Letters in Two Parts, Part 1 · LETTER 89
To JOHN KENNEDY Bailiffe of Ayr. (89:)
Worthy & welbeloved Brother
GRace mercy & peace be unto you: I am yet waiting what our Lord will doe for his afflicted church, & for my reentry to my Lord's house. Oh that I could hear the forfeiture of Christ [now casten out of his inheritance] recalled & taken off by open proclamation, & that Christ were restored to be a Free holder and a landed Hieritour in Scotland: & That the courts fenced in the name of the bastard Prelats [their Godfather's the Pop's Bailiffes & Sherifes] were cryed down! Oh how sweet a sight were it to see all the Tribes of the Lord in this land fetching home again our banished king Christ to his own palace, his Sanctuary and his throne! I shall think it mercy to my soul, if my faith shall out-watch all this winter night & not nod or slumber, till my Lord's summer day dawn upon me. It is much if faith & hope in the sad nights of our heavie trial escape with a whole skin, & without crack or crook: I confess unbelief hath not reason to be either father or mother to it: [for unbelief is alwayes an irrationall thing] but how can it be, but such weak eyes as ours must cast water in a great smoke; or that a weak head should not turn giddy when the water runneth deep and strong? But God be thanked that Christ in his children can endure a stress & storm: howbeit soft nature would fall down in peices. Oh that I had that confidence as to rest rest on this, though he should grind me into small powder, & bray me into dust, & scatter the dust to the four winds of heaven; that my Lord would gather up the powder & make me up a new vessel again to bear Christ's name to the world: I am sure that love bottomed & seated upon the faith of his love to me would desire & endure this, & would even claim & thriep kindness upon Christ's strokes, & kiss his lovely glooms: & both spell & read salvation upon the wounds made by Christ's sweet hands. Oh that I had but a promise from the mouth of Christ, of his love to me; & then howbeit my faith were as tender as paper I think longing & dwining & griening of sick desires would cause it bide out the siege, till the Lord came to fill the soul with his love: & I know also in that case faith should abide green & sappy at the root, even at mid winter, and stand out against all stormes: However it be I know Christ winneth heaven in dispite of hell; But I ow as many praises & thanks to free grace as would lie betwixt me & the utmost border of the highest heaven, suppose ten thousand heavens were all laid above other: But oh I have nothing that can hire or bud grace, for if grace would take hire it were no more grace; but all our stability, & the strength of our salvation is anchored & fastened upon free grace: and I am sure Christ hath by his death & blood casten the knot so fast that the fingers of devils & hel-fuls of sins cannot loose it; & that bond of Christ [that never yet was nor never shall nor can be registrated] standeth surer then heaven or the dayes of heaven, as that sweet pillar of the covenant, whereupon we all hang: Christ and all his little ones under his two wings, & in the compasse or circle of his arms, is so sure, that cast him and them in the ground of the sea, he shall come up again & not loose one: An odde one cannot, nor shall not be lost in the telling. This was alwayes God's aime since Christ came in the play betwixt him & us, to make men dependent creatures, and in the work of our salvation to put created strength, & arms, & legs of clay, quit out of play, & out of office & court: & now God hath substituted in our room & accepted his Son the mediator for us & all that we can make. If this had not been I would have skinked over & foregone my part of paradise & salvation, for a break-fast of dead moth-eaten earth; but now I would not give it, nor let it go for more then I can tell: & truly they are silly fools, and ignorant of Christ's worth [& so full ill trained and tutoured] who tell heaven & Christ over the board, for two feathers or two straws of the devil's painted pleasures, onelyonly lustred in the utter side. This is our happiness now, that our reckonings at night when eternity shall come upon us, cannot be told; we shall be so far gainers & so far from being super expended [as the poor fools of this world are, who give out their money & get in but black hunger] that Angels cannot lay our counts nor summe our advantage & in-comes. Who knoweth how far is it to the bottom of our Christ, & to the ground of our heaven? Who ever weighed Christ in a pair of ballances? Who hath seen the foldings, & plyes, and the heights and depths of that glory which is in him and kept for us? Oh for such a heaven as to stand afar off and see & love and long for him; while time's threed be cut, and this great work of creation dissolved at the coming of our Lord! Now to his Grace I recommend you. I beseech you also pray for a re-entry to me into the Lord's house, if it be his good will:
Aberd. Jan. 6. 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Iesus: S. R.