LETTER CXXXIII. To my Lord BOYD. My very Honourable and good Lord, flower's, and withering riches and honour, that shall go away as smoke, and evanish in a night vision, and GRACE, mercy and peace be to your shall in one half-hour, after the blast Lordship. Out of the worthy report of the archangel's trumpet, lye in that I hear of your Lordship's zeal white ashes. Let me beseech your for this borne-down and oppressed Lordship to draw by the lap of time's gospel, I am bold to write to your curtain, and look in through the Lordship, beseeching you, by the window to great and endless eternimercies of God, by the honour of ty, and consider, if a worldly price, our royal and princely King Jesus, suppose this little round clay globe by the sorrows, tears, and desolation of this ashy and dirty earth, the dy of your afflicted mother-church, and ing idol of the fools of this world, by the peace of your conscience, were all your own, can be given and your joy in the day of Christ, for one smile of Christ's God-like that your Lordship would go on, in and soul-ravishing countenance, in the strength of your Lord, and in that day, when so many joints and the power of his might, to bestir knees of thousand thousands wailing yourself, for the vindicating of the shall stand before Christ, trembling, fallen honour of your Lord Jesus. shouting, and making their prayers O blessed hands for evermore, that to hills and mountains, to fall upon shall help to put the crown upon the them and hide them from the face of head of Christ again, in Scotland. I the Lamb. O how many would sell dare promise in the name of our lordships and kingdoms that day, Lord, that this shall fasten and fix and buy Christ! But, oh the markthe pillars and the stakes of your et shall be closed and ended ere honourable house upon earth, if you then! Your Lordship hath now a lend, and lay in pledge in Christ's blessed venture of winning court hand, upon spiritual hazard, life, with the Prince of the kings of the estate, house, honour, credit, moyen, earth: he himself weeping, truth friends, the favour of men, suppose borne down and fallen in the streets, kings with three crowns, so being ye and an oppressed gospel, Christ's may bear witness, and acquit your-bride, with watery eyes, and spoiled self as a man of valour and courage, of her veil, her hair hanging about to the Prince of your salvation, for her eyes, forced to go in ragged the purging of his temple, and sweep-apparel, the banished, silenced and ing out the lordly Diotrephes's, time imprisoned prophets of God, who courting Demas's, corrupt Hymen- have not the favour of liberty to eus's and Philetus's, and other such prophesy in sackloth; all these I say, oxen, that with their dung defile call for your help. Fear not worms the temple of the Lord. Is not of clay, the moth shall eat them as Christ now crying, Who will help a garment; let the Lord be your me? who will come out with me, to fear, he is with you, and shall fight take part with me, and share in the for you; thus shall ye cause the honour of my victory over these blessing of those, who are ready to mine enemies, who have said, We perish, come upon you; and ye will not have this man to rule over shall make the heart of this your us? My very honourable and dear mother-church to sing for joy. The Lord, join, join as ye do with Christ; Lamb and his armies are with you, he is more worth to you, and your and the kingdoms of the earth are posterity, than this world's May-the Lord's. I am persuaded, there Y Aberdeen, 1657. LETTER CXXXIV. S. R. is not another gospel, nor another | web with paint and build our rotsaving-truth, than that which ye ten and tottering house upon a lie, now contend for. I dare hazard my and falsehood, and vanity. O when heaven and salvation upon it, that will we learn to have thoughts highthis is the only saving way to glory.er than the sun and moon, and learn Grace, grace be with your Lordship. our joy, hope, confidence, and our Your Lordship's at all respective soul's desires, to look up to our best obedience in Christ, 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! O sweetest Lord Jesus! O fairest Godhead! O flower of men and angels! why are we such strangers to and far off beholders of thy glory?' O 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 O that God may burn and blast our hope hereaway, rather than 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 mens' 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 beholding 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, To ROBERT GORDON, Baillie of Ayr. Worthy Sir, 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, submissive onwaiting for the Lord shall 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? O 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, we have had in the creat ure; 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 natural love, that 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 further travelled, than up and down the naughty and feckless creatures. God may say of us, as he said, Amos vi. 13. Ye rejoice in a thing of nought, Surely we spin our spider's fy upon that pope, that shall be dried | land. O what could my soul deup by the root! Fy upon the drunken sire more, next to my Lord Jesus, night bargains, and the drunken and while I am in this flesh, but that mad covenants, that sinners make Christ and his kingdom might be with death and hell after cups. And great among Jews and Gentiles; and when mens' souls are mad and that the isles (and amongst them, drunken with the love of this lawless overclouded and darkened Britain) life, they think to make a nest for might have the glory of a noontheir hopes, and take quarters and day's sun! O that I had any thing, conditions of hell and death, that I will not except my part in Christ, they shall have ease, long life, peace; to wadset or lay in pledge, to redeem and in the morning, when the last and buy such glory to my highest trumpet shall awake them, then they and royal Prince, my sweet Lord rue the block. It is time, and high Jesus! My poor little heaven were time for you, to think upon death well bestowed, if it could stand a and your accounts, and to remember pawn for ever, to set on high the what ye are, where ye will be before glory of my Lord; but I know, he the year of our Lord 1700: I hope needeth not wages nor hire at my ye are thinking upon this. Pull at hand; yea, I know, if my eternal your soul, and draw it aside from glory could weigh down in weight, the company that it is with, and its alone, all the eternal glory of the round and whisper into it news of blessed angels, and of all the spirits eternity, death, judgment, heaven of just and perfect men, glorified and and hell. Grace, grace be with you. to be glorified; Oh, alas! how far Your's in his sweet Lord Jesus, I am engaged to forego it for and S. B. give it over to Christ, so being he might thereby be set on high above ten thousand thousand of inillions of heavens, in the conquest of many, many nations to his kingdom! O that his kingdom would come! O that all the world would stoop beGRACE, mercy, and peace be to you. fore him! O blessed hands that shall It is like, if ye, the gentry and no- put the crown upon Christ's head in bility of this nation, be men in the Scotland! But alas! I can scarce streets, as the word speaketh, for the get leave to ware my love on him; Lord, that he will now deliver his I can find no ways to out my heart flock, and gather and rescue his scat-upon Christ: and my love, that I tered sheep, from the hands of cruel with my soul bestow on him, is like and rigorous lords, that have ruled to die upon my hand, and I think over them with force. O that mine it no children's play to be hungered eyes might see the moon-light turn with Christ's love: to love him and to the light of the sun! But I still to want him, wanteth little of hell. fear the quarrel of a broken cove-I am sure he knoweth, how my joy nant in Scotland standeth before the would swell upon me, from a little Lord: however it be, I avouch it well to a great sea, to have as much before the world, that the tabernacle of his love, and as wide a soul anof the Lord shall again be in the swerable to comprehend it, till I crimidst of Scotland, and the glory of ed, Hold, Lord, no more. But I find, the Lord shall dwell in beauty, as he will not have me to be mine own the light of many days in one, in this steward, nor mine mine own carver; Aberdeen, 1637. LETTER CXXXV. TO ALEXANDER GORDON of Earlstoun. Christ keepeth the keys of Christ, it otherwise; and why is it so, seeing to speak so, and of his own love, our Lord can keep us without nodand he is a wiser distributer than I ding, tottering, or reeling, or any can take up: I know, there is more fall at all? Our desires, I hope, shall in him than would make me run over meet with perfection: but God will like a coast-full sea. I were happy have our sins an office-house for for evermore, to get leave to stand God's grace, and hath made sin a but beside Christ and his love, and matter of an unlaw and penalty for to look in, suppose I were interdict- the Son of God's blood: and howed of God to come near, touch, or beit sin should be our sorrow, yet embrace, kiss, or set to my sinful there is a sort of acquiescing and head, and drink myself drunken with resting upon God's dispensation re that lovely thing. God send me quired of us, that there is such a that which I would have; for I now thing in us as sin, whereupon merverily see, more clearly than before, cy, forgiveness, healing, curing, in our folly in drinking dead waters, our sweet Physician, may find a field and in playing the whore with our to work upon. O what a deep is soul's love upon running out wells, here, that created wit cannot take and broken sherds of creatures of up! However matters go, it is our yesterday, whom time will unlaw, happiness to win new ground daily with the penalty of losing their be- in Christ's love, and to purchase a ing and natural ornaments. O! new piece of it daily, and to add when a soul's love is itching, to conquest to conquest, till our Lord speak so, for God, and when Christ Jesus and we be so near other, that in his boundless and bottomless love, Satan shall not draw a straw or beauty and excellency, cometh and a thread betwixt us. And for myrubbeth up and exciteth that love, self, I have no greater joy, in my what can be heaven, if this be not well-favoured bonds for Christ, than heaven? I am sure, this bit feckless, that I know time shall put him and narrow and short love of regenerated me together; and that my love sinners, was born for no other end, and longing hath room and liberty, but to breathe, and live and love, amidst my bonds and foes, whereof and dwell in the bosom and betwixt there are not a few here of all ranks, the breasts of Christ. Where is to go visit the borders, and outer there a bed or a lodging for the saint's coasts of my Lord Jesus's country! love, but Christ? O that he would and see, at least afar off and darkly, take ourselves off our hand! for nei-the country which shall be mine inther we nor the creatures can be ei-heritance, which is my Lord Jesus's ther due conquest, or lawful heritage due, both through. birth and conto love: Christ, and none but Christ, quest. I dare avouch to all that is Lord and proprietor of it. O alas, know God, that the saints know not how pitiful is it, that so much of our the length and largeness of the sweet love goeth by him! O but we be earnest, and of the sweet green wretched wasters of our soul's love! sheaves before the harvest, that I know, it is the depth of bottomless might be bad on this side of the waand unsearchable providence, that ter, if we would take more pains: the saints are suffered to play the and that we all go to heaven with whore from God, and that their love less earnest, and lighter purses of goeth a-hunting, when God knoweth, the hoped-for summer, than otherit shall cost nothing of that at sup-wise we might do, if we took more per time. The renewed would have pains to win further in upon Christ, in this pilgrimage of our absence from him. Grace, grace and glory be your portion. Your's in his sweet Lord Jesus, Aberdeen, 1637. LETTER CXXXVI, TO JOHN LAURIE Dear Brother, 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 cannot thank him, paineth me most; but both work upon me. For the first, O that he would come and satisfy the longing soul, and fill the hungry with these good things! I know indeed, my guilti ness may be a bar in his way, but he I AM Sorry that ye, or so many in is God, and ready to forgive. And this kingdom, should expect so much for the other, wo, wo is me, that I of me, an empty reed: verily I am a cannot find a heart to give back anoughty and poor body; but if the gain my unworthy little love, for his tinkling of my Lord Jesus's iron great sea-ful of love to me! O that chains on legs and arms could sound he would learn me this piece of grathe high praises of my royal King, titude! O that I could have leave whose prisoner I am, O how would to look in, through the hole of the my joy run over! if my Lord would door, to see his face, and sing his bring edification to one soul by my praises! or could break up one of bonds, I am satisfied; but I know his chamber-windows, to look in upnot what to do to such a princely on his delighting beauty, till my and beautiful Well-beloved; he is Lord send more! Any little comfar behind with me. Little thanks munion with him, one of his loveto me, to say to others his wind looks should be my begun heaven. bloweth on me, who am but wither-I know the Bridegroom is not lorded and dry bones: but since ye de-ly, neither is he love-proud, though sire me to write to you, either help I be black, and unlovely, and unme to set Christ on high, for his run-worthy of him. I would seek but ning-over love, in that the heat of leave, and withal grace, to spend his sweet breath hath melted a froz- my love upon him. I counsel you en heart, else I think ye do nothing to think highly of Christ, and of for a prisoner. I am fully confirm-free, free grace, more than ye did ed, that it is the honour of our Law- before; for I know that Christ is giver I suffer for now: I am not a- not known amongst us. I think I shamed to give out letters of recom- see more of Christ than ever I saw ; mendation of Christ's love, to as ma- and yet I see but little of what may ny as will extol the Lord Jesus and be seen. O that he would draw his cross. If I had not sailed this by the curtains, and that the King sea-way to heaven, but had taken would come out of his gallery and the land-way, as men do, I should palace, that I might see him! not have known Christ's sweetness Christ's love is young glory and in such a measure; but the truth is, young heaven; it would soften let no man thank me; for I caused hell's pains to be filled with it. not Christ's wind to blow upon me: What would I refuse to suffer, if his love came upon a withered crea- I could get but a draught of love ture, whether I would or not, and yet by coming it procured for me a welcome. A heart of iron, and iron doors, will not hold Christ out; I at my heart's desire? O what price can be given for him! Angels cannot weigh him; O his weight, his worth, his sweetness, his overpas |