Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 59
To the Lady Busbie. (59)
MISTRESS.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you. I am glad to hear that Christ & ye are one, & that ye have made him your one thing: Whereas many are painfully t…iled in seeking many things & their many things are nothing. It's onelyonly best, ye set your self apart as a thing laid up & out of the gate for Christ alone, for ye are good for no other thing but Christ, & he hath been going about you these many years by afflictions, to engage you to himself, it were a pity & a loss to say him nay. Verily I could wish, that I could swim through hell & all the ill weather in the world & Christ in my arms; but it is my evil & folly, that except Christ come unsent for, I dow not goe to seek, him: When he & I fall in reckoning, we are both behinde, he in payment, & I in counting, & so marches lie still unrid & counts uncleared betwixt us. O that he would take his own blood for counts & miscounts, that I might be a free man, & none had any claim to me, but onelyonly, onelyonly Jesus. I will think it no bondage to be rooped, comprised & possessed by Christ, as his bond-man. Think well of the visitations of your Lord: For I finde one thing I saw not well before, that when the saints are under trials & well humbled, little sins raise great cryes & war-shouts in the conscience; & in prosperity conscience is a Pope to give dispensations, & let out & in, & give latitude, & elbow-room to our heart. O how little care we for pardon at Christ's hand, when we make dispensations! And all is but bairns-play, till a cross without, beget an heavier cross within, & then we play no longer with our Idols: It is good still to be severe against ourselves, for we but transform God's mercy into an Idol, & an Idol that hath a dispensation to give for turning of the grace of God into wantonness. Happy are they who take up God, wrath, justice & sin, as they are in themselves: For we have miscarrying light that parteth with childe, when we have good resolutions: But God be thanked that Salvation is not rolled upon our wheels. O but Christ hath a saving eye! Salvation is in his eye-lids: When he first looked on me, I was saved; It cost him but a look to make hell quite of me: O merits, free merits, & the dear blood of God, was the best gate that ever we could have gotten of hell! O what a sweet, O what a safe & sure way is it, to come out of hell leaning on a Saviour! That Christ & a sinner should be one & have heaven betwixt them & be halvers of Salvation, is the wonder of Salvation: What more humble could love be? & what an excellent smell doeth Christ cast on his lower garden, where there grow but wilde flowers, if we speak by way of comparison; but there is nothing but perfect garden flowers in heaven, & the best plenishing that is there, is Christ: We are all obliged to love heaven for Christ's sake, he graceth heaven & all his father's house with his presence: He is a rose that beautifieth all the upper garden of God; a leaf of that rose of God, for smell, is worth a world: O that he would blow his smell upon a withered & dead soul, let us then goe on to meet with him & to be filled with the sweetness of his love: Nothing will hold him from us; he hath decreed to put time, sin, hell, devils, men & death out of the way, & to rid the rough way betwixt us & him, that we may enjoy one another. It's strange & wonderfull that he would think long in heaven without us, & that he would have the company of sinners to solace & delight himself withall in heaven. & now the supper is abiding us: Christ the bridegroom with desire is waiting on till the bride, the Lamb's wife, be busked for the marriage, & the great hall be rid for the meeting of that joyfull couple. O fools, what doe we here? & why sit we still? Why sleep we in the prison? Were it not best to make us wings to flee up to our blessed match, our marrow & our fellow-friend? I think, Misterss, ye are looking there-away, & this is your second or third thought: make forward, your guide waiteth on you. I cannot but bless you for your care & kindness to the saints. God give you to finde mercy in that day of our Lord Jesus, to whose saving grace I recommend you.
Aberd. 1637. Yours in our Lord Iesus: S. R.