(_CHALLENGES OF CONSCIENCE--EASE IN ZION._)
DEAR BROTHER,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am, by God's
mercy, come now to Aberdeen, the place of my confinement, and settled
in an honest man's house. I find the town's-men cold, general, and dry
in their kindness; yet I find a lodging in the heart of many
strangers. My challenges are revived again, and I find old sores
bleeding of new; dangerous and painful is an under-cotted conscience;
yet I have an eye to the blood that is physic for such sores. But,
verily, I see Christianity is conceived to be more easy and lighter
than it is; so that I sometimes think I never knew anything but the
letters of that name; for our nature contenteth itself with little in
godliness. Our "Lord, Lord," seemeth to us ten "Lord-Lords." Little
holiness in our balance is much, because it is our own holiness; and
we love to lay small burdens upon our soft natures, and to make a fair
court-way to heaven. And I know it were necessary to take more pains
than we do, and not to make heaven a city more easily taken than God
hath made it. I persuade myself that many runners shall come short,
and get a disappointment. Oh! how easy is it to deceive ourselves, and
to sleep, and wish that heaven may fall down in our laps! Yet for all
my Lord's glooms, I find Him sweet, gracious, loving, kind; and I want
both pen and words to set forth the fairness, beauty, and sweetness of
Christ's love, and the honour of this cross of Christ, which is
glorious to me, though the world thinketh shame thereof. I verily
think that the cross of Christ would blush and think shame of these
thin-skinned worldings, who are so married to their credit that they
are ashamed of the sufferings of Christ. O the honour to be scourged
and stoned with Christ, and to go through a furious-faced death to
life eternal! But men would have law-borrows against Christ's cross.
Now, my dear brother, forget not the prisoner of Christ, for I see
very few here who kindly fear God. Grace be with you. Let my love in
Christ and hearty affection be remembered to your kind wife, to your
brother John, and to all friends. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus,