LXXXV.--_To JOHN KENNEDY, Bailie of Ayr_.
(_THE REASONABLENESS OF BELIEVING UNDER ALL AFFLICTION--OBLIGATIONS TO
FREE GRACE._)
WORTHY AND WELL-BELOVED BROTHER,--Grace, mercy, and peace be unto
you.--I am yet waiting 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 casten out of His inheritance) recalled and
taken off by open proclamation; and that Christ were restored to be a
freeholder and a landed heritor in Scotland; and that the courts
fenced in the name of the bastard prelates (their godfather, the
Pope's, bailiffs and sheriffs) were cried down! Oh, 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 will
out-watch all this winter-night, and not nod nor slumber till my
Lord's summer-day dawn 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 that unbelief hath not reason to be either
father or mother to it,[175] for unbelief is always an irrational
thing; but how can it be, but that such weak eyes as ours must cast
water in a great smoke, or that a weak head should not turn giddy when
the water runneth deep and strong? But God be thanked that Christ in
His children can endure a stress and a storm, howbeit 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, that my Lord
would gather up the powder, and make me up 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 and threep kindness upon Christ's strokes, and kiss
His love-glooms, and both spell and read salvation upon the wounds
made by Christ's sweet hands. O that I had but a promise made from the
mouth of Christ, of His love to me! and then, howbeit my faith were as
tender as paper, I think longing, and dwining, and greening of sick
desires would cause it to bide out the siege till the Lord came to
fill the soul with His love. And I know also, that in that case faith
would bide green and sappy at the root, even at mid-winter, and stand
out against all storms. However it be, I know that Christ winneth
heaven in despite of hell.
[175] Unbelief has not its origin in _reason_.
But I owe as many praises and thanks to free grace as would lie
betwixt me and the utmost border of the highest heaven, suppose ten
thousand heavens were all laid above other. But oh! I have nothing
that can hire or bud 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; and I am sure that Christ
hath by His death and blood casten the knot so fast, that the fingers
of the devils and hell-fulls of sins cannot loose it. And that bond of
Christ (that never yet was, nor ever shall, nor can be registrated)
standeth surer than heaven, or the days of heaven, as that sweet
pillar of the covenant whereon we all hang. Christ, with all His
little ones under His two wings and in the compass or circle of His
arms, is so sure, that, cast Him and them into the ground of the sea,
He shall come up again and not lose one. An odd one cannot, nor shall,
be lost in the telling.
This was always God's aim, since Christ came into the play betwixt 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 place, and out of office and court. And now God hath
substituted in our room, and accepted His Son, the Mediator, for us
and all that we can make. If this had not been, I would have skinked
over and foregone 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. And truly they are silly fools, and ignorant
of Christ's worth, and so full ill-trained and tutored, who tell
Christ and heaven over the board for two feathers or two straws of the
devil's painted pleasures, only lustred on the outer side. 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 super-expended (as the poor fools of this world are, who give
out their money, and get in but black hunger), that angels cannot lay
our counts, nor sum our advantage and incomes. Who knoweth how far it
is to the bottom of our Christ's fulness, and to the ground of our
heaven? Who ever weighed Christ in a pair of balances? Who hath seen
the foldings and plies, 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, whill time's thread be cut, and
this great work of creation dissolved, at the coming of our Lord!
Now to His grace I recommend you. I beseech you also to pray for a
re-entry to me into the Lord's house, if it be His good will.
Yours in his sweet Lord Jesus,