To John Kennedy, Bailie of Ayr — Letter 89
Worthy and well-beloved brother.
Grace, mercy and peace be to you. I am yet waiting to see what our Lord will do for his afflicted church and for my re-entry to my Lord's house. O that I could hear the forfeiture of Christ — now cast out of his inheritance — recalled and taken off by open proclamation, and that Christ were restored to be a freeholder and a landed heir in Scotland! And that the courts fenced in the name of the bastard prelates — the Pope's bailiffs and sheriffs as their godfathers — were cried down! O how sweet a sight were it to see all the tribes of the Lord in this land fetching home again our banished King Christ to his own palace, his sanctuary and his throne! I shall think it mercy to my soul if my faith shall out-watch all this winter night and not nod or slumber until my Lord's summer day dawns upon me. It is much if faith and hope in the sad nights of our heavy trial escape with a whole skin and without crack or crook. I confess unbelief has no reason to be either father or mother to it, for unbelief is always an irrational thing. But how can it be but that such weak eyes as ours must water in a great smoke, or that a weak head should not turn giddy when the water runs deep and strong? But God be thanked that Christ in his children can endure a stress and storm, though soft nature would fall down in pieces. O that I had that confidence as to rest on this: though he should grind me into small powder, and bray me into dust, and scatter the dust to the four winds of heaven, yet my Lord would gather up the powder and make me a new vessel again to bear Christ's name to the world. I am sure that love bottomed and seated upon the faith of his love to me would desire and endure this, and would even claim kindness upon Christ's strokes, and kiss his lovely frowns, and both spell and read salvation upon the wounds made by Christ's sweet hands. O that I had but a promise from the mouth of Christ of his love to me! And then, though my faith were as tender as paper, I think longing and pining and sighing of sick desires would cause it to abide out the siege until the Lord came to fill the soul with his love. I know also in that case faith should abide green and sappy at the root, even at midwinter, and stand out against all storms. However it be, I know Christ wins heaven in spite of hell. But I owe as many praises and thanks to free grace as would lie between me and the utmost border of the highest heaven, though ten thousand heavens were all laid one above another. But O, I have nothing that can hire or buy grace, for if grace would take hire it were no more grace. But all our stability and the strength of our salvation is anchored and fastened upon free grace. I am sure Christ has by his death and blood cast the knot so fast that the fingers of devils and hell-fuls of sins cannot loose it. And that bond of Christ — which never yet was nor ever shall nor can be registered as void — stands surer than heaven or the days of heaven, as that sweet pillar of the covenant whereupon we all hang. Christ and all his little ones under his two wings and in the compass of his arms are so secure that cast him and them in the ground of the sea, he shall come up again and not lose one. Not one odd soul shall be lost in the counting. This was always God's aim since Christ came into the matter between him and us: to make men dependent creatures, and in the work of our salvation to put created strength and arms and legs of clay quite out of play and out of office. God has substituted in our room and accepted his Son the Mediator for us and for all that we can make. If this had not been, I would have squandered and given away my part of Paradise and salvation for a breakfast of dead moth-eaten earth. But now I would not give it nor let it go for more than I can tell. Truly they are silly fools and ignorant of Christ's worth — and so ill trained and tutored — who barter heaven and Christ over the board for two feathers or two straws of the devil's painted pleasures, only lustred on the outside. This is our happiness now: that our reckonings at night, when eternity shall come upon us, cannot be told; we shall be so far gainers, and so far from being over-spent — as the poor fools of this world are, who give out their money and receive back only black hunger — that angels cannot lay our accounts nor sum our advantage and income. Who knows how far it is to the bottom of our Christ, and to the ground of our heaven? Who ever weighed Christ in a pair of balances? Who has seen the foldings and the heights and depths of that glory which is in him and kept for us? O for such a heaven as to stand afar off and see and love and long for him, while time's thread be cut and this great work of creation dissolved at the coming of our Lord! Now to his grace I commend you. I beseech you also pray for a re-entry for me into the Lord's house, if it be his good will.
Aberdeen, January 6, 1637. Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus, S. R.
