Letters in Two Parts, Part 2 · LETTER 28
To his reverend & much honoured Brother, Dr WILLIAM LIGHTON, Christ's prisoner in bonds at London. (28)
Reverend & much honoured prisoner of hope.
GRace, mercy, & peace be to you: It was not my part whom our Lord hath enlarged, to forget you his prisoner. When I consider how long your night hath been, I think Christ hath a minde to put you in free grace's debt, so much the deeper, as your sufferings have been of so long a continuance. But what if Christ minde you no jo… but publike joy with enlarged & triumphing Zion: I think, Sir, ye would love it best to share & divide your song of joy with Zion, & to have mystical Chri… in Eritain halfer & compartner with your enlargement. I am sure, your joy bordering & neighbouring with the joy of Christ's Bride, would be so much the sweeter that it were publike. I thought, if Christ had halved my mercies, and delivered his Bride and not me, that his praises should have been double to what they are: But now two rich mercies conjoyned in one have stoln from our Lord more then half-praises: Oh that mercy should so beguile us, and steal away our counts and acknowledgements! Worthy Sir, I hope I need not exhort you to goe on, in hoping for the salvation of God: There hath not been so much taken from your time of ease & created joyes, as Eternity shall adde to your heaven: Ye know when one day in heaven hath paved you, yea, & overpayed your blood, bonds, sorrow & sufferings, that it would trouble Angels understanding to lay the count of that superplus of glory, which Eternity can & will give you. O but your sand-glass of sufferings & losses, cometh to little, when it shall be counted and compared with the glory that bideth you on the other side of the water! Ye have no leisure to rejoyce & fing here while time goeth about you, & where your Psalms will be short, therefore ye will think Eternity & the long day of heaven that shall be measured with no other sun nor horologe then the long life of the Ancient of dayes, to measure your praises, little enough for you: if your spanlength of time be cloudy, ye cannot but think, your Lord can no more take your blood & your band without the in-come & reeompence of free grace h…e would take the sufferings of Paul & his other dear servants that were well paid home beyond all counting, Rom. 8: 18. If the wisdom of Christ hath made you Antichrist's eye-sore & his envy, ye are to thank God that such a piece of clay as ye are, is made the field of glory to work upon: it was the potter's aim that the clay should praise him, & I hope it satisfieth you that your clay is for his glory. Oh who can suffer enough for such a Lord! & who can lay out in bank enough of pain, shame, losses, tortures, to receive in again the free interest of eternall glory? 2 Cor. 4: 17. O how advantagious a bargaining is it with such a rich Lord! If your hand & pen had been at leisure to gain glory in paper, it had been but paper-glory: but the bearing of a publike cross so long for the now controverted priviledges of the crown & scepter of free King Jesus, the Prince of the Kings of the earth, is glory booked in heaven. Worthy & dear Erother, if ye goe to weigh Jesus his sweetness, excellency, glory & beauty, & say fore-against him your ounces or drams of Suffering for him, ye shall be straitned two wayes. 1. It will be a pain to make the comparison, the disproportion being by no understanding imaginable: nay, if heaven's Arithmetick & Angels were set to work, they should never number the degrees of difference. 2. It should straiten you to finde a scale for the ballance to lay that High & Lofty One, that overtranscending Prince of excellency into: If your minde could fancy as many created heavens as time hath had minutes, trees have had leaves & clouds have had rain drops, since the first stone of the creation was laid, they should not make half a scale to bear & weight boundless excellency it to. And therefore the King whose marks ye are bearing & whose dying ye carry about with you in your body, is out of all cry & consideration beyond & above all our thoughts. For my self, I am content to feed upon wondering sometimes at the beholding but of the borders & skirts of the incomparable glory which is in that exalted Prince: & I think ye could wi…h for more ears to give him then ye have, since ye hope these ears ye now have give him, shall be passages to take in the musick of his glorious voice. I would fain both beleeve & pray for a new Bride of Iews & Gentiles to our Lord Jesus, after the land of graven images shall be laid waste; & that our Lord Jesus is on horse-back hunting & pursuing the beast, & that England & Ireland shall be well sweeped chambers for Christ and his righteousness to dwell in: for he hath opened our graves in Scotland, & the two dead & buried witnesses are risen again & are prophesying. O that Princes would glory & boast themselves in carrying the train of Christ's tobe royal in their arms! Let me die within an half-hour after I have seen the Son of God his temple enlarged, & the cords of I…rusalem's tent lengthned, to take in a more numerous company for a Bride to the Son of God. Oh if the corner or foundation-stone of that house, that new house, were laid above my grave! O who can adde to him, who is that great ALL: If he would create suns & moons; new heavens, thousand thousand degrees more perfect then these that now are, & again make a new creation ten thousand thousand degrees in perfection beyond that new creation, & again still for eternity multiplie new heavens, they should never be a perfect resemblance of that infinite excellency, order, weight, measure, beauty & sweetness that is in him. O how little of him doe we see! O how shallow are our thoughts of him! Oh if I had p…in for him, & shame & losses for him & more clay & spirits for him, & that I could goe upon earth without love, desire, hope, because Christ hath taken away my love, desire & hope to heaven with him! I know, Worthy Sir, your sufferings for him are your glory, & therefore weary not, his salvation is near hand and shall not tarry. Pray for me: his grace be with you.
St Andrewes. Nov. 22. 1639. Yours in his sweet Lor… Iesus, S, R.