Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 134
To my Lord BOYD. [134]
My very honourable & good Lord.
GRace, mercy & peace be to your Lo: Out of the worthy report that I hear of your Lo: zeal for this born down & oppressed Gospel, I am bold to write to your Lo: beseeching you by the mercies of God, by the honour of our royal and princely King Jesus, by the sorrows, tears & desolation of your afflicted mother-church, & by the peace of your conscience & your joy in the day of Christ, that your Lo: would goe on in the strength of your Lord and in the power of his might, to bestir your self for the vindicating of the fallen honour of your Lord Jesus. O blessed hands for evermore that shall help to put the crown upon the head of Christ again in Scotland! I dare promise in the name of our Lord that this shall fasten & fix the pillars & the stakes of your own honourable house upon earth, if ye lend & lay in pledge in Christ's hand [upon spiritual hazard] life, estate, house, honour, credit, moyen, friends, the favour of men [suppose King's with three crown…] sobeing ye may bear witness & acquit your self as a man of valour and courage to the Prince of your salvation, for the purging of his temple & s…eeping out the Lordly Diotrephes's, time-courting Demas's, corrupt Hymeneus's & Philetus's & other such oxen that with their dung defile the Temple of the Lord. Is not Christ now crying, Who will help me? Who will come out with me, to take part with me & share in the honour of my victory over these mine enemies who have said: Wee …ill not have this man to rule over us; My very honourable and dear Lord, joyn, joyn [a… ye do…] with Christ, he is more worth to you & your posterity then this world's May flowers & withering Riches & Honour, that shall goe away as smoke & evanish in a nightvision, & shall in one half hour after the blast of the Archangel's trumpet, lie in white ashes. Let me beseech your Lo: to draw by the lap of Time's curtain & look in through that window to great & endless Eternity, & consider if a worldly price [suppose this little round clay globe of this ashie & dirty earth, the dying idol of the fools of this world were all (your own] can be given for one smile of Christ's God-like & soul ravishing countenance, in that day when so many joints and knees of thousand thousands wailing shall stand before Christ trembling, shouting & making their prayers to hills & mountains to fall upon them and hide them from the face of the Lamb. O how many would sell Lordships & Kingdoms that day & buy Christ! But Oh the market shall be closed & ended ere then. Your Lo: hath now a blessed venture of winning court with the Prince of the Kings of the earth: He himself weeping, truth born down, & fallen in the streets & an oppressed Gospel, Christ's bride with watery eyes & spoiled of her vail, her hair hanging about her eyes forced to goe in ragged apparel, the banished, silenced & imprisoned prophets of God, who have not the favour of liberty to prophesie in sackcloth, all these I say, call for your help: Fear not worms of clay, the moth shall eat them as a garment, let the Lord be your fear, he is with you & shall fight for you: thus shall ye cause the blessing of these who are ready to perish come upon you, & ye shall make the heart of this your mother-Church to sing for joy. The Lamb & his armies are with you & the Kingdoms of the earth are the Lord's. I am perswaded there is not another Gospel nor another saving truth, then that which ye now contend for, I dare hazard my heaven & salvation upon it, that this is the onelyonly saving way to glory. Grace, grace be with your Lo:
Aberd. 1637. Your Lo: at all respective obedience in Christ. S. R.