Letters in Two Parts, Part 2 · LETTER 48 – LETTER 49
To a Christian Gentlewoman. (48)
MISTRESS.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: If Death, which is before you & us all, were any other thing but a friendly dissolution, & a change, not a destruction of Life, it would seem a hard voyage to goe through such a sad & dark trance, so thorny a valley, as is the wages of sin: but I am confident, the way ye know, though your foot never trode in that black shadow: the loss of life is gain to you: if Christ Jesus be the period, the end & lodging-home at the end of your journey, there is no fear ye goe to a friend: & since ye have had a communion with him in this life, & he hath a pawne & pledge of yours, even the largest share of your love & heart, ye may look Death in the face with joy: If the heart be in heaven, the remnant of you cannot be kept the prisoner of the second Death. But though he be the same Christ in the other life, ye found him to be here, yet he is so far in his excellency, beauty, sweetness, irradiations & beams of Majesty, above what he appeared here, when he is seen as he is, that ye shall misken him, & he shall appear a new Christ, & his kisses, breathings, embracements, the perfume; the oyntment of his name poured out on you, shall appear to have more of God, & a stronger smell of heaven, of eternity, of a Godhead, of Majesty & glory there, then here: As water at the fountain, apples in the orchard & beside the tree, have more of their native sweetness, taste & beauty, then when transported to us some hundred miles. I mean not that Christ can lose any of his sweetness in the carrying, or that he in his Godhead and lovileness of presence, can be changed to the worse, betwixt the little spot of the earth ye are in, and the right hand of the father far above all heavens; but the change will be in you, when ye shall have new senses, and the soul shall be a more deep & more capacious vessel to take in more of Christ; and when means, the chariot, the Gospel that he is now carried in, and ordinances that conveigh him, shall be removed: sure ye cannot now be said to see him face to face, or to drink of the wine of the highest fountain, or to take in seas and tides of fresh love, immediately, without vessels, mids's or messengers, at the fountain it self, as ye shall doe a few dayes hence: when ye shall be so near as to be with Christ, Luk. 23: 43, Ioh, 17: 24. Phil. 1: 23. 1 Thess. 4: 17. ye would no doubt bestow a dayes journey, yea, many dayes journey on earth, to goe up to heaven and fetch down any thing of Christ: how much more may ye be willing to make a journey, to goe in person to heaven [it is not lost time, but gained eternity] to enjoy the full Godhead, & then in such a manner as he is not there in his week-dayes apparel, as he is here with us, in a drop or the tenth part of a night's dewing of grace & sweetness, but he is there in his Marriagerobe of glory, richer, more costly, more precious, in one hem or button of that garment of fountain-majesty, then a million of worlds. O the well is deep! ye shall then think that Preachers & sinfull Ambassadors on earth, did but spill & mar his praises, when they spoke of him and preached his beauty. Alas! we but make Christ black & less lovely, in making such insignificant & dry & cold & low expressions of his highest and transcendent super-excellency, to the daughters of Ierusalem. Sure, I have often for my own part sinned in this thing: No doubt, Angels doe not fulfill their task according to their obligation, in that Christ kept their feet from falling with the lost Devils, though I know they are not behinde in going to the utmost of created power: but there is sin in our praising, & sin in the quantity, besides other sins: but I must leave this, it is too deep for me: Goe & see & we desire to goe with you: But we are not masters of our own diet. If in that last journey ye tread on a serpent in the way, & thereby wound your heel, as Jesus Christ did before you, the print of the wound shall not be known at the resurrection of the just. Death is but an aw…om step over Time & Sin to sweet Jesus Christ, who knew & felt the worst of Death, for Death's teeth hurt him: We know Death hath no teeth now, no jaws, for they are broken: it is a free prison, Citizens pay nothing for the Grave, the Jaylor who had the power of Death is destroyed, praise & glory be to the first begotten of the dead. The worst possibly that may be, is, that ye leave behinde you, children, husband, & the Church of God in miseries; but ye cannot get them to heaven with you for the present, ye shall not miss them, & Christ cannot miscount one of the poorest of his lambs: no lad, no girle, no poor one shall be a missing, ere ye see them again, in the day that the Son shall render up the Kingdom to his Father. The evening & the shadow of every poor hireling is coming, the Church of Christ's Sun in this life is declining Low, not a soul of the Militant company will be here within few Generations, our Husband will send for them all. It is a rich mercy, we are not married to Time longer then the course be finished. Ye may rejoyce that ye goe not to heaven till ye know that Jesus is there before you, that when ye come thither, at your first entry ye may finde the smell of his oyntments, his Myrrhe, Aloēs & Cassia: and this first salutation of his will make you finde, it is no uncomfortable thing to die. Goe and enjoy your gain, live on Christ's love while ye are here, and all the way, as for the Church ye leave behinde you, the Government is upon Christ's shoulders, and he will plead for the blood of his Saints: The bush hath been burning above five thousand years & we never yet saw the ashes of this fire: yet a little while & the vision shall not tarry, it shall speak & not lye. I am more afraid of my duty, then of the Head, Christ's government, he cannot fail to bring judgement to victory. O that we could wait for our hidden life! O that Christ would remove the covering, draw aside the curtain of time, and rent the heavens & come down! O that shadows & night were gone, that the day would break, & he that feedeth among the lilies would cry to his heavenly trumpetters, marke ready, let us goe down & fold together the four corners of the world & marry the Bride. His grace be with you. Now if I have found favour with you & if ye judge me faithfull, my last sute to you is, that ye would leave me a legacy, & that is, that my name be at the very last in your prayers, as I desire also it may be in the prayers of these of your Christian Acquaintance with whom ye have been intimate.
London. Jan. 9. 1646. Your Brother in his own Lord Iesus, S. R.
To my Lady KENMURE. (49)
MADAM.
GRace, mercy & peace be to you: It is the least of the princely & royal bounty of Jesus Christ, to pay a King's debts & not to have his servants at a loss: his gold is better then yours, & his hundred fold is the in-come & rent of heaven & far above your revenues: ye are not the first who have casten up your accounts that way: better have Christ your factor then any other, for he tradeth to the advantage of his poor servants. But if the hundred fold in this life be so well told, as Christ cannot pay you with miscounting or deferred hope, O what must the rent of that Land be, which rendereth every day, & every hour of the years of long Eternity, the whole rent of a year, yea, of more then thousand thousands of ages, even the weighty in-come of a rich Kingdom, not every summer once, but every moment! That summe of glory will take you & all the Angels telling. To be a Tennant to such a Land-lord, where every berry & grape of the large field beareth no worse fruit then glory, fulness of joy & pleasures that endure for evermore, I leave it to your self to think what a summer, what a soil, what a garden, must be there, and what must be the commodities of that highest Land, where Sun & Moon are under the feet of the inhabitants: Surely the Land cannot be bought with gold, blood, banishment, loss of father & mother, husband, wife, children: We but dwell here because we can doe no better; it is need, not vertue, to be sojourners in a prison; to weep & sigh, & Alas! to sin 60 or 70 years in a land of tears: the fruits that grow here are all seasoned & salted with sin. O how sweet is't that the company of the first born should be divided in two great bodies of an Army, & some in their countrey, & some in the way to their countrey! If it were no more but to see once the face of the Prince of this good land, & to be feasted for eternity with the fatness, sweetness, dainties of the rayes & beams of matchless glory & incomparable fountain-love, it were a well spent journey to creep, hands & feet, through seven deaths & seven hells, to enjoy him up at the well-head. OnelyOnly let us not weary, the miles to that Land are fewer & shorter then when we first beleeved: strangers are not wise to quarrel with their Host & complain of their lodging; it's a foul way, but a fair home. O that I had but such grapes & clusters out of the Land, as I have sometime seen & tasted in the place where of your La: maketh mention! but the hope of it in the end is a heartsom convoy in the way: if I see little more of the gold till the race be ended, I dare not quarrel: it is the Lord: I hope his chariot shall goe through these three Kingdoms, after our suffering shall be accomplished. Grace be with you.
London. Jan. 26. 1646 Your La: in Iesus Christ, S. R.