Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 153 – LETTER 154
To WILLIAM GORDON. At Kenmure. (153
Dear Brother.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: I have been long in answering your letter, which came in good time to me. It is my aim & hearty desire that my furnace, which is of the Lord's kindling, may sparkle fire upon standers by, to the warming of their hearts with God's love. The very dust that falleth from Christ's feet, his old ragged clothes, his knotty & black cross, is sweeter to me then Kings golden crowns & their time-eaten pleasures: I should be a liar & false witness, if I should not give my Lord Jesus a fair testimonial with my whole soul: my word I know will not heighten him, he needeth not such props under his feet to raise his glory high: But Oh that I could raise him the height of heaven & the breadth & length often heavens in the estimation of all his young lovers! for we have all shapen Christ but too narrow & too short, & formed conceptions of his love in our conceit very unworthy of it. Oh that men were taken & catched with his beauty & fairness! They would give over playing with idols, in which there is not halfroom for the love of one soul to exspatiat itself, & man's love is but heart-hungered in gnawing upon bare bones & sucking at dry breasts: It is well wared they want who will not come to him who hath a world of love & goodness & bounty for all. We seek to thawe our frozen hearts at the cold smoke of the short-timed creature, & our souls gather neither heat nor life nor light, for these cannot give to us what they have not in themselves. Oh that we could thrust in through these thorns & this throng of bastardlovers, & be ravished & sick of love for Christ! We should sinde some footing & some room & sweet ease for our tottering & wirless souls in our Lord. I wish it were in my power after this day, to cry down all love but the love of Christ, & to cry down all Gods but Christ, all Saviours but Christ, all welbeloveds but Christ, & all soul-suters, all love-beggers but Christ. Ye complain that ye want a mark of the sound work of grace & love in your soul. For answer, consider for your satisfaction (till God send more) 1. Ioh. 3: 14. And as for your complaint of Deadness & Doubtings, Christ I hope will take your deadness & you together: They are bodies full of holes, running boils, & broken bones that need mending, that Christ the Physician taketh up: whole vessels are not for the Mediator Christ's art: Publicans, sinners, whores, harlots, are ready market-wares for Christ: The onelyonly thing that will bring sinners within a cast of Christ's drawing arm, is, that which ye write of, some feeling of death & Sin that bringeth forth complaints: & therefore out of sense complain more, & be more acquaint with all the cramps, stitches & soul-swoonings that trouble you: The more pain & the more night-watching & the moe fevers, the better: A soul bleeding to death till Christ were sent for & cried for in all haste to come & stem the blood & close up the hole in the wound, with his own hand & balm, were a very good disease when many are dying of a whole heart. We have all too little of hell-pain & terrours that way: Nay, God send mesuch a hell as Christ hath promised to make a heaven out of. Alas, I am not come that far on in the way as to say in sad earnest, Lord Iesus, great & soveraign Physician, here is a pained patient for thee. But the thing that we mistake, is the want of victory, we hold that to be the mark of one that hath no grace: Nay, I say, the want of fighting were a mark of no grace, but I shall not say, the want of victory is such a mark. If my fire & the Devil's water make crackling like thunder in the air, I am the less feared; for where there is fire, it is Christ's part that I lay & binde upon him to keep in the coal, and to pray the father that my faith fail not, if I in the mean time be wrestling & doing and sighing and mourning: For prayer putteth not Paul's devil [the prick in the flesh & the messenger of Satan] to the door at first, but our Lord will have them trying every one another and let Paul send himself by God's help, God keeping the stakes & moderating the play: And ye doe well not to doubt if the ground-stone be sure, but to try if it be so, for there is great ods between doubting that we have grace & trying if we have grace: the former may be sin, but the latter is good. We are but loose in trying our free-holding of Christ & making sure work of Christ: Holy fear is a searching the camp that there be no enemy within our bosom to betray us, & a seeing that all be fast & sure: For I see many lecking vessels fair before the wind, & professours who take their conversion upon trust, & they goe on securely & see not to the under-water till a storm sink them: Each man had need twice a day & oftner, to be ryped & searched with candles. pray for me that the Lord would give me house-room again to hold a candle to this dark world. Grace, grace be with you.
Aberd. 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord & Master, S. R.
To MARGARET FULLERTON. (154)
MISTRESS.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: I am glad that ever ye did cast your love on Christ, fasten more and more love every day upon him. O if I had a river of love, a sea of love that would never goe dry, to bestow upon him! But alas the pity, Christ hath beauty for me, but I have not love for him. O what pain is it to see Christ in his beauty, & then to want a heart & love for him! But I see, want we must, till Christ lend us, never to be payed again. O that he would empty these vaults and lower houses of these poor souls, of these bastard and base lovers which we follow! And verily I see no object in heaven or in earth that I could ware this much of love upon that I have, but upon Christ. Alas that clay and time and shadows run away with our love, which is ill spent upon any but upon Christ: each fool at the day of judgement shall seek back his love from the creatures, when he shall see them all in a fair fire, but they shall prove irresponsall debters: And therefore best here look ere we leap, and look ere we love. I finde now under his cross that I would fain give him more then I have to give him, if giving were in my power: But I rather wish him my heart then give him it, except he take it and put himself in possession of it [for I hope he hath a market-right to me, since he hath ransomed me] I see not how Christ can have me. O that he would be pleased to be more homely with my soul's love, and to come in to my soul and take his own! But when he goeth away & hideth himself, all is to me that I had of Christ, as if it had fallen in the seabottom. Oh that I should be so fickle in my love, as to love Christ onelyonly by the eyes and the nose! That is, to love him onelyonly in as far as fond & foolish sense carrieth me & no more: And when I see not, & smell not, and touch not, then I have all to seek. I cannot love parquier, nor rejoyce parquier: But this is our weakness till we be at home & shall have aged mens stomacks to bear Christ's love. Pray for me, that our Lord would bring me back to you with a new blessing of the Gospel of Christ. I forget not you. Grace. grace be with you.
Aberd. 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Iesus. S. R.