when he crieth ; the poor also, and him that hath no helper." " He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence : and precious shall their blood be in His sight" (Ps. Ixxii. 6—16). And though we cannot pray home a sweet season that way, yet Christ must bring summer with Him when He cometh. " There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains ; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon." I know not if I apply prophecies as I would, rather than as they are. When the one Shepherd is set over them, even He who shall stand (oh how much do we lie!) and feed in the strength of the Lord, the isles (and this the greatest of them) 676 LETTER CCCXLIL [1653. which wait for His law, are to look for that ; " And I will make them, and the places round about My hill, a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season : there shall be showers of blessing" (Ezek. xxxiv. 26). How desirable must every drop of such a shower be ! And, " I will be as the dew to Israel : he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon" (Hosea xiv. 5, 6). And, "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree ; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off" (Isa. Iv. 13). "I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah-tree, and the oil-tree" (Isa. xli. 19). "I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground : I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring." And it shall be no lost labour or fruitless husbandry ; " They shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water-courses " (Isa. xliv. 3, 4). But when this shall be in Scotland (and it must be) is better to believe than prophesy ; and quietly- to hope and sit still (for that is yet our strength), than to quarrel with Him, that the wheels of this chariot move leisurely. Yet this can hardly say anything to us who do so much please ourselves in our deadness, and are almost gone from godly thirst and missing too, being half-satisfied with our witheredness. N'o doubt we have marred His influences, and have not seconded nor smiled upon His actings upon us. Nor have we been much of his strain who doth eight times breathe out that suit, " Quicken me, quicken me " (Ps. cxix.). So much are we desirous to be acted upon by the Lord as blocks and stones ; and so prodigal are we of His motions, as if they were no better to be husbanded. But it is good that it is not in our power to blast and undo His breathings ; His wind bloweth where He listeth. Could we but lean, and cast a quiet spirit under the dewings and showerings of Him that every moment watereth His vineyard, how happy and blessed were we ! We neither open nor discern His knock- ing, nor do we feel His hand put in through the keyhole, nor can we give any spiritual account of the walkings and motions of Christ, when He standeth behind the wall, when He cometh skipping over the mountains, when He cometh to His garden and feasteth, when He feedeth among the lilies, when His spikenard casteth a smell, when He knocketh and withdraweth, and is no- 1653.] LETTER CCCXLIL 677 where to be found. Oh, how little a portion of God do we see ! How little study we God ! How rarely read we God, or are versed in the lively apprehensions of that great unknown All in All, the glorious Godhead, and the Godhead revealed in Christ ! We dwell far from the well, and complain but dryly of our dryness and dulness. We are rather dry than thirsty. Sir, there may be artificial pride in this humility ; but for me, I neither know what He is, nor His Son's name, nor where He dwelleth. I hear a report of Christ great enough, and that is all. Oh ! what is nearness to Him ? What is that, to be " in God," to "dwell in God"? What a house must that be! (1 John iv. 13). How far are some from their house and home ? how ill acquaint with the rooms, mansions, safety, and sweet- ness of holy security to be found in God ! Oh, what estrange- ment ! what wandering ! what frequent conversing with self and the creature ! Is not here " the bed shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it ? and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it ? " (Isa. xxviii. 20). When shall we attain to a living in only, only God ! and be estranged from all the poor created nothings, the painted shadow-beings of yester- day, which, an hour and less before creation, were dark waste negatives and empty nothings, and should so have been for eternity, had the Lord suffered them to lie there for ever ! It is He, the great " He, who sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers, that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in, that bringeth the princes to nothing, and maketh the judges of the earth as vanity" (Isa. xl. 22, 23). And He, the only He, and there is no He beside Him (Isa. xliii. 10, 11, 13-25). Men or angels, they are not any of them a lu to Him ! But a living, breathing, dying nothing is man at his best, a sick clay- vanity ; and the angd, to Him, but a more excellent, living and understanding nothing. Yet we live at a distance from Him ; and we die and wither when we are out of God. Oh, if we knew how nothing we are without Him ! Sir, we desire to mind your bonds ; and are cheered and refreshed that we hear of any of His manifestations, and His outgoings, which are prepared as the morning to you. We hope that we need not desire you not to faint, and are confident that the anointing that abideth in you teacheth you so much. Wait upon the speaking vision : " Behold, He cometh ! behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him!" (Isa. xl. 10). 678 LETTER CCCXLIIT. [1654. The only wise God strengthen you with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness. Yours, at all observance, in the Lord Jesus, St Andrews, July 1653. *^' "" CCCXLIII. — F(yr the truly honourable CoiiONKL Gilbert Ker.^ {TIf£ STATE OF THE LAND.) UCH HONOUEED,— I bless the Lord for His good hand, who declares that His sovereign presence is alike in England and all places, and sways hearts as pleases Him. The book of holy pro\Tdence is good marginal notes on His revealed will, in His word, and speaks much to us, could we read and understand what He writes, both in the one and the other. You see He is not wanting to you ; houses and lands are His. The Lord led Abraham from his own country to a land he knew not. It would appear He hath not opened His mind to you for leaving of this land, though I be much afraid of a sick state, a sleeping ministry, a covenant-breaking land, a number of dead professors ; all these are grey hairs here and there on Ephraim. Sure our ruin is sure if God let us alone ; we shall rot in our lies. But what am T to determine of con- clusions of mercy revealed to none, and thoughts of peace in the heart of the Lord towards an undeserving land ? I should be glad to see you, and shall desire He may lead you in the matter of your residence whom ye desire to be your Guide and Counsellor, For me, I am, as to my body, most weak and under daily summons ; but I sit still and read not the summons : as to my spirit, much out of court, because out of communion with the Lord, and far from what sometime hath been ; deadness, security, unbelief, and distance from God in the use of means, prevail more than ever.^ I shall desire your help for getting a ^ From a copy among the Wodrow MSS. vol. lix, folio, No. 5. There is probably an error as to the date of this letter. Fiom an allusion in it to a vacancy in one of the professorships of St. Mary's or the New College of St. Andrews, explained in tne following note, it appears to have been written in or subsequent to the year 1657. - Kutherford was now Principal of St. Mary's or thn New College of St. Andrews, a situation to which he was elevated about the close of the year 1647 ; and a vacancy having occurred in the Professorship of Kcclesiastical History, by tlie translation of Mr. James Wood to be Principal of St. Salvator's or tlic OKI College of St. Andrews, in 1657, Rutherford was very desifous of seeing tliat situation filled by a suitable person. 1655] LETTER CCCXLIV. 679 third Professor. I am in this college between wind and weather. Dr. Colville ^ is for Mr. James Sharp ; 2 I am for Mr. William Rait, but know not the event.^ My wife remembers her respects to you. Grace be with you. Yours, at all obedience, in God, St. Andrews, A^\l 2, 1654. S. R. Eemember my love in Christ to Mr. Livingstone. CCCXLIV.— i?'or Mr. John Soot, at Oxnam. [Mr. John Scot, minister of Oxnam, zealously adhered to the Protesters ; and Rutherford's letters to him have chiefly a reference to the proceedings of that party. After the restoration of Charles II., Scot was imprisoned for some time, but suffered less than others of his brethren. On being set at liberty, he was allowed to return to his parish, and to resume the exercise of his ministry. We find him continuing there down to 1664, when he was brought before the short- lived High Commission Court, erected in the beginning of that year, for having assisted at Communions which were reckoned contrary to law. Plow he was dealt with by that Court is not now known. In 1669 he became indulged minister of Oxnam. He must have died previous to 1684, as in that year the name of 'Elizabeth Rae, relict of Mr. John Scot, late minister of Oxnam," occurs among a list of names in the parish of Kelso, delated by the curate of that parish to the Committee of Privy Council which met at Jedburgh, with the view of proceeding against those guilty of "church disorders," that is, against those who deserted their own parish church, and attended conventicles. ("Warrants of Privy Council.")] {EXCUSE FOR ABSENCE FROM DUTY.) fEVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,— No man oweth more to the church of God with you, than poor and wretched I. But when weakness of body, and the Lord by it, did forbid me to undertake a lesser journey to Edinburgh, I am forbidden far more to journey thither. And believe it, notliing besides this doth hinder. I am unable to overtake what the Lord hath laid upon me here ; and, therefore, I desire to submit to sovereignty, and must be silent. If my prayers and best desires to the Lord could contribute anything for promoting of His work, my soul's desire is that the ' Dr. Alexander Colville, who had been Professor of Divinity in the Protestant University of Sedan, was inducted one of the masters in the New College of St. Andrews in 1642. He conformed to Prelacy in 1662 ; became Principal of that College upon Rutherford's death ; and died in 1666. - Afterwards Archbishop of St. Andrews. ^ Rutherford was strenuous in his exertions to secure the appointment of Mr. Rait, but without success. His colleague, Dr. Colville, succeeded in obtaining the appointment of Sharp to the vacant office, into which he was inducted on thft 22nd of February 1661, about a month before Rutherford's death. Mr. Rait after- wards became minister of Dundee. 68o LETTER CCCXLV. [1656. wilderness, and that place to which I owe my first breathing,^ in which I fear Christ was scarce named, as touching any reality or power of godliness, may blossom as a rose. So desiring, and praying that His name may be great among you, and entreating that you may believe that the names of the Lord's adversaries shall be written in the earth, and that " whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem, to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, even upon them shall be no rain," and that the Lord " will create glory upon every assembly in IMount Zion," I rest, your own brother in the Lord, St. Andkews, June 15, 1655. S. K. CCCXLV.— To my Lady Kenmure. {THOUGHTS FOR A TIME OF SICKNESS, ABOUT THE LIFE TO COME.) ADAM, — I have been so long silent, that I am almost ashamed now to speak. I hear of your weakly condi- tion of body, which speaketh some warning to you to look for a longer life, where ye shall have more leisure to praise than time can give you here. It shall be loss to many; but sure yourself, Madam, shall be only ^ free of any loss. And truly, considering what days we are now falling into, if sailing were not serving of the Lord (which I can hardly attain to), a calm harbour were very good when storms are so high. The Forerunner, who hath landed first, must help to bring the sea-beaten vessel safe to the port, and the sick passengers who are following the Forerunner safe ashore. Much deaduess prevaileth over some ; but there is much life in Him who is the Eesurrection and the Life to quicken. Oh, what of our hid life is without us, and how little and poor a stock is in the hand of some ! The only wise God supply what is wanting. The more ye want, and the more your joy hath run on, the more is owing to you by the promise of grace. Bygones of waterings from heaven, which your Ladyship wanted in Kenmure, Eusco, the West, Glasgow, Edinburgh, England, etc., shall all come in a great sum together. The marriage supper of tlie Lamb must not be marred witli too ^ This seems to refer to Nisbet, formerly a separate parish, but now annexed to Crailing, in tlie Presbytery of Jeilburgh, and shire of Roxburgh. It is within two miles of the parish of Oxnani ; and some thirty years ago a house there used to be pointed out, by an old villager, as that in which, according to tradition, Kuthcrfoid was born. * It shall do nothing but free you from evil. 1656.] LETTER CCCXLVI. 681 large four-hours' refreshment. Know, Madam, that He, who hath tutored you from the breasts, knoweth how to time His own day-shinings and love-visits. Grace, that runneth on, be with you. Yours, in the Lord, at all observance, St. Andrews. S. R, CCCXLVI.— To Simeon Ashe. [Mr. Ashe -was a Puritan minister in London during the time of the civil wars. He died in 1662.] {VIEWS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS AS TO ALLEGIANCE TO THE PROTECTOR.) ^SeVEREND WOETHY SIE,— I would recommend to ^;g^i you the bearer, Mr. James Simpson,^ a faithful ^^j preacher of the Gospel. Be pleased to hear him. I trust he shall give you a true and faithful relation of our affairs. You may be pleased to believe me, that men who have borrowed your ear to blacken the godly in the land, and who have now both deserted us and the Covenant, and joined feet with the Malignant party, and now have owned the present powers, and brought the intrants to the ministry to give under their hand a subscription, an engagement (the writ calls it, a resolution to live peaceably and unoffensively under the present Government), so that no holy man can get any mainten- ance in the land but such as will sinfully comply (and such as cannot, what an entry tliey have to that holy calling to embrace it !), these men seek more their own things, than the things of Jesus Christ. And being backed by the whole multitude of the promiscuous generality, throughout the land, who are for their way, as of old the prelatic conformists did, they do perse- cute the godly, and in pulpits and presbyteries declaim against us as implacable and separatists. You may. Sir, by this, and what the bearer will make known to you, perceive what wrong the compliance of these men hath done to the cause of God. ^ Mr. James Simpson was minister of Airth. He subscribed the protestation which Rutherford gave in against the lawfulness of the Assembly held at St. Andrews in July 1651 ; for Avhich he was deposed from the ministry by the adjourned meeting at Dundee. After the Restoration he was accused in Parliament, by the King's advocate, of seditious practices, and banislied by Parliament, without being heard. He removed to Holland, where he died. Simpson at this time had been sent up to London by the Protesters, to repio.-ent their cause to Cromwell and the ministers of the city, in opposition to the notorious James Sharp, afterwards Archbishop of St. Andrews, who had been sent up by the Resolutioners. 682 LETTER CCCXLVIL [1657. But I spare, and do beg the favour of your other care. The grace of God be with you. I am your loving brother in Christ, 1656. S. R. CCCXLVII.— To tny Lady Kenmure. {UNKINDNESS OF THE CREATURE— GOUS SOVEREIGNTY IN PERMITTING HIS CHILDREN TO BE INJURED BY MEN.) 'ad AM, — I confess that I have cause to be grieved at my long silence or laziness in writing. I am also afflicted to hear, that such who were debtors to your Ladyship for better dealing have served you with such prevarication. Ye know that crookedness is neither strong, nor long enduring ; and ye know likewise, that these things spring not out of the dust. It is sweet to look upon the law- less and sinful stirrings of the creature as ordered by a most holy hand in heaven. Oh, if some could make peace with God ! It would be our wisdom, and afiford us much sweet peace, if oppressors were looked on as passive instruments, like the saw or axe in the carpenter's hand. They are bidden (if such a distinction may be admitted), but not commanded, of God (as Shimei was, 2 Sam. xvi. 10), to do what they do. Madam, these many years the Lord hath been teaching you to read and study well the book of holy, holy, and spotless sovereignty, in suffering from some nigh-hand, and some far off. Whoever be the instruments, the replying of clay to the Potter, the Former of all, is unbeseeming the nothing-creature. I hope that He will clear you : but, when Zion's public evils lie not nigh some of us, and leave no impression upon our hearts, it is no wonder that we be exercised with domestic troubles. But I know that ye are taught of God to prefer Jerusalem to your chiefest joy. Madam, there is no cause of fainting : wait upon the not-tarrying vision, for it will speak. The only wise God be with you, and God, even your own God, bless you. Yours, at all observance, in God, St. Andrews, June 1657. ^' ^' 1657.J LETTERS CCCXLVIIL, CCCXLIX. 683 CCCXLVIII.— To my Lady Kenmure. {GOD'S DEALINGS WITH THE LAND.) jJADAM, — I should not forget you; but my deadness under a threatening stroke, both of a falling church (a broken covenant, a despised remnant) and a craziness of body, that I cannot get a piece sickly clay carried about from one house or town to another, lieth most heavy on me. The Lord hath removed Scotland's crown, for we owned not His crown. We fretted at His catholic government of the world, and fretted that He would not be ruled and led by us, in breaking our adversaries: and He maketh us to suffer and pine away in our iniquities, under the broken government of His house. It is like, that it would be our snare to be tried with the honour of a peaceable Eeformation : we might mar the carved work of His house, worse than those against whom we cry out. It is like, that He hath bidden us lie on our left side three hundred and ninety days ; and yet so astonishing is our stupidity, that we moan not our sore side. Our gold is become dim, the visage of our Nazarites is become black, the sun is gone down on our seers ; the crown is fallen from our heads ; we roar like bears. Lord save us from that, " He that made them will not have mercy on them" (Isa. xxvii. 11). The heart of the scribe meditateth terror. Oh, Madam, if the Lord would help us to more self-judging, and to make sure an interest in Christ ! Ah, we forget eternity, and it approaches quickly. Grace be with you. Your Ladyship's, at all obedience, in the Lord, St. Andrews, N(yv. 20, 1657. S. R. CCCXLIX. — For Mr. John Scot, at Oxnam. [John Livingstone, in his letter to his parishioners at Ancrum, says : " Oxnam IS not far off from you, and I hope Mr. Scot doth and will declare for the sworn Reformation, and testify against present defection."] {PROTESTERS' TOLERATION.) jEVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,—! saw from C. K. a testimony of your Presbytery against tolera- tion, in which ye have been instrumental. The Lord give strengtli to do more. I think it both rare and necessary, and would account it a great mercy, if there were an 684 LETTER CCCL. [1658. addition of a postscript from divers ministers and elders, out of all the shires of Scotland. It is really the mind of all the godly and tender in this land. It is believed by some, that the Pro- testing party hath quite given over the cause. I hope it is not so ; but the Lord shall be yet victorious in His most despised ones. Our darkness is great and thick, and there is much dead- ness ; yet the Lord will be our light. Thus recommending you to His grace whose ye are, I am, your own brother, in the Lord, St. Andrews, April 2, 1058. ^' ^' CCCL. — For Mr. John Scot, at Oxnam. (gloomy times— means of promoting godliness.) EAR BROTHER, — Faint not; but be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. I look on it as a rich mercy that the Lord is with you, strengthening you to quicken fainters, to warm and warn any that are cold or dead, or who deaden others. Believe that it will be your peace -in the end. The times are sad; yet I persuade myself that the vision will not tarry, but will speak. The Lord will loose our captive bonds. Oh, blessed he, though alone, who is found fast and constant for the desirable interest of Christ. My humble advice would be, that you see to the placing^ of the deacon and the ruling elder, or to anything that may weaken the Discipline. Our Second Book of Discipline should be heeded : Sessions purged. Oh ! catechising and personal visit- ing, and speaking to them sigillatim (one by one) concerning their interest in Christ and a state of conversion, is little in practice. The practice of family fasts is scarce known to be an ordinance of God. It were good that ye should confer with godly brethren in private, concerning the promoting of godliness, concerning Christian conference, and praying together, worship- ping of God in families, and solitary fasts. To His grace who can direct, quicken, and strengthen you, I commend you, and am your loving brother, St. Andrews. S. K. ' This seems to mean, the place assigned to the respective oflScea of elder and deacon. 1658.] LETTER CCCLl 685 CCCLI. — To Mr. James Durham, Minister of the Gospel at Glasgow, some ' few days before his Death. [Mr. James Durham was ordained minister of Blackfriars Churcli, Glasgow, in November 1647. In September 1651 he was translated to the Inner High Church, Glasgow. He was a man at once distinguished for ardent piety and great talents. Robert Baillie counted him "one of the most gracious, wise, and able preachers in this isle." " He is the minister of my family," the same writer says, "and almost the only minister in this place [Glasgow] of whom my soul gets good, and whom I respect in some things above all men 1 know." Durham was cut off in the prime of life. He died at Glasgow on the •25th of June 1658, — ten days after this letter was written to him, — in the thirty-sixth year of his age, much regetted by all. (See Letter XCl.) He wrote on the "Book of Revelation," "Christ Crucified," and some other excellent pieces.] {J'JAN'S WAYS NOT GOD'S WAYS.) IE, — I would ere now have written to you, had I not known that your health, weaker and weaker, could scarce permit you to hear or read. I need not speak much. The "Way ye know, and have preached to others the skill of the Guide, and the glory of the home beyond death. And when He saith, " Come and see," it will be your gain to obey, and go out and meet the Bridegroom. What accession is made to the higher house of His kingdom should not be our loss, though it be real loss to the church of God. But we count one way, and the Lord counteth another way. He is infallible, and the only wise God, and needeth none of us. Had He needed the staying in the body of Moses and the prophets, He could have taken another way. Who dare bid you cast your thoughts back on wife or children, when He hath said, " Leave them to Me, and come up hither " ? Or who can persuade you to die or live, as if that were arbitrary to us, and not His alone who hath determined the number of your months ? If so it seem good to Him, follow your Forerunner and Guide. It is an unknown land to you, who were never there before ; but the land is good, and the company before the throne desirable, and He who sitteth on the throne is His lone a sufficient heaven. Grace, grace be with you. Yours in the Lord, St, Ajs'drews, June 15, 1658, S- ^- 686 LETTERS CCCLIL, CCCLIIl. [1658. CCCLII. — For Mr. John Scot, at Oxnam. {ADHERENCE TO THE TESTIMONY AGAINST TOLERATION.) EVEKEND AND DEAE BROTHEE,— Your letter that came uuto me, of August 2nd, to be at Edinburgh upon August 2nd, was unknown to me by the sub- scription. But since it was written for so honourable and warrantable a truth of Christ, as a testimony against Toleration, if my health would have permitted, and my daily menacing gravel, I should have come to Edinburgh. What either counsel, countenance, or clearing, ye could have had from the like of me, I cannot say ; nor dare I speak much, but with a reserve of the help of His grace. I desire to desire,^ and purpose by strength from above, to own that cause, and to join with you and some in this church, besides your Presbytery, who will own that cause. Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. This cloud will over,^ could we live by faith, and wait on a speaking, and a seemingly delaying vision. (Heb. ii. 3.) The Lord will not tarry. Grace be with you. Many are with you, but there is One who is above millions. Your own brother, St. Ani>k£Ws, August 8, 1658. S. R CCCLIIl. — To mxj Lady Kenmurb. {TRIALS— DEADNESS OF SPIRIT— DANGER OF FALSE SECURITY.) ADAM, — I am ashamed of my long silence to yuur Ladyship. Your tossings and wanderings are known to Him upon whom ye have been cast from the breasts, and who hath been your God of old. The temporal loss of creatures, dear to you there, may be the more easily endured, that the gain of One " who only hath immortality " groweth. There is an universal complaint of deadness of spirit on all that know God. He that writeth to you. Madam, is as deep in this as any, and is afraid of a strong and hot battle, before time be at a close. But no matter, if the Lord crown all with the ^ Perhaps, " I desire to pray for." * Pass over. 1 6s 8.] LETTER CCCLIIL 087 victorious triumphing of faith. God teacheth us by terrible things in righteousness. We see many things, but we observe nothing. Our drink is sour. Grey hairs are here and there on us. We change many lords and rulers ; but the same bondage of soul and body remaineth. We live little by faith, but much by sense, according to the times, and by human policy. The watchmen sleep, and the people perish for lack of knowledge. How can we be enlightened when we turn our back on the sun ? and must we not be withered when we leave the fountain ? It should be my only desire to be a minister, gifted with the white stone, and the new name written on it. I judge it were fit (now when tall professors and when many stars fall from heaven, and God poureth the isle of Great Britain from vessel to vessel, and yet we sit, and are settled on our lees) to consider (as some- times I do, but ah ! rarely), how irrecoverable a wo it is to be under a beguile in the matter of eternity. And what if I, who can have a subscribed testimonial of many who shall stand at the right hand of the Judge, shall miss Christ's approving testi- mony, and be set upon the left hand among the goats ? (Matt. vii. 22, XXV. 8-12 and 33 ; Luke xiii. 25-27). There is such a beguile ; and it befalleth many ; and what if it befall me, who have but too much art to cozen my own soul and others, with the flourish of ministerial, or country, holiness ! Dear lady, I am afraid of prevailing security. We watch little (I have relation mainly to myself), we wrestle little. I am like one travelling in the night, who seeth a spirit, and sweateth for fear, and careth not to tell it to his fellow, for fear of in- creasing his own fear. However, I am sure, when the Master is nigh His coming, it were safe to write over a double, and a new copy, of our accounts of the sins of nature, childhood, youth, riper years, and old age. What if Christ have another written repre- sentation of me than I have of myself ? Sure He is right ; and if it contradict my mistaken and sinfully erroneous account of myself, ah ! where am I then ? But, Madam, 1 discourage none. I know that Christ hath made a new marriage- contract of love, and sealed it with His blood, and the trembling believer shall not be confounded. Grace be with you. Yours, at all obedience, in Christ, St. Andrews, May 26, 1658. ►S- -R- 688 LETTER CCCLIV. [1659. CCCLIV. — To my Lady Kenmurb. {PREVAILING DECLENSION, DECAY, AND INDIFFERENCE TO GOD'S DEALINGS— THINGS FUTURE.) ADAM, — I should be glad that the Lord would be pleased to lengthen out more time to you, that ye might, before your eyes be shut, see more of the work of the right hand of the Lord, in reviving a now swooning and crushed land and church. Though I was lately knocking at death's gate, yet could I not get in, but was sent back for a time.^ It is well if I could yet do any service to Hira ; but, ah ! what deadness lieth upon the spirit ! And deadness breedeth distance ■ from God. Madam, these many years the Lord hath let you see a clear difference betwixt those who serve God and love His name, and those who serve Him not. And I judge that ye look upon the way of Christ as the only best way, and that ye would not exchange Christ for the world's god, or their mammon, and that ye can give Christ a testimony of " Chief among ten thousand." True it is that many of us have fallen from our first love ; but Christ hath renewed His first love of our espousals to Himself, and multiplied the seekers of God all the country over, even where Christ was scarce named, east and west, south and north, above the number that our fathers ever knew.^ But, ah ! Madam, what shall be done or said of many fallen stars, and many near to God com- plying wofully, and sailing to the nearest shore ? Yea, and we are consumed in the furnace, but not melted ; burned, but not purged. Our dross is not removed, but our scum remaineth in us ; and in the furnace we fret, we faint, and (which is more strange) we slumber. The fire burneth round about us, and we lay it not to heart. Grey hairs are upon us, and we know it not. It were now a desirable life to send away our love to heaven. And well it becometh us to wait for our appointed change, yet so as we should be meditating thus : " Is there a new world above the sun and moon ? And is there such a blessed company harping and siuging hallelujahs to the Lamb up above ? Why, then, are we taken with a vain life of sighing and sinning ? Oh, ^ Reading the Letters chronoloijically , we are now within two years of his death, but Lady Kenmure survived many years. ^ How interesting is this notice of Revival, prefacing and preparing the church for the days of sore trial that soon burst over Scotland 1 1659.1 LETTER CCCLV. 68^ where is our wisdom, that we sit still, laughing, eating, sleeping prisoners, and do not pack up all our best things for the journey, desiring always to be clothed with our house from above, not made with hands ! " Ah ! we savour not the things that are above, nor do we smell of glory ere we come thither ; but we transact and agree with time, for a new lease of clay mansioiis. Behold, He cometh ! We sleep, and turn all the work of duties into dispute of events for deliverance. But the greatest haste, to be humbled for a broken and buried covenant, is first and last forgotten ; and all our grief is, the Lord lingereth, enemies triumph, godly ones suffer, atheists blaspheme. Ah ! we pray not ; but wonder that Christ cometh not the higher way, by might, by power, by garments rolled in blood. "What if He come the lower way ? Sure we sin, in putting the book in His hand, as if we could teach the Almighty knowledge. We make haste ; we believe not. Let the only wise God alone ; He steereth well. He draweth straight lines, though we think and say they are crooked. It is right that some should die and their breasts full of milk ; and yet we are angTy that God dealeth so with them. Oh, if I could adore Him in His hidden ways, when there is darkness under His feet and darkness in His pavilion, and clouds are about His throne ! Madam, hoping, believing, patient pray- ing, is our life. He loseth no time. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours, at all obliged observance in Christ, St. Andrews, Stxit- 12, 1659. S. R. CCCLV, — To the Presbytery of Kirkcddbright, anent Union, with a desire to have Mr. William Rait Professor at St. Andrews.'^ {UNION— HUMILIATION— CHOICE OF A PROFESSOR.) |EVEEEND, — The desire of your W[isdoms] for union to me, who am below such a public mercy, and of so high concernment to the Church of Scotland, ought to be most acceptable. The name of peace is savoury, both good and pleasant. I so close with your godly and religious 1 From the original among the Wodrow JISS. vol. xxix. 4to, No. 88. The letter is addressed in the back, "For tlie very Reverend and honoured of the Lord, the Moderator and Remanent Brethren of the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright." That Presbytery particularly distinguished itself by its earnest endeavours to restore harmony between the Resolutioners and Protesters ; to which they were stirred up chiefly by Mr. Thomas Wylie. But their laudable efibrts, though partially success- ful in allaying animosity, failed to heal the breach. On this subject, Mr. George 2 X 690 LETTER CCCLV. [1659. aim therein, as judging the Lord hath from heaven suggested to you, and inspired your spirits with, a fervent thirst and intention to promote the Gospel, that though I should judge myself (as in truth I am) lower than to suit ^ from either Presbytery or Synod any favour, yet I shall, in all humility, beseech your W[isdoms] to prosecute with the power which Christ hath given you the work of union ; and so much the more that I must shortly put off this my tabernacle. I offer to your W[isdoms'] serious con- sideration, the evident necessity of union with God, and of a serious and sound humiliation, and lying in the dust before the Lord for a broken covenant, declining from our former love, own- ing of such as we sometime judged to be malignant enemies and opposers of the work of reformation and of the sworn covenant of God, despising of the offered salvation of the Gospel, and cold- ness and indifferency in purging the house of God, and other causes of the sad judgments which we now are under. And my last and humble suit to your 'W[isdoms] is, that ye would be pleased to take in with this union the planting of the New College 2 with a third master. It is a matter that concerns the whole Church of Scotland and seminary of the ministry thereof, and cannot, be done but by a General Assembly. If, therefore, you have, dear brethren, judged me faithful of the Lord, and regard the work of the Lord, and the promoting of the kingdom of Christ (as I nothing doubt but it is the desire of your souls), give commission to the brethren sent to treat for union, at the meeting in Edinburgh or elsewhere, to join their authority and power, such as now may be had, to call, invite, and obtest some godly and able man, to embrace the charge of Professor in the College of Divinity in St. Andrews. And because Mr. William Eait, minister at Brechin, is a man for learning, godliness, prudence, and eminent authority in the Church of Scotland, sought for to the ministry by the town of Edinburgh, and also by Aberdeen, to preach the Gospel and to profess in the College, and hath the approbation of the present masters of the New College, the godly ministers of the Synod of Fife, of the Pres- Hutchison, in a letter to Mr. Thomas Wylie, dated March 12, 1660, says: "That little essay towards union hath been followed with the blessing of nuich less aui- aiosity than was wont to be before, in actiugs and walkings one with another ; thougli, as yet, it is to be regretted that little can be got done for healing particular ruptures of parislies and presbyteries, even upon seeming equal overtures; ami, ii fears me, some elsewhere are more stiff than needful in such an exigent. But I apprehend that either our trials or God's appearing, among others, may press the Ikocessity of union more u})ou us" (Wodrow's MSS. vol. xxix.). ^ Solicit. ^ At yt. Andrews, i66o.] LETTER CCCLVI. 691 bytery of St. Andrews, ministers of the city of St. Andrews, it is my soul's desire, and the heart-cry of students in the College, and of the godly in the city, that Mr. William Eait may be the man ; and that your commissioners may be moved to deal with the commissioners of the Synod of Fife and Angus for that effect ; so shall you be instrumental to repair our breaches, and build His house. So praying that your labours may not be in vain in the Lord,, I rest (the Lord Jesus be with your spirit !) your unworthy brother and fellow-labourer in the Lord, St. Andrews, the 23rd October 1659. S. E. CCCLVI. — To Mr. John Murray, Minister at Methven.^ [Mr. John Murray was une of the Protesters (see Baillie's " Letters ") ; and was committed prisoner to the Castle of Edinburgh for meeting with a few of his brethren to draw up a congratulatory address to Charles IL upon his restoration, expressing their loyalty, and reminding him of the obligation of the Covenant. He was summoned to appear before the Parliament on the charge of high treason, but at length was liberated. About 1672 he was apprehended and imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh for alleged house-conveuticles. "When set at liberty, he was confined to the parish of Queensferry, and ordained to wait upon ordinances and abstain from keeping convencicles, and to attend the parish church. (Wodrow's " History, " vol. ii. )] {A SYNOD PROPOSAL FOR UNION— BRETHREN UNDER CENSURE.) EVEREND AND DEAR BROTHER,— I weuld gladly know the issue of your Synod. We did profess we could not be concluded ^ by the Synod of Fife's [overtures] of union, but upon condition of the taking off the censures of our brethren, which we think injuriously are inflicted. Much is promised to us for the remedying of these censures. I shall believe when I see their performances. I hope you will see that the brethren get no wrong, or the house of God in their persons ; and send me a line of the conclusion of the Synod in that business. The paper of union is very general, and comes to no particulars : it only tells the good of union, and contains some obtestations to us that insinuate the unsavouriness of irregular courses ; yet we thought it not safe to yield to any union of that kind, so long as our brethren are under the censures.^ I much doubt of their honest meaning, and that ^ From the original among the Wotlrow MSS. vol. xxvii. fol. No. 42. ' Determined finaUy. ' Murray, and the other Protesters in the Synod of Perth, acted upon a similar principle. As an instance of this, we may adduce the following extracts from a paper entitled, "The desires of the brethren of the Protesting judgment in the Synod of Perth under-subscribing, unto the Moderator and remanent members of the Synod." They desire, " 1st, That the Synod will declare and enact, that none of the Acts made by the two controverted Assemblies at St. Andrews, Dundee, and at Edinbuigli, in the years 1651 and 1652, appointing censure upon such as will not 692 LETTER CCCLVII. [1660. barriers in the way of entrant ministers and elders be revived. And I see no engagement, so much as verbal, for purging ; but the contrary practice is here. Mr. Robert Anderson ^ is as much opposed as if he were the most corrupt sectary or Jesuit. My wife remembers her to you. Remember me to your own bed-fellow. Grace be with you. Your own brother, St. Andrews, Jan. 26, 1660. S. R. EDINBURGH CASTLE. CCCLVII. — To his Reverend and dear Brethren, Mr. Guthrie, Mr. Traill, and the rest of their brethren imprisoned in the Castle of Edinburyli. [The circumstances of the case to which this letter refers are these : — On the 23rd of August 1660, the following ministers, Mr. James Guthrie of Stirling, Mr. John Stirling and Mr. Robert Traill of Edinburgh, Mv. Alexander MoncriefF of Scoonie, Mr. John Semple of Carsfairn, Mr. Thomas Ramsay of Mordington, Mr. John Scot of Oxnani, Mr. Gilbert Hall of Kirkliston, Mr. John Murray of Methven, Mr. George Nairn of Burntisland, with two gentlemen, ruling elders, met in a private house in Edinburgh, to draw up an humble address to Charles II., congratu- lating his return, and expressing their entire and unfeigned loyalty, but at the same time reminding him of the obligation of the Covenant which he and the nation had sworn. Whilst thus employed, their i)apers were secured, by the order of the Committee of Estates ; and they themselves were arrested, and committed close prisoners to the Castle of Edinburgh.] acknowledge the constitution of these Assemblies, and will not submit unto the Acts tliereof, shall hereafter be of force within the bounds of this Synod 3. That the Synod will declare and enact, that notwithstanding of the sup]xised censures inflicted upon Mr. James Guthrie, minister at Stirling, ' and Mr. James Simpson, minister at Airth, by the pretended Assembly at St. Andrews and Dundee, and of the approbation or intimation thereof by the Synod, that the said Mr. James Guthrie and 5lr. James Simpson are lawful standing ministers of the Gospel in the respective charges of Stirling and Airth, and capable to sit and vote in the Synod and in their own Presbytery, and of every other ministerial privilege and employ- ment" (Wodrow's MSS. vol.' xxvii.). ^ A minister who is mentioned again in Letter CCCLXV. i66o.] LETTER CCCLVJI. 693 {ON SUFFERING FOR CHRIST— GOD' S PRESENCE EVER WITH HIS PEOPLE— FIRMNESS AND CONSTANCY.) EVEREND, NOW VEEY DEAE, AND MUCH HONOUEED PEISONEES FOE CHEIST,— I am, as to the point of light, at the utmost of persuasion in that kind that it is the cause of Christ which ye now suffer for, and not men's interest. If it be for men, let us leave it ; but if we plead for God, our own personal safety and man's deliverance will not be peace. There is a salvation called " the salvation of God," which is cleanly, pure, spiritual, unmixed, near to the holy word of God. It is that which we would seek, even the favour of God that He beareth to His people ; not simple gladness, but the gladness and goodness of the Lord's chosen. And sure, though I be the weakest of His witnesses, and unworthy to be among the meanest of them, and am afraid that the Cause be hurt (but it cannot be lost) by my unbelieving faintness, I would not desire a deliverance separated from the deliverance of the Lord's cause and people. It is enough to me to sing when Zion singeth, and to triumph when Christ triumpheth. I should judge it an unhappy joy to rejoice when Zion sigheth. " Not one hoof " will be your peace. (Exod. x, 26.) If Christ doth own me, let me be in the grave in a bloody winding-sheet, and go from the scaffold in four quarters, to grave or no grave. I am His debtor, to seal with sufferings this precious truth ; but, oh ! when it cometh to the push, I dare say nothing, considering my weakness, wickedness, and faintness. But fear not ye. Ye are not, ye shall not be, alone : the Father is with you. It was not an unseasonable, but a seasonable and a necessary duty ye were about. Fear Him who is Sovereign. Christ is captain of the castle and Lord of the keys. The cooling well-spring, and refreshment from the pro- mises, are more than the frownings of the furnace. I see snares and temptations in capitulating, composing, ceding, minching with distinctions of circumstances, formalities, compliments, and extenuations, in the cause of Christ. " A long spoon : the broth is hell-hot." ^ Hold a distance from carnal compositions, and much nearness to the fountain, to the favour and refreshing light from the Father of lights speaking in His oracles. This is sound health and salvation. Angels, men, Zion's elders, eye * A proverb : ' ' They need a long spoon who sup with the devil. " 694 LETTER CCCLVIJI. [1660. us ; but what of all these ? Christ is by us, and looketh on us, and writeth up all. Let us pray more, and look less to men. Eemember me to Mr. Scott, and to all the rest. Blessings be upon the head of such as are separated from their brethren. Joseph is a fruitful bough by a well. Grace be with you. Your loving brother and companion in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, St. Andbews, 1660. S. R CCCLVIII. — To SEVERAL Brethren. Reasons for petitioning his Majesty after his return, and for owning such as were censured ^ while about so necessary a duty. EVEEEND AND DEAE BEETHEEN,— It is a matter of difficulty to me to write at this distance, not having heard your debates. It seemeth that the Lord calleth us to give information to the King's Majesty of affairs. The Lord's admirable providence, in bring- ing him to his throne, and laying aside others who were sworn enemies to the cause and covenant of God, so that now the Government is in a right line, is to be adored. And I judge (without prescribing) that some should be sent to his Majesty to congratulate that providence ; and that reason of our being so slow in rendering should be rendered. 1. We should write, not in the name of the Kirk of Scot- land, but in the name of a most considerable immber of godly ministers, elders, and professors, who both pray for the King, are obedient to his laws, and are under the oath of God for the sworn Eeformation. 2. It is better now, than after sentences and trouble, to have recourse to him who is by place parens patrice. 3. "We should supplicate in all humility for protection and countenance ; far more for lawful liberty to fear the bond of the oath of the dreadful and most high Lord ; avouching to his Majesty, that the Lord, His holy name being interposed, will own that Covenant, and bless his Majesty with a happy and successful reign, in the owning thereof, and kissing of the Son ' Tliat is, the ministers mentioned in the note prefixed to the preceding letter, who were arrested and imprisoned by the Committee of Estates. i66o.J LETTER CCCLVIIL 695 of God. And when the Lord shall be pleased to grant that to us which concerneth religion, the beauty of His house, the pro- pagating of the Gospel, the government of the Lord's kingdom, without Poperj, Prelacy, unwritten traditions and ceremonies, let his Majesty try our loyalty with what commands he will be pleased to lay on us, and see if we be found rebellious. 4. We should disclaim such as have sinfully complied with the late usurpers ; produce our written testimonies against them ; our not accepting of offices and places of trust from them ; our testimonies against their usurpation, covenant-breaking, toleration of all religions, corrupt sectarian ways, for which the Lord hath broken them. 5. We are represented to his Majesty as such as would not consent that the Remonstrance of the western forces ^ should be condemned by the Commission of the General Assembly ; where- as, 1. We did humbly desire that the judicature should not condemn nor censure that Remonstrance, till the gentlemen were heard, and their reasons discussed. 2. Whatever demur was as to the banding or combining part of it, we were and are obliged to believe that they had no sectarian design therein, nor levelling intention. 3. They are gentlemen most loyal, and never were enemies to his Majesty's royal power; but only desired that security might be had for religion and the people of God, and persons disaffected to religion and • the sworn Cove- nant abandoned ; otherwise they were, and still are, willing to hazard lives and estates for the just greatness and safety of his Majesty in the maintenance of the true religion, Covenant, and cause of God. The only difficulty will be, where to have fit men to send. But as it will be both sin and shame for us to desert our undeservedly now censured brethren, so it will be our sin and reproach sinfully to comply with such things and courses as we testified against, and confessed to God. I can say no more at present but that I am your loving brother, St. Ajjdrews, 1660. S. E. ^ See notice of Colonel Gilbert Ker, p. 649. 696 LETTER CCCLIX. [1660. CCCLIX.— To a Brother Minister. Judgment of a draught or minute of a Petition, to have been presented to the Committee of Estates, by those Ministers who were then prisoners in the Castle of Edinburgh for that other well-known Petition to his Majesty, about which they were when seized upon and made prisoners.^ ["But that no man may mistake or judge amiss of persona so fixed in the cause and faithful in their generations, know that this draught was not sent to Mr. Rutherford as a paper concluded and condescended upon among these brethren, ■whose love to truth made them in all things so tender that they were ever fond to abstain from all appearance of evil. It was more like the suggestion of some other men (wherein was laid before them what kind of address would most probably please, waiving the just measures of what was simply duty in their circumstances), than anything flowing from themselves, as the product of a mature deliberation. And, secondly, know (which confirmeth what was said), that whatever it was, or whoever gave the rise to it, yet it was never made use of, nor presented to the Committee of Estates, by any of these faithful men, whose praise, for their fidelity, fixedness, real and untainted integrity, is in the churches of Christ" (Note by Mr. Robert M'Ward, the original editor of Rutherford's "Letters").] EAE BROTHER, — I am, as ye know, straitened as another suffering man, but dare not petition this Committee : — 1. Because it draweth us to capitulate with such as have the advantage of the mount, the Lord so disposing for the present : and, to bring the matters of Christ to yea and no (ye being jJrisoners and they the powers) is a hazard. 2. A speaking to them in write, and passing in silence the sworn Covenant and the cause of God (which is the very present controversy), is contrary to the practice of Christ and the Apostles, who, being accused or not accused, avouched Christ to be the Son of God and the Messias, and that the dead must rise again, even when the adversary misstated the question. Yea, silence on the cause of God, which adversaries persecute, seemeth a tacit deserting ot the cause, when the state of the question is known to beholders : and I know that the brethren intend not to leave the cause. 3. I know of no offence that you have given (I will not say ^vhat offence may be taken), either as to the matter or manner of your petition. For, if what you have done be a necessary duty laid aside by others, a duty can never give an offence to Christ, and so none to men ; but Christians will look upon a pious, harmless, and innocent petition to the Prince, in the matters of the Lord's honour and the good of His church (though proffered by one or two. when they are silent whose it is to speak and act), as a se;isonable duty. ' Soe note i.rotixed to Letter CCCLVIL, p. 602. i66o.] LETTER CCCLIX. 697 4. The draught of that petition, which you sent me, speaketh not one word of the Covenant of God for the adhering to which you now suffer, and which is the object of men's hatred, and the destruction whereof is the great work of the times. Your silence in this nick of time appeareth to be a non-confession of Christ before men ; and you want nothing to beget an uncleanly deliverance but the profession of silence. 5. There is a promise and real purpose, as the petition saith, to live peaceably under the King's authority. But, 1. Ye do not answer candidly and ingenuously the mind of the rulers, who, to your knowledge, mean a far other thing by authority than ye do. For ye, mean, his just authority , his authority in the Lord, and his just greatness, in the maintenance of true religion, as in the Covenant, Confession of Faith, and Catechisms, is expressed from the Word of God : they mean his supreme authority, and absolute prerogative above laws, as their acts make clear, and as their practice is. For they refused, to such as were unwilling to subscribe their bond, to add " authority in the Lord," or, "just and lawful authority," or "authority as it is expressed in the Covenant." But this draught of a petition, under your own hand, yieldeth the sense and meaning to them which they crave. 2. That authority for which they contend is exclusive of the sworn Covenant ; so that, except ye had said, " We shall be subject to the King's authority in the Lord, or according to the sworn Covenant," ye say nothing to the point in hand ; and that, sure, is not your meaning. 3. Whoever promised so much peaceable living under his Majesty's authority, leaving out the exposition of the fifth commandment, as your petition doth, may upon the very same ground subscribe the bond refused by the godly ; and so you pass from the Covenant, and make all those by-past actings of this Kirk and State, these years by-past, to be horrid rebellion ! And how deep that guiltiness draweth, consider. 6. A condemning of the Eemonstrance, simply and without any limitation and distinction, is a condemning of many precious ones in the land, and a passing from the causes of God's wrath, which is the chief matter of the Eemonstrance. 7. That nothing is before your eyes but the exoneration of your conscience, is indeed believed by the godly who know you ; but a passing in silence of the honest materials in your former petition to his Majesty peemeth to be a de^ertin*? thereof, since. in all your petition, ye do not once say ye cannot but adhere to 698 LETTER CCCLX. [1660. that pious petition, as your necessary duty. And, that ye intend in the petition the happiness of his Majesty, is also believed. Dear brother, show to our brethren, that the Lord Christ, in your persons, hath a stated question betwixt Him and the powers on earth. The only wise God lead you now, when He hath brought you forth in public, so to act as if ye did see Jesus Christ by you, and beholding you. It is easy for sucli as are on the shore to throw a counsel to those that are tossed in the sea ; but, only by living by faith, and by fetching strength and comfort from Christ, can you be victorious, and have right to the precious promises " of the tree of life," " of the hidden manna," of the gifted " morning star," and the like, made to those who overcome : to whose strength and grace, brethren who, desire with me to remember you do recommend you. I am, dear brother, Yours, in the Lord, St. Andrews, 1660. S. K. CCCLX.-^i^or fhe Right Honourable my Lady Viscountess of Kenmure. [On the imprisonment of the Marquis of Argyle.] GOnS JUDGMENTS CALLING TO FLEE TO HIM— THE RESULT OF TIMID COMPLIANCE.) ADAM, — It is not my part to be unmindful of you. Be not afflicted for your brother, the Marquis of Argyle.^ As to the main, in my weak apprehension, the seed of God being in him, and love to the people of God and His cause, it will be well. The making of particular reckoning with the Lord, and of peace with God, and owning of His cause when too many disown it, will make his peace with the King the surer.^ The Lord is beginning to reckon with such as did forsake His cause and covenant ; and until we return to Him, our peace shall not be like a river and as the waves of the sea. However, the opening of the bosom to take in all the Malignants can produce no better fruits. The Lord calleth us ^ A fortnight before this was written, viz. on 8th July 1660, the King had committed the Marquis to the Tower, on an unfounded charge of treason, Ruther- ford did not live to see the issue. ' " His heavenly King, whom he has faithfully owned, as well as in private conscientiously served, will on that account all the more stand by him, in the question of his earthly King being reconciled to him." The hopes of his friends, however, were not realized ; for next year (on 27th May 1661) he was beheaded at Edinburgh. i66o.] LETTER CCCLXI. 699 to flee into our chambers, and shut the doors, till the indignation be over. (Isa. xxvi. 20.) The lily among the thorns is so served. He hideth Himself, and our mountain is removed, and we are troubled. But the Lord reigneth ; let the earth tremble, and let the earth rejoice. The Lord, without blood, broke the yoke of usurping oppressors, and laid them aside : the same Lord can settle throne and kingdom on the pillars of heaven. But, oh, the controversy the Lord hath with Edom, and those who cove- nanted with us, and then sold us ; and with those of whom the Holy Ghost speaketh, " Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee ; they have not discovered thine iniquity to turn away thy captivity, but have seen for thee false burdens, and causes of banishment" (Lam. ii. 14). The time of Jacob's suffering is but short, and the vision will speak. Could we be from under deadness, and watch unto wrestling and prayer with the Lord, and live more by faith, we should be more than con- querors. Wait upon the Lord ; faint not. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit. Yours, at all respective observance in the Lord, St. Andeews, Jvly 24, 1660. S. K. \^k CCCLXI. — Fa,ssing by. 122. By -gone ; passed away. 71, etc. By-gones; things forgotten. 62, 72. By-good, or bye-good; an object in addition to some other good. 195. By -hand ; aside. 72, 276, By -look , side-look. 249. By -past ; time that has elapsed, oi recently, as a thing done. 190 By-purne ; a side purse, away from the other. 284. By-work; work done at leisure time only. 191. Canny ; prudent, cautious and skilful. Adv., cannily. 69. Card ; chart or map. 69, 232. Cast ; participle, casten : throw or fling. 324. — Cast the balance; turn the scale. 153. — "To cast at;" be sulky, quarrel with. 4, 23.—" To cast up;" to upbraid. — "To cast out with;" quarrel. 224, 254. — "Cast a knot;" tie so as not to sUp. 122. Cast, a Noun; lot, fate. "Common cast ; " a providence occurs often in Brovra of Wamphray. 185, 265. Casualty; emoluments beyond the stated yearly dues paid to the superior. 240, 253. Oauldri/e ; susceptible of cold ; luke- warm. 198. Cawms ; a mould. 282. — if OM^da being often made of pipe-clay, it became customary to call pipe-clay "caum- stone." Baillie in his "Letters" spells it "caulms." In Gaelic, cuma means a pattern, or shape. Causey (Fr., chausie); the public street. "To keep the crown of the causey " is to make bold appearance in the public street in open day. 52, 59, 69, 181. The streets in those days were raised in the middle, and had gullies on either side. The French had the phrase, "Tenir le haut du pav^." See "Notes and Queries," March 29, 1873. Caution; security, surety. 2, 19, etc. — Adj., Cautionary. 187. And as Noun, suretyship. 114. Challenge; charge, upbraiding, accusa- tion. 2, 10, etc. Cheap is connected with "chapman;" from the old English "chap," a bargain. The phrase ' ' Better cheap." 216, 293.— And so "Good cheap," properly "a good barga n." Chirurgeon ; surgeon. 293, 295. Greek and Latin word. GLOSSARY. 721 Clap; something done unexpectedly. "I71 a clap;" like thunder suddenly heard. 264. Clay; earth, earthenware. 291, etc. — "Clay- banks," 300. So "Clay- heavens," 294 ; " clay -pawns," 300, bodies of dust. Cleck ; to hatch a brood, swarm. 281. Clipped ; coin not of full weight. 81. Clog ; to adhere ; form an encumbrance. 249.— Used in old English. Close, a Noun ; the lane or porch leading into the house. 157. Close, Adv. ; "dose off," completely. 50, 82 (like the phrase close-shaven), 88. Closet-ward ; guard -room. 254. Coast; to sail near land, sail from one port to another. 301. Coastful ; full to the utmost shore. 201. Corj ; to fix the teeth of a wheel, and so stop its motion ; put on a drag. 51, 194, 229. Coldlike ; like a fire going out ; hope abating. 179. Coldrife, 19S.— See Cauldrife. "How coldrife and indifferent are ye ! " (Sermon on Isa. xlix. 1-4). Chilly, heartless. Common; alluding to persons sharing at a common table in College. As this was a privilege enjoyed by special favour, ' ' To he in one's common " is to be indebted to, under obligation to. 42, 52, 157, 252, etc. — "To quit commons" (214); to be freed from obligation by requiting the person. In 275 and 285, "It is ill my common " seems to mean. It ill becomes me, having no right. Communion; the dispensing of the Lord's Supper. 14, 20, 25, etc. Companionry ; companionship. 147, 280. — The termination "ry" marks plurality in old English. Compear ; appear judicially, at the bar. 3, etc. Compearance ; the act of appearing in court in obedience to a citation. Compose; compromise. 357. — Com- position, in same sense. Comprize ; to arrest by a writ ; attach by a legal process. 130, 160, 171. Seize for debt. 184, 206, etc. Conciotial. 179. — See note. Concredit ; entrust. 260. Used often by Dickson on Job. Conquest; written also conquess ; ac- quisition, made not by inheritance but by purchase and exertion. 2, 54, 79, 182, 190, 191.— "The young heir knows not how hard the con- quest was to his poor father" (Sermon at Anwoth on Zech. xi. 9). Conscionable; according to conscience, reasonable, just. 365. Considerable ; worthy of consideration or regard. 321, 331. Construct ; for construe. 361, etc. Contestation; strife. 189. Contrair ; adversary, contrary to. 6. Convoy ; to accompany a friend on the way. 210, 230, 231. Couchers ; cowards ; or rather lazy fellows. Fr., coucher, to lie down. 251. (7oM?j<; to lay the count. 289. To settle, balance. Country, in opposition to city ; common, in contrast to fine. 153, 353. Coup; to upset, overturn. 120. Court. " No great court ;" no influence. 78, 141, 148, 151, 158, 183, etc.— "To he in court," in favour. See " Sermons." Cow ; to cut out, eat up, carve (Fr., couper). 170, 178. Cripple; halting. 258. Crook ; to walk crookedly, lamely ; halt. 233, 299. Cry down; depreciate, cause to lose good name. 280. — As a Noun. 289. — "Cry," proclamation, 289. Cuff; a blow with the hand. 130. Cumber; trouble. 196. — Adj., "cum- bersome." 292. Daft; foolish, crazy. 93, 285.— "A daft young heir " (Sermon on Zech. xi. 9). Dainty ; that has in it something fine, 301. Dawted ; made a favourite, petted. 89, 98, ICG. — "Dawted Davie;" a petted child. 110.— " Better be God's sons than the world's dawtiea" (Sermon on Isa. xlix. 1). Daylight ; note in 315. 2 z 72a GLOSSARY, Dead; in the expression, " Dead- aweer," thoroughly lazy ; as in- capable of moving as one dead. 105. Deaf nuts ; no kernel in them. 138. Dear ; where provision is sold at a high price. 84. Deave, from deaf; to make deaf j dis- tract. 286. Decore ; to adorn. 42. — {La,t,, decorus.) Decourt ; to discard, send out of court. 188, 197, 284. Decreet; a judicial sentence. 3, 12, 132, etc. Depone ; state as a witness. 180. Depursement ; same as disbursement. 59. — Q.d., taking out of the purse, or bourse (291). Dew; a Verb ; to moisten. 333. Din; noise. 38, 59, 100, 155, 249, 282, 325. Di7ig ; knock in with violence. 248. Dint; the stroke, or force. 332. — Zachary Boyd speaks of " The dint of God's judgments." Dispone; make over. 19, 261. Disrespective ; disrespectful. 300. — See Hespective. Ditty, or Dittay ; indictment, ground of accusation. 12, 44, 180, 233. Do. "To do for;" to act for; make etfortfor ; accomplish a thing. 93, 116, 135, 162, 206, 228, 244.— See Ps. cix. 21. Dool-like ; in mourning guise. 268. — i>ooZ; grief ; "Dolor."' 272, Doomster; pronouncer of sentence. 229. Dorta ; the sulks, offence taken. 23, 70, 89. DoM^^e ; a duplicate. 353. Doxo ; to be able; can. 23, 260, etc. — Dought is the past tense. Hogg's " Queen's Wake " uses the perf. : "She turned away and dought luck naemair." So Letter 74, "dought." Draff -polce; the beggar's bag, for carrying anything put in. 249. — Draff ; a useless thing; "draught," Matt. XV. 17. "Corruption like a draff- poke at my heels" (Eliz. West). Draught ; plans dra\vn out and sketched. 14. Draw; in the sense of "remove;" table drawTi. 146, In Lady llontague's Letters, "drawing-room, or wit/idraiving room, as they now say." Z)/aw 6^' ; draw aside. 11. Draw-hiol; a slip-knot, easily loosened. 51. Dreary ; sad. 87. Drink over the board ; renounce. Drink-silver ; gift, or token of regard for kindness shown or service done, — a gift to servants. 119. — Drink- money, 277 ; the same. Drouthy ; from "drought;" very dry. 256. Drumbled ; made muddy ; troubled water. 153. Dry; reserved, backward. 181, 182, 187, 206, etc. Dumps; bad humour. 187. Dwine ; to pine away. 85, 169, etc. Dyke; a wall. 194, 276, etc. Dyvour ; a debtor ; sometimes a bank- rupt— Fr., ^^ Devoir.' Zi'aniesi ; the foretaste. 179. Ease-room ; a room for pleasure or repose, 5, 247, 311. Ebb, Adj. ; shallow, like tide going back. 94, 120, etc.— Ebbness. 175. Edge by ; imsh aside. 225. Evipawn ; lay down as pledge. 229, 2G8. Enact ; to decree. 291. "End;" thrice on end. 324.— Thrice in succession. Engyne, or ingyyie ; Latin, Ingeniuvi, disposition, ability, policy. 84, 94. — Power of mind. 64. Entire ; no division or half-heartedness. 119, 280. Errand; business. 210, 250. — "Ride his errands," 249, go on with his work. Evangel ; good news generally. 224. Even ; to put dowTi one as capable of a thing ; propose as fit for a person, 70. — The phrase, "Be even with;" have accounts settled, be quits. 113, 114. Evil-worthy; unworthy, ill-worth. 336. Expone ; explain the sense. 165. Eye, Verb ; to look for. 276. Eye-sweet; pleasant to the eye. 213, 277. GLOSSARY. 723 Fail, OT feal; turf. 194. Fain; glad. " FaiiUes," most gladly. "Fain not tmce " is glad to remain settled ; not caring to rise after sitting down. "Fain have taken effect," 16; desire to have carried through. J'owV; a market. 172, Fcdr; Adj. in the phrase, "fair fire," is commonly in Scotland "a fair lowe," i.e. all a flame together. 2QL—" Fair fall you," good betide. 337. Faird, or fard; to paint (q.d. make fair), embellish, disguise. 82, 83 88, 191. Fair-oiUslded. 88.— AppUed to the world that is fan- only on the outside. Fall about; search about. 21.— " Fall by;" be lost. 252, 2n. — " Fall to;" engage in. 72, 2Bd,.—" Fall off;" forsake. 246. Far. "The/ar end," the final issue. 184.- Fard; paint, fine coloming. 82, 83. Farm-room; a rented room, like a tenant's firm. Fasha.nd fashery ; trouble by impor- tunity ,and about little things. 145, 196, 249, etc. Fast; firm, 74, 250. Feared; alarmed, timid. 293. Feckless; worthless, useless, pithless. 23, 24, etc.— Baxter in his "Saints' Rest " uses it. Fenced; guarded; also constituted; a law term, used of opening a Court and proclaiming the authority by which the Court was held and the object of it. 77,82,112,146,161. Fend; provide for, take care of, 87, 114, 129, etc. So Maxton on Ps. cxix. cxlv. Fetch; to make for a place. 83, 106, 184, 240, 241, 284. Feu-duty; yearly rent for ground on which a house is built. 254. Find; to feel, or find out. 155, 169, 192, 334. Fire-flaught; a flake of fire, a flash of lightning. 104.— In Row's "Hist, of Scot.," "extraordinary thunder and fire-flaught," p. 333. Flitting ; removing furniture and goods place. 250, 277. (It 50. to another is A.S.) Flourish ; to blossom. Fhjte; to scold or chide. 189,—" Flyt- ing free ; " they have nothing to say against him. 181. Foot. The phrase, < ' hold the foot to it," go on in the march. 249. Foot-mantle ; a riding habit reaching to the feet. 268.-In a sermon on Zech. xi. 9, "Gold, silks, velvets, and foot-mantles, and high horses." For; notwithstanding, 307. I Forcasten; cast away, neglected. 167 177, 285. Fore; surplus; the perquisite given over and above ; something still re- maining. 70, 80, 158, Foregainst ; opposite, 289, Forfeit ; declare to be forfeited, 206. Forlorn; prodigal. 167, 228, 285,— "The lost forlorn son" is the prodigal. (So in German.) Forthcoming; ready to come forward and speak. 250, Four-hours; the afternoon meal, taken four hours after the forenoon's. 94, 110, 118, 285, Fourteen Prelates; the number of Bishops in Scotland under Charles II. Frame ; to fit or set ( Judg. xii. 6 ; Hos. V. 4), set in a proper position ; turn out, or succeed. 32, 41, 187, 232 254, 287. Fraught; the same as/ra^/t;;. 84, 153, 195, 217.—" Fraught-free ; " no faie to pay. 265. Freeholding ; lands held for life. 203. Free-tvard; liberty. 269. Free-warders ; prisoners who have right to go free. 265. Frem, A. S., "fremd;" hence written "fremd" or fremmyt;" strange, foreign, distant, 69, 165, Friend-sted; to befriend. 188, 275. Frith ; strait ; sea. 84. Fryst, or frist; to postpone possession or action, — the opposite of tryst. 176, 205, etc. Give credit to. 105. Put off a demand. 20. Fyle ; to defile, find guUt. 212. Gaddy ; fond of gadding about. 270. Oardies, or gardess ; tLvmB. 18. — It ia 724 GLOSSARY. the Gaelic word "gairdean," an arm. lu Row's "Life of Blair " (p. 154), "Mrs, Hamilton came up to Traquair, and fest-grip his gardie." Oate ; road, way, manner of doing. 29, 38, etc. — The phrase, "start to the gate," begin early, soon on the road. 136, 148, 186, 294. Oawd ; trick, bad custom. 240. — Used by Gawin Douglas and by Chaucer for a freak, and said to be from Fr., "gaudir," to be merry. Gear; goods, substance, money, 120. Oeneral; not at all familiar. 205. " In fair generals." 93. Not coming to close quarters. Oifted; bestowed as a favour. 853, 359. — Often so used in his " Covenant of Life Opened. " Make a present of. Olaiked, or glaiket ; giddy, light. 284. Glance; bright as glowing metal. So in his sermon on Zech. xiii. 7. 287, 295. Glister; glitter, shine bright. 51. — See Luke ix. 21. Gloom; frown, sullen look. Verb and Noun. 187, 266,;etc.— " The sad and glooming cross" ("Christ Dying"). Goodman, or gudeman ; one who holds his house or lands from a superior ; unlike laird, who owns no superior but the king. 16, 18, etc. — Good- wife. 34. — See Luke xii. 39. Good cheap; very cheap, gratuitous. But probably cheap is here a Noun, "chap," equivalent to "bargain." 104, 105, 121, 186, 215, 245, 249. — "Better cheap." 216. — SeeCJieap. Gone; ruined, hopeless. 183. Gowk; a simpleton. — " Goivket," acting like a simpleton, or put in a foolish position. 151, 232, 256. Grace ; to give favour and honour to a person, to adorn ; sometimes to get mercy. 12, 29, 133, 237, 275. Grammercy ; thanks. 249. — French, " grand-merci. " Green; to long after. 85, 160, 213, 226, etc. Grip; a grasp, firm hold, clasp. 22, 24, etc. — "Grips," close quarters, fight. 294. Ground; bottom. 85, 99, 203, 287. Out at the ground. 287. — "Ground- stone ; " foundation-stone ; from the very foundation. 74, 82, 248. — " Grounds ; " dregs of a cup. 251 . Guide ; to manage or to make use of. 256, 275. Guise; manner, way (French). 101, 164, 172. — Bunyan, in his History of Badman : " One guise for abroad, another for home." Gutters; pools of dirty water, marks made by the tears that soil the face. 138, 194. Hable ; able. Fr., habile. 325.— Rol- lock (Lect. li.), "hability and strength." Trappe on Kom. vi. 22, "Our hability for obedience." Halfer; an equal sharer. 200, 245, 249. — "Written " halver" also. Half-hungered ; left in a hungry state. 26. Half-marrow; a married partner. 183, 270, Half-tiner; half- loser. 182. Hall; the "hall-house, or ha-house, the mansion-house. So in sermon on John XX. 13, 285. — Hall-binks; seats of honour. Handfoit ; to join hands in betrothing, to affiance. 143, 173, 225. Handgrips ; grasping close. 87, 106. Handsel; to use for the first time. 239. Handtvrite; written with one's own hand. 270. Hard. — See Heads, Hardly ; with dif&culty. 232. Haunt up; be up frequently in his company. 84. — FuUerton of Earl- ton, in his "Turtle Dove," speaks of Christ and His saints; "with whom espoused now He haunts in heavens of bliss." Hause; to clasp or close with. 69. — Gawin Douglas uses it for "em- brace;" from "hals," the neck or throat. Have; to "have over," to let alone, be done with. 87, 106. Head of Wit; a wiseacre, one who affects to have much wisdom. 230, 234. — "Hard-heads ;" the name of a small coin. 270. — Knox's " History," etc. See note in Letter 270. GLOSSARY. 72s Heap-mete; heaped up measure, full measure. 249. Hear ; to attend, to treat, serve. 195. Heartsome; happy, cheerful. 32, 51, 167. — " Clear, bright, and heart- some morning" (Sennon on Zech. xi. 9). So heartful. 99. Heaven-name ; name he hears in heaven. .301. Hell-hot ; hot as hell. 357. Hereaway ; in this quarter. 50, 286, 336, etc. In this present life, in this world. Herry ; cruelly spoil, or rob. 52. Het>p ; hank or hasp of yarn. 196. Hide; the sldii. 198.— In "Christ Dying," he speaks of the skin or hide of the visible hearers. " Hing; for hang. 104, 249. Ho ; cessation, to cause to stop. 167. Hold-draw; struggle with. 137. Holding ; tenure. 284. So in sennon on Rev. xix. Hole (sometimes spelt "holl"); to make a hole, to pierce, dig out. 103, 177, \m.— "Holey," or "holie;" full of holes. 83, 196, 258. Homely ; familiar, at home with one. 59, 105, 130, etc. Home over ; homewards. 28, 205, 211, etc. Homeward ; in its own favour. 163. Honesty ; kindly dealing, 69-76. Hook; sickle, reaping-hook. 16, 21, 224, etc. "Mowers with the scythe and hook." Sermon at Kirkmabreck, 1630. Hope ; consider, 204, 295. Horning ; a legal demand for payment of a debt under threat of imprison- ment and being proclaimed rebels. It used to be proclaimed by sound of horn in the market-place. 130. Horologue ; a watch. From the Greek. — An old tower at Montrose bore the name of "The Horologue Tower." 238, 289. Rutherford in a sermon before the House of Lords speaks of " Time's horologue, set agoing by God at the Creation." House; "take up Ids house." 250. Enter on housekeeping. Howheit ; although. — See our Version of the Bible. Huge; vast, very great. 189, 288, etc. — " I am hugely pleased with your letter," says Waterland, in a letter to T. Boston (App. to Life). In Forbes, on Rev. xix., "huge matter of God's praise." In Rutherford's Treatise on Prayer, "heaven is a huge thing," p. 97. 305. Hungredly ; on spare diet. 282. Hungry of heart ; heart - hungered. 203. If; but that. 342.— 0 if. 206. ///; in the phrase, "III to please," difficult to please, 131. Ill-flitten ; misplaced. 106. Q.d. re- moved to a wrong place. Til-friended; without friends. 96. — Zachary Boyd uses this word in "Last Battle," p. 410. Ill-learned ; taM^it &\i\. 276. ni-ravelled ; sadly entangled. 196. Ill-ivaled ; ill-selected. 326. Ill-washen; dirty. 227, etc Improbation ; action to prove forgery, or that the person had no right to what he claimed. 178. Incontinently ; immediately, as if un- able to restrain himself. 241. Indent. Its common English sense oc- curs in Letter 2S8, to set in corre- sponding notches. But also to sign a paper containing agreement to certain articles. 173. — Zachary Boyd's "Samson" has, "As I in- dented, so I'll undertake." Ingyne. 64. — See Engym. Inhibit ; forbid. Instant ; earnest. 16. Instruct of; instruct concerning. 225. Instruments, to take ; to take dotcuments from the band of the proper party by way of attestation. 107, 110, 144, etc. Interdict ; forbid by positive injunction to do or use a thing for a time, to enter on possession. Into; for in. 336.— Rollock (Lect. xlvii.) : "When the Spirit is wrest- ling into us." Intromit; intermeddle, a law phrase ; handle. 82, 105. 726 GLOSSAR Y. In-under ; close under. 260. Irresponsal ; not able to pay, insolvent. 104, 204. Jealoiisy ; suspicion. So the Adjective. 74, 144, 148, 152, etc. Joule ; to bend down, in order to escape a storm or a stroke ; to dissemble, compromise. 16, 181, 284. Kep ; intercept, catch when falling, 165. Kind; nature. 276. — "Man doth Us kind in committing evil," says Trappe on Gen. vii. 21 ; that is, does what his nature leads to. Kindly ; what our kindred give us right to. 261. Also according to nature ; natural. 66, 98, 102, 254. —In "Christ Dying" (p. 30) we find, "The life of Christ had in- firmities kindly to it." Kingly. 55, 61, 281, 363 ; and used by him on his deathbed. Kinless ; who have no kindred. 250. Knot; difficulty to be solved. 312. — Rollock (Lect. li. ) speaks of "get- ting office with a knot " — a difficulty accompanying it. Knottlneas ; full of knots. 287. Lair; a bog. 110. "To lair" is to stick in the mire. Laird. — See Goodman. Lap ; the loose part or fold of a garment. 78. Laitrealion ; obtaining or conferring academic honours. 274. Law-biding. 106, 231, 299.— See Bide. Law-burrows; giving a pledge not to injure. — See Burrows. 61, 66, 163, 184, 275, etc. Lea; an unploughed part of a field, where the grass grows. 75, 234. Lead. In the phrase, " Lead stones to a wall ; " convey them, q.d. by leading the horse and cart. 24. Leal; honest, genuine, loyal. 182, 225. Ijearn ; in the sense of "to teach." 175, 199, 222.— (German, "lehren.") Leave ; dismissal from s situation. 277, 311. Leavings ; the overplus of the feast. Leek; aleak. 130. — In Row's "History" (398) we find, "The ship being leek." Leel-come ; what has been got in an honest way. 182. i/ee-S(cZe; sheltered side. 115. Leme ; earthen; our "loam." Lat., " Hmiis." 182.— In Row's " Hist." (260), "A leme pig" is an earthen jug. Rutherford in a sermon on Dan. vi. 26 speaks of the potter making a " leme vesseh" Let; to hinder. — "To let in," to admit. To let on. 182. To seem to notice. Lift ; part of a load. 298. Lightly, a Verb ; to trifle with. 201, 260, 272. Knox and Rollock use this word. Like; same as likely; probable. 21, 267, 384.—" Thelike of;" such as. 92, 158, 275, 284, 336. Lippen ; to trust, entrust. 69, 182, 260. Lith ; a joint. — " The shoulder-blade out oflitk." Sermon, 1634. The A.S. word for the joints of the body. 86, 167. Lone; one's self, alone. 49, 162, 192, etc. Long. "Think long;" to weary for. 14, 93, etc. Loof ; the palm of the hand. — Gaelic, "lambh." 77, 122. Look by ; neglect, look aside. 23. Loun; a rogue, worthless fellow; q.d, low one. 116, 160, 232, 241. Love-blinks; love-glances. Low ; of low stature. 236. Lucks - head ; chance of winning, prospect of success. 178, 182. Brown of Wamphray, p. 150, "Swan-Song." Lust ; to desire a thing. 226, 276. Lustred ; made to shine, 89, 117, 191. —Noun, 75, 260, 289, 295, 297, 298. A fair, shining look. Mail; rent, tax. — " Mail free;" rent free. 29, 50, 284, 321. Mailing; sometimes written "mealing ;" a farm, for which rent is paid. 29, 50. Make; to mould, turn to use. 145. GLOSSARY. 727 MoJce, on ; to make up by putting the fuel in order. 32. Make up with. 247. Become friends with. Man, a Verb ; " to man the house," act as the goodman of the house, at- tending to visitors, etc. 142. March-houndary ; limit. 82, etc. — " March - stones ; " 278. In his Treatise on Prayer, he calls Christ, as God-man, "the common march- stone." Market-sioeet (like " eye - sweet ") ; pleasing to the frequenters of the market ; suitable for sale, and so set up in open market. 213, 216, 237. Marrow; a match, companion. 26, 133, 148, etc. — "Man-owless" occurs, 180. Unequalled ; peerless. Mash ; to infuse. 287. Jtfas^eWess; owned of no one. 120. Mealing. — See Mailing. 50. Mean; to consider, reckon. 8G, 250. Noun ; resource, 257. Meikle ; much. ' ' Meikle world's good, as much as having a world's good things. 165, 180, 225. Melancholious ; melancholy. 293. Mends; reparation of a wrong. 14. — " To the viends;" to boot, besides, add to that. M'rfses ; means, instrumentality. 190, 317. Mid-way ; courses. 190. — Hal f and half, undecided. Minch ; cut into small pieces. 127. Mind ; remember, take care to speak of. 333, 334, 342. Mint ; to attempt, intend at doing, essay. 29, 92, 188, etc. Mired ; plunged into mire, soiled. 174. Misbelief ; wrong belief. 112, 143. Miscall ; give wrong names to. 322, etc. Misconstruct ; misconstrue, 285. Miscount; erroneous calculation. 133. Misken ; to misunderstand, overlook, to treat as if unknown. 89, 99, 102, 148, 181, etc. Misleard ; indiscreet, rude; q.d. mis- learned, 112, 181. Mismannered ; unmannerly, lOG. Misnurtured ; ill-disciplined, ill-trained. 181, 234. Missive ; a letter empowering the person to act. 142. Misted.— See Bemisted. 118,146. Like one in a mist. Moderate, a Verb ; to rule over a meet- ing. 203. — An ecclesiastical phrase from the Latin. Moneys; price. 281. Moyen ; means ; interest ; influence. 59, 116, 119, etc. Muir -ground ; waste land covered with heath. 157, 298. Naughty ; vile, worthless. 77, 81, etc. — Bunyan calls Badman, "a man left to himself, a naughty man." Nay-say; denial. 80, 231. — In a ser- mon on Zech. xiii. 7 : " Christ gave the devil three nay-says." Near -hand; near at hand. 29, 79, 191, etc. Need-force ; by sheer necessity ; or, by hook or crook. 71, 179, 205, etc. Under plea of necessity. Nether ; the lower ; not high enough. 245. Newings; novelties; q.d. neio thhigs. 29. Nice; chary, capricious, ill to please. 81, 226. Nick ; mark, notch, point. 70, 249, etc. Niffer ; exchange, barter. 140, etc. Nigh-hnnd ; near. 183, 347. Night-glass ; hour-glass. 281. Non-entry ; monej', or rents, duo to the superior by an lieir on coming to his property ; or the state of one who is heir, but has not yet got the legal investiture. 222, 256. Nor; than. 144, 307. Noughty ; useless, worthless, nothing in it. 175, 200, 225.— Sibbs, "Others that are nought " (on 2 Cor. i. 4). Nurture ; discipline. 70, 98, 206.— The Verb, to use discipline. 299. Odds; difference. 294. —Also odd; any leisure time. Of. The use of the preposition " of " is common and peculiar to the time in such phrases as "Dear of a drink of water ; " at the price of. 148. — "Content of." 45. — "Understood of." 51. — Is it from the French 728 GLOSSARY. "de?" Olil Chaucer sings: "And all tlie orient laiiglietli of delight" (Knight's Tale). Off-fallings ; droppings, remnants, 70, ]69, 285. John Livingstone writes : "Compared vith Christ Pliniself, what is all this hut the off-fallinrjs." Oh if. ISO, 204, etc.— "OA if," 152. What would you say if. Oh that! in the sense of Alas I 189. So "Oh for." 97. Old-dated; antiquated, 320. Once ; one time or other, sooner or later. 62, 112, 143, 152, 170, 217, 255, 270, 330. Knox uses it often thus. Also, once for all ; alto- gether. Once-errand ; on the sole hiisiness. 210, 301. Opimsiies ; opponents. 231. Or.— See Then. Order ; take order is an old English phrase for " take measures." 18. Ordinarily ; usually. 144. Other; ought else. 68, 77. — Others; each other. 82. Out, a Noun ; laying out, exhibiting for sale. 277. , Outcast ; a contention, quarrel. 239, 274, 275. — In a sermon on Zech. xiii. 7 he says : ' ' After a sore outcast, there is greater love be- twixt Christ and His people than before." Outfeld ; waste laud, covered with heath. 256, 261. Outgate ; way of escape, outlet. "Make home over us, go homeward." Over; in the phrase "over-little," too little. 257. Overmist ; rise over like a mist. 189. Over-ioatered ; plated over. 299. Oyess ; the French Oyez ; the crier's "Hearken." The Verb, to de- nounce one by public proclamation. 249. Paces (from French " pcser," to weigh, and old English "to paise"); the weights of a clock. He uses the same figure in a sermon on Song V. 1. 189, 197, 199, 292. Packald ; burdens, things packed up. 198. Packs, or paiks ; a severe blow. " Paiks the man," the man soundly beaten. 138. Pact. 230. Paiks.— Sco Paclc^. Painful; taking pains, laborious. 188, — Sec Baxter, etc. Paintry ; painting. 83. Panged; quite full, crammed; "Pang- full." 225. Pantry, a Verb ; to lock up in the cup- board. 110. Pasch ; Passover, or Easter. 51. (Acta xii. 4 ; vatr^a.) Pass from ; used of a summons ; not enforce it. Passmcnts ; strips of lace sewed on dress by way of ornament. 42, 75, 275. Pawn; pledge. " Pawn-clay ;" a thing of dust, and that is only partlj' ours. 77, 130, 139. Perqueer ; the French par cmur ; by heart, perfectly. 204. Pertinacy ; same as pertinacity. Piclde ; small grain. 22, 186, 197. Piece-ivithered ; withered patches. 254. Pinning; a small stone to fill up a crevice. 211, 239. In a sermon on Zech. xi. 19 he says: "Would they give Christ no room ? Jlight theynothave made Him apinning ?" IJ. Blair's " Life " (p. 115). "Weak pinnimjs are very useful in building a wall ; and so are graces, though they are not the i'oundation." Playmal-er ; director of the jilay. 70, Pica ; a quarrel between parties. 240, etc. Plenishing ; furniture, possessions. 4, 133, 258. The Verb, fill. 247, 250, 326. Ply; a fold or turn. Verb; to ply, applied to a ship. 95, 105, 152. Poind; to distrain, make seizure ol goods. 160. "Drive the poind" is to drive away the cattle thus seized. Point ; to fill up crevices in a wall with lime and little stones. 299. Port; gate. 241, 336, 339.—" He went out at the ports, bearing His cross." Sermon on Heb. xii. Pose; a hoard, store. 206. — In a sermon by Kutherford, wo find GLOSSARY. 729 the "miser's hoard" called " tlie wretcli's pose." Prevent; anticipate. 297. Be first in acting. Prig ; to chaffer or higgle about a thing. 21, 81. Proctor-fee. 285. A fee to the pro- curator, one who manages a cause, paid when the suit is ended. Professor ; in the sense of confessing or professing the faith. 105, 284, 292, 304. Proline ; Noun and Verb ; hold out a gift, to present. 37, 88, 130, 165. Used as a Noun, 29. Put; to "put" as a ram, push, help. — "Put by;" to put away from, cause to pass by. 111. — "Put it doivn;" make it more easily swallowed. 62. — ' ' Put off; " .spend time. 162. Also, put aside as finished. 1 90. — " Put to;" apply ; also to shut. 97, 275. — "Put tiporl;^' urge, to set on one in the way of importunit}'. 7, 12. — To cause difiiculty. 319. — "Put up;" push up. 29. Quarrelous.; fault-finding, provoking to quarrels. 184, 189, 239.— He v.Tites it "querulous" in his "Christ Dying," p. 179: "Querulous love- motions against the reality of Christ's love. " Quick; alive. 61, 265. Quit ; to set one free from. 224, 268, Bagged; torn and incomplete. 151. Pavel; disorderly twisting of threads. 196. Reckon; consider of importance. 230, 233. Red, Adj., in the phrase, "red hunger," intensive. 213. — "Red war," and "red ivet," mean.s soaked in wet. Redd tip; to clear up, settle. 34, 38, 48, 136, etc. Refreshfid; full of refreshment. 333. Registrate ; to register, to protest. 85, 249.— Seeno^e. /i'c^'a*'' ; make amends to. 312. /?esemWe; to represent. 3. Res2)ective ; to each individual. 136. — Is this Sibbs' meaning, "Every saint has something lovely and re- spective in him" (on 2 Cor. i. 1)1 But, also, Sibbs uses it for respect- fid: "Dependency is always very respective." And so Ferguson on Col. iii. 22 : " Servants respective to their masters." — See Disrespcclive. Letters 321, 360. Responsal ; solvent, able to paj'. 231. Rest; in the Latin sense, "remains." 244. Reverence; q.d. rendering homage, power. 30, 43, 233, 298. — "/ \uUl not he in your reverence " was a phrase for, " I will not submit to your dictation." Reversion; the right held by some one to the future possession of an estate. 148. Rid (see Redd) ; annihilate. Participle, put away. 133. Ridable ; can be crossed on horseback. 160. Rijle ; sums as ruffle. 158. Rift ; a rent, crack. 241, 284. — Verb, to vomit, or come back with violent retching. 72. — Rifty; broken, full of rents. 120. Right, Verb ; to put right. 196. Rights; title-deeds. 77. Rink; the ring, or race-course. 122, 276, 286. Rijie ; to examine and search carefully. Connected with "rip up." 203. Rive ; rend, tear ; break up. 16, 50, 72, etc. Rooftree ; the beam that runs across the roof, and supports the rafters. 270. Room; place. 22, etc. Round ; whisper or sing in the ear. (German, raunen.) 293. Roup; set up to sale by action. 37, 131, 199, etc. Rovers; "at rovers," at random. 182. Roving ; wandering through excitement of mind, raving. 161. Rub; trouble. 323. Rue; to repent, be sorry, 115. — "Rue upon;" take pity. 21, 69, 186, etc. Run by ; run past. 226. Rush; to pu.sh forward with violence. 270. — See 7iolc. 730 GLOSSARY. Sad; settled, solid, real. 62, 75, 99, 163, 191, 203.— It is from old English "set," settlavl down. Wickliffe's Bible, Rom. X7. 1 : " We that are sadder men " (stronger). Pilkington on Neh. iv. : "A good builder digs down to the sad earth." Salt ; bitter, unpleasant, sarcastic. 115. —In his "Christ Dying," p. 690, he says : " A violent death hath a Salter bite. " Sanded ; driven on the sands. 217. Scad ; the red tinge of a burn. " Scad- ded and burnt in the furnace " (Rutherford's "Gov. of Life," p. 69). The tinge given by reflected light. 291 . It is connected with ' ' scald. " Scaur, or scar; to boggle, take fright. 70, 119, 183, etc. Schoolheads ; worldly wise. 337, Second, Foun and Verb ; one wlio helps. — Often used by Lord Kenmure in "Last Speeches." 2,91,247. Seen-in ; experienced in a matter. 86. Set ; it becomes, 260 ; disposed, 120. — "Set to; " engage, set about. 110, 145, 179, 235. Set-rent ; full rent. Shake ; to push aside, push out. Shell of a balance ; the scale. 268. Short; in temper hasty, rash. 153.— "Shortly;" forthwith. 249.— "Short-dated ;" lasting only a short time. 196. Shute ; sometimes written shoot ; to push in, shove back. 20, 29, 158, 163. — " Satan shutes in his teeth," occurs in Rutherford's "Christ Dying." Sib; nearly related to. 106, 212, 245, etc. — "We behoved to be as sib as brethren." Sermon. Sicht, or sight, a Verb ; to examine narrowly, q.d. by close sight. 12. It occurs in Row's " History " often. Sicker ; strong. 107. Silly ; poor, frail, pitiful. 27, 184. Silver, or siller ; money. 254. Sing; in the phrase, "Sing dumb," be reduced to silence. 128. Singly ; with a single mind. 83. Sink; a common sewer. 272, 276. Sit with ; to endure in patient silence. 52, 63. Submit to. 43. Treat with carelessness. Skalll ; disperse, scatter. 160, 190, 241, etc. Skaith ; harm. 285. Skaur. — See Scaur. Skink ; formally renounce, or bid fare- well to. 85, 88.— In A.S., the Verb is "to give drink ; " in Ger- man, "schenken," to give. It is q.d. take leave by giving a present, or by drinking a farewell. Slot ; a moveable bolt ; bar. 29, 47, 48. Sued; to prune, lop off, make tidy. 298. Solacious; full of cheer, or comfort. 105. Soldiers-stately ; in Letter 63. It might have been noticed that old editions make this one word equivalent to "a spirit becoming a soldier ; " like Milton's "timely-happy spirits." Joseph Alleine's " Life" has, "holy- taking rhetoric." Others point thus, "Your soldier's stately spirit." So, "heavenly -wise." 191. Some. 64, 214. For somewhat. Sometimes; properly "some-time ; " on former days, once on a time. 28, etc. — In our Version of the Bible, Eph. ii. 3 ; 1 Pet. iii. 20. Soon-saddled; hasty in temper. 189. — Little time taken to get on the saddle. Soul-couper ; a jobber in souls. 330. — See Couj). Souple ; same as supple. 132. Spaits. — See Speat. Sparing; niggardly. 222. jSpar^ ; to squirt out. 163. Sparkle; to spark out, scatter sparks. 263. — Chaucer speaks of the shop- herd seeking his " sparkeland sheep, " i. e. scattered. Spent, or spait ; a flood, overflowing stream. 37, 248, 285. (Gaelic), " speid "), a river-flood. Speed ; to " come speed " is to succeed. Speir, or speer ; ask questions at. — " Speer out," search out by ques- tions. 180. Spelk ; to truss, support by splinters, 107, 128. (Saxon word.) GLOSSAR Y. 73» Spill; spoil, mar, or injure. 22, 310, etc. — So Ps. Ixiii. 9, in Ecus' ver- sion ; a child spoiled by indulgence. Spring; a tune, sprightly air. 181, 182, 214. Spunk ; a sj^axk. 215. Stalks. In Letter 17, "to keep the stalks," is the reading of some old editions ; but in another Letter, 194, "keep the stakes." If the former, the sense is, "to got only the withered stalks to keep," Song ii. 14 specially; if the latter, "get what they deposited." Stand upon; require the help of. 81. Standing drink. 177. — Like the stirrup- cup handed to a friend as he stood at the door. Startle ; ran up and down in excitement, as cattle do in hot weather ; act extravagantly. 69, 75, 182, 258. StaHs. " At starts ; " fitfully. 7, 293. — " Start to the gate." — See Gate. State; the mode of putting or stating a question. 214, 245, 278, 333, 359. — " Stated ;" set dovm. 359. Sted ; a place, a foundation for a house, a site. 18. So used by Gawin Douglas. — " Stedable," q.d. able to furnisli a foundation ; available, serviceable. 170, 252. Stent ; to fix at a certain rate, and no more. 249. In Fullerton's " Turtle Dove:" "Hestented twice on the horologue." Still; always, ever. 87, 108, 133, 285. In our metre version of the Psalms it occurs, c. jr. Ps. ciii. 9, "Keep His anger still. " Stoh ; a stake sharpened at the end. 240. Stock of cards ; B, \>a,Q'k oL 194. Stoop ; to make a stoop is to bow low. 287. Stop-hole; anything to fill up a hole. 239. Stot; a rebound. 249.— " To keep slots ; " keep pace with, to rebound regularly. 236. Stound ; a stroke that suddenly over- powers and produces faiutness. 167. Stoup ; a stake, post, prop. 84, 196. Suit ; urge a suit, woo, solicit. 19, 26, 37, 355, etc. Sundry; separate. 247. — ^'Sunder" part from, the Verb. 264. Sure; surely. 359, etc. SusjKnsion ; an act in law, suspending final execution of a sentence. 230. Swatter; to move, or toss about, as a duck in the water. 178. — R. Blair (see "Life" by Row) uses it in a poem, — ' ' Out of the dreary vale of tears My soul hath swatlered out." RoUock (Lect. xxxviii.) : "He swat- ters and swims." Sivear one's self bare; swear that you have given up everytliing. 285. 5^?<;eer ; lazy, reluctant. 178,280 285. Tack; stitch, hold, tie. 275. Also, possession by lease. 284. Tailzie ; a Scotch law term for entail or charter of entail. 32. Take up house ; enter on housekeeping. 250. — I take myself, 98. — I retract my word. Taken up with; occupied with. 185. Taking; that is, attractive. 305. South's sermons has it. Tarrow ; to be pettisli at, reluctant. 23, 118. Tell; count up. 85, 167, 241, 249, 265. — "Telling ;" something to mark down. 209. Testijicate ; certificate, testimony to character. 149. That; often for "so ;" e.g. that much. 41, 59, 85, 293. Then; in that case. 24, 39, 220, 238, 241. — " Or then ; " if that be not so, otherwise. 43, 46, 72, 323. Thereanent ; regarding this. 110. Thereaway; to or in that quarter. 133. Therefor ; on account of this. 34. — See note. Thick; a crowd or throng. 209, 225, 251. — Adjective ; very familiar with one. 94, 128. Thieves' -hole ; a prison. 178. Thin. 223. — Thin-skinned ; soit. 256. Think long. 16, -207, 133, 151, etc. — See Long. — It is still common to write, " I think long after you." Threap ; to assert vehemently, over and over. 85. Thring; to push in by force. 147, 226,282. 73« GLOSSARY. Throng ; tlie multitude and tho busy part. 206. — Throng ivrj ; crowding in. 180, 206. Through other ; one thing blended with the other, promiscuously'. 226, etc. Tig; AaXlj, toy with. 4S. — Also a civil sort of begging, when a new- married person brought his cart to the house of friends, that they might put in something to his store. Timeous ; early, seasonable, opportune. 180, 212, 275.— So Knox uses it; and our metre version of Psalms, cxix. 148. Tine; to lose. 182, 226, etc. To ; used for "in comparison of, " in the phrase, "little to." 361. Tocher; a marriage dowry. "Tocher- good." 265, 285. Toom ; quite empty ; nothing in it. 138, 178, 188, etc. Topic-maxim ; a maxim for general use. 259, 260. Tops ; to be "on one's tops," to assault or oppose. 231. — "To tope" is to oppose. ' ' He has continued all his daj's on tops with God, and will not m.ahe peace -with Him. Durham Sermon 54, Isa. liii. Totcli ; a push. ISo.—See 7iofe. Touches; to "keep touches," 12], an English phrase for the exact per- formance of an engagement. Toice ; rope made of tow, a hauser. 196. Train; to draw, entice. 30. — It is French, trainer. T'raiice ; passage. haXxw, transitm. 26. Tree; for the trood of a tree. 225. — As in sermon on Rev. xix. Trindle; same as trundle. 107. Truant; pretcjided, like boys' pretences for play. 181. Tryst ; to appoint a meeting at a certain place and time. Noun and Verb. 176, etc. Turnpike ; stair that winds. 300. Tutor ; to discipline. 282. Twin; to separate, 82. — It is q.d. to make into two. Unco ; uncommon, strange. Same originally n.sviicouth, and so written ver)' often. — Noun ; Unconess ; 179. Underccte, or undercoat ; f'ster undtr the sJcin (coat is "cutis," skin). 66, 82, 151, 284.— Caldcrwood in his "History" uses this word, v. 653. Under-tools ; lesser tools. 311. Under-water ; bilge - water. 82, 86, 203, 284. Unfriend; less than friendly. 178. Unheartsome ; sad. 277. Unlaw ; transgi-ess the law ; also, to fine for transgressing the law. 201. Unrld, or unrcd. 133. — It is q. d, unred- tip ; the boundaries not fixed. — In A.S., unrid is "disorderly." Upsun ; the sun above the horizon. Uptaking ; as a Noun, apprehension, 56, 275 ; as an Adjective, exhilarat- ing, or exalting, 210. Vaccane, orvacanse; vacation, holidays. 84. Vively ; in a lively manner, to the life. 4. Voyage; journey, 226. — The French "voyage," fiom via. Wad-fee ; the sum paid in hiring, as a pledge of the person being engaged. — Wad is a pledge. — See Wed. Wadset; to pledge in mortgage, alienate by reversion. 79, 1 91, 201, 206, etc, — Noun, the money paid in hiring as a pledge of engagement, 182. Wager ; something hazarded. 220. A pledge, 170. Wair'd, or ivared. — See Ware. Wale ; to choose (Noun and Verb), select out of other articles. 39, 192, etc. Wcdkings ; weiglits of a clock. 199. — Possibly the waggings of tho pendu- lum, though some say it is the striking of the hour that " ivaulceiis up." It is connected with motions. 292, 342. Wandhand ; the hand that holds the rod, or whip, as the hand that guided tlie horse was the working hand. 186. Want ; to be destitute of. 95. Ward ; guard. 254. Ware; to expend, use. 37, 104, 201, 228, etc. GLOSSARY. 733 Warmly; heart-wanning. 227. Washen ; washed or whitened, with fair appearance. 167, Waster, Adj.; prodigal, wasteful. 226. Watch-glass ; hour-glass. 276. Watered; plated over. 206, 280.— "The watering will go off and leave nothing but dross " is a sentence in a sermon on Zech. xiii. 7. Wed ; a pledge or fee. Written also wad. — Our "wedding "is a deriva- tive, signifying the security or pledge given by the parties. Weight, or wecht ; to put on a weight or burden, depress. 115,159. In one of his sermons he says, " Death did not weight the martyrs." — " To bear iveight," 249, is to stand the Well; a Noun for weal, welfare. 72, 202. — " Well is me;" it is good forme. 120, 222, 250, 257, etc.— "Wellcome;" come i;i an honest way. 162, 182. Well-wared ; well laid out. 104. — Well deserved. 203. Wersh ; saltless, insipid. 182. While, ovwMll; till. 12, 24, 44, etc. Whiles; a.timu'a. 102,182. White ; the lohite is the mark aimed at, the bull's eye. 194. Whiten. 287. Like a stick from which the bark is stript. Whitsunday ; term day. 21. " l/\fho hut he?" a non-such. 23.— See note. Why hut? why object although? 295. Win; reach, attain to. 21, 30. — " Win away;" to escape from. 6. Wind in ; get your way into. 297. Windlestrae or windlestraw ; from Windd, to hoist about. Used in plaiting. A withered stalk of dog's- tail grass ; metaphorically, a mere trifle. 63, 190, 192, 212.— In the "Life" of Pringle of Greenknow, a place is mentioned called "Tho Windlestraw Law." So Durham on Job, p. 285. Wit ; to know. Noun ; wisdom, intel- ligence. 184, 282. — " IVit's head;" a wiseacre. 232, 235, 239, 249, 258. Wo, an Adjective; sorrowful. 116, 178, 196. — Generally written "wae" by Scotch writers. Wombful; bellyful. 225. Won goods; goods already got and secured. 128. Work on ; it causes care. 230. Wrack; ruin, wreck. 284. Wring ; squeeze out water ; as Judges vi. 30. 300. Writ; a writing in law. 59, 285, 359. — "In write;" by written paper. 359. Yoke ; yoke for work ; set to, press in. 94, 119, 181, 202.— Noun, yoking, a setting to, contest, onset. 117. " He yoked to the Jews early " (sermon on Heb. xii. 1). So Durham on Isa. liii. 8. Yonder ; far otf in the distance. 245. — *' The yonder end." NOTE. There are some words, such as " Ease-rooms " and "Heaven-name," that seem to be Rutherford's own coining. But these are very few. On the other hand, there is in these Letters what was a characteristic of the style of the times, viz. the use of synonymous words, side by side. Thus we have "niffer and exchange ; " "feast and banquet;" "unco and strange;" "I dow not, I cannot;" "pledge and pawn ;" "wale and choose;" and many more. So Knox speaks of " let and hindrance;" "gauge and pledge." Zachary Boyd speaks of "reekie smoke;" "kindly and natural ; " "bag and baggage." In a Number of the "Athenaeum," March 1873, no less than twenty instames of this sort, in "Hamlet" alone, are given from Shakespeare, APPENDIX. EDITIONS OF RUTHERFORD'S LETTERS. Row, in his "History of the Kirk of Scotland" (p. 396), wrote in 1650 regard- ing these Letters : — "Sundry have whole books full of them, whilk, if they were printed, I am confident, through the Lord's rich mercy and blessing, would not fail to do much good." This was written fourteen years before any attempt had been made at collecting them for publication. L The First Edition appeared in 1664, in duodecimo. The place of publica- tion is not given on the title-page, these being days of persecution ; but it is known to have been Rotterdam, in Holland, under the superintending care of Mr. M'Ward, who was once Rutherford's amanuensis. It is divided into two parts, the one con- taining 215 Letters, the other, 71. It has a long recommendatory Preface, containing matter that is of no great interest to us now ; but it preserves one weighty saying of this man of God on his deathbed. '* When he was on the threshold of glory, ready to receive the immortal crown, he said, 'Now my tabernacle is weak, and I would think it a more glorious way of going home, to lay down my life for the cause, at the Cross of Edinburgh or St. Andrews; but I submit to my Master's v. ill.'" y fvo is iii» original title-page ; — 7M APPENDIX. {First Edition) JOSHUA REDIVIVUS. OR, Mr, Rutherford's Letters, Divided in two Parts. The First, Containing those which were written from Aberdeen, where he was confined by a sentence of the High Commission ; drawn forth against him, partly upon the account of his dechning them, partly upon the account of his Non-Conformity. The Second, Containing some which were written from Anwoth before he was by the Prelates' Persecution thrust from his ministry ; & others upon diverse occasions afterward, from St. Andrews, London, &c. Now published for the use of all the people of God, but more particularly for those who now are or afterwird may be put to Suffering, for Christ and His cause. By a Wellwisher to the Work &> People of God, have not known the Father, nor ml" ^' ^ '''"' "''"«' ^'" "^^^ <'°' l"^""^' tt*? ^o^^^''Zlt',[^K^VyV:^^^^ to them that revealed from he/veo. with HrmSt^rget" & ' ""' "= "''" '"'^ ^°^*^ J«"* '^^ "^ Printed in the Year do Idc LXHII 3 A 737 738 APPENDIX. Bj some mistake in reading the numeral letters, booksellers' catalogues have spoken of editions in 1662 and 1663 ; but there were none such. Such a mistake might easily occur in writing tlie numerals. In a Manuscript of the Letters (kindly forwarded to the Editor by Rev. A. B. Grosart, Kinross), the date of tlie First Edition is written thus : do Ico LI I II. Here there is, beyond doubt, a mistake ; the X is omitted from LXIIII. ; for the MS. is merely a copy of the First Edition. It copies out the title-page in full, and then appends this note: "Intended to be wryten from the printed book, by the wryter, for particular use, and for several reasons unnecessary to be inserted." Some of the " Testimonies of the Martyrs " are appended, as they appeared in the "Cloud of Witnesses" afterwards. There are now and then marginal notes, all of which are simply hints as to what the Letter contains, thus » " Cause of Rutherford's confinement ; " "Comfort for the sei-vants of God and for ministers." The existence, however, of such a MS., copied with such pains from a printed volume, tells the high esteem in which the Letters were held. We may note one small matter. In this MS. the name " Bethaia" {so written in all the printed editions) is given " Bethia ;" showing that the name was so written at that time also, as it is always now. 2. The Second Edition.— It appeared in 1671, an exact reprint of the first, with the same title-page, etc. But it is very inaccurate ; e.g. there are ten obvious misspellings of common words in the two first pages, not to speak of bad punctua- tion, which is a fault common to all the early editions. 3. The Third Edition, in 1675, retains the original title-page, except that it Has, "In Three Parts," and "The Second and Third." This last Part contains sixty-eight additional Letters. This edition is the one which subsequent editors follow. It omits the original "Preface to the Christian Reader," and hai only four introductory pages, two of which are the advertisement about the lost MS. of Rutherford on Isaiah. It has a long " Postscript," in which we cannot say there is much that is important. 4. The Edition of 1692. 6. The Edition of 1709. Edinburgh. 6. The Edition of 1724. Edinburgh. 12mo. "Printed by T. Lumsden and J. Ritchie, and sold at their printing-house in the Fish Market, and by John Paton and James Thomson, booksellers in the Parliament Gloss ; and sold at Glasgow by John Robertson, James and John Browns, and Mrs. Brown, booksellers. 1724." It is marked "The Fifth Edition." If this means the " fifth " of those editions that contain the " Three Parts," then our list is not complete. But it seems as if the editor had overlooked one of the earlier editions; and if so, this is the sixth. 7. The Edition of 1738. Edinburgh. Marked "Sixth Edition." 8. The Edition of 1761. Edinburgh. In two vols. 9. The Edition of 1765. Glasgow. A good edition. It has the author's Testimony and Dying Words, as well as the original Preface of tho earliest edition. It is marked " Ninth Edition." 10. The Edition of 1783. Glasgow. Marked "Tenth Edition." 8vo. Printed by John Bryce. (The Eleventh Edition we have not seen, but it may be that of 1796.) APPENDIX. 739 11. The Edition of 1802, Aberdeen. Marked "Twelfth Edition." 12. The Edition of 1809. Edinburgh. Marked " Tliirteeuth Edition." 13. Another in 1818, "One hundred and fifty-two Religions Letters," to whici is added a Testimony to the Covenanted Work of Reformation between 1638 and 1849. Octavo. 14. Another in 1821. "With a brief notice of the author. 15. The London Religious Tract Society's Edition, first published in 1824. It is properly only a selection of sixty Letters, with extracts from many others. It has " Contents " prefixed to each Letter. 16. Another, 1824. Glasgow. With brief notice of the author. 17. The Edition of 1825. One of "Collins' Select Christian Authors." It passed through three editions. It has a doctrinal Preface by Thomas Erskine, Esq., and gives about one half of the Letters. It has not retained all the peculiar phraseology of the original ; but it gives some account of his life, and appends his " Last Word.s, " and his " Testimony to the Covenanted Work of Reformation. Kenmure is misspelt " Kenmuir " in the edition of 1825, but corrected in the next. 18. The Edition of 1830. Glasgow. 19. Another in 1834. 20. The Edition of 1836. London : Baisler. Edited by Rev. Charles Thomson. In two vols. It has valuable explanatory notes, and the Letters are, for the most part, arranged chronologically, — a great improvement on the "Three Parts" of so many former editions. 21. The Edition of 1839. 22. The, Edition of 1846. Aberdeen: King. This edition is in double columns. 23. The Edition of 1848. Edinburgh : Whyte and Kennedy. With historical and biographical notices, by Rev. James Anderson. The Letters, so far, chrono- logically arranged, and ten additional Letters given. Contents also, and indices ; and a Sketch of Rutherford's Life. 24. The Edition of 1857. London : Collingridge. Edited by Rev. D. A. Doubdney. It has the long Original Preface of 1664, and the Postscript of 1675 ; also a synopsis of each Letter. But it is not accurate, especially as to proper names. 25. The Edition of 1863. In two vols. It contains Letters 290, 325, 327, 336, 337, 340, 343, 355, 356, 365, not found in any previous edition but that of 1848 ; as well as 283 and 307, added since then. There are 365 in all ; one for each day of the year, if any one chooses. 26. An Edition in octavo, by Rev. J. M'Ewan, Edinburgh, — a reprint of the old. 1867. 27. Extracts. — There have been abridgments in the form of " Extracts," from time to time. We might give as samples, Jo. Wesley's Extracts(an edition in 1825) ; John Brown of Haddington's ' ' Pleasant and Practical Hints, " selected from the Letters ; and recently, " Last Words of S. R., in verse, by A. R. C, with some of his sweet sayings." A variety of such have appeared. 28. Edition 1875. By Dr. Thomas Smith. Preface by Dr. Duff. 740 APPENDIX. 29. Foreign Editions. — 1. There is an American Edition ; a reprint, by Carter, New York, of the Edition of 1848. — 2. A Dutch translation appeared at Flushing in 1673. The translation made by Mr. Koelman, minister of Sluys, with a brief Life. Of this there have been frequent reprints ; that of 1754 is in three vols, octavo ; another in 1855, — a new translation in double columns, published at Grave. — 3. There is also a German translation (see "Mission of Inquiry to the Jews, 1839," ch. v.); but we are not able to give any account of it. 30. This present Edition, 1891. Edinburgh : Oliphant, Anderson, & Ferrier. Reprinted 1894, 1900, 1905. SAMPLE OF THE OLD ORTHOGRAPHY. (Letter CCCLI.) Sir I would ere now have writtin to you had I not knowin yo"" health weaker and weaker could scairclie permitt you to hear. I neid not speak. The way you know and have preached to others the skill off the Giiijd and the glorio of the hom beyond death And qn he sayes com aud sie it will be yo"^ gaine to obey and goe out and meett the brydgroom What accessioun is mad to the higher hoiis off his kingdom sould not bo our lose though it be a reall losso to the church of God Bot we count on way and the Lord counts anoy'' way He is jnffallible and the onlie wyse God and needs non of us Had He needed Mosses and the prophetts ther staying in the Bodip he could hav taken an oy"" way Who dar bid you cast your thoughts bak on wyff or children when he hath said Leav yam to me and com up liither or who cane per- swad you to die or liv as iff that wer abritarie to us and not his alon who hath determined the number off yo'' moneths. If so it seem good to him follow your forrunner and Guyd. It is ane unknowcn land to you who was never ther beffor bot the land is good and the company befor the thron desyreable and he who sittes on the throne is alon a suiScient heavin. Grac be with you St Andrews 15 jun. 1658. Yours in the Lord SR [Fivm a MS. vol. belo.ujing to Mr. Lamb, JJundri,] APPENDIX. 741 LAST WORDS. Mrs. A. R. Cousin, wife of Rev. W. Cousin, Free Church minister of Melrose, has woven into a delightful poem many of Samuel Rutherford's most remarkable utterances. This piece has become almost a household hymn, known over all our country, and in America no less. It is entitled sometimes by its first line, "The Bands of time are sinking," and sometimes, "The Last Words of S. R.," though it takes in many of his sayings, besides his deathbed words. The sands of time are sinking. Letters 79, 147. The dawn of Heaven breaks, The summer morn I've sighed for, The fair sweet mom awakes : Dark, dark hath been the midnight, But dayspring is at hand, And glory — glory dwelleth Letter 323. In Immanuel's land. Oh 1 well it is for ever, Oh ! well for evermore. My nest hung in no forest Of all this death-doom 'd shore : Yea, let the vain world vanish. As from the ship the strand, While glory — glory dwelleth In Immanuel's land. Letter 4, There the Red Rose of Sharon Unfolds its heartsome bloom, And fills the air of Heaven With ravishing perfume : — Oh ! to behold it blossom, While by its fragrance fann'd Where glory — glory dwelleth In Immanuel's land. letters 181, 821. The King there in His beauty, Without a veil, is seen : It were a well-spent journey, Though seven deaths lay between. The Lamb, with His fair army, Doth on Mount Zion stand. And glory — glory dwelleth In Imniauuel's land. Letters 165, 284, 291, 318. 74* APPENDIX. Oh 1 Christ He is the Fountain, The deep sweet well of love I The streuhis on earth I've tasted, More deep I'll drink above : There, to an ocean fulness, His mercy doth expand. And glory — glory dwelleth In Immanuel's land. Letteifl 288, 817. E'en Anwoth was not heaven — E'en preaching was not Christ ; And in my sea-beat prison My Lord and I held tryst : And aye my murkiest storm-cloud Was by a rainbow spann'd, Caught from the glory dwelling In Immanuel's land. Letters 88, 96, 225, 335. But that He built a heaven Of His surpassing love, A little New Jerusalem, Like to the one above, — "Lord, take me o'er the water," Had been ray loud demand, "Take me to love's own country. Unto Immanuel's land." Letter 233. But flowers need night's cool darknese The moonlight and the dew ; So Christ, from one who loved it, His shining oft withdrew ; And then for cause of absence, My troubled soul I scann'd — But glory, shadeless, shineth In Immanuel's land. Letter 234. The little birds ot Anwoth I used to count them blest, — Now, beside happier altars I go to build my nest : O'er these there broods no silence, No graves around them stand, For glory, deathless, dwelleth In Immanuel's land. Letters 92, 167 206. Fair Anwoth by the Sol way. To me thou still art dear I E'en from the verge of Heaven I drop for thee a tear. Oh 1 if one soul from Anwoth Meet me at God's right hand, My Heaven will be two Heavens, In Immanuel's land. Letter 226. APPENDIX. I have wrestled on towards Heayen, 'Gainst storm, and wind, and tide; Now, like a weary traveller, That leaneth on his guide, Amid the shades of evening, While sinks life's ling'ring sand, I hail the glory dawning From Immanuel's land. Deep waters cross'd life's pathway, The hedge of thorns was sharp; Now these lie all behind me— Oh ! for a well-tuned harp I Oh ! to join Halleluiah With yon triumphant band, Who sing, where glory dwelleth, lu Immanuel's laud. With mercy and with judgment My web of time He wove. And aye the dews of sorrow Were lustred with His love. I'll bless the hand that guided, I'll bless the heart that plann'd, When throned where glory dwelletb In Immanuel's land. Soon shall the cup of glory Wash down earth's bitterest woes. Soon shall the desert-briar Break into Eden's rose : The curse shall change to blessing — The name on earth that's bann'd, Be graven on the white stone In Immanuel's land. Oh ! I am my Beloved's, And my Beloved is mine I He brings a poor vile sinner Into His "House of wine." I stand upon His merit, I know no other stand. Not e'en where glory dwelleth in Immanuel's land. 743 Letters 275, 826. Letter 137. Deathded, p. 21 Letters 245, 296, 298. Letters 20, 295. Eev. ii. 17. Letters 76, 116, 119, 148. I shall sleep sound in Jesus, Fill'd with His likeness rise. To live and to adore Him, To see Him with these eye» 'Tween me and resurrection But Paradise doth stand; Then — then for glory dwelling In Immanuel's land ! Page 21 of " Life. 744 APPENDIX. The Bride eyes not her garment, But her dear Bridegroom's face ; I will not gaze at glory, Letters 21, 168. But on my King of Grace — Not at the crown He gifteth, But on His pierced hand : The Lamb is all the glory Of Immanuel's land. I have borne scorn and hatred, I have borne wrong and shame, Earth's proud ones have reproach'd me. For Christ's thrice blessed name : — Where God His seal set fairest They've stamp'd their foulest brand ; But judgment shines like noonday In Immanuel's land. They've summoned me before them. But there I may not come, — My Lord says, "Come up hither," My Lord says, "Welcome Home 1 " My kingly King, at His white throne, Deathbed saying. My presence doth command, Where glory — glory dwelleth In Iramauuel's laud. APPENDIX, 745 WHAT I KNOW CONCERNING AN ALLEGED PORTRAIT OF SAMUEL RUTHERFORD IN MY POSSESSION. The portrait was generously presented to me, some years ago now, by Alexander W. Inglis, Esq., of the Board of Trustees for Manufactures, Royal Institution, Edinburgh. He bought it at a sale at Chapman's for a few pounds, with the view of presenting it to the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, should he be able to authenticate it. Previously it was in the possession of a Mrs. Auld, widow of a Dr. Auld, for many years headmaster of the Madras College, St. Andrews. On inquiry I found he obtained it in a somewhat curious manner. He was, although a Presbyterian himself, on very intimate terms with a Roman Catholic priest in Edin- burgh who had a great many pictures in his house, and seems to have been some- what of a connoisseur in art. Going through his rooms one day along with Dr. Auld, he, either with his foot or with something in his hand, turned over the portrait now in my possession, laid on its face, and very much spoiled. He asked the Doctor who that was ? " I do not know," was the reply. "That," said the priest, "is the arch-heretic, Samuel Rutherford." The Doctor said, that divine deserved better usage. "If you think so," said the priest, "take him with you, and use him as well as you choose." Dr. Auld appears to have made no apology for accepting the offer, and carried it triumphantly to his home in St. Andrews, where it hung for many years. I have made elaborate inquiries to iind out who this priest was, but without success. How it came into his hands, and who pos- sessed it before him, will ever, I am afraid, remain an impenetrable secret. A label on the back of the frame, written in a somewhat old-fashioned hand, intimates the portrait to be that of Samuel Rutherford, Professor of Divinity in St. Andrews, who died 1661 ; and the painter, R. Walker. This, doubtless, is Robert Walker, the famous portrait-painter of Rutherford's time, who painted Cromwell (twice over, I think) and nearly all his officers. Several specimens of his work exist in the National Portrait Gallery of London to-day. The editor of the Magazine of Art (Cassell & Co.) kindly offered, if I sent him a photograph of the picture, to give me his opinion as to Walker being the painter of the portrait. His reply was "that the style of the picture is certainly that of the painter by whom the picture claims to be, and that the treatment greatly resembles that in the portrait of Robert Walker by himself, now in the National Gallery " (London). An artist whom I asked to take a copy of the pictui-e, before I had any idea I would obtain possession of the original, said that, although not particularly impressed with the painting just at first, when he proceeded with his work the conviction grew stronger and stronger upon him that it was painted by a celebrated artist. A picture-dealer in Liverpool, who at my request sent the portrait up to London to be cleaned and restored, obtained the opinion of an expert there that undoubtedly it was "a Walker." The one half of the statement on the label seems, therefore, to be true, which rather, primd facie, points to the other half being also true. But now for the other half. 746 APPENDIX. The canvas is uudouLtedly very old, and must be quite the age the label indicates The skull-cap, the gown and bauds, all point to one in Rutherford's position. A contemporary describes Rutherford as "a little fair man," which description the portrait bears out. That Rutherford should have his portrait painted by AValker when in London attending the Assembly of Divines seems not unlikely or imjirobable. Any artist or picture-dealer contemplating a fraud on the public would be unlikely to select Rutherford for that purpose, as he might have chosen others much more popular and known to a larger circle of admirers, and therefore more saleable. A strong tradition has been handed down that my mother, whose name was Rutherford, was descended from a near relative of the divine. Her ancestors lived for centuries in the parish where he was born, and their tombstones can be seen to this day. The resemblance of the portrait, not only to herself, but to her brothers and sisters as well, is very striking, and was noticed and commented on by nearly every one who saw it. A Presbyterian clergyman, having lieard of the portrait, and who called one day to insjiect it, informed me that Avhen he saw it hanging directly above the chair where my mother was sitting at the time, the resemblance between the portrait and my motlier so struck him that he could scarcely suppress his astonishment. It was, however, considered to resemble still more a sister of my mother whom the clergyman referred to had not seen. If it be objected that the distance in time renders such a circumstance of no real value, it has to be remembered that my mother was born only about one hundred and fifty years after Rutherford's death, which does not represent very many generations ; moreover, both her great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather married their full cousins, which must have had the effect of confirming, or drawing in, the line of hereditary tendencies, to the exclusion, so to speak, of foreign elements. But per- haps the most striking fact of all remains to be told. The picture-dealer in Liver- pool, to whom I have already referred, had the portrait for a good while, both before and after it was sent to London, exposed to view in his gallery, and it attracted the notice of a good many callers, some of whom declared that there was not the slightest doubt it was a genuine portrait of Rutherford, as they had seen an engraving of it exactly the same as the painting. If this statement can be relied upon, it practically settles the matter. Some of the London dealers in engravings admit there is an engraving of Rutlierford going about, but it turns up, they say, very rarely, and is not easily obtainable. This is all I know of the portrait, and how far the evidence is satisfactory must be left to the individual judgment of the reader, J. R. B. Liverpool, August 1904. Demy Svo, Cloth Extra, with Newly Engraved Portrait, and Facsimiles of Writing, Price 3s. 6d. ^^ Memoir aiid Re^nains of the Rev, Robert Mttrray M'Cheyne of Dundee^ By the Rev. ANDREW^ A. Bonar, D.D. New Edition, printed from New Type, and with additional matter. " How admirable an edition is this ! the best five shilling octavo you ever saw. And it is made richer than the old by new matter from the venerable editor's pen."— Expository Times. " A model book in every way — binding, paper, and type — and which is enriched by additional notes from the pen of the reverend author. ... It will rank as a standard edition to an immortal book." — TA< British Weekly , ' ' The issue of a book which has been so widely valued as to take the rank of an Evangelical classic, is enriched with fac-similes of M'Cheyne's handwriting, while the venerable author has introduced some additional information on certain points. We wish the book a fresh career of usefulness in its new form." — Critical Review. " It has the advantage over other editions of being printed in large type, and in having an appendix in which additional information is given on such points as the results of the Mission of Inquiry into the state of the Tews, together with facsimiles of Mr. M'Cheyne's handwriting." — Scottish Review. OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, 100 PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH ; 21 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.G. Large Crown 8vo, Art Cloth, with Two Portraits, Price 2S. 6d. net. ''Samuel Rutherford^ A Study, Biographical and Somewhat Critical, in the History of the Scottish Covenant. By Rev. ROBERT GILMOUR. " I think you will find that this will be received by the press and the public as an admirable and most competent Appreciation of Rutherford." — Dr. Whyte. " The latest biographer of Samuel Rutherford has plainly, at all events, endeavoured to hold the balance level and true in his estimate of this great Scottish reformer. He has certainly done justice to his religious and patriotic enthusiasm, his intellectual acumen, and his strenuous sincerity of conviction." — Scottish Historical Review, "A popular exposition — a book which maybe commended to young people desirous of learning in brief compass something of a man who left a strong impress of his work on the history of his country. " — Scotsman. "Mr. Gilmour has done his work admirably. We hope that this will not be his last contribution to biography. There is a fine discrimination characterising the book." — Saint Andrew. "A very welcome volume to all who are interested in the history of Scottish Covenant times." — Scottish Patriot. "This clear, sympathetic presentation of his life will be appreciated by many. ' — Dominion Presbyterian (Ottowa). "Next to his own classical Letters in Dr. Bonar's classical edition, it seems to be the book from which to learn what Calvinism can do in the making of a saint." — Expository Times. " The book is luminous with rays of Rutherford's own bright intellect, and fragrant with the aroma of his real saintliness." — Presbyterian. "A luminous study of a great Scotsman and a great period." — Monthly Messenger. OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER, loo PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH ; 21 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C. ological Semmary-Speer Libr? 1 1012 01057 4723 DATE DUE PRINTED IN USA