Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 186
To WILLIAM GORDON Of Robertovvn. (186)
Dear Brother.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: So often as I think on our case in our souldiers night-watch, & of our sighting life in the fields, while we are here: I am forced to say, prisoners in a dungeon condemned by a judge, to want the light of the sun and moon & candle, till their dying day, are no more, nay not so much to be pitied as we are; for they weary of their life, they hate their prison: But we fall to in our prison, where we see little, to drink our selves drunk with the night-pleasures of our weak dreams, & we long for no better life then this; but at the blast of the last trumpet, & the shout of the Archangel, when God shall take down the shepherd's tent of this fading world, we shall not have somuch as a drink of water of all the dreams that we now build on. Alas that the sharp & bitter blasts on face & sides which meet us in this life, have not learned us mortification, & made us dead to this world! We buy our own sorrow, & we pay dear for it, when we spend out our love, our joy, our desires, our confidence upon an handfull of snow & ice that time will melt away to nothing, & go thirstie out of the drunken Innes when all is done: Alas that we enquire not for the clear fountain; but are so foolish as to drink foul muddy & rotten waters even till our bed-time; & then in the resurrection when we shall be awakned, our yesternight's sowre drinke & swinish dregs shall rift up upon us, and sick, sick shall many a soul be then: I know no wholesom fountain but one: I know not a thing worth the buying but heaven: And my own minde is, if comparison were made betwixt Christ & heaven, I would sell heaven with my blessing & buy Christ. Oh if I could raise the market for Christ, & heighten the market a pound for a penny, & cry up Christ in mens estimation ten thousand talents more then men think of him! But they are shaping him & crying him down & valuing him at their unworthy half-penny, or else exchanging & bartering Christ with the miserable old fallen house of this vain world, or then they lend him out upon interest & play the usurers with Christ: Because they profess him & give out before men that Christ is their treasure & stock, & in the mean time, praise of men, & a name, & case, & the summmer-sun of the Gospel is the usury they would be at, so when the trial cometh, they quite the stock for the interest & loose all: Happy are they who can keep Christ by himself alone, and keep him clean and whole till God come & count with them. I know in your hard and heavy trials long since, ye thought well and highly of Christ; but truly no cross should be old to us: We should not forget them, because years are come betwixt us and them, & cast them by hand as we doe old clothes: We may make a cross old in time, new in use, & as fruitfull as in the beginning of it: God is where and what he was seven years agoe, what ever change be in us: I speak not this, as if I thought ye had forgotten what God did to have your love long since; but that ye may awake your self in this sleepy age, & remember fruitfully of Christ's first wooing and suiting of your love both with fire & water, & try if he got his answer, or if ye be yet to give him it: For I finde in my self that water runneth not faster through a sieve, then our warnings slip from us; for I have lost & casten by hands many summonds the Lord sent to me, & therefore the Lord hath given me double charges, that I trust in God shall not rive me. I bless his great name who is no niggard in holding in crosses upon me, but spendeth largely his rods, that he may save me from this perishing world: how plentifull God is in means of this kinde is esteemed by many, one of God's unkinde mercies; but Christ's cross is neither a cruel nor unkinde mercy, but the love-token of a father. I am sure a lover chasing us for our well & to have our love, should not be run away from or fled. God send me no worse mercy then the sanctified cross of Christ portendeth, & I am sure I should be happy & blest. Pray for me that I may finde house-room in the Lord's house to speak in his name. Remember my dearest love in Christ to your wife. Grace, grace be with you.
Aberd. 1636. Yours in his sweet Lord Iesus. S. R.