To the Honourable, Reverend, and Beloved Professors of Christ and His Truth in Ireland — Letter 3

Dearly beloved in our Lord and partakers of the heavenly calling, grace, mercy, and peace be to you, from God our father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. I always, but most of all now in my bonds (most sweet bonds for Christ my Lord), rejoice to hear of your faith and love, and to hear that our king, our well-beloved, our bridegroom, without tiring, stays still to woo you as his wife, and that persecutions and mockings of sinners have not chased away the wooer from the house. I persuade you in the Lord: the men of God now scattered and driven from you put you upon the right scent and pursuit of Christ. And my salvation on it (if ten heavens were mine) if this way — this way that I now suffer for, this way that the world nicknames and reproaches — and no other way, is not the king's gate to heaven. And I shall never see God's face (and alas I were a beguiled wretch if it were so) if this be not the only saving way to heaven. Oh that you would take a prisoner of Christ's word for it; indeed, I know you have the greatest king's word for it, that it shall not be your wisdom to seek out another Christ, another way of worshiping him, than is now savingly revealed to you. Therefore, though I never saw your faces, let me be pardoned to write to you, you honorable persons, you faithful pastors yet among the flocks, and you sincere professors of Christ's truth, or any weak tired strayers who cast but half an eye after the bridegroom — if possibly I could by any weak experience confirm and strengthen you in this good way everywhere spoken against. I can with greatest assurance (to the honor of our highest and greatest and dearest Lord let it be spoken) assert (though I be but a child in Christ, and scarce able to walk but by a hold, and the meanest and less than the least of saints) that we do not come near, by twenty degrees, to the due love and estimation of that fairest among the sons of men. For if it were possible that heaven — indeed, ten heavens — were laid in the balance with Christ, I would think the smell of his breath above them all. Sure I am he is the far best half of heaven; indeed, he is all heaven and more than all heaven. And my testimony of him is that ten lives of black sorrow, ten deaths, ten hells of pain, ten furnaces of brimstone, and all exquisite torments, were all too little for Christ, if our suffering could be a wage to buy him. And therefore faint not in your sufferings and hazards for him. I proclaim and cry hell, sorrow, and shame upon all lusts, upon all by-lovers, that would take Christ's room over his head in this little inch of love of these narrow souls of ours that is due to sweetest Jesus. O highest, O fairest, O dearest Lord Jesus, take your own from all bastard lovers! O that we could mortgage and sell all our part of time's glory and time's good things, for a lease and grant of Christ for all eternity! O how are we misled and mired with the love of things that are on this side of time and on this side of death's water! Where can we find a match to Christ, or an equal or a better than he among created things? Oh this world is out of all regard and all love with our well-beloved. O that I could sell my laughter, joy, ease, and all for him, and be content of a straw-bed and bread by weight and water by measure in the camp of our weeping Christ! I know his sackcloth and ashes are better than the fool's laughter, which is like the crackling of thorns under a pot. But alas, we do not harden our faces against the cold north storms which blow upon Christ's fair face; we love well summer religion, and to be that which sin has made us — even as thin-skinned as if we were made of white paper — and would gladly be carried to heaven in a glass-covered chariot, wishing from our hearts that Christ would give us surety and his handwriting and his seal for nothing but a fair summer, until we be landed in at heaven's gates. How many of us have here been deceived and fainted in the day of trial! Among you there are some of this stamp. I shall be sorry if my acquaintance A. T. has left you; I will not believe he dare stay from Christ's side. I desire that you show him this from me, for I loved him once in Christ, neither can I change my mind suddenly of him. But the truth is that many both of you, and too many also of your neighbor church of Scotland, have been like a tenant that sits rent-free and knows not his holding while his rights be questioned. And now I am persuaded it will be asked at every one of us on what terms we held Christ, for we have sat long rent-free; we found Christ without a wet foot, and he and his gospel came upon small charges to our doors, but now we must wet our feet to seek him. Our evil manners and the bad fashions of a people at ease from our youth, and like Moab not cast from vessel to vessel (Jeremiah 48:11), has made us like standing waters, to gather a foul scum, and when we are jostled, our dregs come up and are seen. Many take but half a grip of Christ, and the wind blows them and Christ asunder. Indeed, when the mast is broken and blown in the sea, it is an art then to swim upon Christ to dry land. It is even possible that the children of God in a hard trial lay themselves down as hidden in the lee-side of a bush while Christ their master is taken, as Peter did, and lurk there while the storm is overpast. All of us know the way to a whole skin, and the sincerest heart that is has a secret purse that will contain the denial of Christ and a fearful backsliding. O how rare a thing it is to be loyal and honest to Christ, when he has a controversy with the shields of the earth. I wish all of you would consider that this trial is from Christ; it has come upon you unbought. Indeed, when we buy a temptation with our own money, no marvel that we be not easily free of it, and that God be not at our elbow to take it off our hand. This is Christ's ordinary house-fire that he makes use of to try all the vessels of his house; and Christ now is about to bring his treasure out before sun and moon, and to count his money, and in the counting, to try what weight of gold and what weight of watered copper is in his house. Do not now duck or bow or yield to your adversaries in a hair's breadth; Christ and his truth will not divide. And his truth has not latitude and breadth, that you may take some of it and leave other some of it. In fact, the gospel is like a small hair that has no breadth and will not cleave in two. It is not possible to compromise and compound a matter between Christ and Antichrist; and therefore you must either be for Christ, or you must be against him. It was but man's wit and the wit of prelates and their godfather the Pope (that man without law) to put Christ and his royal prerogatives and his truth, or the smallest nail-breadth of his latter will, in the new calendar of indifferencies, and to make a blank of un-inked paper in Christ's testament, that men may fill up and so shuffle the truth and matters they call indifferent through each other, and spin both together that the Antichrist's wares may sell the better. This is but the device and forged dream of men whose consciences are made of stubbornness, and have a throat that a graven image greater than the bounds of the kirk door would give free passage to. I am sure when Christ shall bring us all out in our blacks and whites, at that day when he shall cry down time and the world, and when the glory of it shall lie in white ashes like a May flower cut down and having lost the blossom, there shall be few — indeed, none — that dare make any point that touches the worship and honor of our king and lawgiver to be indifferent. O that this misled and blindfolded world would see that Christ does not rise and fall, stand or lie, by men's apprehensions! What is Christ the lighter, that men do with him by open proclamation as men do with clipped and light money — they are now crying down Christ some grain-weights and some pounds or shillings, and they will have him lie for a penny or a pound, for one or for a hundred, according as the wind blows from the east or from the west. But the Lord has weighed him and balanced him already: 'This is my well-beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear him;' his worth and his weight stand still. It is our part to cry up, up with Christ, and down, down with all created glory before him. O that I could heighten him and heighten his name and heighten his throne! I know and am persuaded that Christ shall again be high and great in this poor withered and sunburned kirk of Scotland, and that the sparks of our fire shall fly over sea and round about to warm you and other sister churches, and that this tabernacle of David's house that is fallen — even the Son of David's waste places — shall be built again. And I know the prison, crosses, persecutions, and trials of the two slain witnesses that are now dead and buried (Revelation 11) and of the faithful professors have a back door and back entry of escape, and that death and hell and the world and tortures shall all cleave and split in twain and give us free passage and liberty to go through them toll-free. And we shall bring all God's good metal out of the furnace again, and leave behind us but our dross and our scum. We may then beforehand proclaim Christ to be victorious. He is crowned king in mount Zion; God did put the crown upon his head (Psalm 2); and who dare take it off again? Out of question he has sore and grievous quarrels against his church, and therefore he is called (Isaiah 39:10) he whose fire is in Zion and whose furnace is in Jerusalem. But when he has performed his work on mount Zion, all Zion's haters shall be as the hungry and thirsty man that dreams he is eating and drinking, and behold when he awakens he is faint and his soul empty. And this advantage we have also: that he will not bring before sun and moon all the infirmities of his wife. It is the modesty of marriage-anger, or husband-wrath, that our sweet Lord Jesus will not come with chiding to the streets, to let all the world hear what is between him and us; his sweet frowns stay under roof, and that because he is God. Two special things you are to mind. First, try and make sure your profession; that you carry not empty lamps. Alas, security, security is the bane and the wreck of the most part of the world! Oh how many professors go with a golden luster and gold-like before men (who are but witnesses to our white skin), and yet are but bastard and base metal. Consider how fair before the wind some do ply, with up-sails and white, even to the edge of illumination (Hebrews 6:5), and tasting of the heavenly gift, and a share and part of the Holy Spirit, and the tasting of the good word of God and the powers of the world to come. And yet this is but a false edge of renewal, and in a short time such are quickly broken upon the rocks and never reach the harbor, but are sanded in the bottom of hell. O make your heaven sure, and try how you come by conversion; that it be not stolen goods, in a white and well-lustered profession! A white skin over old wounds makes an undercutting conscience. False underwater not seen is dangerous; and that is a leak and rift in the bottom of an enlightened conscience, often falling and sinning against light. Woe, woe is me, that the holy profession of Christ is made a stage garment by many, to bring home a vain fame, and Christ is made to serve men's ends. This is as it were to stop an oven with a king's robes. Second, except men martyr and slay the body of sin in sanctified self-denial, they shall never be Christ's martyrs and faithful witnesses. Oh if I could be master of that house-idol my self — my own, mine, my own will, wit, credit, and ease — how blessed were I? O but we have need to be redeemed from ourselves rather than from the devil and the world! Learn to put out yourselves and to put in Christ for yourselves. I should make a sweet bargaining and trading, and give old for new, if I could shuffle out self and substitute Christ my Lord in place of myself, to say, not I but Christ, not my will but Christ's, not my ease, not my lust, not my feckless credit, but Christ, Christ. But alas, in leaving ourselves, in setting Christ before our idol self, we have yet a glancing back-look to our old idol. O wretched idol, myself — when shall I see you wholly discarded and Christ wholly put in your room? Oh if Christ, Christ, had the full place and room of myself, that all my aims, purposes, thoughts, and desires would coast and land upon Christ and not upon myself! And yet, however we cannot attain to this denial of me and mine, that we can say I am not myself, myself is not myself, my own is no longer my own, yet our aiming at this in all we do shall be accepted. For alas I think I shall die but aiming and attempting to be a Christian. Is it not our comfort that Christ the mediator of the new covenant is come between us and God in the business, so that green and young heirs, the like of sinners, have now a tutor that is God? And now, God be thanked, our salvation is bottomed on Christ; sure I am that bottom shall never fall out of heaven and happiness to us. I would give over the bargain a thousand times, were it not that Christ his free grace has taken our salvation in hand. Pray, pray, and contend with the Lord for your sister-church, for it would appear the Lord is about to seek for his scattered sheep in the dark and cloudy day. O that it would please our Lord to set up again David's old wasted and fallen tabernacle in Scotland, that we might see the glory of the second temple in this land! O that my little heaven were mortgaged to redeem the honor of my Lord Jesus among Jews and Gentiles! Let never dew lie upon my branches, and let my poor flower wither at the root, so that Christ were enthroned and his glory advanced in all the world, and especially in these three kingdoms. But I know he has no need of me; what can I add to him? But oh that he would cause his high and pure glory run through such a foul channel as I am! And however he has caused the blossom fall off my one poor joy that was on this side of heaven, even my liberty to preach Christ to his people, yet I am dead to that now, so that he would hew and carve glory, glory forevermore, to my royal king, out of my silence and sufferings. Oh that I had my fill of his love, but I know ill manners make an uncouth and strange bridegroom. I entreat you earnestly for the aid of your prayers, for I forget not you. And I salute with my soul in Christ the faithful pastors and honorable and worthy professors in that land. Now the God of peace, that brought again our Lord Jesus from the dead, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight. Grace, grace be with you.

Aberdeen, February 4, 1638. Yours in his sweetest Lord Jesus, S. R.