Letters in Two Parts, Part 2 · LETTER 42 – LETTER 47
To BARBARA HAMILTON. (42)
Worthy Friend.
GRace be to you: I doe unwillingly write unto you of that which God hath done concerning your son in law; onelyonly, I beleeve ye look not below Christ and the higest and most supream act of providence, which moveth all wheels: And certainly what came down enacted & concluded in the great book before the throne, & signed & subscribed with the hand which never did wrong, should be kissed & adored by us: we see God's decrees, when they bring forth their fruits, all actions, good & ill, sweet & sowre in their time; But we see not presently the after-birth of God's decree, to wit, his blessed end & the good that he bringeth out of the womb of his holy & spotless counsel: we see his working, & we sorrow: The end of his counsel & working lieth hidden & underneath the ground, & therefore we cannot beleeve: Even amongst men, we see hewen stones, timber & an hundred scattered parcels & pieces of an house, all under-tools, hammers & axes & saws; yet the house, the beauty & ease of so many lodgings & ease-rooms, we neither see nor understand for the present: these are but in the minde & head of the builder as yet: wee see red earth, unbroken clods, furrows & stones; but we see not summer-lilies, roses, & the beauty of a garden: If ye give the Lord time to work [as often he that beleeveth not, maketh haste, but not speed] his end is under the ground, & ye shall see it was your good that your Son hath changed dwelling-places, but not his Master: Christ thought good to have no more of his service here, yet Rev. 22: 3. His servants shall serve him: He needeth not us or our service, either in earth or in heaven: But ye are to look to him, who giveth the hireling both his leave & his wages for his naked aim & purpose to serve Christ, as well as for his labours: It is put up in Christ's account, such a labourer did sweat fourty years in Christ's vineyard, howbeit he got not leave to labour so long, because he who accepteth of the will for the deed, counteth so: None can teach the Lord to lay an account: He numbereth the drop of rain, & knoweth the stars by their names: It would take us much studying to give a name to every star in the firmament, great or small. See Lev. 13: 13. And Aaron held his peace: Ye know his two Sons were …ain, whilst they offered strange fire to the Lord: Command your thoughts to be silent: If the souldiers of Newcasile had done this, ye might have stomacked, but the weapon wa in another hand: Hear the rod what it preacheth, & see the name of God, M…. 6. 9. And know that there is somewhat of God & Heaven in the …od: The Majesty of the unsearchable & bottomless wayes & judgements of God is not seen in the rod, & the seeing of them r…quireth the eyes of the man of wisdom. If the sufferings of some other with you in that loss could ease you, ye want them not: But He can doe no wrong, he cannot halt, his goings are equal who hath done it. I know our Lord aimeth at more mortification: let him not come in vain to your house, & lose the p…ins of a mercifull visite: God, the founder, never melteth in vain; howbeit to us, he seemeth often to lose both fire & mettall: But I know yeare more in this work then I can be: There is no cause to faint or weary. Grace be with you, & the rich consolations of Jesus Christ sweeten your cross & support you under it. I rest.
London, Octob. 15. 1645. Yours in his Lord & Master, S. R.
To Mis…ress HUME. (43.)
Loving Sister.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you; If ye have any thing better then the husband of your youth, ye are Jesus Christ's de…ter for it: Pay not then your debts with grudging: Sorrow may diminish from the sweet fruit of righteousness; but quietness, silence, submission & faith, put a crown upon your sad losses: ye know whose voice the voice of a crying rod is. Micah. 6. 9. The name & majesty of the Lord is written on the rod, read & be instructed: Let Christ have the room of the husband, he hath now no need of you or of your love; for he enjoyeth asmuch of the love of Christ as his heart can be capable of: I confess it is a dear-bought experience to teach you to undervalue the creature; yet it is not too dear if Christ think it so. I know that the disputing of your thoughts against his going thither, the way & manner of his death, the instruments, the place, the time, will not ease your spirit, except ye rise higher then second causes, & be silent because the Lord hath done it: If we measure the goings of the Almighty & his wayes, the bottom whereof we see not, we quite mistake God: O how little a portion of God see we! He is far above our ebbe & narrow thoughts: He ruled the world in wisdom, ere we creatures of yesterday were born, & shall rule it when we shall be lodging beside the worms & corruption: OnelyOnly, learn heavenly wisdom, self-deniall & mortification by this sad loss: I know that it is not for nothing (except ye deny God to be wise in all he doeth) that ye have lo… one in earth: There hath been too little of your love & heart in heaven, & therefore the jealousie of Christ hath done this: It is a mercy that he contendeth with you & all your lovers: I should d…sire no greater savour for my self, then that Christ laid a necessity & took on such bonds upon himself; Such an one I must have, & such a soul I cannot live in heaven without. Ioh. 10. 16. And beleeve it, it is incomprehensible love, that Christ saith, If I enjoy the glory of my father, & the crown of heaven far above men & Angels, I must use all means, though never so violent, to have the company of such an One, for ever & ever: If with the eyes of wisdom, as a childe of wisdom, ye justifie your mother The wisdom of God [whose childe ye are] ye shall kiss & embrace this loss, & see much of Christ in it: Beleeve & submit, & referre the income of the consolations of Jesus, & the event of the trial to your heavenly father, who numbereth all your hairs: And put Christ in his own room in your Love: It may be he hath either been out of his own place, or in a place of love inferiour to his worth: Repair Christ in all his wrongs done to him, & love him for a husband, & he is a husband to the widdow shall be that to you, which he hath taken from you. Grace be with you.
London. Octob. 15. 1645. Your sympath Zing Brother. S. R.
To BARBARA HAMILTON. (44)
Loving Sister.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: I have heard with grief, that Newcastle hath taken one more, in a bloody account, then before; even your Son in Law, & my friend. But I hope ye have learned that much of Christ, as not to look to wheels rolled round about on earth: Earthen vessels are not to dispute with their Former: peices of sinning-clay may by reasoning & contending with the Potter, mar the work of him, who hath his fire in Zion and his furnace in Jerusalem, as bullocks sweating & wrestling in the furrow make their yoke more heavie: In quietness & rest ye shall be saved: If men doe any thing contrary to our heart, we may ask both who did it? And what is done? And why? When God hath done any such thing we are to enquire who hath done it? And to know that this cometh from the Lord, who is wonderfull in counsel: but we are not to ask what? or why? If it be from the Lord [as certainly their is no evil in the city without him Amos. 3. 6.] it is enough the fairest face of his spotless way is but coming, & ye are to beleeve his works aswell as his word. Violent death is a sharer with Christ in his death, which was violent: it maketh not much what way we goe to heaven: the happie home is all, where the roughness of the way shall be forgotten: He is gone home to a friend's house and made welcome, and the race is ended: Time is recompensed with eternity, and copper with gold: God's order is in wisdom, the husband goes home before the wife, and the throng of the marker shall be over ere it be long, and another generation where we now are, and at length an emptie house, and not one of mankinde shall be upon the earth within the sixth part of an hour after the earth and the works that are therein shall be burnt up with fire: I fear more that Christ is about to remove when he carrieth home so much of his plenishing before hand: we cannot teach the Almighty knowledge: when he was directing the bullet against his servant, to fetch out the soul, no wise man could cry to God, Wrong, wrong Lord, for he is thine own: There is no mist over his eyes who is wonderfull in counsel: If Zion be builded with your son in law's blood, the Lord [deep in counsel] can glew together the stones of Zion with blood, and with that blood which is precious in his eyes: Christ hath fewer labourers in his vineyard then he had; but some moe witnesses for his cause and the Lord's Covenant with the three Nations. What is Christ's gain is not your loss: Let not that which is his holy and wise will be your unbeleeving sorrow: Though I really judge I had interest in his dead servant; yet because he now liveth to Christ, I quite the hops I had of his succesfull labouring in the ministery: I know he now praiseth the grace that he was to preach: And if there were a better thing on his head now in heaven then a crown, or any thing more excellent then heaven, he would cast it down before his feet, who sitteth on the throne: Give glory therefore to Christ as he now doeth, and say, Thy will be done. The grace and consolation of Christ be with you.
London. Nov: 15. 1645. Yours in his sweet Lord Iesus, S. R.
To the vicountesse of KENMURE. (45)
MADAM.
GRace, mercy & peace be to your La: though Christ lose no time; yet when sinfull men drive his chariot, the wheels of … chariot move slowly: The woman Zion as soon as she travelled brought forth her children, yea Isa. 66: 7. before she travelled she brought f…rth, before her pain came she was delivered of a man-childe: Yet the deliverance of the people was with the woman's going with childe seventy years, that is more then nine moneths: There be many oppositions in carrying on the work; but I hope the Lord will build his own Zion, & evidence to us that it is done not by might not by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord. Madam, I have heard of your infirmities of body & sickness: I know the issue shall be mercy to you, & that God's purpose, which lieth hidden underground to you, is, to commend the sweetness of his love, & care to you from your youth: And if all the sad losses, trials, sicknesses, infirmities, griefs, heaviness & inconstancie of the creature, be expounded [as sure I am they are] the rods of the jealousie of an husband in heaven, contending with all your lovers on earth (though there were millions of them) for your love, to fetch more of your love home to heaven, to make it single, unmixt & chast to the fairest in heaven & earth, to Jesus the Prince of ages, ye will forgive [to borrow that word] every rod of God, & not let the Sun goe down on your wrath against any messinger of your afflicting & correcting Father. Since your La: cannot but see, that the mark at which Christ hath aimed at, these twenty four years and above, is, to have the company & fellowship of such a sinfull creature in heaven with him for all eternity, and because he will not (such is the power of his love) enjoy his father's glory and that crown due to him by eternall generation, without you by name, Ioh. 17: 24. Ioh. 10: 16. Ioh. 14: 3. Therefore Madam beleeve no evil of Christ: Listen to no hard reports that his rods make of him to you: He hath loved you & washed you from your sins, & what would ye have more? Is that too little, except he adjourne all crosses till ye be where ye shall be out of all capacity to sigh or to be crossed? I hope ye can desire no more, no greater, nor more excellent sute, then Christ & the fellowship of the Lamb for evermore: And if that desire be answered in heaven (as I am sure it is, & ye cannot denie but it is made sure to you) the want of these poor accidents of a living husband, of many children, of an healthfull body, of a life of case in the world, without one knot in the rush, are nobly made up & may be comfortably born. Grace, grace be with your La:
London. October. 16. 1645. Your La: at all obedience in Christ. S. R.
To a Christian friend upon the death of his wife. (46)
Worthy friend.
I Desire to suffer with you in the loss of a loving & good wife, now gone before, [according to the method & order of him of whose understanding there is no searching out] whither ye are to follow: He that made yesterday to goe before this day, & the former generation, in birth & life, to have been before this present generation, & hath made some flowers to grow and die & wither in the monethmonth of May, & others in Iune, cannot be challenged in the order he hath made of things without souls: And some order he must keep also here, that one might bury another: Therefore I hope ye shall be dumb & silent because the Lord hath done it: what creatures or under-causes doe in sinfull mistakes, are ordered in wisdom by your Father, at whose feet your own soul & your heaven lieth, & so the dayes of your wife. If the place she hath left were any other then a prison of sin, & the home she is gone to, any other then where her …ead & Saviour is King of the land, your grief had been more rationall; But I trust your faith of the resurrection of the dead in Christ, to glory & immortality, will lead you to suspend your longing for her, till the morning & dawning of that day, when the Archangel shall descend with a shout, to gather all his prisoners out of the grave up to himself: To beleeve this is best for you, & to be silent because he hath done it, i… your wisdom: It is much to come out of the Lord's School of trial, wiser & more experienced in the wayes of God: And it is our happiness, when Christ openeth a veine, he taketh nothing but ill blood from his sick ones: Christ hath skill to doe (and if our corruption mar not) the art of mercy in correcting: we cannot of our selves take away the tin, the lead & the scum that remaineth in us: And if Christ be not Master-of-work, & if the furnace goe it's alone, he not standing nigh the melting of his own vessel, the labour were lost & the founder should melt in vaine: God knoweth some of us have lost much fire, sweating & pains to our Lord Jesus, & the vessel is almost marred, the furnace & rod of God spilt, & day-light burnt, & the reprobat mettall not taken away, so as some are to answer to the Majesty of God for the abuse of many good crosses & rich afflictions lost without the quiet fruit of righteousness: And it is a sad thing when the rod is cursed that never fruit shall grow on it, & except Christ's d…w fall down, & his summer-sunshine, & his grace follow afflictions, to cause them bring f…rth fruit to God, they are so fruitless to us that our evil ground [rank & fat enough for briers] casteth up a crope of noisome weeds: The rod [as the prophet saith, Ezek 7: 10, 11.] blossometh, pride buddeth forth, violence riseth up into a rod of wickedness, & all this hath been my case under many rods since I saw you. Grace be with you.
London 1645. Yours in his sweet Lord Iesus, S. R.
To a Christian Brother. (47)
Reverend & beloved in the Lord.
IT may be I have been too long silent, but I hope ye will not impute it to forgetfulness of you. As I have heard of the death of your daughter with heaviness of minde on your behalf, so am I much comforted, that she hath evidenced to your self & other witnesses, the hope of the resurrection of the dead: as sown corn is not lost [for there is more hope of that which is sown, then of that which is eaten. 1 Cor. 15. 42.] so also is it in the resurrection of the dead; the body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. I hope ye wait for the crope & harvest, 1 Thess. 4. 14. For if we beleeve that Iesus died & rose again, even so also them which sleep in Iesus will God bring with him: then they are not lost who are gathered in to that Congregation of the first-born & the General Assembly of the Saints: though we cannot outrun nor overtake them that are gone before, yet we shall quickly follow them, & the difference is, that she hath the advantage of some moneths or years of the Crown, before you & her mother: & we doe not take it ill, if our children outrun us in the life of grace, why then are we sad if they outstrip us in the attainment of the life of glory? It would seem that there is more reason to grieve that childrē live behinde us, then that they are glorified & die before us: all the difference is in some poor hungry accidents of-time, less or more, sooner or later: so the godly childe, though young, died of an hundred years old: & ye could not now have bestowed her better, though the choise was Christ's, not yours: & I am sure, Sir, ye cannot now say, she is married against the will of her parents; she might more readily, if alive, fall in the hand of a worse husband, but can ye think that she could have fallen in the hands of one better? and if Christ marry with your house, it is your honour not any cause of grief, that Jesus should portion any of yours ere she enjoy your portion, is it not great love? the patrimony is more then any other could give as good a husband is unpossible; to say a better, is blasphemy. The King & Prince of ages can keep them better then ye can doe: while she was alive, ye could intrust her to Christ & recommend her to his keeping, now by an after-faith ye have resigned her unto him, in whose bosom doe sleep all that are dead in the Lord: ye would havelent her to glorifie the Lord upon earth, & he hath borrowed her [with promise to restore her again, 1 Cor. 15: 53. 1 Thess. 4: 15. 16:] to be an organ of the immediate glorifying of himself in heaven: sinless glorifying of God is better then sinfull glorifying of him. And sure your prayers concerning her are fulfilled: I shall desire, if the Lord shall be pleased the same way to dispose of her mother, that ye have the same minde: Christ cannot multiply injuries upon you, if the fountain be the love of God (as I hope it is) ye are enriched with losses. Ye know all I can say, better, before I was in Christ, then I can express it. Grace be with you.
London. Jan. 6. 1646. Yours in Christ Iesus, S. R.