To the Laird of Gaitgirth — Letter 76

Right honorable.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to your lordship. I rejoice exceedingly that I hear your lordship has a good mind toward Christ and his now-downtrodden truth. My very dear Lord, go on in the strength of the Lord to carry your honor and worldly glory to the new Jerusalem; for this cause your lordship received these from the Lord. This is a sure way for the establishment of your house, if you be of those who are willing in your place to build Zion's old waste places in Scotland. Your lordship lacks neither God's law nor man's law to come to the streets for Christ. And suppose the unlawful laws of man were against you, it is an honest and zealous error if here you slip against a point or punctilio of standing policy. When your foot slips in such well-known ground as the royal prerogative of our high and most truly dread Sovereign, who has many crowns on his head, and the liberties of his house, he will hold you up. Blessed shall they be who take Babylon's little ones and dash their heads against stones; I wish your lordship may have a share of that blessing with other worthy nobles in our land. It is true, it is now accounted wisdom for men to be partners in pulling up the stakes and loosening the cords of the tent of Christ. But I am persuaded that that wisdom is cried down in heaven, and shall never pass for true wisdom with the Lord, whose word cries shame upon wit against Christ and truth — and accordingly it shall prove shame and confusion of face in the end. Our Lord has given your lordship a better stamp, and learning also, wherein you are not behind the disputer and the scribe. Oh what a blessed thing it is to see nobility, learning, and sanctification all concur in one! For these, you owe yourself to Christ and his kingdom. God has bewildered and be-misted the wit and learning of the scribes and disputers of this time; they look askance at the Bible. This blinding and besotting world blindfolds men's light, so that they are afraid to see straight out before them; no, their very light plays the knave, or worse, to truth. Your lordship knows that within a little while, policy against truth will blush, and the works of men shall burn — even their spider-web, who spin out many hundred yards and webs of indifference in the Lord's worship, more than Moses, who would have had a roof for shelter, or Daniel, who would have a look out at a window, ever thought a matter of life and death. Alas, that men dare to shape, carve, cut, and clip our King's princely testament in length and breadth and in all dimensions, answerable to the conceptions of such policy as a sharp wit thinks a safe and tidy way of serving God. How have men forgotten the Lord, that they dare go against even that truth which they once preached themselves, though their sermons now be as thinly sown as strawberries in a wood or wilderness! Certainly the sweetest and safest course, for this short time of the afternoon of this old and declining world, is to stand for Jesus. He has said it, and it is our part to believe it, that before long time shall be no more, and the heavens shall wax old as a garment. Do we not see it already an old, holed, and threadbare garment? Does not our own plain nature tell us that the Lord will fold up the old garment and lay it aside, and that the heavens shall be folded together as a scroll and this plague-house shall be burned with fire, and that both furnishings and walls shall melt with fervent heat? For at the Lord's coming he will do with this earth as men do with a leprous house — he will burn the walls with fire and the furnishings of the house also; see 2 Peter 3:10-12. My very dear Lord, how shall you rejoice in that day to have Christ, angels, heaven, and your own conscience smile upon you! I am persuaded one sick night through the terrors of the Almighty would make men — whose conscience has so wide a throat that an image like a cathedral church could go down it — have other thoughts of Christ and his worship than now they please themselves with. The scarcity of faith in the earth says we are hard upon the last moment of time. Blessed are those who keep their garments clean against the bridegroom's coming; there shall be spotted clothes and many defiled garments at his last coming, and therefore few found worthy to walk with him in white. I am persuaded, my Lord, this poor traveling woman, our pained church, is with child of victory and shall bring forth a man-child that shall be caught up to God and his throne, though the Dragon in his followers be attending the birth-pains as an Egyptian midwife, to receive the birth and strangle it — see Isaiah 29:8. But they shall be disappointed who thirst for the destruction of Zion. They shall be as when a hungry man dreams that he eats, but behold he wakes and his soul is empty; or when a thirsty man dreams that he drinks, but behold he wakes and is faint, and his soul is not satisfied. So shall it be, I say, with the multitude of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion. Therefore the weak and feeble, those who are as signs and wonders in Israel, have chosen the best side — even the side that victory is upon. And I think this is no evil policy. Truly, for myself, I am so well pleased with Christ and his noble and honest-born cross — this cross that is come from Christ's house and is of kin to himself — that I should weep if it should come to bartering and exchanging of lots and conditions with those who are at ease in Zion. I hold still my choice and bless myself in it. I see and I believe there is salvation in this way that is everywhere spoken against. I hope to go to eternity and to venture upon the last evil to the saints — even upon death — fully persuaded that this only, even this, is the saving way for tender consciences and for weary and burdened sinners to find ease and peace forevermore. And indeed it is not for any worldly respect that I speak so of it. The weather is not so hot that I have great cause to be alarmed in my prison, or to boast of that entertainment that my good friends the prelates intend for me, which is banishment, if they shall obtain their desire and carry out what they design. But let it come; I do not regret that I made Christ my treasure and my choice. I think him always, the longer the better. My Lord, it shall be good service to God to hold your noble friend and chief upon a good course for the truth of Christ. Now the very God of peace establish your lordship in Christ Jesus to the end.

Aberdeen, September 10, 1637. Your lordship's in his sweet Lord Jesus, S. R.