Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 148
To CASSINCARRIE. (148.)
Much honoured Sir.
GRace, mercy and peace be to you: I have been too long in writing to you. I am confident ye have learned to prize Christ & his love & favour more then ordinary professours, who scarce see Christ with half an eye, because their sight is taken up with eying & liking the beauty of this over-guileded world that promiseth fair to all it's lovers, but in the push of a trial when need is, can give nothing but a fair beguile. I know ye are not ignorant that men come not to this world as some doe to a market, to see and be seen, or as some come to behold a May-game, and onelyonly to behold and to goe home again: Ye came hither to treat with God & to tryst with him in his Christ, for salvation to your soul, & to seek reconcilation with an angry and wrathful God in a covenant of peace made to you in Christ, & this is more then an ordinary sport or the play that the greatest part of the world give their heart unto: And therefore, Worthy Sir, I pray you by the salvation of your soul and by the mercy of God & your compearence before Christ, doe this in sad earnest, & let not salvation be your by-work or your holy-day's task onelyonly, or a work by the way: For men think that this may be done in three dayes space on a feather-bed, when death & they are fallen in hands together, and that with a word or two they shall make their soul-matters right: Alas, this is to …it loose and unsure in the matters of our salvation: Nay, the seeking of this world & the glory of it, is but an odde & by-errand that we may slip, sobeing we make salvation sure. Oh when will men learn to be that heavenly wise as to divorce from & free their soul of all Idol-lovers, and make Christ the onelyonly onelyonly One, and trim & make ready their lamps while they have time and day! How soon will this house skail and the Innes where the poor soul lodgeth fall to the earth! How soon will some few years pass away, & then when the day is ended & this life's lease expired, what have men of world's glory, but dreams & thoughts? O how blessed a thing is it to labour for Christ & to make him sure! Know and try in time your holding of him and the rights and charters of heaven, and upon what terms ye have Christ and the Gospel, and what Christ is worth in your estimation, and how lightly ye esteem of other things and how dearly of Christ! I am sure if ye see him in his beauty and glory, ye shall see him to be all things, and that incomparable jewel of gold that ye should seek, howbeit ye should sell, wod-set & forfeit your few years portion of this life's joyes. O happy soul for evermore who can rightly compare this life with that long-lasting life to come, & can ballance the weighty glory of the one, with the light golden vanity of the other! The day of the Lord is now near hand, & all mē shall come out in their black's & white's as they are: There shall be no borrowed lying colours in that day, when Christ shall be called Christ & no longer nicknamed: now men borrow Christ & his white colour & the lustre & fairding of Christianity; but how many counterfeit masks will be burnt in the day of God, in the fire, that shall burn the earth & the works that are in it: And howbeit Christ have the hardest part of it now, yet in the presence of my Lord whom I serve in the spirit, I would not niffer or exchange Christ's prison, bands & chains, with the gold chains & Lordly rents, & smiling & happy-like heavens of the men of this world. I am far from thoughts of repenting because of my losses & bonds for Christ, I wish all my adversaries were as I am except my bonds. Worthy, worthy, worthy for evermore is Christ, for whom we should suffer pains like hell's pains, far more the short hell that the saints of God have in this life. Sir, I wish your soul may be more acquainted with the sweetness of Christ. Grace, grace be with you.
Abord. 1637. Yours in his onelyonly Lord & Master, S. R.