To the Lady Culross — Letter 41

Madam.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I dare not say I wonder that you have never written to me in my bonds, because I am not ignorant of the cause; yet I could not but write to you. I know not whether joy or heaviness in my soul carries it away; sorrow without any mixture of sweetness seldom has loving thoughts of Christ, but I see the devil can insinuate himself and ride his errands upon the thoughts of a poor, oppressed prisoner. I am grieved that I am making Christ my enemy by seeking quarrels against him, because I am the first in the kingdom put to utter silence, and because I cannot preach my Lord's righteousness in the great congregation. I am notwithstanding less anxious about how it goes, if there is no wrath in my cup. But I know I only scratch my wounds when my physician has forbidden me. I would believe in the dark on trust, and take my hazard of Christ's goodwill, and rest on this: that in my fever my physician is at my bedside, and that he sympathizes with me when I sigh. My borrowed house, and another man's bed and fireside, and other losses have no room in my sorrow — a greater heat to eat out a lesser fire is a good remedy for some kinds of burning. I believe when Christ draws blood, he has skill to cut the right vein, and that he has taken the whole ordering and disposing of my sufferings. Let him tutor me, and tutor my crosses as he thinks good; there is no danger or hazard in following such a guide, though he should lead me through hell, if I could put faith foremost and fill the field with a quiet waiting and believing to see the salvation of God. I know Christ is not obliged to let me see both sides of my cross and turn it over and over, that I may see all. My faith is richer to live upon credit and Christ's borrowed provision than to have much in my hand. Alas, I have forgotten that faith in times past has stopped a leak in my battered vessel and has filled my sails with a fair wind. I see it is a work of God that past experiences are all lost when challenges are raised against poor souls in their heavy trials, trying to prove their claims to Christ are counterfeit. But let me be a sinner, and worse than the chief of sinners — yes, a guilty devil — I am sure my beloved is God, and when I say Christ is God, and my Christ is God, I have said all things; I can say no more. I wish I could build as much on this — my Christ is God — as it would bear; I might lay all the world upon it. I am sure that Christ, untried and not taken up in the power of his love, kindness, mercies, goodness, wisdom, long-suffering, and greatness, is the rock that dim-sighted travelers dash their foot against and so stumble terribly. But my wounds are sorest, and pain me most, when I sin against his love and his mercy. And if he would set me and my conscience at odds together and resolve not to resolve the quarrel, but let us settle it between us, my spitting upon the fair face of Christ's love and mercies by my jealousies, unbelief, and doubting would be enough to sink me. Oh, oh, I am convicted, O Lord, I stand dumb before you for this. Let me be my own judge in this, and I take a dreadful doom upon myself for it, for I still disbelieve, though I have seen that my Lord has made my cross as if it were all crystal, so that I can see through it Christ's fair face and heaven. God has honored a lump of sinful flesh and blood like me, to be Christ's honorable prisoner. I ought to esteem the walls of the thieves' hole, if I were shut up in it, or any stinking dungeon, all hung with tapestry and most beautiful for my Lord Jesus. And yet I am not so shut up but that the sun shines upon my prison and the fair wide heaven is its covering. But my Lord in his sweet visits has done more, for he makes me find that he will be a confined prisoner with me; he lies down and rises up with me; when I sigh, he sighs; when I weep, he suffers with me. And I confess here is the blessed outcome of my sufferings already begun — that my heart is filled with hunger and desire to have him glorified in my sufferings. Blessed are you of the Lord, Madam, if you would help a poor debtor, and cause others of your acquaintance in Christ help me, to pay my debt of love, even real praises to Christ my Lord. Madam, let me charge you in the Lord, as you will answer to him — help me in this duty, which he has tied about my neck with a chain of such singular expressions of his loving kindness, to set Christ on high, to hold to my honesty at his hands, for I have nothing to give him. Oh that he would seize upon my love and my heart for all! I am a debtor who has no more free goods in the world for Christ save this: it is both the whole estate I have and all my movables besides. Lord, give the thirsty man a drink. Oh to be over the ears in the well! Oh to be plunging and swimming over head and ears in Christ's love! I would not have Christ's love entering into me, but I would enter into it and be swallowed up of that love. But I see not myself here, for I fear I make more of his love than of himself, whereas himself is far beyond and much better than his love. Oh if I had my sinful arms filled with that lovely one, Christ! Blessed be my rich Lord Jesus, who does not send away beggars from his house with an empty dish; he fills the vessels of such as will come and seek. We might beg ourselves rich, if we were wise, if we could but hold out our withered hands to Christ and learn to suit and seek, ask and knock. I owe my salvation for Christ's glory; I owe it to Christ, and desire that my hell — yes, a new hell seven times hotter than the old — might buy praises before men and angels to my Lord Jesus, providing always I were free of Christ's hatred and displeasure. What am I, to be sold and forfeited in soul and body, to have my great and royal King set on high and exalted above all? Oh if I knew how high to have him set, and all the world far, far beneath the soles of his feet! No, I do not deserve to be the occasion of his praises, far less to be an agent in praising him. But he can win his own glory out of me, and out of one worse than I, if any such there be, if it pleases his holy Majesty so to do. He knows that I am not now flattering him. Madam, let me have your prayers, as you have the prayers and blessing of one who is separated from his brethren. Grace, grace be with you.

Aberdeen, June 15, 1637. Your own in his sweet Lord Jesus, S. R.