The Blessedness of the Death of These that Die in the Lord, Title page – Dedication
The Blessednesse of the Death of these that die in the Lord, and more especially in ane evil time;
Excellently discoursed in seven very searching, but very sweet Sermons, on Revel. 14. v. 13.
Wherein, several weighty cases relating to death in General, and to dieing in the Lord in particular are succinctly, solidly, and satisfieingly handled.
By that Faithful, Fruitful, and Famous Minister of the Gospel, Mr. JAMES DURHAM some time Preacher thereof at Glasgow
Iob 14. v. 14.
—All the dayes of my appointed …ime will I wait, till my change come
Psal. 90. v 12.
So teach us to number our dayes that we may apply our hearts to wisdome▪
Nunc age, quod moriturus agas.
Whereunto, at the desire of the Worthy Widow and other Judicious Christian Friends of that singu larly successeful Minister of the Gospel, Mr. Wil liam Guthry, there is affixed a vindication of his sweet smelling memory, from the high injury done thereto, by the pitifully ignorant and grossely non-sensical mis-printing of some of his Sermons
Printed in the Year 1681
To the Very much HONOURED and Vertuous. LADY MADAM JEAN COKBURNE, Lady to the Right Honourable Sir ROBERT HEPBURNE OF KEITH-MARESCHAL In East-Lothian, Knight.
MADAM,
WHen I was casting in my thoughts, to whom I should address the dedication of these, few following Sermons, your Ladyships selfe readily offered, being a person to whom I am upon many accounts singularly oblidged, As I am likewise unto your Honourable Husband; Haveing also had the retirement and conveniencie not far from you, for reviseing and makeing them ready for the Presse, which as you partly know, and as others may conjecture, was not so very easy a peece of work, considering that they were not taken from the Author's Pen, but from his mouth when preaching, by one of his ordinary hearers no Scolar, and afterwards transscribed by another person of lesse Judgment: Your La: being withall a genuine and undegenerat Daughter of the Ancient, Honourable, and Loyal Family of Ormestoune, eminently instrumental in our beautiful and blessed, in our great and glorious, work of Reformation from Popery, and famous (as it is hoped it will thrugh grace still continue to be, if the like sad occasion, as we wish it never may, should againe occurre) for ready and chearful receiving, herbouring, cherishing, and incourageing the faithful Servants of God and Martyrs of Jesus; particularly of renowned Mr. George Wishart, who was thence taken under trust by the unhappy Earle of Bothwel, now extinct and his memorial with him (the mentioning whereof, I know your Honourable Husband Sir Robert's just regaird for the Reformed Protestant Religion, will easily persuade him o bear with, though he may be, for any thing I know, one of the neerest relations of that some-time great Nobleman now surviving) while the house of Ormestoune stands and flourisheth still; which Mr. Wishart, I say, was taken thence, and thereafter most cruelly murdered at Saint-Andrewes, the then seat of Cardinal Beatton, who in great state and much pompuous pride, looking out of the Window of his Castle there, now almost levelled with the ground fedd his lustful eyes with the horrid and pitiful, but to him pleasant, spectackle, of that eminent Saint and Servant of Christ, his bei… brunt alive and consumed into ashes: The measure that Master Patrick Hamiltoune that notable person nobly descended, having been *See Spotswoods Hist. pag. 52.nephew by his Father to the Earle of Arran, and by the Mother to the Duke of Albany (no blood being too noble or precious to be lett by these butchers, or to be suckt by these blood-thirsty leeches) mett with at the hands of Arch-Prelat Beatton Uncle to the said Cardinal, not many years before in that same place. O! terrible truculent and Tragical actings, yet such as may be eracted amongst us, if ever (as God forbid) the Roman Antichrist that scarled coloured beast drunk with the blood of the Saints, and Martyres of Jesus, shall againe recover his interest in these Kingdomes, now the Kingdomes of the Lord and of his Christ.
But it may be some care lesse and unconcerned Gallioos will, for silenceing and satisfieing us, say that these things were done by Law; As we are told by a late petulant and prophane Pampheleteer, that all these horrid and hideous persecutions raised and prosecuted against many Protestants in the neighbouring Kingdome of England, in the short but very bloody reigne of Queen Mary, notwithstanding her solemne Professions made to the Northfolk and Suffolk Gentlemen, and in plaine Councel, to the contrary; Were according to Law, So that the Martyres in her dayes can no more be …ounted such, then those who suffered since the late Popish plot; (above 200. of whom, being in all but 277, according to his reckonings, (though he reckoneth amisse) were, as he falsly and impudently alledgeth, executed as profligat persons, speaking this malicious and grosly calumnious lie purely out of his own, in exact imitation of the Father of lies; for famous Mr. Fox that indefatigably laborious searcher after all occurrents of that nature, gives us no such account; of whose exact scrutiny in the sufferings of the Martyres under Queen Mary, ingenuo… and impartial Master Fuller speaking in his ecclesiastical History, sayeth; This point hath been handled already so curiously and copiously by Mr. Fox, that his industry herein hath starved the endeavours of such as shall succeed him, leaving nothing for their pens and paines to feed upon; for what can the man doe that cometh after the King? But that which hath been already done, and Mr. Fox appearing sole Emperour in this subject, all posterity may dispair to add any remarkable discoveries which have escaped his observation, wherefor to handle this subject after him, is to light a candle to the Sun; and further according to his commendable candor, he adds, as if it had been in designed contradiction to this Detractor, And now to take our leaves of these Martyres, what remaines but—that we embrace and defend that doctrine which they sealed with their lives, and as occasion shall offer, to vindicat and assert their memories from such scandalous tongues and pens, as have or shall traduce them; Neither doeth Doctor Burnet, in his late History of the Reformation of the Church of England, give us any such account; Nay neither Speed nor Baker, whom he most injuriously voucheth for his Authors of this calumny, hint any such thing): But the man hath forgotten, or would not remember, that there have been, may be, and still are in the world, thrones of iniquity which establish mischiefe by a Law, wherewith God, the great Lawgiver, hath no fellowship; And that the primitive Christian Martyres, who were most cruelly put to death by the persecuting PaganRoman-Emperours, particularly by Trajan, Hadrian, the Antonins and Severus, wer so dealt with by them, according to the Then-lawes of the Roman Empyre; for which reason, it is very probable that Iohn the Divine in the Revelation, brings in some of these persecutors with a pair of ballances in their hands, insinuating thereby, that they pretended to weigh and measure out their persecutions of Christians, by exact Justice according to Law: Who are therefor no more to be accounted Martyrs; Nay, all that have suffered most exquisit torments and cruel deaths on the account of the Protestant Religion, not only in Scotland & England, but in France, Germanie, the Low countries, and elsewhere since the beginning of the Reformation, and our forsakeing the Apostate Church of Rome: and in Tholouse, Bohemia, the Valleyes of Piedmont, and in other parts of the Christian World before that time, for that very same Religion, tho not under the denomination of Protestant, must needs according to the new doctrine of this pretended protestant Author, be dasht out of the roll and catalogue of the Martyres of Jesus Christ; because forsooth, they wer generally put to death by and according to the lawes of the respective Countries wherein they suffered, tho these humane Lawes were framed on the matter in contempt and defiance of divine Lawes to the contrary. And yet we need neither wonder nor strange to find this man basely bespattering, as so many profligats, the Protestants who suffered in Queen Mary's dayes, and ranking them almost in the same class and category, and setting them near by on the same levell with the Papists, that were lately executed for their accession to the horrid and hellish plot, and denying the former to have been Martyres more then the latter; who roundly and boldly in the face of the reformed Churches dar assert, that all the difference betwixt the Popish and Protestant Religion is, in modes and circumstances, and no more in reality; and that the Lawes which established the Protestant, and abolished the Popish Religion, cannot be otherwayes altered but by ane equal power with that from whence they had their being, King and Parliament, who by aggreeing, no more prejudge the publick in order to Heaven, then they did before, that being only accidental and extrinsecal to the substance of Religion, by which alone, and not by formes or ceremonies, men are to be saved. What? are there no material and highly momentuous doctrinal differences betwixt Papists and Protestants? As about the Pope his arrogantly claimed & Usurped universal, Civil, & Ecclesiastick supremacy, whereby he taketh on him to transfer Kingdomes, to depose Kings and Emperors, and to loose subjects from their sworn alleadgences to them; to interdict as to all sacreds, and on the matter to excommunicat, not only particular persons the greatest crowned heads not excepted, but wholl Christian Kingdoms at his pleasure, none being warranted to say, what, or why doest thou? And all this as Christs Viccar on earth, whereas indeed he is the Arch-enemy of Christ, even that Antichrist to whom all his characters assigned by the Apostles Paul and Iohn, doe most exactly and punctually aggree. About his fondly fancied infallibility, times and wayes out of number to the conviction of the World, not only fallibilized, but grosly falsified and belied; as for instance undenyably appears in a matter of very great moment, to wit, the different translation of the old vulgar latine Bible by Pope Sixtus the fifth, and by Pope Clement the eight, some three years only interveening betwixt the one and the other †See Mr. Thomas James his Bellum Papale, and his Defence thereof.; each of which translations, is in the preface or bull thereto prefixt, declared to be authentick and obligatory of the whole Christian World, to own the same as such; the printing or publishing of any other translation, being under the paine of the greater excommunication severly discharged; and yet these two translations, are not only in a multitude of places, upward of a thousand, different the one from the other, but in many expresly contrary the one to the other; so that the Popes pretended infallibility, doeth infallibly prove fallible, and falls down flat; for if the one of those translations be infallibly true, the other must needs be infallibly false, or if they should still say, which it seems they cannot have the e…rontry to doe, that they are both infallibly true, then their Popes will not only be made infallible, but (if it did not involve a blasphemous repugnancy) superomnipotent, by attributing to them a power to make, most really, plainly, and palpably contradictory propositions true at once (So that we need not henceforth wonder, that their Canon-law stileth the Pope, Our Lord God the Pope); besides that several of these pretended infallible Popes, have by the published confessions of their own writers, been found respectivly guilty of grossest Heresy, Simony, Perjury, Adultery, Sodomy, Necromancy, Sacrificeing to Idols and Devils, and of other most vile and abominable villanies; yea, their great Champion Baronius at the year 897; expresly sayeth, that for the space of ane hundred and fifty years togither, the Popes wer rather Apostats then Apostolicks, and that they wer thrust into the papal chair, by the power of harlots, and by the violence of the Princes of Tuscany; which Sandy fundation of alledged infallibility being overturned, all the rotten and tottering superstructure of his false doctrines rear'd up thereon, as so many castles of come-downe, must needs fall to the ground; It is indeed a wonder that any rational man should have the confidence to own such a fancie, but a greater wonder that any professing himselfe to be a Christian, should make it a grand article of his belieffe, and a basis of the eternal salvation of his immortal soul; alace! its to be feared that ane evil conscience cauterized, and some predisposition to Atheisme, are with many, the great inductives to it. About the authority of the sacred Scriptures, which they will have wholly as to us, to depend upon the authority of the Church, that is to say at bottome, of the Pope, blasphemously alleadging, that the authority of the Pope is above the authority of the Scriptures, that no book, nay, nor chapter in the whole Bible, is to be held for canonical, without the Popes authority, and that the authority of the Scriptures is no more to be valued then Aesops Fables †See Pighius de Hier. Eccl. lib. 1. cap. 2. Prierius his dialogues against Luther. See Greg. 7. Dict. in Conc. Rom. See Hermannus., unlesse it wer for the Testimony of their Church. And about the perfection and perspicuity thereof in all things necessary to Salvation, which they endeavour to disgrace, by the impious imputations of imperfection and obscurity, calling them a Black Gospel, Incken Divinity, and a Nose of Wax *See Pighius ibid. lib. 3. cap. 3.. About the necessity of unwritten traditions in matters of faith, as proceeding from the same divine authority, and to be received with the same divine beliefe, and under the same paine of divine wrath and damnation, that the divinely and infallibly inspired Scriptures are; For the Councel, or rather causlesly cursing Conventicle, at Trent, sayeth, that they are to be received with the same reverence. About the unwarrantablenesse of translateing the Scriptures into vulgar languages, and of the peoples reading of them, in point blanck-contradiction to the Scriptures themselves; and whatever be pre…ended, mainly intended to keep them still in gross ignorance of divine Scripture-truths, and in utter incapacity to discover, detasse, and abandon their abominable errors; and how dar the people presume to read the Scriptures? Since his holinesse Pope Innocent belloweth out like a beast this fine infallible interpretation of that Scripture, anent the beasts not touching the mountaine whereon the Law was given, This mountaine (saith he) which must not be touched by the beasts, is the high and holy Scriptures, which the unlearned must not read: And their Doctors commonly affirme, that the People must not be suffered to read the Scriptures, because forsooth, We must not give holy things to dogs, nor cast pearls before swine: such account make these Pastors of the people, as to rank them amongst beasts even the vilest of them, dogs and swine; which sayeth, such Pastors are fitter to feed and keep dogs and swine, then to feed and watch over rational men and women that have immortal souls: And one of them, Alphonsus de Castro, asserts, that from the reading of the Scriptures, all heresies come; though this hath been ordinarly more through the fault of learned men then of the common people, and in neither, through any fault of the Scriptures; They are so mad angry at the translation of the Bible into vulgar languages, that some of them have boldly belched out this blasphemy, That peoples being permitted to read the Bible, was the invention of the Devil *See Peresius.; there is ane English Pamphlet printed Anno 1663. intituled, The Reconciler of Religions, that hath these horrid words, pag. 41.—The protestant Bible is no more the Word of God, then is the Alchoran or Aesops Fables, it is a Diabolical invention, and a sacrilegious instrument to deceive and damne all such poor soules as beleive it, and therefore worthy to be burnt with fire in the midle of the merket at noone, and let all the People say Amen, so be it. About justification by works and inherent righteousnesse, and not by the imputed righteousnesse of Christ; whereby sinners have accesse to boast and glory, as being made their owne immediat saviours, and to offer a false sacrifice which God will never accept of, to the great dishonour of the alone Saviour Jesus Christ. About the possibility of not only fulfilling the Law perfectly in this life, tho the whole Scriptures, the universal experience of all ages, and mens own consciences reclaim; but of out-doeing the Law, and doeing more then it requireth or oblidgeth men unto, by their works of supererogatione; whereby they think to oblidge God, and to merite from him not only for themselves, but for others also, and whereby they will needs have the righteousnesse of one supererogating Saint, to be imputed to other persons, and hold this for a very real truth, while in the mean time they flout at the imputation of Christs merits and righteousnesse, as but a putative and meerly imaginary thing, so great is the strength of judicially infatuating delusion. About antiscriptural, irrational, nonsensical, and monstrous Transubstantiation, whereby they will have the bread and wine in the Eucharist turned, and that by the Priest when and as often as he pleaseth, into the very body and blood of Christ, and so will have him, whom the Heavens must receive or containe till the time of the restitutione of all things, to be corporally or bodily present therein, and that in thousands of places at once, as to his whole body; and so to be chewed with the teeth, digested in the stomack, and sent forth into the draught of the profainest wretches that participat of that Sacrament; yea, it may be, to be eaten by mice and rats, terrible to be once but thought of. And their abominable unbloody sacrifice of the Mass, offered dayly for the sinnes of the Living and of the Dead, highly derogatory unto that one propitiatory and Justice-attoneing bloody sacrifice, offered up once for all unto God by Jesus Christ the great high Priest, on the golden Altar of his divine nature, by which sacrifice he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. About the Sacraments conferring grace on such as receive them by the very deed done; and the necessity of a right intention in the administrator of them, not only as to the fruit and effect, but as to the validity and very being of them; whereby not only their Opus operatum is overturned, but most things in popery as such, namely their Transubstantiation, and sacrifice of the Mass, nay the very Papacy itselfe (as some of their own noted writers seem to be convinced †See Puteanus, who in 22. q. 1. art. 6. teacheth that it is not absolutly of faith, that the existing Pope (v. g.) Paul the 5th is the true Vicar of Christ, and Successor of Peter, because it suppons two propositions, Paul is baptized (N. B.) and Paul is canonically elected, neither of which is absolutely of Faith.are rendered utterly uncertaine; and in truth nothing left certaine among them but this, that there is ane uncertainty of most, if not of all things. About their halfe-communion, whereby, on most frivolous and foolish reasons, such as their fear least some of the wine or blood as they call it, should remaine on the Laiks beards or mustachoes, they sacrilegiously rob the people of the cup, most expresly contrary to Christs allowance thereof on them, in the divine unalterable institution of that most precious ordinance, appointed for the spiritual nurishment of his people. And the absolute necessity of baptisme in order to salvation; wherby all the Children of them who beleive no other place that souls departed goe to after death but Heaven or Hell, are for the meer want thereof, tho neither neglected nor contemned by the parents (for of such contempt or neglect the infants themselves are incapable) are most cruelly damned to Hell fire for ever. About purgatory, a meer fable and figment, but indeed a very serviceable fire for the Popes Kitchine; whereby the alone, purely, and perfectly purging vertue of Christs precious blood, is mightily disparadged. And about the Popes pardons and indulgences (or rather emulgences or purse-milking and emptying devyces) offered to all who will give money for them on their saying of so many Ave Mary's, and Pater-nosters, and doeing other such poor, childish, and foolish faites; and manyest to them that give most money, but utterly denyed to those poor wretched soules that have nothing to give. About their praying publickly in the Church, in a language utterly unknown to the generality of the common people; whereby he that should be their mouth to God is a Barbarian to them, and they incapacitat to joine with him understandingly, or to give their assent to what he prayes; in plaine and palpable contradiction to what is most clearly and convinceingly discoursed in the Scripture to this purpose. About praying to Angels and Saints departed, not without deep and dishonourable reflections on the intercession of Jesus Christ our alone Mediator. And About praying for the dead, who are by death put into ane eternal unalterable state, and so set quit without the reach of the benefite of the prayers of the living. About worshiping of images with religious and divine worship; which if any of them for shame should deny, their great Angelick Doctor, Thomas of Aquin †See Thomas in 3. q. 25. Art. 3, 4.will give them the lie, who expresly sayes, that the same reverence is given to the Image of Christ, which is given to himselfe, and because Christ is worshiped by the worship Latria (which is the highest worship) his image therefor is to be worshiped with the same worship Latria; he affirms the like of worship given to the crosse of Christ, or the Crucifix of whatever matter it be made. And on the matter About the obligation of the Second Command, which because it cannot be bowed nor bended, no not by the plenitude of the Popes power, to patronize nor in the least to favour their grosly Idolatrous image-worship, they will needs not only break it, but dash it quit out of the decalogue in despite of the great Law giver, who hath so vexed and confounded them by that Command, that they cannot evite the dint of it; and hath involved them into such a Labyrinth that they cannot extricat nor bring themselves out of it, no not by the clew of the smalest Spunthreed of their most subtile distinctions. About the Apostacy of the Saints, and the uncertainty of their Salvation, the very cut-throats of the comfort that is allowed by Jesus Christ on them that unfainedly beleive in him; and about many moe weighty things. Are all these but Ceremonies and Circumstances in Religion? Can the man be so grosly ignorant as to think so, or so wickedly prejudicat to say so when he thinks otherwayes? Are all the very substantial differences betwixt Protestanisme and Popery thus dwindled away into mere Modes, and Circumstances, Formes, and Ceremonies? And shall we look on the great multituds of Protestants, who on the sole account of their Religion have been putt to so many, various, exquisit tortures and most cruell deaths, as a company of silly shallow-pated ridiculs, rather to be pitied then as paterns to be imitated, who knew not how to distinguish betwixt the substance and mere modes and circumstances of Religion, but would needs injudiciously and foolishly throw away their lives, burne quick, and run themselves into so many extreme sufferings, for their obstinat adhering to modes and circumstances of Religion, wherein the substance of it was not at all concerned, nor so much as trench'd upon or touched? God forbid that we should dar, especially at so high a rate, to offend against, and condemne the generation of, these righteous persones, who overcame by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their Testimony, and by not loveing their lives unto the death; or suffer ourselves to be whidled into such a sinister and perverse beliefe of these witnesses and worthies, of whom the world was not worthy, and that upon the bare and unproved assertions, and maligne whispers, of this truckler after, and trafficker for, Rome; who, yet if ye will trust him, never was, nor is like to be, addicted to Popery, he is not sure but he may be, and who I pray that is not over credulous will beleive him, or any other man of his Kidney, that lookes at all differences betwixt Protestants and Papists, as matters of mere Mode, Circumstance, and Ceremony, but that he will be easily prevailed with, to forgoe the one and to embrace the other Religion, both being in his account the very same for substance, if especially by the change he may come to a litle more substance in the world?
However, since such industrious endeavours are used to disparage, disgrace, and vilifie sufferers and Martyres for the Protestant Religion, and to make litle and light of all the great and weighty differences betwixt Protestanisme and Popery, It should alarme, as with sound of trumpet, your La: and all sound and upright hearted Protestants in Scotland, to rouze ourselves, and by all suteable, sinlesse, and warrantable wayes earnestly to contend for the reformed Protestant Religion, the very faith once for all delivered by Jesus Christ and his Apostles to the Saints, (I say the very faith so delivered, because we reformed Protestants heartily own all the doctrine of faith contained in the sacred Scriptures, and own nothing as necessary to be beleived or practised in order to salvation, that is not contained there, either in expresse words, or that is not deducible therefrom by genuine, unconstrained, and necessary consequence) that hath been signally sealled from Heaven by the conversion, edification, and salvatione of multitudes of souls; That hath been confirmed by the sufferings & deaths of many thousands of Martyres thorrow the world, and of not a few in these Kingdomes; That faith for which our noble and renowned Ancestors did so strenuously strive and wrestle, by all lawful means and wayes, that the same might be handed down to us; And which God and they have committed to our trust and custody as a most precious depositum, oblidging us under all highest paines, even of his eternal wrath and curse, that we endeavour to transmit the same inteir and untainted to them that shall come after us; And that faith which we are withall by solemne ingadgements, taken on before God and the World, indispensibly oblidged to maintain, professe, avouch, and bear testimony unto, at any rate or hazard, as we are called to it, It being indeed the true glory of a testimony, to give it when God calls for it in the face of danger; Let us therefore be prevailed with, and perswaded by all these and other such considerations, earnestly to contend for this faith, and to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, that we be not againe intangled with the yoke of Antichristian bondage. And that we may thorrow grace, be the better disposed and capacitated to doe so; We would endeavour, 1. Thorrowly to know, and to be well acquainted with, the principles of the Religion which we professe, that we may be able and ready alwayes, with meeknesse and fear, to answer every one that asketh us a reason of our faith and hope; even to have our loins girt about with the truth. 2. We would seek to be fully assured and perswaded of the infallible truth and divine authority of the sacred Scriptures wherein our Religion is contained, and that from the inward work of the Spirit of God bearing testimony thereof unto our Spirits according to the Scriptures. 3. We would yet more then ever endeavour to receive the love of the truth, or to receive the truth in love, for the neglect whereof many have been, and moe, if God prevent not, will be, given up to strong delusion to beleive lies. 4. We would covet earnestly to feel the power and more and yet more of the power of our Religion upon our hearts, captivating us to its obedience, and mightily influenceing our practice to ane universal exact conformity to it, that no part nor point of the truth may be detained in unrighteousnesse, nor made, as it wer, a prisoner of, by setting a guard of corrupt affections about it, not suffering it to look out and shew itselfe in our practice. 5. We would study to be and abide near God, not only to make sure on good grounds, that we who wer sometime far off, are now made nigh through the blood of Christs crosse as to our state, but by all appointed means to endeavour to draw nigh as to our frame, disposition, and walk, (for though it be impossible that there can be any drawing nigh to God in respect of frame where the distance of state remaineth still, yet there may be, as many doleful experiences of the Saints put beyond all reach of debate, great distance of disposition and frame where there is nearnesse of state) that we may hear this to be the unanimous voice of all the occurring providences of these dayes, that its good for us that we draw nigh to God; It was sure alwayes good but never better, alwayes necessary but never more necessary then at such a time, wherin distance from God, usually attended with darknesse and deadnesse, is singularly dangerous and portends sadly. 6. We would endeavour to have the honour and glory of Jesus Christ much endeared to our hearts; To have, and to keep up, a high and superlative esteime of him as transcendently and incomparably precious, and of the worth and excellency of our Religion, as coming from him, as conforming us to his image, and as disposing and fitting us for the enjoyment of him; that in comparison of the excellency of the knowledge of him, by and according to Scripture-Religion which we professe, all things in this world, pleasure, profit, and honour, may in our esteime be degraded, and detruded into the very lowest degree of basenesse and vilenesse, even to be accounted but as losse and dung; which will not ably predispose to part with, forgoe, and actually to suffer the losse of them, when any of them or all of them togither shall presume to compare or come in competition with the excellency of Jesus Christ, and of the Christian reformed Protestant Religion: This is a time, wherein all the lovers of Christ and of their Religion amongst us, are in ane especial manner called to have such a low esteime of all these things in this competion, to cry down the market and to let the prices of them fall, to sitt very loose of them, to be very denyed to them, and to be ready on a call to let them all goe, when we cannot brooke them and Christ and our Religion togither. 7. We would sett ourselves down with greater and more grave deliberation then ever, to count what Christ and our Religion may coste us; And to this purpose we would cast up (to say so) the Kings Book of Rates, the Book of the holy Scriptures, that there we may see what all the followers of Christ are most expresly called to lay their reckoning with the losse of, for his and the Gospels sake, and what Christ and the very same Religion which we professe, hath coste many of the Saints recorded there; We would also review, as we have accesse, humane writings concerning the many various, great, and greivous losses and sufferings of the Martyres of Jesus, for him and for our Religion, that we may thence further see what they have been put to expend on that noble and non-such account, who yet all reckoned their greatest expence and coste infinitly below the worth of the cause for which they wer put to it; We have generally hitherto, and that for a considerable time, held and possessed our Religion at mighty easy and cheap rates, it hath coste us but very litle; It may be, yea, its probable that the rates will be raised, that the market will be up; Which calls aloud on us to sitt down seriously and soberly and count the coste, whither we will be able to finish and goe through with our undertaking, and that thorrow the neglect and defect of such previous deliberat reckoning, we be not with the surprising and unexpected change and coste putt to give over in the midest of our work, and so expose ourselves to be the objects of the scorne and derision of all observing passers-by. 8. We would beleivingly take Christs bond and obligation, for his gracious and free compensing of all losses that shall be honestly undergone for his and the Gospels sake, even ane Hundred fold in this present time as to what is infinitly better then that which is loste, and life eternal in the world to come, with the comfortable clause non obstante persecutione, with or notwithstanding of persecutione, and to shew that he is not complementing sincere sufferers for his sake, by giving them this his bond for upmaking of their losses, nor putting ane emptie spoone into their mouth, but speaks his very heart to them, he hath ordered the recording or regestrating of it by three of his Evangelists, and in every drawght of it (which is worthie observation) he hath prefixed a grave asseveration, verely; O! highly valid, good, and sufficient security, given with such sincerity by so infinitly Responsal a person, whom God hath trusted as great Surty and Cautioner for the debt and duty of all the elect, who can never breck or be unable to pay his debt; And who is willing his people should beleivingly, prayerfully, and humbly sue him, in the court of Heaven for implement of his bond for compensation, and will never refuse the debt, nor will he suffer his bond to ly untaken up, nor will he take it up till he hath compleatly payed all that he hath most freely become debitor for by his bond and obligation; And when that shall be done, then sure all losses for Christ and the Gospel, for true Religions sake, shall be fully, superaboundantly, and to ane infinit overplus, made up.
Madam, I am the more incouraged to address the dedication of these few Sermons on this sweet, serious, and savoury subject to your La: that I know you will read them concernedly, as will also your honourable Husband Sir Robert doe, as being, through grace, more immediatly contributive towards his excitment and upstirring, to make ready for his quickly approaching dissolution, walking now betwixt threescore and ten and fourscore years, the outmost ordinary boundary fixed by God in these last ages of the world for the continuance of the short life of man; I know he readeth much, would to God that all the Gentlemen in Scotland old and young, gave themselves as much, when not otherwayes necessarly and suitably avocked, to reading of profitable and edifieing bookes as he doeth; they might, through his blessing, be much more accomplished both men and Christians, and a great deal more fitted to serve their generation, according to the will of God, in their respective capacities and stations. That you both may be helped of God, to live more and more so as you may have the well-grounded, lively, and soul-refreshing hope of dieing the blessed death of them that die in the Lord, who rest from their labours and whose works follow them, is the very serious desire of
Madam Your La: very much obliged Servant, and hearty Well-wisher in the Lord J. C. Iuly 1681.