Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 126
To MARION MCKNAUGHT. (126)
Dearly beloved in our Lord Iesus Christ.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: Few know the heart of a stranger & prisoner, I am in the hands of mine enemies: I would honest & lawfull means were essayed for bringing me home to my charge, now when Mr A. R. & Mr H. R. 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 b…, 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 dayes flee away & I doe 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 wayes, neither can I finde him out. O that he would shine upon my darkness, and bring forth my morning light from under the thick cloud, that men have spread over me! O that the Almighty would lay my cause in a ballance 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 unjustly and cruelly closed, the bloom fell off my branches, and my joy did cast the flower; How beit I have been casting my self under Christ's feet, and wrestling to beleeve 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 insupportable weight: O 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 & wormwood since that day, my Master laid bonds upon me to speak no more: I speak not this because the Lord is uncouth to me, but because beholders that stand on dry land see not my sea-storm: The witnesses of my cross are but strangers to my sad dayes & nights. O that Christ would let me alone & speak love to me & come home to me & bring summer with him! O that I might preach his beauty & glory as once I did, before my clay-tent be removed to darkness, & that I might lift Christ off the ground & my branches might be watered with the dew of God, & my joy in his work might grow green again & bud & send out a flower! But I am but a short sighted creature & my candle casteth not light afar off: He knoweth all that is done to me, how that when I had but one joy & no more, & one green flower that I esteemed to be my garland, he came in one hour & dried up my flower at the root, & took away mine onelyonly eye, & mine onelyonly one crown & garland: What can I say? Surely my guiltiness hath been remembered before him, & he was seeking to take down my sails & 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 wailed stroke, I welcome this surnace, God's wisdom made choice of it for me, & it must be best because it was his choice. O that I may wait for him till the morning of this benighted Kirk break out! This poor afflicted Kirk had a fair morning; but her night came upon her before her noon-day, & she was like a traveller forced to take house in the morning of his journey: & now her adversaries are the chief men in the land, her wayes 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 & dry the face of his weeping spouse & comfort Zion's mourners, who are waiting for him: I know, he shall make corn to grow upon the top of his withered mount Zion again. Remember my bonds & forget me not: Oh that my Lord would bring me again amongst you with abundance of the Gospel of Christ! But O that I may set down my desires where my Lord biddeth me! Remember my love in the Lord to your husband, God make him faithfull to Christ, & my blessing to your three children. Faint not in prayer for this Kirk: Desire my people not to receive a stranger & intruder upon my ministery: let me stand in that right & station that my Lord Jesus gave me. Grace, grace be with you.
Aberd. 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord and Master, S. R.