To John Stuart, Provost of Ayr — Letter 53

Worthy and dearly beloved in our Lord.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I was refreshed and comforted with your letter. What I wrote to you for your comfort I do not remember, but I believe love will prophesy homeward as it would have it. I wish I could help you to praise his great and holy name, who keeps the feet of his saints and has numbered all your goings. I know our dearest Lord will pardon and pass by our honest errors and mistakes when we have regard for his honor. Yet I know none of you have seen the other half and the hidden side of your wonderful return home to us again. I am confident you shall yet say that God's mercy blew your sails back to Ireland again. Worthy and dear sir, I cannot but give you an account of my present state, that you may go an errand for me to my high and royal Master, of whom I boast all the day. I am as proud of his love — no, I bless myself and boast more of my present lot — as any poor man can be of an earthly king's court or of a kingdom. First: I am very often turning over both sides of my cross, especially my silent Sabbaths — not because I desire to find a fault or defect in my Lord's love, but because love is sick with fancies and fears, whether or not the Lord has a proceeding against my guiltiness that I have not yet well seen. I know not. My desire is to ride fair, and not to cast mud — if with reverence of him I may be permitted to use such a word — in the face of my only, only beloved. But fear of guilt is a tale-bearer between me and Christ, and is always whispering ill tales of my Lord to weaken my faith. I had rather a cloud went over my comforts by these messages than that my faith should be hurt, for if my Lord gets no wrong from me, truly I desire grace not to care what becomes of me. I desire to give no faith or credit to my sorrow, which can make a liar of my best friend Christ. Woe, woe be to them all who speak ill of Christ. Hence these thoughts awake with me in the morning and go to bed with me. Oh, what service can a dumb person do in Christ's house! Oh, I think the word of God is imprisoned also! Oh, I am a dry tree! Alas, I can neither plant nor water! Oh if my Lord would but make dung of me, to fatten and make fertile his own cornfields on Mount Zion! Oh if I might but speak to three or four herd-boys about my worthy Master, I would be satisfied to be the meanest and most obscure of all the pastors in this land, and to live in any place, in any of Christ's most humble outhouses. But he says, 'No, I will not send you; I have no errands for you there.' My desire to serve him is sick with jealousy lest he be unwilling to employ me. Second: this is followed by another: oh, all that I have done in Anwoth — the fair work that my Master began there — is like a bird dying in the shell! And what shall I then have to show of all my labor in the day of my appearance before him, when the Master of the vineyard calls the laborers and gives them their hire? Third: but truly, when Christ's sweet wind is in the right quarter, I repent, and I pray Christ to bind over my quarrelsome and unbelieving sadness and sorrow. 'Lord, rebuke those who put ill between a poor servant like me and his good Master' — then I say, whether the black cross will or not, I must climb, hands and feet, up to my Lord. I am now ruing from my heart that I please the law — my old dead husband — so far as to apprehend wrath in my sweet Lord Jesus. I had far rather take a wage to plead for the grace of God, for I think myself Christ's sworn debtor. And the truth is, to speak of my Lord what I cannot deny, I am over head and ears drowned in many obligations to his love and mercy. He handles me sometimes so that I am almost ashamed to seek more for a brief time, but to live content until the marriage supper of the Lamb with what he gives. But I know not how greedy and hard to please love is — for either my Lord Jesus has taught me ill manners, not to be content except my head lies in his bosom and I am fed with the fattest of his house; or else I have grown impatiently particular and hard to please, as if Christ were obliged under this cross to do nothing but bear me in his arms, and as if I had claim by merit for my suffering for him. But I wish he would give me grace to learn to go on my own feet, and to learn to want his comforts, and to give thanks and believe when the sun is not in my sky, and when my beloved is from home and gone on another errand. Oh, what sweet peace I have when I find Christ holds and I draw, when I climb up and he seems to shut me back down, when I grip him and embrace him, and he seems to loose the grip and flee away from me. I think there is even a sweet joy of faith and contentedness and peace in his very tempting unkindness, because my faith says Christ is not in sad earnest with me, but is trying whether I can be kind to his mask and cloud that covers him as well as to his fair face. I bless his great name that I love his veil that goes over his face, until God sends better; for faith can kiss God's testing reproaches, when he nicknames a sinner a dog not worthy to eat bread with the children. I think it an honor that Christ calls me ill names and reproaches me; I will take that well of him, though I would not bear it well from another who would be so familiar. But because I am his own — God be thanked — he may use me as he pleases. I must say, the saints have a sweet life between them and Christ; there is much sweet solace of love between him and them, when he feeds among the lilies and comes into his garden and makes a feast of honeycombs and drinks his wine and his milk, and cries: 'Eat, O friends; drink — yes, drink deeply, O beloved.' One hour of this is worth a shipload of the world's drunken and muddy joy. No, even the gate of heaven is the sunny side of the hill and the very garden of the world. For the men of this world have their own unchristened and profane crosses — woe be to them and to their cursed crosses both, for their ills are salted with God's vengeance, and our ills seasoned with our Father's blessing. So they are no fools who choose Christ and sell all things for him; it is no child's bargain or blind trade — we know well what we get and what we give. Now as for any resolution to go to any other kingdom, I dare not speak one word. My hopes of release are cold; my hopes of re-entry to my Master's ill-tended vineyard again are far colder. I have no seat for my faith to rest on but bare omnipotence, and God's holy arm and good will. Here I desire to stay and ride at anchor and winter through until God sends fair weather again, and is pleased to take home to his house my wayward mother. Oh if her husband would be that kind as to go and fetch her out of the house of ill-fame and chase her lovers to the hills! But there will be sad days before it comes to that. Remember my bonds. Grace be with you.

Aberdeen, 1637. Yours in our Lord Jesus, S. R.