good of Christ, till he gives us the slip, (which is impossible) and to take his word for caution, that he shall fill up all the blanks in his promises, and give us what we want; but to the unbeliever Christ's testament is white, blank, unwritten paper. Worthy and dear Sir, set your face to heaven, and make you to stoop at all the low entries in the way; that ye may receive the kingdom as a child; without this, he that knew the way, said, there is no O but Christ be willing pose love in heaven and earth were lost, I dare sware, it may be found in Christ. Now the very God of peace establish you, till the day of the glorious appearance of Christ. Your own in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen. Sept. 7. 1637. S. B. of a prisoner. I bless the Lord, the cause I suffer for needeth not blush before kings: Christ' white, honest, and fair truth needeth neither to wax pale for fear, nor blush for shame. I bless the Lord, who hath graced you to own Christ now, when so many are afraid to profess him, and hide him, for fear they suffer loss by avouching him. Alas! that so many in these days are carried with the times! as if their conscience rolled, upon oiled wheels, so do they go any way the wind blows and because Christ is not entry in. : market-sweet, men put him away to lead, a poor sinner! O what love from them. Worthy and much my poor soul hath found in him, in honoured Sir, go on to own Christ the house of my pilgrimage! Supand his oppressed truth: the end of sufferings for the gospel, is rest and gladness. Light and joy is sown for the mourners in Zion, and the harvest (which is of God's making for time and manner) is near: crosses have right and claim to Christ in his members, till legs and arms, and whole mystical Christ be in heaven. There will be rain, and hail, and storm, in the saint's clouds, ever till God cleanse with fire the works of To the Lady GAITGRITH. creation, and till he burn the botch Much Honoured and Christian Lady, house of heaven and earth, that GRACE, mercy and peace be to you. mens' sin hath subjected unto vanity. I long to hear how it goeth with They are blessed who suffer and sin you and your children; I exhort not, for suffering is the badge that you, not to lose breath, nor to faint Christ hath put upon his followers: in your journey; the way is not so take what way we can to heaven, long to your home as it was; it will the way is hedged up with crosses, wear to one step or an inch at length, there is no way but to break through and ye shall come ere long to be them; wit and wiles, shifts and laws, within your arm-length of the gloriwill not find out a way about the ous crown. Your Lord Jesus did cross of Christ, but we must through; sweat and pant, ere he got up that one thing by experience, my Lord, mount; he was at, Father, save me, hath taught me, that the waters be- with it; it was he who, Psal. xxii. twixt this and heaven may all be 14. said, I am poured out like water; ridden, if we be well hors'd, I mean, all my bones are out of joint. Christ if we be in Christ; and not one was as if they had broken him upon shall drown by the way, but such as the wheel, my heart is like wax, it love their own destruction. Oh, if is melted in the midst of my bowels, we could wait on for a time, and ver. 15. My strength is dried up believe in the dark the salvation of like a potsherd. I am sure, ye love God! At least we are to believe the way the better, his holy feet trod LETTER LXXVI. it before you. Crosses have a smell by death, taketh us down to scour of crossed and pained Christ. I be- the wheels of both, and to purge us lieve your Lord will not leave you perfectly from the root and remainto die your alone in the way. Ider of sin; and we shall be set up Lord. Then Your's in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, Sept. 7, 1637. LETTER LXXVII. S. R. To his Reverend and very dear Brother, Mr. know have sad hours, when the in better case than before. ye Comforter is hid under a vail, and pluck up your heart, heaven is yours, when ye inquire for him, and find and that is a word few can say. but a toom nest; this, I grant, is but a Now, the great Shepherd of the cold good-day, when the seeker mis-sheep, and the very God of peace, seth whom the soul loveth; but even confirm and establish you, to the his unkindness is kind, his absence day of the appearance of Christ our lovely, his mask a sweet sight, till God send Christ himself in his own sweet presence: make his sweet comforts your own, and be not strange and shame-faced with Christ; homely dealing is best for him, it is his liking. When your winter storms are over, the summer of your Lord) shall come; your sadness is with child of joy, he will do you good in My very Dear Brother, the latter-end. Take no heavier lift I RECEIVED yours. I am still with of your children than your Lord the Lord; his cross hath done that alloweth; give them room beside which I thought impossible once; your heart, but not in the yoke of Christ keepeth tryst in the fire and your heart, where Christ should be; water with his own, and cometh ere for then they are your idols, not your our breath go out, and ere our blood children: if your Lord take any of grow cold. Blessed are they, whose them home to his house, before the feet escape the great golden net that storm come on, take it well; the is now spread; it is happiness to owner of the orchard may take take the crabbed, rough, and poor down two or three apples off his own side of Christ's world, which is a trees, before mid-summer, and ere lease of crosses and losses for him; they get the harvest sun: and it for Christ's incomes and casualties would not be seemly that his servant, that follow him are many, and it is the gardener, should chide him for not a little one, that a good conit; let our Lord pluck his own fruit cience may be had in following him. at any season he pleaseth; they are This is true gain, and must be lanot lost to you, they are laid up so boured for, and loved. Many give well, as that they are coffered in Christ for a shadow, because Christ heaven, where our Lord's best jewels was rather beside their conscience, lye: they are all free goods that are in a dead and reprobate light, than there, death can have no law to in their conscience. Let us therearrest any thing that is within the fore be ballasted with grace, that we walls of the new Jerusalem. All the be not blown over, and that we saints, because of sin, are like old stagger not. Yet a little while, and rusty horologies, that must be taken Christ and his redeemed ones shall down, and the wheels scoured and fill the field, and come out victorious; mended, and set up again, in better Christ's glory of triumphing in Scotcase than before; sin hath rusted land is yet in the bud, and in the both soul and body: our dear Lord, birth, but the birth cannot prove an abortive. He shall not faint nor be | Oh, I am made of unbelief, and candiscouraged, till he hath brought not swim but where my feet may forth judgment unto victory. Let us still mind our covenant. And the very God of peace be with you. Your Brother in Christ. Aberdeen, Sept. 9, 1637. touch the ground! Alas, Christ under my temptations is presented to me as lying waters, as a dyvour and a cousener! We can make such a S. R. Christ, as temptations, casting us in a night-dream, do feign and devise, and temptations represent Christ LETTER LXXVIII. ever unlike himself, and we in our To Mr. MATTHEW MOWAT. folly listen to the tempter. If I Reverend and dear Brother, could minister one saving word to I AM refreshed with your letters. I any, how glad would my soul be! would take all well at my Lord's But I myself, which is the greatest hands that he hath done, if I knew evil, often mistake the cross of Christ; I could do my Lord any service in for I know if we had wit, and knew my suffering; suppose my Lord well that ease slayeth us fools, we would make a stop hole of me, to fill would desire a market where we a hole in the wall of his house, or a would barter or niffer our lazy ease pinning in Zion's new work: for any with a profitable cross; howbeit place of trust in my Lord's house, as there be an outcast natural betwixt steward, or chamberlain, or the like, our desires and tribulation; but some surely I think myself (my very dear give a dear price and gold for phybrother, I speak not by any proud sic, which they love not; and buy figure or trope) unworthy of it; nay, sickness, howbeit they wish rather to I am not worthy to stand behind the have been whole than to be sick. door; if my head, and feet, and body But surely, brother, ye shall not have were half out, half in, in Christ's my advice, howbeit, alas! I cannot house, so I saw the fair face of the follow it myself, to contend with the Lord of the house, it would still my honest and faithful Lord of the house; longing and love-sick desires. When for, go he, or come he, he is ay graI hear that the men of God are at cious in his departure: there are work, and speaking in our Lord Je-grace, and mercy, and loving kindsus his name, I think myself but an ness, upon Christ's back parts; and out-cast or out-law, chased from the city, to lye on the hills, and live amongst the rocks and out-fields. O that I might but stand in Christ's out-house, or hold a candle in any low vault of his house! But I know this is but the vapours that arise out of a quarrellous and unbelieving heart to darken the wisdom of God. And your fault is just mine, that I cannot believe my Lord's bare and naked word. I must either have an apple to play me with, and shake hands with Christ, and have seal, caution, and witness to his word, or else I count myself loose; howbeit, I have the word and faith of a King. own making; when I miscooked when he goeth away, the proportion of his face, the image of that fair Sun that stayeth in his eyes, senses and heart after he is gone, leaveth a mass of love behind it in the heart. The sound of his knock at the door of his beloved, after he is gone and past, leaveth a share of joy and sorrow both: so we have something to feed upon till he return; and he is more loved in his departure, and after he is gone, than before; as the day in the declining of the sun, and towards the evening, is often most desired. And as for Christ's cross, I never received evil of it, but what was mine Christ's physic, no marvel that it hurt | Christ is still the longer the better, me; for since it was on Christ's back, and that this time is the time of it hath always a sweet smell, and loves. When I have said all I can, these 1600 years it keepeth the smell others may begin and say, I have of Christ; nay, it is older than that said nothing of him; I never knew too, for it is a long time since Abel Christ to ebb or flow, wax or wane; first handseled the cross, and had it his winds turn not; when he seemlaid upon his shoulder; and down eth to change, it is but we who turn from him, all alongst to this very our wrong side to him, I never had day, all the saints have known what a plea with him, in my hardest conit is. I am glad that Christ hath flicts, but of mine own making. Oh such a relation to this cross, and that I could live in peace and good that it is called the cross of our Lord neighbourhood with such a second, Jesus, Gal. vi. 14. his reproach, and let him alone! My unbelief Heb. xiii. 13. as if Christ would made many black lies, but my reclaim it as his proper goods, and so cantation to Christ is not worth the it cometh in the reckoning among hearing. Surely he hath borne with Christ's own property; if it were strange gades in me; he knoweth simple evil, as sin is, Christ, who my heart hath not natural wit to is not the author nor owner of sin, keep quarters with such a Saviour. would not own it. I wonder at the Ye do well to fear your backsliding. enemies of Christ, in whom malice I had stood sure, if I had in my youth hath run away with wit, and will is borrowed Christ to be my bottom; up, and wit down, that they would but he that beareth his own weight essay to lift up the stone laid in to heaven, shall not fail to slip and Zion; surely it is not laid in such sink. Ye had no need to be baresinking ground as that they can raise footed among the thorns of this it, or remove it; for when we are in apostate generation, lest a stob stick their belly, and they have swallowed up in your foot, and cause you to us down, they will be sick, and spue halt all your days. And think not us out again. I know Zion and her Christ will do with you in the matter husband cannot both sleep at once; of suffering, as the pope doth in the I believe our Lord once again shall matter of sin; ye shall not find that water with his dew the withered hill Christ will sell a dispensation or give of mount Zion in Scotland, and come a dyvour's protection against crosses; down, and make a new marriage crosses are proclaimed as common again, as he did long since. Re- accidents to all the saints, and in member our covenant. Your ex- them standeth a part of our comcuse for your advice to me is need-munion with Christ; but there lyeth less; alas, many sit beside light, as a sweet casualty to the cross, even sick folks beside meat, and cannot Christ's presence and his comforts, make use of it. Grace be with you, when they are sanctified. RememYour Brother in Christ, ber my love to your father and mother. Grace be with you. Aberdeen, Sept. 7, 1637. මෙම LETTER LXXIX. To Mr. JOHN MEINE. Dear Brother, S. R. I RECEIVED your letter. I cannot Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, LETTER LXXX. To JOHN FLEMING, Baillie of Leith. Much honoured in the Lord, but testify under mine own hand, that GRACE, mercy and peace be to you. close up our seams and rifts, that we might be able to comprehend it, which yet is incomprehensible. Remember my love to your wife. Grace be with you. Your's in his Sweet Lord Jesus, LETTER LXXXI. S. R. To ALEXANDER GORDON, of Earlstoun I am still in good terms with Christ; however my Lord's wind blow, I have the advantage of the calm and sunny side of Christ. Devils, and hell, and devils' servants, are all blown blind, in pursuing the Lord's little bride; they shall be as a night-Aberdeen, Sept. 7, 1637. dream, who fight against mount Zion. Worthy Sir, I hope ye take to heart the worth of your calling; this great fair and meeting of the people will skail, and the port is open for us; as fast as time weareth out, How EIT I would have been glad we flee away: eternity is at our el- to have seen you; yet, seeing our bow. O how blessed are they, who, Lord hath been pleased to break the in time, make Christ sure for themsnare of your adversaries, I heartily selves! Salvation is a great errand, bless our Lord on your behalf. Our I find it hard to fetch heaven. Oh crosses for Christ are not made of that we could take pains of our iron, they are softer and of more lamps, for the Bridegroom's coming: gentle metal: it is easy for God to the other side of this world will be make a fool of the devil, the father turned up incontinent, and up shall of all fools: as for me, I but breathe down: and these that are weeping out what my Lord breatheth in. in sackcloth shall triumph on white The scum and froth of my letters I horses; with him whose name is, father upon my unbelieving heart. The Word of God. These dying I know your Lord hath something idols, the fair creatures that we to do with you, because Satan and whorishly love better than our Crea- malice have shot sore at you; but tor, will pass away like snow water. your bow abideth in its strength. The God-head, the God-head, a Ye shall not, by my advice, be a halcommunion with God in Christ, to ver with Christ, to divide the glory be halvers with Christ of the pur- of your deliverance betwixt yourself chased house and inheritance in hea- and him, or any other second mean ven, should be our scope and aim. whatsoever. Let Christ, as it setFor myself, when I lay my counts, teth him well, have all the glory and O what telling, O what weighing is triumph his alone. The Lord set in Christ! O how soft are his kisses! himself on high in you. I see Christ O love, love surpassing in Jesus! I can borrow a cross for some hours, have no fault to that love, but that it and set his servants beside it, rather seemeth to deal niggardly with me; than under it, and win the plea too, I have little of it. O that I had yea, and make glory to himself, and Christ's seen and read bond, sub-shame to his enemies, and comfort to scribed by himself, for my fill of it! his children, out of it; but whether What garland have I, or what crown, Christ buy or borrow crosses, he is if I looked right on things, but Jes- King of crosses, and King of devils, us! O there is no room in us on this and King over hell, and King over side of the water for that love! This malice. When he was in the grave narrow bit of earth, and these ebb he came out, and brought the keys and narrow souls can hold little of with him; he is Lord Jailor: nay, it, because we are full of rifts. I would glory, glory would enlarge us, as it will, and make us tight, and what say I? he is Captain of the castle, and he hath the keys of death and hell: and what are our P |