To the Right Honourable and Christian Lady, the Viscountess of Kenmure — Letter 11
Madam.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you. I am refreshed with your letter. The right hand of him to whom belong the issues from death has been gracious to that sweet child. I do not, I do not forget him and your ladyship in my prayers. Madam, for your own case, I love careful complaints — and withal, complaints that involve doing — because of want of practice; for I observe many who think it holiness enough to complain and set themselves at nothing, as if to say 'I am sick' would cure them. They think complaints a good charm for guiltiness. I hope you are wrestling and struggling on in this dead age, wherein people have lost tongue and legs and arms for Christ. I urge upon you, Madam, a nearer communion with Christ and a growing communion. There are curtains to be drawn aside in Christ that we never saw, and new foldings of love in him. I despair that ever I shall win to the far end of that love; there are so many layers in it. Therefore dig deep, and sweat, and labor, and take pains for him, and set by so much time in the day for him as you can; he will be won with labor. I, his exiled prisoner, sought him, and he has had compassion upon me, and has made a moan for me as he does for his own (Jeremiah 31:20; Isaiah 45:11). And I know not what to do with Christ — his love surrounds and overcharges me, and burdened with it, oh how sweet and lovely is that burden! I cannot keep it within me. I am so in love with his love that if his love were not in heaven I would be unwilling to go there. O what weighing and what telling is in Christ's love! I fear nothing now so much as the laughing of Christ's cross and the love-showers that accompany it. I wonder what he means to put such a slave at the head of his table, at his own elbow. Oh that I should lay my black mouth to such a fair, fair, fair face as Christ's — but I dare not refuse to be loved. The cause is not in me why he has looked upon me and loved me, for he got neither bribe nor fee from me; it cost me nothing — it is good-cheap love. O the many pound-weights of his love under which I am sweetly pressed! Now Madam, I persuade you the greatest part but play with Christianity; they put it by hand easily. I thought it had been an easy thing to be a Christian, and that to seek God had been at the next door. But oh the windings, the turnings, the ups and the downs that he has led me through, and I see yet much way to the ford. He speaks with my conscience in the night season, and in the morning when I awake I find his love-arrows that he shot at me sticking in my heart. Who will help me to praise? Who will come lift with me, and set on high his great love? And yet I find that a lightning-flash of challenges will come in at midsummer and question me, but it is only to keep a sinner in order. As for friends, I shall not think the world to be the world, if that well goes not dry. I trust in God to use the world as a clever master does a knave-servant — at least God give me grace to do so. He gives him no handling or credit; only he entrusts him with common errands wherein he cannot play the knave. I pray God I may not give this world credit of my joys and comforts and confidence — that were to put Christ out of his office. Indeed, I counsel you Madam from a little experience: let Christ keep the great seal, and entrust him so, as to hang your vessels great and small and pin your burdens upon the nail fastened in David's house (Isaiah 22:23). Let me not be well if ever they get the tutoring of my comforts. Away, away with irresponsible tutors that would play me a slip, and then Christ would laugh at me and say, 'well spent — try again before you trust.' Now woe is me for my whorish mother the kirk of Scotland; oh who will bewail her! Now the presence of the great angel of the covenant be with you and that sweet child.
Aberdeen, March 7, 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, S. R.
