(_PROTESTATION OF CARE FOR THEIR SOULS AND GLORY OF GOD--DELIGHT
IN HIS MINISTRY, AND IN HIS LORD--EFFORTS FOR THEIR
SOULS--WARNING AGAINST ERRORS OF THE DAY--AWFUL WORDS TO THE
BACKSLIDER--INTENSE ADMIRATION OF CHRIST--A LOUD CALL TO ALL._)
DEARLY BELOVED AND LONGED-FOR IN THE LORD, my crown and my joy in the
day of Christ,--Grace be to you, and peace from God our Father, and
from our Lord Jesus Christ.
I long exceedingly to know if the oft-spoken-of match betwixt you and
Christ holdeth, and if ye follow on to know the Lord. My day-thoughts
and my night-thoughts are of you: while ye sleep I am afraid of your
souls, that they be off the rock. Next to my Lord Jesus and this
fallen kirk, ye have the greatest share of my sorrow, and also of my
joy; ye are the matter of the tears, care, fear, and daily prayers of
an oppressed prisoner of Christ. As I am in bonds for my high and
lofty One, my royal and princely Master, my Lord Jesus; so I am in
bonds for you. For I should have slept in my warm nest, and kept the
fat world in my arms, and the cords of my tabernacle should have been
fastened more strongly; I might have sung an evangel of ease to my
soul and you for a time, with my brethren, the sons of my mother, that
were angry at me, and have thrust me out of the vineyard; if I would
have been broken, and drawn on to mire you, the Lord's flock, and to
cause you to eat pastures trodden upon with men's feet, and to drink
foul and muddy waters. But truly the Almighty was a terror to me, and
His fear made me afraid. O my Lord, judge if my ministry be not dear
to me, but not so dear by many degrees as Christ my Lord! God knoweth
the sad and heavy Sabbaths I have had, since I laid down at my
Master's feet my two shepherd's staves. I have been often saying, as
it is written, "My enemies chased me sore like a bird, without cause:
they have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me"
(Lam. iii. 52, 53). For, next to Christ, I had but one joy, the apple
of the eye of my delights, to preach Christ my Lord; and they have
violently plucked that away from me. It was to me like the poor man's
one eye; and they have put out that eye, and quenched my light in the
inheritance of the Lord. But my eye is toward the Lord: I know that I
shall see the salvation of God, and that my hope shall not always be
forgotten. And my sorrow shall want nothing to complete it, and to
make me say, "What availeth it me to live?" if ye follow the voice of
a stranger, of one that cometh into the sheep-fold not by Christ the
door, but climbeth up another way. If the man build his hay and
stubble upon the golden foundation, Christ Jesus (already laid among
you), and ye follow him, I assure you, the man's work shall burn and
never bide God's fire: and ye and he both shall be in danger of
everlasting burning except ye repent. Oh, if any pain, any sorrow, any
loss that I can suffer for Christ, and for you, were laid in pledge to
buy Christ's love to you! and that I could lay my dearest joys, next
to Christ my Lord, in the gap betwixt you and eternal destruction! O
if I had paper as broad as heaven and earth, and ink as the sea and
all the rivers and fountains of the earth, and were able to write the
love, the worth, the excellency, the sweetness, and due praises of our
dearest and fairest Well-beloved! and then if ye could read and
understand it! What could I want, if my ministry among you should make
a marriage between the little bride in those bounds and the
Bridegroom? Oh, how rich a prisoner were I, if I could obtain of my
Lord (before whom I stand for you) the salvation of you all! Oh, what
a prey had I gotten, to have you catched in Christ's net! Oh, then I
had cast out my Lord's lines and His net with a rich gain! Oh then,
well-wared pained breast, and sore back, and crazed body, in speaking
early and late to you! My witness is above; your heaven would be two
heavens to me, and the salvation of you all as two salvations to me. I
would subscribe a suspension, and a fristing of my heaven for many
hundred years (according to God's good pleasure), if ye were sure in
the upper lodging, in our Father's house, before me. I take to witness
heaven and earth against you, I take instruments in the hands of that
sun and daylight that beheld us, and in the hands of the timber and
walls of that kirk, if I drew not up a fair contract of marriage
betwixt you and Christ, if I went not with offers betwixt the
Bridegroom and you, and your conscience did bear you witness, your
mouths confessed, that there were many fair trysts and meetings drawn
on betwixt Christ and you at communion feasts, and other occasions?
There were bracelets, jewels, rings, and love-letters, sent to you by
the Bridegroom. It was told you what a fair dowry ye should have, and
what a house your Husband and ye should dwell in, and what was the
Bridegroom's excellency, sweetness, might, power, the eternity and
glory of His kingdom, the exceeding deepness of His love, who sought
His black wife through pain, fires, shame, death, and the grave, and
swimmed the salt sea for her, undergoing the curse of the law, and
then[339] was made a curse for you; and ye then consented, and said,
"Even so I take Him." I counsel you to beware of the new and strange
leaven of men's inventions, beside and against the word of God,
contrary to the oath of this kirk, now coming among you. I instructed
you of the superstition and idolatry in kneeling in the instant of
receiving the Lord's Supper, and of crossing in baptism, and of the
observing of men's days, without any warrant of Christ our perfect
Lawgiver. Countenance not the surplice, the attire of the mass-priest,
the garment of Baal's priests. The abominable bowing to altars of tree
(wood) is coming upon you. Hate, and keep yourselves from idols.
Forbear in any case to hear the reading of the new fatherless
Service-Book,[340] full of gross heresies, popish and superstitious
errors, without any warrant of Christ, tending to the overthrow of
preaching. You owe no obedience to the bastard canons; they are
unlawful, blasphemous, and superstitious. All the ceremonies that lie
in Antichrist's foul womb, the wares of that great mother of
fornications, the kirk of Rome, are to be refused. Ye see whither they
lead you. Continue still in the doctrine which ye have received. Ye
heard of me the whole counsel of God. Sew no clouts upon Christ's
robe. Take Christ, in His rags and losses, and as persecuted by men,
and be content to sigh and pant up the mountain, with Christ's cross
on your back. Let me be reputed a false prophet (and your conscience
once said the contrary), if your Lord Jesus will not stand by you and
maintain you, and maintain your cause against your enemies.
[339] Thus.
[340] See Letter CLXI. The Service-Book, which has no author's name.
I have heard, and my soul is grieved for it, that since my departure
from you, many among you are turned back from the good old way, to the
dog's vomit again. Let me speak to these men. It was not without God's
special direction, that the first sentence that ever my month uttered
to you was that, "And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this
world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see
might be made blind" (John ix. 39). Is it possible that my first
meeting and yours may be when we shall both stand before the dreadful
Judge of the world; and in the name and authority of the Son of God,
my great King and Master, I write, by these presents, summonses to
those men. I arrest their souls and bodies to the day of our
compearance. Their eternal damnation standeth subscribed, and sealed
in heaven, by the hand-writing of the great Judge of quick and dead;
and I am ready to stand up, as a preaching witness against such to
their face, on that day, and to say "Amen" to their condemnation,
except they repent. The vengeance of the Gospel is heavier than the
vengeance of the Law; the Mediator's malediction and vengeance is
twice vengeance; and that vengeance is the due portion of such men.
And there I leave them as bond men, aye and whill they repent and
amend.
Ye were witnesses how the Lord's day was spent while I was among you.
O sacrilegious robber of God's day, what wilt thou answer the Almighty
when He seeketh so many Sabbaths back again from thee? What will the
curser, swearer, and blasphemer do, when his tongue shall be roasted
in that broad and burning lake of fire and brimstone? And what will
the drunkard do, when tongue, lungs, and liver, bones, and all, shall
boil and shall fry in a torturing fire? He shall be far from his
barrels of strong drink then; and there is not a cold well of water
for him in hell. What shall be the case of the wretch, the covetous
man, the oppressor, the deceiver, the earth-worm, who can never get
his wombful of clay (Ps. xvii. 14), when, in the day of Christ, gold
and silver must lie burnt in ashes, and he must compear and answer his
Judge, and quit his clayey and noughty heaven? Wo, wo, for evermore,
be to the time-turning atheist, who hath one god and one religion for
summer, and another god and another religion for winter, and the day
of fanning, when Christ fanneth all that is in His barn-floor: who
hath a conscience for every fair and market, and the soul of him
runneth upon these oiled wheels, time, custom, the world, and command
of men. Oh, if the careless atheist, and sleeping man, who edgeth by
all with, "God forgive our pastors if they lead us wrong, we must do
as they command," and layeth down his head upon time's bosom, and
giveth his conscience to a deputy, and sleepeth so, whill the smoke of
hell-fire fly up in his throat, and cause him to start out of his
doleful bed! Oh, if such a man would awake! Many woes are for the
over-gilded and gold-plastered hypocrite. A heavy doom is for the liar
and white-tongued flatterer; and the flying book of God's fearful
vengeance, twenty cubits long, and ten cubits broad, that goeth out
from the face of God, shall enter into the house, and in upon the
soul of him that stealeth, and sweareth falsely by God's name (Zech.
v. 2, 3). I denounce eternal burning, hotter than Sodom's flames, upon
the men that boil in filthy lusts of fornication, adultery, incest,
and the like wickedness. No room, no, not a foot-breadth, for such
vile dogs within the clean Jerusalem. Many of you put off all with
this, "God forgive us, we know no better." I renew my old answer: the
Judge is coming in flaming fire, with all His mighty angels, to render
vengeance to all those that know not God, and believe not (2 Thess. i.
8). I have often told you that security will slay you. All men say
they have faith: as many men and women now, as many saints in heaven.
And all believe (say ye); so that every foul dog is clean enough, and
good enough, for the clean and new Jerusalem above. Every man hath
conversion and the new birth; but it is not leal come. They had never
a sick night for sin; conversion came to them in a night-dream. In a
word, hell will be empty at the day of judgment, and heaven pang full!
Alas! it is neither easy nor ordinary to believe and to be saved. Many
must stand, in the end, at heaven's gates (Luke xiii. 25). When they
go to take out their faith, they take out a fair nothing, or (as ye
use to speak) a blaflum. Oh, lamentable disappointment! I pray you, I
charge you in the name of Christ, make fast work of Christ and
salvation.
I know there are some believers among you, and I write to you, O poor
broken-hearted believers: all the comforts of Christ in the Old and
New Testaments are yours. Oh, what a Father and Husband ye have! Oh,
if I had pen and ink, and ingine to write of Him! Let heaven and earth
be consolidated into massy and pure gold, it will not weigh the
thousandth part of Christ's love to a soul, even to me a poor
prisoner. Oh, that is a massy and marvellous love! Men and angels!
unite your force and strength in one, ye shall not heave nor poise it
off the ground. Ten thousand worlds, as many worlds as angels can
number, and then as a new world of angels can multiply, would not all
be the balk of a balance to weigh Christ's excellency, sweetness, and
love. Put ten earths into one, and let a rose grow greater than ten
whole earths, or whole worlds, oh, what beauty would be in it, and
what a smell would it cast! But a blast of the breath of that fairest
Rose in all God's paradise, even of Christ Jesus our Lord, one look of
that fairest face, would be infinitely in beauty, and smell, above all
imaginable and created glory. I wonder that men dow bide off Christ.
I would esteem myself blessed, if I could make an open proclamation,
and gather all the world, that are living upon the earth, Jew and
Gentile, and all that shall be born till the blowing of the last
trumpet, to flock round about Christ, and to stand looking, wondering,
admiring, and adoring His beauty and sweetness. For His fire is hotter
than any other fire, His love sweeter than common love, His beauty
surpasseth all other beauty. When I am heavy and sad, one of His
love-looks would do me meikle worlds' good. Oh, if ye would fall in
love with Him, how blessed were I! how glad would my soul be to help
you to love Him! But amongst us all, we could not love Him enough. He
is the Son of the Father's love, and God's delight; the Father's love
lieth all upon Him. Oh, if all mankind would fetch all their love and
lay it upon Him! Invite Him, and take Him home to your houses, in the
exercise of prayer morning and evening, as I often desired you;
especially now, let Him not want lodging in your houses, nor lie in
the fields, when He is shut out of pulpits and kirks. If ye will be
content to take heaven by violence and the wind on your face for
Christ and His cross, I am here one who hath some trial of Christ's
cross, and I can say, that Christ was ever kind to me, but He
overcometh Himself (if I may speak so) in kindness while I suffer for
Him. I give you my word for it, Christ's cross is not so evil as they
call it; it is sweet, light, and comfortable. I would not want the
visitations of love, and the very breathings of Christ's mouth when He
kisseth, and my Lord's delightsome smiles and love-embracements under
my sufferings for Him, for a mountain of gold, or for all the honours,
court, and grandeur of velvet kirkmen.[341] Christ hath the yoke and
heart of my love. "I am my Beloved's, and my Well-beloved is mine."
[341] High Churchmen.
Oh that ye were all hand-fasted to Christ! O my dearly-beloved in the
Lord, I would I could change my voice, and had a tongue tuned by the
hands of my Lord, and had the art of speaking of Christ, that I might
point out to you the worth, and highness, and greatness, and
excellency of that fairest and renowned Bridegroom! I beseech you by
the mercies of the Lord, by the sighs, tears, and heart's-blood of our
Lord Jesus, by the salvation of your poor and precious souls, set up
the mountain, that ye and I may meet before the Lamb's throne amongst
the congregation of the first-born. Lord grant that that may be the
trysting-place! that ye and I may put up our hands together, and
pluck and eat the apples off the tree of life, and that we may feast
together, and drink together of that pure river of the water of life,
that cometh out from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Oh, how little
is your hand-breadth and span-length of days here! Your inch of time
is less than when ye and I parted. Eternity, eternity is coming,
posting on with wings; then shall every man's blacks and whites be
brought to light. Oh, how low will your thoughts be of this
fair-skinned but heart-rotten apple, the vain, vain, feckless world,
when the worms shall make them houses in your eye-holes, and shall eat
off the flesh from the balls of your cheeks, and shall make that body
a number of dry bones! Think not that the common gate of serving God,
as neighbours and others do, will bring you to heaven. Few, few are
saved. The devil's court is thick and many; he hath the greatest
number of mankind for his vassals. I know this world is a forest of
thorns in your way to heaven; but you must go through it. Acquaint
yourselves with the Lord: hold fast Christ; hear His voice only. Bless
His name; sanctify and keep holy His day; keep the new commandment,
"Love one another;" let the Holy Spirit dwell in your bodies; and be
clean and holy. Love not the world: lie not, love and follow truth:
learn to know God. Keep in mind what I taught you; for God will seek
an account of it, when I am far from you. Abstain from all evil, and
all appearance of evil: follow good carefully, and seek peace and
follow after it: honour your king, and pray for him. Remember me to
God in your prayers; I dow not forget you. I told you often while I
was with you, and now I write it again, heavy, sad, and sore is that
stroke of the Lord's wrath that is coming upon Scotland. Wo, wo, wo to
this harlot-land! for they shall take the cup of God's wrath from His
hands, and drink, and spue, and fall, and not rise again. In, in, in
with speed to your stronghold, ye prisoners of hope, and hide you
there whill the anger of the Lord pass! Follow not the pastors of this
land, for the sun is gone down upon them. As the Lord liveth, they
lead you from Christ, and from the good old way. Yet the Lord will
keep the holy city, and make this withered kirk to bud again like a
rose, and a field blessed of the Lord.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. The prayers and
blessings of a prisoner of Christ, in bonds for Him, and for you, be
with you all. Amen.
Your lawful and loving pastor,