To Mr. Robert Cunyngame, Minister of the Gospel at Holywood in Ireland — Letter 1

Well-beloved and reverend Brother, grace, mercy, and peace be to you; upon acquaintance in Christ, I thought good to take the opportunity of writing to you, seeing it has seemed good to the Lord of the harvest to take the hooks out of our hands for a time, and to lay upon us a more honorable service, even to suffer for his name. It would be good to comfort one another in writing. I have had a desire to see you in the face, yet now being the prisoner of Christ it is taken away. I am greatly comforted to hear of your soldiers' stately spirit, for your princely and royal Captain Jesus our Lord, and for the grace of God in the rest of our dear brethren with you. You have heard of my trouble I suppose. It has pleased our sweet Lord Jesus to let loose the malice of these interdicted Lords in his house to deprive me of my ministry at Anwoth and to confine me, eight score miles from there to Aberdeen; and also (which was not done to any before) to inhibit me to speak at all in Jesus's name, within this kingdom, under the pain of rebellion. The cause that ripened their hatred was my book against the Arminians, for which they accused me; these three days I appeared before them. But let our crowned king in Zion reign; by his grace the loss is theirs, the advantage is Christ's and truth's. Although this honest cross gained some ground on me, by my heaviness and inward challenges of conscience for a time were sharp, yet now for the encouragement of you all, I dare say it, and write it under my hand: welcome, welcome, sweet, sweet cross of Christ. I verily think the chains of my Lord Jesus are all overlaid with pure gold, and that his cross is perfumed, and that it smells of Christ, and that the victory shall be by the blood of the lamb and by the word of his truth, and that Christ, laying on his back in his weak servants and oppressed truth, shall ride over his enemies' bellies, and shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. It is time we laugh when he laughs, and seeing he is now pleased to sit with wrongs for a time, it becomes us to be silent, until the Lord has let the enemies enjoy their hungry, lean, and feckless paradise. Blessed are they who are content to take strokes with weeping Christ; faith will trust the Lord, and is not hasty nor headstrong; neither is faith so timorous as to flatter a temptation, or to bribe the cross. It is little up or little down that the lamb and his followers can get no lawsuit nor truce with crosses; it must be so, until we are up in our father's house. My heart is woe indeed for my mother church, that has played the harlot with many lovers; her husband has a mind to sell her for her horrible transgressions, and heavy will the hand of the Lord be upon this backsliding nation. The ways of our Zion mourn, her gold has become dim, her white Nazirites are black like a coal; how shall not the children weep, when the husband and the mother cannot agree. Yet I believe Scotland's sky shall clear again, and that Christ shall build again the old waste places of Jacob, and that our dead and dry bones shall become an army of living men, and that our beloved may yet feed among the lilies, until the day breaks and the shadows flee away. My dear brother, let us help one another with our prayers. Our king shall mow down his enemies, and shall come from Bozrah with his garments all dyed in blood, and for our consolation shall he appear, and call his wife Hephzibah, and his land Beulah; for he will rejoice over us and marry us, and Scotland shall say, what have I to do any more with idols? Only let us be faithful to him that can ride through hell and death upon a windlestraw, and his horse never stumble; and let him make of me a bridge over a water, so that his high and holy name may be glorified in me. Strokes with the sweet mediator's hand are very sweet; he was always sweet to my soul, but since I suffered for him, his breath has a sweeter smell than before. Oh that every hair of my head, and every member, and every bone in my body, were a man to witness a fair confession for him — I would think all too little for him. When I look over beyond the line, and beyond death to the laughing side of the world, I triumph, and ride upon the high places of Jacob; however otherwise I am a faint, dead-hearted, cowardly man, often borne down and hungry in waiting for the marriage supper of the lamb. Nevertheless I think it the Lord's wise love that feeds us with hunger, and makes us fat with wants and desertions. I know not, my dear brother, if our worthy brethren be gone to sea or not; they are on my heart and in my prayers. If they be yet with you, salute my dear friend John Stuart, my well-beloved brethren in the Lord, Mister Blair, Mister Hamilton, Mister Livingston, and Mister McClelland, and acquaint them with my troubles, and entreat them to pray for the poor afflicted prisoner of Christ. They are dear to my soul. I seek your prayers and theirs for my flock; their remembrance breaks my heart. I desire to love that people, and others my dear acquaintance in Christ with love in God, and as God loves them. I know that he who sent me to the west and south sends me also to the north. I will charge my soul to believe and to wait for him, and will follow his providence and not go before it, nor stay behind it. Now, my dear brother, taking farewell in paper, I commend you all to the word of his grace and to the work of his Spirit, to him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, that you may be kept spotless until the day of Jesus our Lord.

From Irving, being on my journey to Christ's palace in Aberdeen, August 4, 1636. Your brother in affliction in our sweet Lord Jesus, S. R.