Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 192
To CARDONNESS Younger. (192.)
Much honoured Sir.
I Long to hear whether or not your soul be hand-fasted with Christ: Lose your time no longer: Flee the follies of youth: Gird up the loins of your minde, & make you ready for meeting the Lord. I have often summoned you, & now I summond you again, to compear before your Judge, to make a reckoning of your life: while ye have Time, look upon your papers & consider your wayes: O that there were such an heart in you, as to think what an ill conscience will be to you, when yeare upon the border of eternity, & your one foot out of time! O then, ten thousand thousand floods of tears cannot extinguish these flames, or purchase to you one hour's release from that pain! O how sweet a day have ye had! But this is a fair day that runneth fast away, see how ye have spent it, & consider the necessity of salvation: & tell me [in the fear of God] if ye have made it sure: I am perswaded ye have a conscience that will be speaking somewhat to you: Why will ye die & destroy yourself? I charge you in Christ's name to rouze up your conscience, & begin to indent & contract with Christ in time while salvation is in your offer: This is the accepted time, this is the day of salvation: play the marchant, for ye cannot expect another market-day when this is done; therefore let me again beseech you to consider in this your day, the things that belong to your peace, before they be hid from your eyes. Dear Brother, fulfill my joy, & begin to seek the Lord while he may be found: Forsake the follies of deceiving & vain youth: Lay hold upon eternall life: Whoring, night-drinking, & mispending of the sabbath, & neglecting of prayer in your house, & refusing of an offered salvation, will burn up your soul with the terrours of the Almighty, when your awakened conscience shall flee in your face. Be kinde & loving to your wife, make conscience of cherishing her and not being rigidly austere. Sir, I have not a tongue to express the glory that is laid up for you in your father's house, if ye reform your doings and frame your heart to return to the Lord. Ye know this world is but a shadow, a shortliving creature, under the law of time; within less then fifty yeers, when ye look back to it, ye shall laugh at the evanishing vanities thereof, as feathers flying in the air, and at the houses of sand within the sea-mark, which the children of men are building: Give up with courting of this vain world: Seek not the bastard's moveables, but the Son's heritage in heaven. Take a trial of Christ, look unto him & his love shall so change you, that ye shall be taken with him & never chuse to goe from him: I have experience of his sweetness in this house of my pilgrimage here: My witness who is above, knoweth, I would not exchange my sighs & tears with the laughing of the fourteen Prelats: There is nothing will make you a Christian indeed, but a taste of the sweetness of Christ, come and see will speak best to your soul: I would fain hope good of you: be not discouraged at broken & spilt- resolutions, but to it, & to it again: Wooe about Christ, till ye get your soul espoused as a chaste virgin to him: Use the means of profiting with your conscience: Pray in your family, & read, the word: Remember how our Lord's day was spent when I was among you: It will be a great challenge to you before God, if ye forget the good that was done within the walls of your house on the Lord's dayes, & if ye turn aside after the fashions of this world, & if ye goe not in time to the kirk to wait on the publike worship of God, & if ye tarry not at it, till all the exercises of religion be ended: Give God some of your time both morning & evening & afternoon, & in so doing, rejoyce the heart of a poor oppressed prisoner. Rue upon your own soul, & from your heart fear the Lord. Now he that brought again from the dead the great Shepherd of his sheep, by the blood of the eternall Covenant, establish your heart with his grace, & present you before his presence with joy.
Aberd. 1637. Your affectionat & loving Pastor, S. R.