To the Much Honoured John Gordon of Cardoness, Elder — Letter 14

Much honored and dearest in my Lord, grace, mercy, and peace be to you. My soul longs exceedingly to hear how matters go between you and Christ, and whether or not there be any work of Christ in that parish that will abide the trial of fire and water. Let me be weighed of my Lord in a just balance, if your souls lie not weightily upon me. You go to bed and you rise with me; thoughts of your soul, my dearest in our Lord, depart not from me in my sleep. You have a great part of my tears, sighs, supplications, and prayers. O if I could buy your soul's salvation with any suffering whatever, and that you and I might meet with joy up in the rainbow when we shall stand before our judge! O my Lord forbid I have any hard thing to testify against you in that day! O that he who quickens the dead would give life to my sowing among you! What joy is there (next to Christ) that stands on this side of death that would comfort me more than that the souls of that poor people were in safety and beyond all hazard of losing? Sir, show the people this, for when I write to you I think I write to you all, old and young. Fulfill my joy and seek the Lord. Sure I am, once I discovered my lovely, royal, princely Lord Jesus to you all. Woe, woe, woe shall be your part of it forevermore, if the gospel be not the savor of life to life to you. As many sermons as I preached, as many sentences as I uttered — as many points of indictment shall they be, when the Lord shall plead with the world for the evil of their doings. Believe me, I find heaven a city hard to be won; the righteous will scarcely be saved. O what violence of thronging will heaven take! Alas, I see many deceiving themselves, for we will all go to heaven; now every foul dog with his foul feet will in at the nearest to the new and clean Jerusalem. All say they have faith, and the greatest part in the world know not and will not consider that a slip in the matter of their salvation is the most pitiful slip that can be, and that no loss is comparable to this loss. O then see that there be not a loose pin in the work of your salvation! For you will not believe how quickly the judge will come. And for yourself, I know that death is waiting and hovering and lingering at God's command, that you may be prepared. Then you have need to stir yourself in time, and to take eternity and death to your riper advisement. A wrong step or a wrong stumble in going out of this life in one property is like the sin against the Holy Spirit, and can never be forgiven, because you cannot come back again through the last water to mourn for it. I know your accounts are many, and will take telling and laying and reckoning between you and your Lord. Fit your accounts and order them; lose not the last play, whatever you do. For in that play with death, your precious soul is the prize. For the Lord's sake do not spoil the play and lose such a treasure. You know that out of love I had to your soul, and out of desire I had to make an honest account for you, I testified my displeasure and disliking of your ways very often, both in private and public. I am not now a witness of your doings, but your judge is always your witness. I beseech you by the mercies of God, by the salvation of your soul, by your comforts when your eyestrings shall break and the face wax pale and the soul shall tremble to be out of the lodging of clay, and by your appearance before your awful judge — after the sight of this letter, take a new course with your ways, and now in the end of your day make sure of heaven. Examine yourself if you be in good earnest in Christ, for some (Hebrews 6:4) are partakers of the Holy Spirit and taste of the good word of God and of the powers of the life to come, and yet have no part in Christ at all. Many think they believe, but never tremble. The devils are further on than these (James 2:19). Make sure to yourself that you are above ordinary professors. The sixth part of your span-length and handbreadth of days is scarcely before you; haste, haste, for the tide will not wait. Put Christ upon all your accounts and your secrets. Better it is that you give him your accounts in this life, out of your own hand, than that after this life he take them from you. I never knew so well what sin was as since I came to Aberdeen, however I was preaching of it to you. To feel the smoke of hell's fire in the throat for half an hour, to stand beside a river of fire and brimstone broader than the earth, and to think to be bound hand and foot and cast in the midst of it alive, and then to have God locking the prison door never to be opened for all eternity — O how will it shake a conscience that has any life in it! I find the fruits of my pains, to have Christ and that people once fairly met, now meets my soul in my sad hours, and I rejoice that I gave fair warning of all the corruptions now entering in Christ's house. And now many a sweet, sweet, soft kiss, many perfumed and sweet-smelling kisses and embracements have I received of my royal master. He and I have had much love together. I have for the present a sick, declining life, with much pain and much love-sickness for Christ. O what I would give to have a bed made for my wearied soul in his bosom! I would postpone heaven for many years to have my fill of Jesus in this life, and to have occasion to offer Christ to my people, and to woo many people to Christ. I cannot tell you what sweet pain and delightful torments are in Christ's love. I often challenge time that holds us asunder. I profess to you I have no rest, I have no ease while I be over head and ears in love's ocean. If Christ's love, that fountain of delight, were laid as open to me as I would wish — O how would I drink and drink abundantly! O how drunk would this my soul be! I half call his absence cruel, and the mask and veil on Christ's face a cruel covering, that hides such a fair, fair face from a sick soul. I dare not challenge himself, but his absence is a mountain of iron upon my heavy heart. O when will we meet! O how long is it to the dawning of the marriage day! O sweet Lord Jesus, take wide steps! O my Lord, come over mountains at one stride! O my beloved, flee like a roe or young hart upon the mountains of separation! O if he would fold the heavens together like an old cloak and shovel time and days out of the way, and make ready in haste the Lamb's wife for her husband! Since he looked upon me, my heart is not my own; he has run away to heaven with it. I know it was not for nothing that I spoke so much good of Christ to you in public. O if the heaven and the heaven of heavens were paper, and the sea ink, and the multitude of mountains pens of brass, and I were able to write that paper within and without full of the praises of my fairest, my dearest, my loveliest, my sweetest, my matchless, and my most incomparable and marvelous well-beloved! Woe is me, I cannot set him out to men and angels. O there are few tongues to sing love-songs of his incomparable excellency! What can I, a poor prisoner, do to exalt him? Or what course can I take to extol my lofty and lovely Lord Jesus? I am put to my wit's end how to get his name made great. Blessed are they who would help me in this. How sweet are Christ's lesser glories? O what then is in his face! Those that see his face, how do they get their eye plucked off him again! Look up to him and love him; O love and live. It were life to me if you would read this letter to that people, and if they did profit by it. O if I could cause them to die of love for Jesus! I charge them by the salvation of their souls to hang about Christ's neck and take their fill of his love and follow him as I taught them. Part by no means with Christ; hold fast what you have received; keep the truth once delivered. If you or that people quit it in a hair or in a hoof, you break your conscience in two, and who then can mend it and cast a knot on it? My dearest in the Lord, stand fast in Christ. Keep the faith; contend for Christ; wrestle for him, and take men's feud for God's favor — there is no comparison between these. O that my Lord would fulfill my joy, and keep the young bride to Christ that is at Anwoth. And now, whoever they be that have returned to the old vomit since my departure, I bind upon their back, in my master's name and authority, the long-lasting weighty vengeance and curse of God. In my Lord's name I give them a doom of black, unmixed, pure wrath, which my master shall ratify and make good when we stand together before him, except they timely repent and turn to the Lord. And I write to you, poor mourning and broken-hearted believer, be who you will, of the free salvation: Christ's sweet balm for your wounds. O poor humble believer: Christ's kisses for your watery cheeks, Christ's blood of atonement for your guilty soul, Christ's heaven for your poor soul, though once banished out of paradise. And my master shall make good my word before long. O that people were wise! O that people were wise! O that people would seek out Christ and never rest until they find him! O how shall my soul mourn in secret, if my nine years' pained head and sore breast and pained back and grieved heart and private and public prayers to God shall all be for nothing among that people. Did my Lord Jesus send me but to summon you before your judge, and to leave your summons at your houses? Was I sent as a witness only to gather your indictments? O my God forbid! Often did I tell you of a fan of God's word to come among you, for the contempt of it. I told you often of wrath, wrath from the Lord, to come upon Scotland, and yet I abide by my master's word: it is quickly coming — desolation for Scotland, because of the quarrel of a broken covenant. Now worthy sir, now my dear people, my joy and my crown in the Lord, let him be your fear; seek the Lord and his face; save your souls. Doves, flee to Christ's windows; pray for me and praise for me. The blessing of my God, the prayers and blessing of a poor prisoner and your lawful pastor be upon you.

Aberdeen, June 16, 1637. Your lawful and loving pastor, S. R.