ABERDEEN, _Sept. 10, 1637_.
[370] He was banished to the north of the Firth of Forth.
CCLVIII.--_To the Right Honourable my_ LORD LOUDON.
(_THE WISDOM OF ADHERING TO CHRIST'S CAUSE._)
RIGHT HONOURABLE,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to your Lordship.--I
rejoice exceedingly to hear that your Lordship hath a good mind to
Christ, and His now borne-down truth. My very dear Lord, go on, in the
strength of the Lord, to carry your honours and worldly glory to the
New Jerusalem. For this cause your Lordship received these of the
Lord. This is a sure way for the establishment of your house, if ye be
of those who are willing, in your place, to build Zion's old waste
places in Scotland. Your Lordship wanteth not God's and man's law
both, now to come to the streets for Christ: and suppose the bastard
laws of man were against you, it is an honest and zealous[371] error,
if here you slip against a point or punctilio of standing policy. When
your foot slippeth in such known ground, as is the royal prerogative
of our high and most truly dread Sovereign (who hath many crowns on
His head), and the liberties of His house, He will hold you up.
Blessed shall they be who take Babel's little ones, and dash their
heads against the stones. I wish your Lordship may have a share of
that blessing, with other worthy nobles in our land.
[371] Arising from zeal.
It is true that it is now accounted wisdom for men to be partners in
pulling up the stakes, and loosing 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 crieth
shame upon wit against Christ and truth; and, accordingly, it shall
prove shame and confusion of face in the end. Our Lord hath given your
Lordship light of a better stamp, and learning also, wherein ye are
not behind the disputer and the scribe. Oh what a blessed thing is it
to see nobility, learning, and sanctification, all concur in one! For
these ye owe yourself to Christ and His kingdom. God hath bewildered
and bemisted the wit and the learning of the scribes and disputers of
this time; they look asquint to the Bible. This blinding and bemisting
world blindfoldeth men's light, that they are afraid to see straight
out before them; nay, their very light playeth the knave, or worse, to
truth. Your Lordship knoweth that, within a little while, policy
against truth shall blush, and the works of men shall be burned up,
even their spider's-web who spin out many hundred ells and webs of
indifference in the Lord's worship; more than ever Moses, who would
have[372] a hoof material (Exod. x. 26), and Daniel, who would have a
look out at a window a matter of life and death, than ever, I say,
these men of God dreamed of. 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 conception of such policy, as a
head-of-wit thinketh a safe and trim way of serving God! How have men
forgotten the Lord, that they dare to go against even that truth which
once they preached themselves, howbeit their sermons now be as thin
sown as strawberries in a wood or wilderness! Certainly the sweetest
and safest course is, for this short time of the afternoon of this old
and declining world, to stand for Jesus. He hath said it, and it is
our part to believe it, that ere it be long, "Time shall be no more,
and the heaven shall wax old, as a garment." Do we not see it already
an old holie and threadbare garment. Doth not cripple and lame 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
pesthouse shall be burnt with fire, and that both plenishing and walls
shall melt with fervent heat? For at the Lord's coming, He will do
with this earth, as men do with a leper-house; He will burn the walls
with fire, and the plenishing of the house also (2 Pet. iii. 10, 12).
My very dear Lord, how will ye rejoice in that day, to have Christ,
angels, heaven, and your own conscience to smile upon you? I am
persuaded that one sick night, through the terrors of the Almighty,
would make men, whose conscience hath such a wide throat that an image
like a cathedral church, would go down it, have other thoughts of
Christ and His worship, than now they please themselves with. The
scarcity of faith in the earth saith, "We are hard upon the last nick
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.
[372] Would reckon.
I am persuaded, my Lord, that this poor travailing Woman, our pained
church, is with child of victory, and shall bring forth a Man-child
all lovely and glorious, that shall be caught up to God and to His
throne, howbeit the dragon, in his followers, be attending the
childbirth pain, as an Egyptian midwife, to receive the birth and
strangle it. But they shall be disappointed who thirst for the
destruction of Zion. "They shall be as when a hungry man dreameth that
he eateth, but, behold, he awaketh, and his soul is empty; or when a
thirsty man dreameth that he drinketh, but, behold, he awaketh, 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" (Isa.
xxix. 8). Therefore, the weak and feeble, those that 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.
Verily, for myself, I am so well pleased with Christ, and His noble
and honest-borne cross, this cross that is come of Christ's house and
is of kin to Himself, that I should weep if it should come to
niffering and bartering of lots and condition with those that are "at
ease in Zion." I hold still my choice, and bless myself in it. I see
and I believe that there is salvation in this way, which is everywhere
spoken against. I hope to go to eternity, and to venture on the last
evil to the saints (even upon death), fully persuaded that this only,
even this, is the saving way for racked consciences, and for weary and
laden sinners to find ease and peace for evermore in. 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 startle 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
effectuate what they design. But let it come; I rue not that I made
Christ my wale and my choice; I think Him aye the longer the better.
My Lord, it shall be good service to God, to hold your noble friend
and chief[373] upon a good course for the truth of Christ. Now the
very God of peace establish your Lordship in Christ Jesus unto the
end.
Your Lordship's, in his sweet Lord Jesus,