Letters in Two Parts, Part 2 · LETTER 33 – LETTER 34
To his very dear friend JOHN FENNICK. (33)
Much honoured & dear friend.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: The necessary impediments of my calling have hitherto kept me from making a return to your letter, the heads whereof I shall now briefly answer. As. 1. I approve your going to the fountain, when your own Cisterne is dry: A difference there must be betwixt Christ's well & your borrowed water, & why but ye have need of emptiness & drving up, aswell as ve have need of the well? want & a hole there must be in our vessel, to leave room to Christ's art; his well hath it's own need of thirsty drinkers, to commend infinite love, which from eternity did brew such a cellar of living waters for us. Ye commend his free love; & it's well done: Oh if I could help you, & if I could be master-conveener to gather an earth-full & an heaven-full of tongues dipped and steeped in my Lord's well of love or his wine of love, even tongues drunken with his love, to raise a song of praises to him, betwixt the East & West-end & furthest points of the broad heavens! If I were in your case [as alas! my dry & dead heart is not now in that garden] I would borrow leave to come & stand upon the banks & coasts of that sea of love, & be a feasted soul to see Love's fair tide, free Love's high and lofty waves, each of them higher then ten earths, flowing in upon pieces of lost clay: O welcome, welcome, great sea! O if I had as much love for wideness and breadth, as twenty outmost shells and spheres of the heaven of heavens, that I might receive in a little flood of his free love! Come, come, dear Friend, & be pained that the King's wine-cellar of free love & his banquetting house [O so wide, so stately! O so God-like, so glory-like!] should be so abundant, so overflowing, & your shallow vessel so little to take in some part of that love: but since it cannot come in you for want of room, enter your self in this sea of love, & breath under these waters, & die of love, & live as one dead & drowned of this Love. But why doe ye complain of waters going over your soul, & that the smoke of the terrors of a wrathfull Lord, doeth almost suffocate you & bring you to death's brink? I know the fault is in your eyes, not in him; its not the rock that fleeth & moveth, but the green sailer: if your sense & apprehension be made judge of his love, there is a graven image made presently, even a changed God & a foe-God, who was once [when ye washed your steps with butter, & the rock poured you out rivers of oyl, Iob. 29. 6.] a friend-God: either now or never let God work; ye had never since ye was a man, such a fair field for faith: for a painted hell & an apprehension of wrath in your father, is faith's opportunity to try what strength is in it: now give God as large a measure of charity as ye have of sorrow; now see faith to be faith indeed, if ye can make your grave betwixt Christ's feet, & say, Though he should flay me, I will trust in him; his beleeved love shall be my winding-sheet, & all my grave-cloaths; I shall roll & sowe in my soul, my slain soul, in that web, his sweet & free love: & let him write upon my grave Here lieth a beleeving dead man, breathing out and making an hole in death's broad side, & the breath of faith cometh forth through the hole. See now if ye can overcome & prevail with God, & wrestle God's tempting to death & quit out of breath, as that renowned wrestler did, Hos 12. 3. And by his strength he had power with God. v. 4. Yea he had power over the Angel & prevailed. He is a strong man indeed who overmatcheth heaven's strength and the holy One of Israel, the strong Lord: which is done by a secret supply of divine strength within, wherewith the weakest being strengthned, overcome and conquer. It shall be great victory to blow out the flame of that furnace yeare now in, with the breath of faith: & when hell, men, malice, cruelty, falshood, Devils, the seeming glooms of a sweet Lord, meet you in the teeth, if ye then as a captive of Hope, as one fettered in Hope's prison, run to your strong hold, even from God glooming to God glooming, & beleeve the salvation of the Lord in the dark, which is your onelyonly victory: your enemies are but pieces of malitious clay, they shall die as men & be confounded. But that your troubles are many at once, & arrows come in from all airths, from countrey, friends, wife, children, foes, estate, & right down from God who is the hope & stay of your soul, I confess is more & very heavy to be born; yet all these are not more then Grace, all these bits of coals casten in your sea of mercy cannot dry it up: your troubles are many & great, yet not an ounce-weight beyond the measure of infinite wisdom, I hope, not beyond the measure of grace that he is to bestow; for our Lord never yet brake the back of his childe, nor spilt his own work: nature's plastering & counterfit work he doeth often break in sheards, & putteth out a candle not lighted at the Sun of righteousness; but he must cherish his own reeds & handle them softly, never a reed getteth a thrust with the Mediator's hand to lay together the two ends of the reed. O what bonds & ligaments hath our Chirurgion of broken spirits, to binde up all his lame & bruised ones with! cast your disjoynted spirit in his lap, & lay your burden upon one who is so willing to take your cares & your fears off you, & to exchange & niffer your crosses, & to give you new for old & gold for iron, even to give you garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness. It's true in a great part what ye write of this Kirk, that the letter of Religion onelyonly is reformed & scarce that: I doe not beleeve out Lord will build his Zion in this land, upon this skin of Reformation: so long as our scum remaineth & our heart-idols are keeped, this work must be at a stand; and therefore our Lord must yet sift this land and search us with candles; and I know, he shall give and not sell us his Kingdom: his Grace and our remaining guiltiness must be compared, & the one must be seen in the glory of it and the other in the sinfulness of it: But I desire to beleeve and would gladly hope to see, that the glancing and shining luster of glory, coming from the diamonds and stones set in the crown of our Lord Jesus, shall cast rayes and beams many thousand miles about. I hope Christ is upon a great Marriage, and that his wooing and suting of his excellent Bride, doeth take it's beginning from us the ends of the earth. O what joy and what glory would I judge it, if my heaven should be suspended, till I might have leave to run on foot, to be a witness of that Marriage-glory, & see Christ put on the glory of his last married Bride and his last Marriage-love on earth, when he shall enlarge his lovebed and set it upon the top of the mountains, and take in the elder Sister, the Iewes, and the fulness of the Gentiles! It were heaven's honour & glory upon earth, to be his lackey to run at his horse-foot and hold up the train of his Marriage-roberoyal, in the day of our high a…d royal Solomon's espousals. But O what glory to have a seat or …e… in King Iesus his chariot, that is bottomed with gold & paved and lined over and floored within with Love, f… the daughters of Ierusalem! Cant. 3. 10. To lie upon such a King's love, were a bed next to the flower of heaven's glory. I am sorry to hear you speak in your Letter, of a God an…ry at you, and of the sense of his indignation, which onelyonly ariseth from suffering for Jesus, all that is now come upon you: Indeed apprehended wrath flameth out of such ashes as apprehended sin; but not from suffering for Christ: But suppose ye were in hell for by-gones and for old debt, I hope ye ow Christ a great summe of charity to beleeve the sweetness of his love: I know what it is to sin in that kinde, it is to sin our [if it were possible] the unchangeableness of a Godhead out of Christ, & to sin away a lovely & unchangeable God. Put more honest apprehensions upon Christ, put on his own mask upon his face, and not your vail made of unbelief, which speaketh, as if he borrowed love to you, from you and your demerits & sinfull deservings. Oh no! Christ is man, but he is not like man; he hath man's love in heaven, but it is lustered with God's love, & it is very God's love, ye have to doe with: When your wheels goe about, he standeth still: Let God be God and be ye a man, and have ye the deserving of man & the sin of one who hath suffered your Welbeloved to slip away, nay hath refused him entrance, when he was knocking till his head and locks were frozen: Yet what is that to him? his book keepeth your name, and is not printed and reprinted and changed and corrected: And why but he should goe to his place & hide himself? Howbeit his Departure be his own good work, yet the belief of it in that manner is your sin: But wait on till he return with Salvation and cause you rejoyce in the latter end. It is not much to complain: but rather beleeve then complain, and sit in the dust and close your mouth, till he make your sown light grow again; for your afflictions are not eternal, Time will end them, & so shall ye at length see the Lord's salvation: his love sleepeth not, but is still in working for you, his Salvation will not tarry nor linger, & Suffering for him is the noblest cross that is out of heaven: Your Lord had the waile & choice of ten thousand other crosses beside this, to exercise you withall; but his wisdom & his love wailed and choosed out this for you, beside them all, & take it as a choice one, & make use of it, so, as ye look to this world as your step-mother in your borrowed prison: For it is a love-look to heaven and the other side of the water, that God seeketh: & this is the fruit, the flower & bloom growing out of your cross, that ye be a dead man to time, to clay, to gold, to countrey, to friends, wife, children, & all pieces of created nothings, for in them there is not a seat nor bottom for your soul's love. O what room is for your Love [if it were as broad as the sea] up in heaven and in God! and what would not Christ give for your love? God gave so much for your soul, & blessed are ye, if ye have a love for him & can call in your soul's love from all idols, and can make a God of God, a God of Christ & draw a line betwixt your heart and him. If your deliverance come not, Christ's presence and his beleeved love must stand as caution and surety for your deliverance, till your Lord send it in his blessed time: for Christ hath many Salvations, if we could see them: and I would think it better born comfort and joy that cometh from the faith of deliverance and the faith of his love, then that which cometh from deliverance it self. It is not much matter, if ye finde ease to your afflicted soul, what be the means, either of your own wishing, or of God's choosing; the latter I am sure is best and the comfort strongest and sweetest: let the Lord absolutely have the ordering of your evils & troubles, and put them off you by recommending your cross and your furnace to him, who hath skill to melt his own mettall and knoweth well what to doe with his surnace: let your heart be willing that God's fire have your tin and brass and dross: to consent to want corruption is a greater mercy then many professors doe well know, and to refer the manner of God's Physick to his own wisdom, whither it be by drawing blood, or giving sugared drinks that cure sick folks without pain, it is a great point of faith; and to beleeve Christ's cross to be a friend as he himself is a friend, is also a special act of faith: but when ye are over the water, this case shall be a yesterday past an hundred years ere ye were born, & the cup of glory shall wash the memory of all this away and make it as nothing: OnelyOnly now take Christ in with you under your yoke, and let patience have her perfect work, for this haste is your infimity. The Lord is rising up to doe you good in the latter end, put on the faith of his salvation & see him posting & hasting towards you. Sir, my employments being so great, hinder me to write at more length excuse me: I hope to be mindfull of you. I shall be obliged to your if ye help me with your prayers for this people, this College, & my own poor soul. Grace be with you. Remember my love to your wife.
St Andrews. Feb. 13. 1640. Yours in Christ Iesus. S. R.
To the much honoured PETER STIRLING. (34)
Much honoured & worthy Sir.
I Received yours, & cannot but be ashamed that mistaking love hath brought me in court & account in the heart of God's children, especially of another nation: I should not make a lye of the grace of God, if I should think I have little share of it my self: O how much better were it for me to stand in the counting table of many for a half-penny & to be estemed a liker rather than a lover of Christ! If I were weighed, vanity should bear down the scale, as having weight in the ballance above me; except my lovely Saviour should cast in beside me some of his borrowed worth; & Oh if I were writing now sincerely in this extenuation, which may be & I fear is, subtile & coosening pride! I would I could love something of heaven's worth in you & all of your mettall. O how happy were I, if I could regain & conquer back from the creature my sold & lost love, that I might lay it upon heaven's jewel, that ever, ever blooming flower of the highest garden, even my soul-redeeming & never-enoughprized Lord Jesus! O that he would wash my love & put it on the Mediator's wheel & refine it from it's dross & tin, that I might propine & gift that Lord so love-worthy, with all my love! Oh if I could set a lease of thousands of years & a suspension of my part of heaven's glory, & frist till a long day my desired salvation, sobeing I could in this lower kitchin & under-vault of his creation, be feasted with his love, & that I might be a footstool for his glory before men & Angels! Oh if he would let out heaven's fountain upon withered me, dry & sapless me! If I were but sick of love for his love [& O how would that sickness delight me!] How sweet would that easing & refreshing pain be to my soul! I shall be glad to be a witness to behold the Kingdom: of the world become Christ's: I could stay out of heaven many years to see that victorious triumphing Lord act that prophesied part of his soul-conquering love, in taking in to his Kingdom the greater Sister, that Kirk of the Iews, who sometimes courted our Welbeloved for her little Sister, Cant. 8: 8. to behold him set up as an ensign & a banner of love to the ends of the world. And truly we are to beleeve that his wrath is ripe for the land of graven images, & for the falling of that mill-stone in the midst of the sea. Grace be with you.
St Andrews March. 6. 1640. Yours in his sweet Lord Iesus, S. R.