Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 29 – LETTER 33
To the Lady Kilconqhuair. (29.)
MISTRESS.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: I am glad to hear that you have your face home-ward towards your fathers house, now when so many are for a home nearer hand: but your Lord calleth you to another life & glory, then is to be found hereaway: & therefore I would counsel you to make sure the charters, & rights, which ye have to Salvation. You came to this life about a necessary & weighty business, to tryst with Christ anent your precious soul, & the eternal salvation of it: this is the most necessary business ye have in this life, & your other adoés beside this, are but toyes & feathers, & dreams, & fancies: this is the greatest haste & should be done first. Means are used in the Gospel to draw on a meeting betwixt Christ & you: if ye neglect your part of it, it is, as if you would tear the contract before Christ's eyes, & give up the match, that there shall be no more communing of that business. I know other lovers beside Christ are in suit of you, & your soul wanteth not many wooers, but I pray you make a chaste virgin of your soul, & let it love but one: most worthy is Christ alone of all your souls love, howbeit your love were higher then the heaven & deeper then the lowest of this earth, & broader then this world: many, alas too many, make a common strumpet of their soul, for every lover that cometh to the house. Marriage with Christ would put your love, & your heart by the gate, out of the way, & out of the eyes of all other unlawfull suiters; & then you had a ready answer for all others, I am already promised away to Christ, the match is concluded, my soul hath a husband already, & it cannot have two husbands. Oh if the world did but know what a smel the ointments of Christ cast, and how ravishing his beauty, even the beauty of the fairest of the sons of men is, & how sweet & powerful his voice is, the voice of that one welbeloved! Certainly where Christ cometh, he runneth away with the souls love, so that they cannot command it. I would far rather look but thorow the hole of Christs door, to see but the one half of his fairest, & most comely face [for he looketh like heaven] suppose I should never win in to see his excellency & glory to the full; then to enjoy the flower, the bloome, & chiefest excellency of the glory, & riches, of ten worlds. Lord send me for my part but the meanest share of Christ, that can be given to any of the indwellers of the new Jerusalem; But I know my Lord is no niggard: He can, & it becometh him well to give more, then my narrow soul can receive. If there were ten thousand, thousand millions of worlds, & as many heavens full of men & Angels, Christ would not be pinched to supply all our wants, and to fill us all. Christ is a well of life, but who knoweth how deep it is to the bottom? This soul of ours hath love, and cannot but love some fair one: And O what a fair one, what an onelyonly one, what an excellent lovely ravishing one is Jesus! Put the beauty of ten thousand thousand worlds of Paradises like the garden of Eden in one, put all trees, all flowers, all smels, all colours, all tastes, all joyes, all sweetness, all lovelyness is one, O what a fair and excellent thing would that be! & yet it should be less, to that fair & dearest welbeloved Christ then one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, & fourtains of ten thousand earths. O but Christ is heavens wonder & earths wonder! what marvel that his bride saith, Cant 5: v. 16. He is altogether lovely. Oh that black souls will not come, & fetch all then love to this fair one! O if I could invite & perswade thousands, & ten thousand times ten thousand of Adam's sons; to flock about my Lord Jesus, & to come & take their fill of love! Oh pity, for evermore, that there should be such an one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, & so incomparable in infinite excellency, & sweetness, and so few to take him. Oh, oh, ye poor, dry & dead souls, why will ye not come hither with your toom vessels, & your empty souls, to this huge, & fair, & deep, & sweet well of life, & fill all your toom vessels! Oh that Christ should be so large in sweetness, & worth, & we so narrow, so pinched so ebbe, & so void of all happiness, and yet men will not take him! They lose their love miserably who will not bestow it upon this lovely one. Alas, these five thousand yeers, Adam's fools, his waster-heirs, have been wasting & lavishing out their love, and their affections upon black lovers, and black harlots: upon bits of dead creatures, and broken idols, upon this, & that feckless creature, & have not brought their love, and their heart to Jesus. O pity, that fairness hath so few lovers! O woe, woe to the fools of this world; who run by Christ to other lovers! Oh misery, misery, misery, that comeliness can scarce get three, or four hearts in a town, or a countrey! Oh that there is so much spoken & so much written and so much thought of creature-vanity, and so little spoken, so little written, so little thought of my great, and incomprehensible, and never-enough-wondered-at Lord Jesus. Why should I not curse this forlorn, and wretched world, that suffereth my Lord Jesus to lie his alone? O damned souls, O miskenning world, O blind, O beggerly, and poor souls, O bewitched fools, what aileth you at Christ, that you run so from him? I dare not challenge providence, that there are so few buyers, and so little sale for such an excellent one as Christ. O the depth, and O the hight of my Lords wayes, that passe finding out. But oh if men would once be wise, and not fall so in love with their own hell, as to pass by Christ, and misken him! But let us come near, and fill our selves with Christ, and let his friends drink, and be drunken, and satisfie our hollow and deep desires, with Jesus. Oh come all and drink at this living well; come drink & live for ever more, come drink & welcome: welcome, saith our fairest Bridegroom, no man getteth Christ with ill will, no man cometh & is not welcome, no man cometh and rueth his voyage: all men speak well of Christ who have been at him; men and Angels who know him, will say more then I dow doe, & think more of him then they can say. O if I were misted and bewildered in my Lords love! Oh if I were fettered & chained to it! O sweet pain to be pained for a sight of him! O living death, O good death! O lovely death to die for love of Jesus! Oh that I should have a sore heart & a pained soul for the wanting of the love of this, & that idol! woe, woe to the mistakings of my miscarrying heart, that gapeth & cryeth for creatures, & is not pained, & cutted, & tortured, & in sorrow for the want of a souls-fill of Christ. Oh that thou would'st come near, my Beloved: O my fairest one, why standest thou a far? come hither that I may be satiat with thy excellent love: O for an union, O for a fellowship with Jesus! O that I could buy with a price that lovely one, suppose hells torments for a while were the price! I cannot beleeve but Christ will ru… upon his pained lovers, & come & ease sick hearts, who sigh and swoond for the want of Christ: who dow bide Christs love to be nice? What heaven can there be liker to hell, then to lust, and grein, and dwine, and fall a swoon for Christs love, and to want it? is not this hell & heaven woven thorow other? Is not this pain and joy, sweetness and sadness to be in one web, the one the woft, the other the warp. Therefore I would Christ would let us meet; and joyn together, the soul & Christ in others arms. O what meeting is like this, to see blackness and beauty, contemptibleness and glory, highness and baseness, even a soul and Christ kiss one another! Nay but when all is done I may be wearied in speaking and writing, but O how far am I from the right expression of Christ o… his love. I can neither speak, nor write feeling, nor …alling, nor smeling… come feel, & smel, & taste Christ, & his love…d & ye shall call it more then can be spoken: to write how sweet the honeycomb it is not so lovely as to eat & suck the honey comb: …nd nights rest in a bed of love with Christ, will say more then he… can think, or tongue can utter. Neither need we fear crosses, or sigh, or be sad for any thing that is on this side of heaven, if we have Christ: our crosses will never draw blood of the joy of the holy Ghost, & peace of conscience; ou… joy i… laid up in such a high place as temptations cannot climb up to take it down: this world may boast Christ; but they dare not strike, or if they strike, they break their arm in fetching a stroke upon a rock. O that we could put our treasure in Christ's hand, & give him our gold to keep, & our crown. St…iv…, Mistress, to throng thorow the thorns of this life to be at Christ: …in… not sight of him in this cloudy, & dark day: Sleep with him in your heart in the night: Learn not at the world to serve Christ, but speir at himself the way, the world is a false copy & a lying guide to follow. Remember my love to your husband, I wish all to him I have written here. The sweet presence, the long lasting goodwill of our God, the warmely & lovely comforts of our Lord Jesus be with you. Help me his prisoner in your prayers: For I remember you.
Aberd. Agust. 8. 1637. Yours i… his sweet Lord Iesus, S. R.
To the Lady Forre… (30)
Worthy Mistress.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: I long to hear from you: I hear Christ hath been that Kind as to visit you with sickness, & to bring you to the door of the grave, but ye found the door shut (blessed be his glorious name) while ye be riper for eternity: He will have more service of you, & therefore he seeketh of you, that hence forth ye be honest to your new husband, the Son of God. We have all Idol-love, & are wh…y inclined to love other things beside our Lord; and therefore our Lord hunteth for our love, moe wayes then one or two. Oh that Christ had his own of us: I know he will not want you, & that is a sweet wilfulness in his Love; & ye have as good cause o… the other part to be head strong & peremptory in your love to Christ, & not to part or divide your love betwixt Him & the world; if it were more it is little enough, yea too little for Christ. I am now every way in good terms with Christ, he hath set a banished prisoner as a seal on his heart, and as a bracelet on his arme: that crabbed and black tree of the cross, laugheth upon me now: the alarming noise of the cross is worse then it self. I love Christs glooms, better, then the world's worm-eaten joyes. Oh if all the Kingdom were as I am, except these bonds: my losse is gain: my sadness, joyfull: my bonds, liberty: my tears comfortable. This world is not worth a drink of cold water. O but Christ's love casteth a great heat, … hell & all the salt sea and the rivers of the earth cannot quench it: I remember you to God, ye have the prayers of a prisoner of Christ: Grace, grace be with you.
Aberd. March. 9. 1637. Yours …n his sweet Lord Iesus, S. R.
To the Lady Caskiberry. (31)
MADAM.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: I long to hear how your La: is: I know not how to requite your La: kindness, but your love to the Saints Madam, is Laid up in heaven, I know it is for your welbeloved Christs sake, that ye make his friends so dear to you, & concerne your self somuch in them. I am in this house of my pilgrimage every way in good case, Christ is most kind and loving to my soul, it pleaseth him to feast with his unseen consolations a stranger, and an exiled prisoner, and I would not exchange my Lord Jesus, with all the comfort out of heaven: his yoke is easie and his burden light. This is his truth I now suffer for, for he hath sealed it …ith his blessed presence, I know Christ shall yet win the day, and gaine the battell in Scotland. Grace be with you.
Aberd. March. 7. 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Iesus. S. R.
To Mr. JAMES BRUCE. Minister of the Gospel. (32)
Reverend & welbeloved Brother.
GRace, mercy and peace be to you: Upon the nearest acquaintance, that we are fathers children, I thought good to write to you. My case in my bonds for the honour of my royall Prince, and King Jesus, i… as good as becometh the witness of such a Soveraign King. At my first coming hither, I was in great heaviness, wrestling vvith challenges, being burdened in heart, (as I am yet) for my silent Sabbaths, and for a bereft people; young ones new-borne plucked from the breasts, & the Childrens table drawn. I thought I was a drie tree cast over the dike of the vine-yard; but my secret conceptions of Christs love, at his sweet & longdesired return to my soul, were found to be a lye of Christs love forged by the tempter, and my own heart, and I am perswaded that it was so: Now there is greater peace and security within then before: the court is raised and dismissed for it was not fenced in God's name: I was far mistaken, who should have summoned Christ for unkindness: misted faith, & my sever conceived amiss of him: novv, novv, he is pleased to feast a poor prisoner, and to refresh me vvith joy unspeakable and glorious; so, as the holy Spirit is witness, that my sufferings are for Christs truth, and God forbid I should deny the testimony of the holy Spirit, and make him a false witness. Now I testify under my hand, out of some small experience, that Ch…ists cause [even with the cross,] is better then the Kings crown, & that his reproaches are sweet, his cross perfumed, the walls of my prison fair & large, my losses gain. I desire you, my dear Brother, help me to praise, and remember me in your prayers to God. Grace, grace be with you.
Aberd. March. 14. 1637. Yours in our Lord Iesus, S. R.
To the Lady Earlstoun. (33)
MISTRESS.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: I long to hear how your soul prospereth. I exhort you to go on in your journey: your day is short, & your afternoon-sun will soon goe down: make an end of your accounts with your Lord: for Death and Judgement are tides, that bide no man: salvation is supposed to be at the door, and Christianity is thought an easie task; but I finde it hard, and the way strait and narrow, were it not but my guide is content to wait on me, and to care for a tired traveller. Hurt not your conscience with any known sin: let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God; if the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summers-loan of them, & keep good neighbourhood, to borrow & lend with him. Set your heart upon heaven, and trouble not your spirit with this clay-Idol of the world, which is but vanity, and hath but the lustre of the Rain-bow in the air, which cometh and goeth with a flying March-shower: Clay is the Idol of bastards, not the inheritance of the children. My Lord hath been pleased to make many unknown faces laugh upon me, and hath made me well content of a borrowed fire-side, and a borrowed bed: I am feasted with the joyes of the holy Ghost, & my royal King beareth my charges honourably. I love the smell of Christ's sweet breath, better then the worlds gold. I would I had help to praise him. The great Messenger of the Covenant, the Son of God establish you on your rock, & keep you to the day of his coming.
Aberd. March. 7. 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Iesus, S. R.