To Earlston, Younger — Letter 27

Much honored and well-beloved in the Lord.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. Your letters give a dash to my laziness in writing. I must first tell you, there is not such a glassy, icy, and slippery piece of way between you and heaven as youth. I have experience to say with me here, and seal what I assert: the old ashes of the sins of my youth are new fire of sorrow to me. I have seen the devil, as it were, dead and buried, and yet rise again and be a worse devil than ever he was. Therefore, my brother, beware of a green young devil that has never been buried. The devil in his flowers (I mean the hot fiery lusts and passions of youth) is much to be feared. Better to yoke with an old gray-haired, withered, dry devil; for in youth he finds dry sticks and dry coals and a hot hearthstone, and how soon can he with his flint cast fire, and with his bellows blow it up, and fire the house. Sanctified thoughts — thoughts made conscience of, and called in, and kept in awe — are green fuel that burns not, and are a water for Satan's coal. Yet I must tell you the whole saints now triumphant in heaven and standing before the throne are nothing but Christ's forlorn and beggarly bankrupts. What are they but a pack of redeemed sinners? But their redemption is not only past the seals, but completed; and yours is on the wheels and in doing. All Christ's good children go to heaven with a broken brow and with a crooked leg. Christ has an advantage of you, and I pray you let him have it; he shall find employment for his calling in you. If it were not with you as you write, grace should find no sale nor market in you. But you must be content to give Christ something to do. I am glad that he is employed that way. Let your bleeding soul and your sores be put in the hand of this expert physician. Let young and strong corruptions and his free grace be yoked together, and let Christ and your sins deal it between them. I will be loath to put you off your fears and your sense of deadness (I wish it were more). There are some wounds of that nature that their bleeding should not be soon stopped. You must take a house beside the physician; it shall be a miracle if you be the first sick man he put away uncured and worse than he found you. No, no, Christ is honest, and in that speaking freely with sinners (John 6:37: 'and him that comes to me, I will in no case cast out') — take that as your own. It cannot be presumption to take that as your own, when you find your wounds smarting. Presumption is ever whole at the heart, and has but the truant-sickness, and groans only for appearance. Faith has sense of sickness, and looks like a friend to the promise, and looking to Christ therein, is glad to see a known face. Christ is as full a feast as you can have to hunger. In fact, Christ, I say, is not a full man's leavings; his mercy sends always a letter of defiance to all your sins, if there were ten thousand more of them. I grant you it is a hard matter for a poor hungry man to win his meat upon a hidden Christ, for then the key of his pantry door and of the house of wine is missing and cannot be had. But hunger must break through iron locks. I do not pity them who can make a din and all the fields in commotion for a lost Savior. You must let him hear it (to say so) upon both sides of his head, when he hides himself; it is no time then to be quiet and patient. Christ is rare indeed, and a delicacy to a sinner; he is a miracle and a world's wonder to a seeking and a weeping sinner. But yet such a miracle as will be seen by them who will come and see. The seeker and sigher is at last a singer and enjoyer. In fact, I have seen a dumb man get an alms from Christ. He that can tell his tale, and send such a letter to heaven as he has sent to Aberdeen, it is very likely he will come speed with Christ. It forebodes God's mercy to complain heartily for sin. Let wrestling be with Christ until he says, 'How is it, sir, that I cannot be quit of your bills and your illiterate cries?' And then hope for Christ's blessing, and his blessing is better than ten other blessings. Think not shame because of your guiltiness; necessity must not blush to beg. It stands you hard to want Christ, and therefore what idle waiting cannot do, urgent crying and knocking will do. And for doubtings, because you are not as you were long since with your master, consider three things. First, what if Christ had such tottering thoughts of the bargain of the new covenant between you and him as you have. Second, your heart is not the compass Christ sails by; he will give you leave to sing as you please, but he will not dance to your foolish tune. It is not referred to you and your thoughts what Christ will do with the charters between you and him; your own unbelief has torn them, but he has the principal in heaven with himself. Your thoughts are no parts of the new covenant; dreams change not Christ. Third, doubtings are your sins, but they are Christ's drugs and ingredients that the physician makes use of for the curing of your pride. Is it not suitable for a beggar to say at meat, 'God reward the winners?' — for then he says he knows who bears the charges of the house. It is also fitting you should know by experience that faith is not nature's ill-gotten bastard, but your Lord's free gift, that lay in the womb of God's free grace — praised be the winner. I may add a fourth: in the passing of your bill and your charters, when they went through the mediator's great seal and were concluded, faith's advice was not sought. Faith has not a vote beside Christ's merits; blood, blood, dear blood that came from your surety's holy body, makes that sure work. The use then which you have of faith now (having already closed with Jesus Christ for justification) is to take out a copy of your pardon, and so you have peace with God, upon the account of Christ. For since faith apprehends pardon but never pays a penny for it, no marvel that salvation does not die and live, ebb or flow, with the working of faith. But because it is your Lord's honor to believe his mercy and his fidelity, it is infinite goodness in our Lord that unbelief gives a dash to our Lord's glory, and not to our salvation. And so, whoever lacks (indeed, however God here bears with the lack of what we are obliged to give him, even the glory of his grace by believing), yet a poor covenanted sinner lacks not. But if guiltiness were removed, doubtings would find no friend nor life; and yet faith is to believe the removal of guiltiness in Christ. A reason why you get less now (as you think) than before (as I take it) is, because at our first conversion our Lord puts the meat in young children's mouths with his own hand. But when we grow to some further perfection, we must take heaven by violence, and take by violence from Christ what we get. And he can and does hold, because he will have us to draw. Remember now you must live upon violent plucking; laziness is a greater fault now than long since; we love always to have the food put in our mouth. Now for myself — alas, I am not the man I go for in this nation. Men have not just weights to weigh me. [illegible] but I am a lifeless body and [illegible] whom, if Christ would refer the matter [illegible] (in his presence I speak it) I might think shame to vote my own salvation. I think Christ might say, 'Do you not think it shame to claim heaven, who does so [illegible] for it?' I am very often so, that I know not whether [illegible] — I find myself a bag of light froth. I would bear no weight (but vanities and nothings weigh in Christ's balance) if my Lord cast not in borrowed weight and metal, even Christ's righteousness, to weigh for me. The stock I have is not my own; I am but the merchant that traffics with other folks' goods. If my creditor Christ would take from me what he has lent, I would not long keep the street. But Christ has made it his and mine. I think it manhood to play the coward and shelter in the lee-side of Christ, and thus I am not only saved from my enemies, but I obtain the victory. I am so empty that I think it were an act of charity in Christ if he would win a poor prisoner's blessing forevermore and fill me with his love. I complain when Christ comes; he comes always to fetch fire; he is ever in haste; he may not tarry. And poor [a beggarly bankrupt] gets but a standing visit, and a standing kiss, and but 'how are you?' in the passing. I dare not say he is lordly because he is made a king now at the right hand of God, or has grown unknowing and cold to his poor friends (for he cannot make more of his kisses than they are worth). But I think it my happiness to love the love of Christ, and when he goes away, the memory of his sweet presence is like a feast in a dear summer. I have comfort in this, that my soul desires that every hour of my imprisonment were a company of heavenly tongues to praise him on my behalf, however my bonds were prolonged for many hundred years. O that I could be the man who could cause my Lord's glory to flow like a full sea and blow like a mighty wind upon all the four corners of Scotland, England, and Ireland! O if I could write a book of his praises! O fairest among the sons of men, why do you stay so long away? O heavens, move fast! O time, run, run, and hasten the marriage day, for love is tormented with delays! O angels, O seraphim who stand before him, O blessed spirits who now see his face, set him on high, for when you have worn your harps in his praises, all is too little, and is nothing, to cast the smell of the praise of that fair flower, that fragrant rose of Sharon, through many worlds! Sir, take my hearty commendations to him, and tell him that I am sick of love. Grace be with you.

Aberdeen, June 16, 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, S. R.