To the Lady Busbie — Letter 59
Mistress.
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am glad to hear that Christ and you are one, and that you have made him your one thing — whereas many are painfully toiled in seeking many things, and their many things are nothing. It is only best that you set yourself apart as one laid up and out of the way for Christ alone, for you are good for nothing other than Christ, and he has been going about you these many years by afflictions to engage you to himself. It were a pity and a loss to say no to him. Truly I could wish that I could swim through hell and all the ill weather in the world with Christ in my arms. But it is my evil and folly that except Christ comes unsent for, I cannot bring myself to go and seek him. When he and I come to reckon, we are both behind — he in payment and I in counting — and so boundaries lie unresolved and accounts uncleared between us. Oh that he would take his own blood for counts and miscounts, that I might be a free man and none had any claim to me but only, only Jesus. I will think it no bondage to be seized, claimed, and possessed by Christ as his bondman. Think well of the visitations of your Lord. For I find one thing I did not see clearly before: that when the saints are under trials and well humbled, little sins raise great cries and war-shouts in the conscience; and in prosperity, conscience is a pope to give dispensations and let out and in and give latitude and elbow-room to our heart. Oh, how little we care for pardon at Christ's hand when we make our own dispensations! And all is but child's play, until a cross without begets a heavier cross within, and then we play no longer with our idols. It is good still to be severe against ourselves, for we but transform God's mercy into an idol — an idol that has a dispensation to give for turning the grace of God into license. Happy are they who take up God, wrath, justice, and sin as they really are, for we have a miscarrying light that fails when we have good resolutions. But God be thanked that salvation is not rolled upon our wheels. Oh but Christ has a saving eye! Salvation is in his eyelids; when he first looked on me, I was saved. It cost him but a look to set me free from hell. Oh merits — free merits — and the dear blood of God: that was the best gate that ever we could have gone out of hell! Oh what a sweet, oh what a safe and sure way it is, to come out of hell leaning on a Savior! That Christ and a sinner should be one and have heaven between them and be sharers of salvation — that is the wonder of salvation. What more humble could love be? And what an excellent fragrance does Christ cast on his lower garden, where there grow but wild flowers, if we speak by way of comparison! But there is nothing but perfect garden flowers in heaven, and the best furnishing that is there is Christ. We are all obliged to love heaven for Christ's sake; he graces heaven and all his Father's house with his presence. He is a rose that beautifies all the upper garden of God; a leaf of that rose of God, for fragrance, is worth a world. Oh that he would breathe his sweetness upon a withered and dead soul! Let us then go on to meet with him and to be filled with the sweetness of his love. Nothing will hold him from us; he has decreed to put time, sin, hell, devils, men, and death out of the way, and to clear the rough road between us and him, that we may enjoy one another. It is strange and wonderful that he would long in heaven without us, and that he would have the company of sinners to gladden and delight himself with in heaven. And now the supper awaits us; Christ the bridegroom with longing is waiting until the bride, the Lamb's wife, is dressed for the marriage, and the great hall is cleared for the meeting of that joyful couple. O fools, what do we here? And why do we sit still? Why do we sleep in the prison? Were it not best to make ourselves wings to fly up to our blessed match, our companion and fellow-friend? I think, Mistress, you are looking that way, and this is your second or third thought. Make forward — your guide waits on you. I cannot but bless you for your care and kindness to the saints. God give you to find mercy in that day of our Lord Jesus, to whose saving grace I commend you.
Aberdeen, 1637. Yours in our Lord Jesus, S. R.
