Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 136
To ALEXANDER GORDON, Of Earlestown. (136)
Much honoured Sir.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: It is like if ye the Gentry & Nobility of this nation, be men in the streets [as the word speaketh] for the Lord, that he will now deliver his flock & gather & rescue his scattered sheep from the hands of cruel & rigorous Lords, that have ruled over them with force. O that mine eyes might see the moon-light turn to the light of the sun! But I still fear the quarrel of a broken Covenant in Scotland standeth before the Lord: However it be, I avouch it before the world, the tabernacle of the Lord shall again be in the midst of Scotland, and the glory of the Lord shall dwell in beauty as the light of many days in one, in this land, O what could my soul desire more next to my Lord Jesus, while I am in this flesh, but that Christ & his Kingdom might be great amongst Jews & Gentiles, & that the Isles [& amongst them, overclouded & darkned Britan] might have the glory of a noon-day's sun! Oh that I had any thing [I will not except my part in Christ] to wodset or lay in pledge to redeem & buy such glory to my highest & royal Prince, my sweet Lord Jesus! my poor little heaven were well bestowed, if it could stand a pawne for ever to set on high the glory of my Lord; But I know, he needeth not wages nor hire at my hand: Yea, I know, if my eternal glory could weigh down in weight it's alone, all the eternal glory of th… blessed Angels & of all the spirits of just & perfect men glorified & to be glorified, Oh alas, how far am I engaged to forgoe it for, and give it over to Christ; sobeing he might thereby be set on high above ten thousand thousand millions of heavens, in the conquest of many, many nations to his Kingdom! Oh that his Kingdom would come! O that all the world would stoop before him! O blessed hands that shall put the crown upon Christ's head in Scosland! But alas, I can scarce get leave to ware my love on him: I can finde no wayes to …u… my h…at upon Christ & my love that I with my soul bestow on him, it is like to die upon my hand, & I think it no bairns-play to be hungred with Christ's love: To love him & to want him wanteth little of hell. I am sure he knoweth how my joy would swell upon me from a little well to a great sea, to have as much of his love & as wide a soul answerable to comprehend it, till I cried, hold Lord, no more: But I finde he will not have me to be mine own steward nor mine own carver: Christ keepeth the keys of Christ [to speak so] & of his own love, and he is a wiser distributer then I can take up: I know there is more in him then would make me run over like a coast-full-sea. I were happy for evermore to get leave to stand but beside Christ and his love, and to look in, suppose I were interdicted of God to come near hand, touch or embrace, kiss or set too my sinfull head and drink my self drunken with that lovely thing. God send me that I would have, for I now verily see, more clearly then before, our folly in drinking dead waters & in playing the whore with our soul's love upon runningout wells, & broken sheards of creatures of yesterday, whom Time will unlaw with the penalty of losing their being & natural ornaments. O when a soul's love is itching [to speak so] for God, and when Christ in his boundless and bottomless love, beauty and excellency cometh & rubbeth up & exciteth that love, what can be heaven if this be not heaven? I am sure this bit feckless, narrow & short love of regenerated sinners was born for no other end, but to breath & live and love & dwell in the bosom and betwixt the breasts of Christ: Where is there a bed or a lodging for the saints love but Christ? O that he would take our selves off our hand, for neither we nor the creatures can be either due conquest or lawfull heritage to love! Christ & none but Christ is Lord & proprietour of it. Oh alas, how pitifull is it that so much of our love goeth by him! O but we be wretched wasters of our soul's love! I know it is the deep of bottomless, and unsearchable providence, that the saints are suffered to play the whore from God, and that their love goeth a hunting, when God knoweth it shall rost nothing of that at supper-time: The renewed would have it otherwise; & why is it so, seeing our Lord can keep us without nodding, tottering or reeling, or any fall at all? Our desires I hope shall meet with perfection; but God will have our sins an office-house for God's grace, & hath made sin a matter of an unlaw & penalty for the Son of God's blood; & howbeit sin should be our sorrow, yet there is a sort of acquiescing & resting upon God's dispensation required of us, that there is such a thing in us as Sin, whereupon mercy, forgiveness, healing, curing, in our sweet Physician, may finde a field to work upon. O what a deep is here, that created wit cannot take up! However matters goe, it is our happiness to win new ground daily in Christ's love, and to purchase a new piece of it daily and to adde conquest to conquest, till our Lord Jesus & we be so near other, that Satan shall not draw a straw or a threed betwixt us. And for my self, I have no greater joy in my welfavoured bonds for Christ, then that I know, time shall put him & me together; & that my love & longing hath room & liberty amidst my bonds & foes [whereof there are not a few here of all ranks] to goe visit the borders & utter coasts of my Lord Jesus's countrey & see at least afar off & darkly, the countrey which shall be mine inheritance, which is my Lord Jesus's due, both through birth and conquest. I dare avouch to all that know God, that the saints know not the length & largeness of the sweet earnest & of the sweet green sheaves before the harvest, that might be had on this side of the water, if we should take more pains: And that we all goe to heaven with less earnest & lighter purses of the hoped-for summe, then otherwise we might doe, if we took more pains to win further in upon Christ, in this pilgrimage of our absence from him. Grace, grace & glory be your portion.
Aberd. 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Iesus. S. R.