Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 105
To the Lady ROBERTLAND. [105.]
MISTRESS.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: I shall be glad to hear that your soul prospereth & that fruit groweth upon you after the Lord's husbandry & pains in his rod, that hath not been a stranger to you from your youth. It is the Lord's kindness that he will take the scum off us in the fire: Who knoweth how needfull winnowing is to us, & 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 & lumps of pride, and self-love, & idol-love, & world-love must be hammered off us, that we may throng in, stooping low & creeping thorow that narrow & thorny entry. And now for my self, I finde it the most sweet & heavenly life, to take up house & dwelling at Christ's fire-side, & set down my tent upon Christ that foundation-stone, who is sure & faithfull ground & hard under foot. Oh if I could win to it & proclaim my self not the world's debter, nor a lover obliged to it; & that I minde not to hire or bud this world's love any longer; but defie the kindness & feud of God's whole creation whatsomever; especially the lower vault & clay part of God's creatures, this vain earth: For what hold I of his world? A borrowed lodging & some years houseroom, & bread & water, & fire & bed & candle, &c. are all a part of the pension of my King & Lord to whom I ow thanks & not to a creature. I thank God that God is God, & Christ is Christ, & the earth the earth, & the Devil the devil, and the world the world, & that sin is sin, and that every thing 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 threed with the world and the things thereof. Oh if I could hold and keep Christ all alone and mix him with nothing! O if I could cry down the price and weight of my cursed self and cry up the price of Christ, and double & triple and augment and heighten to millions the price & worth of Christ! I am [if I durst speak so & might lawfully complain] so hungredly tutoured by Christ Jesus my liberall Lord, that his nice love which my soul would be in hands with, flyeth me; & yet I am trained on to love him, & lust & long & die for his love whom I cannot see: it is a wonder to pine away with love for a covered & hid lover, & to be hungred with his love, so as a poor soul cannot 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 tutours and stewards and Masters, and Lordcarvers of Christ's love, we should be more lean & worse fed then we are: Our meat doeth us the more good, that Christ keepeth the keys, & that the wind & the air of Christ's sweet breathing & 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, & waiting on: They thrive who wait on his love & the blowing of it & the turning of his gracious wind; & they thrive who in that on-waiting make haste and din and much adoe for their lost and 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 got 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 & come through, 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 goe in at heavens 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 ma… 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 in this side of the new Ierusalem, we shall still have need of forgiving and healing grace. I finde crosses Christ's carved work that he marketh out for us, and that with crosses he figureth & pourtraieth us to his own image, cutting away pieces of our ill & corruption: Lord cut, Lord carve, Lord wound, Lord doe any thing that may perfect thy Father's image in us & 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 & tell what I have heard & seen of him. Forget not Zion that is now in Christ's calmes & in his forge: God bring her out new work. Grace, grace be with you.
Aberd. Jan. 4. 1638. Yours in his sweet Lord Iesus. S. R.