To My Lord Boyd — Letter 39

My very honorable and good Lord.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am glad to hear that you in the morning of your short day have regard for Christ, and that you love the honor of his crown and kingdom. I beseech your lordship, begin now to shape your love, and to cast it in no mold but one, that it may be for Christ only. For when your love is now in the forming and making, it will take best with Christ; if any other than Jesus gets hold of it while it is green and young, Christ will be an unfamiliar and strange world to you. Promise the lodging of your soul first to Christ, and stand by your first covenant, and keep to Jesus, that he may find you faithful. It is easy to master an arrow and to set it right before the string is drawn, but when once it is shot and in the air and the flight begun, then you have no power at all to command it. It were a blessed thing if your love could now aim only at Christ, that his fair face were the mark you shot at. For when your love is loosed and out of your grip, and moving to fetch home an idol and has taken a faithless roaming journey to seek an unknown and strange lover, you shall not then have power to call home the arrow, or to be master of your love, and you shall hardly give Christ what you scarcely have yourself. I speak not this as if youth itself could purchase heaven and Christ. Believe it, my lord — it is hardly credible what a nest of dangerous temptations youth is, how inconsiderate, foolish, proud, vain, headstrong, rash, profane, and careless of God this piece of your life is. So the devil finds in that age a furnished and swept house for himself and seven devils worse than himself. For then the affections are on horseback, lofty and stirring; then the old man has blood, lust, much will, and little wit, and hands, feet, wanton eyes, and profane ears as his servants and as a king's officers at command, to come and go at his will. Then a green conscience is as pliable as the twig of a young tree — it bends every way; every religion, every sinful course prevails with it. And therefore — oh what a sweet couple, what a glorious yoke are youth and grace, Christ and a young man! This is a meeting not to be found in every town. None who have been to Christ can bring back to your lordship a report adequate to his worth, for Christ cannot be spoken of or commended according to his worth; 'Come and see' is the most faithful way to speak of him, and little persuasion would prevail where that were done. It is impossible in the setting out of Christ's love to lie and pass over truth's line. The discourses of angels, or love-books written by the congregation of seraphim — all their wits being combined and melted in one — would forever fall short of fully declaring the thing as it is. The infiniteness, the boundlessness of that incomparable excellence that is in Jesus, is a great word. God send me, if it were but the remnants and leavings, or an ounce weight or two, of his matchless love — and suppose I never got another heaven, providing this blessed fire were evermore burning — I could not but be happy forever. Come then and give out your treasure wisely for bread; come here and bestow your love. I have cause to speak this, because unless you enjoy and possess Christ, you will be a cold friend to his spouse, for it is love to the husband that causes kindness to the wife. I dare say, it would be a blessing to your house — the honor of your honor, the flower of your credit — now in your place and as far as you are able, to lend your hand to your weeping mother, even your oppressed and despoiled mother-church. If you love her and bestir yourself for her and hazard the lordship of Boyd for the recovery of her veil, which the smiting watchmen have taken from her, then surely her husband will not neglect to honor your estate. Fragments of lordships are little to him who has many crowns on his head and the kingdoms of the world in the hollow of his hand. Court, honor, glory, riches, stability of houses, and favor of princes are all at his fingertips. Oh, what glory it would be to lend your honor to Christ and to his Jerusalem! You are one of Zion's native sons; your honorable and Christian parents would have you venture yourself upon Christ's errands. Therefore I beseech you, by the mercies of God, by the death and wounds of Jesus, by the hope of your glorious inheritance, and by the comfort and hope of the joyful welcome you would have at the water's edge when you put your foot in the dark grave — take courage for Christ's truth and the honor of his free kingdom. For though you are a young flower and green before the sun, you know not how soon death will cause you to shed your bloom and wither root and branch and leaves. Therefore write up what you have to do for Christ, and make a treasury of good works, and begin in time. By appearance, you have the advantage of the high ground; see what you can do for Christ against those who are waiting for Christ's tabernacle to fall, that they may run off with the boards of it and build their nests on Zion's ruins. They are blind who do not see that men are now pulling up the stakes and breaking the cords and tearing the curtains of Christ's once-beautiful tent in this land. Antichrist is lifting that tent up on his shoulders and going away with it. And when Christ and the gospel are out of Scotland, do not dream that your houses shall thrive and that it shall go well with the nobles of the land. As the Lord lives, the streams of your waters shall become pitch, and the dust of your land brimstone, and your land shall become burning pitch, and the owl and the raven shall dwell in your houses, and where your table stood there shall grow briers and nettles (Isaiah 34:9-11). The Lord gave Christ and his gospel as a pledge to Scotland; the watchmen have fallen and lost their part of the pledge. And who does not see that God has dried up their right eye and their right arm, and has broken the shepherds' staffs, and men are treading with contempt upon such tasteless salt that is good for nothing else? If you the nobles also put away the pledge, and refuse to plead the controversy of Zion with the professed enemies of Jesus, you have done with it. Oh, where is the courage and zeal now of the ancient nobles of this land, who with their swords and hazard of life, honor, and houses brought Christ to our hands? And now the nobles cannot be but guilty of pushing out Christ and murdering the souls of posterity, if they shall hide themselves and lurk in the sheltered side of the hill till the wind blows down the temple of God. It goes now under the name of wisdom for men to cast their cloak over Christ and their profession, as if Christ were stolen goods and dared not be avowed. Though this is reputed a piece of policy, yet God esteems such men to be but state-fools and court-simpletons, whatever they or other sharp minds like them think of themselves — since their damnable silence is the ruin of Christ's kingdom. Oh, but it is true honor and glory to be the fast friends of the bridegroom, and to own Christ's bleeding head and his forsaken cause, and to contend legally and in the wisdom of God for our sweet Lord Jesus and his kingly crown. But I will believe your lordship will take Christ's honor to heart, and be a man in the streets, as the prophet speaks, for the Lord and his truth. To his rich grace and sweet presence, and the everlasting consolation of the promised Comforter, I commend your lordship, and am.

Aberdeen, September 7, 1637. Your lordship's in his sweet Lord Jesus, S. R.