(_ANXIETY FOR THE PROSPERITY OF ZION--ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THE NOBLES TO
SUPPORT IT--THE VANITY OF THIS WORLD, AND THE FOLLY AND MISERY OF
FORSAKING CHRIST--THE ONE WAY TO HEAVEN._)
MY VERY HONOURABLE AND NOBLE LORD,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to your
Lordship.--Pardon me to express my earnest desire to your Lordship,
for Zion's sake, for whom we should not hold our peace. I know that
your Lordship will take my pleading on this behalf in the better part,
because the necessity of a falling and weak church is urgent. I
believe that your Lordship is one of Zion's friends, and that by
obligation. For when the Lord shall count and write up the people, it
shall be written, "This man was born there;" therefore, because your
Lordship is a born son of the house, I hope your desire is, that the
beauty and glory of the Lord may dwell in the midst of the city,
whereof your Lordship is a son. It must be, without all doubt, the
greatest honour of your place and house, to kiss the Son of God, and
for His sake to be kind to His oppressed and wronged Bride, who now,
in the day of her desolation, beggeth help of you that are the shields
of the earth. I am sure many kings, princes, and nobles, in the day of
Christ's Second Coming, would be glad to run errands for Christ, even
barefooted, through fire and water. But in that day He will have none
of their service. Now, He is asking if your Lordship will help Him
against the mighty of the earth, when men are setting their shoulders
to Christ's fair and beautiful tent in this land, to loose its stakes
and to break it down. And certainly such as are not with Christ are
against Him: and blessed shall your Lordship be of the Lord, blessed
shall your house and seed be, and blessed shall your honour be, if ye
empawn and lay in Christ's hand the Earldom of Cassillis (and it is
but a shadow in comparison of the city made without hands!), and lay
it even at the stake, rather than Christ and borne-down truth want a
witness of you, against the apostacy of this land. Ye hold your lands
of Christ; your charters are under His seal; and He who hath many
crowns on His head, dealeth, cutteth, and carveth pieces of this
clay-heritage to men, at His pleasure. It is little your Lordship hath
to give Him; He will not sleep long in your common, but shall surely
pay home your losses for His cause. It is but our bleared eyes that
look through a false glass to this idol-god of clay, and think
something of it. They who are past with their last sentence to heaven
or hell, and have made their reckoning, and departed out of this smoky
inn, have now no other conceit of this world, but as a piece of
beguiling well-lustred clay. And how fast doth time (like a flood in
motion) carry your Lordship out of it! And is not eternity coming with
wings? Court goeth not in heaven as it doth here. Our Lord (who hath
all you, the nobles, lying in the shell of His balance) esteemeth you
according as ye are the Bridegroom's friends or foes. Your honourable
ancestors, with the hazard of their lives, brought Christ to our
land;[380] and it shall be cruelty to the posterity if ye lose Him to
them. One of our tribes, Levi's sons, the watchmen, are fallen from
the Lord, and have sold their mother, and their father also, and the
Lord's truth, for their new velvet-world and their satin-church. If
ye, the nobles, play Christ the slip now, when His back is at the wall
(if I may so speak), then may we say that the Lord hath casten water
upon Scotland's smoking coal. But we hope better things of you. It is
no wisdom (however it be the state-wisdom now in request) to be
silent, when they are casting lots for a better thing than Christ's
coat. All this land, and every man's part of the play for Christ, and
the tears of poor and friendless Zion (now going dool-like in
sackcloth), are up in heaven before our Lord; and there is no
question, but our King and Lord shall be master of the fields at
length. And we would all be glad to divide the spoil with Christ, and
to ride in triumph with Him; but oh how few will take a cold bed of
straw in the camp with Him! How fain would men have a well-thatched
house above their heads, all the way to heaven! And many now would go
to heaven the land-way (for they love not to be sea-sick), riding up
to Christ upon foot-mantles, and rattling coaches, and rubbing their
velvet with the princes of the land, in the highest seats. If this be
the way Christ called strait and narrow, I quit all skill of the way
to salvation. Are they not now rouping Christ and the Gospel? Have
they not put our Lord Jesus to the market, and he who outbiddeth his
fellow shall get Him? O my dear and noble Lord, go on (howbeit the
wind be in your face) to back our princely Captain. Be courageous for
Him. Fear not those who have no subscribed lease of days. The worms
shall eat kings. Let the Lord Jehovah be your fear, and then, as the
Lord liveth, the victory is yours. It is true, many are striking up a
new way to heaven; but, my soul for theirs, if they find it, and if
this be not the only way, whose end is Christ's Father's house. And my
weak experience, since the day I was first in bonds, hath confirmed me
in the truth and assurance of this. Let doctors and learned men cry
the contrary, I am persuaded that this is the way. The bottom hath
fallen out of both their wit and conscience at once; their book hath
beguiled them, for _we_ have fallen upon the true Christ. I dare
hazard, if I alone had ten souls, my salvation upon this Stone that
many now break their bones upon.[381] Let them take this fat world.
Oh, poor and hungry is their paradise! Therefore let me entreat your
Lordship, by your compearance before Christ, now while this piece of
the afternoon of your day is before you (for ye know not when your sun
will turn, and eternity shall benight you), let your worldly glory,
honour, and might, be for our Lord Jesus. And to His rich grace, and
tender mercy, and to the never-dying comforts of His gracious Spirit,
I recommend your Lordship and noble house.
Your Lordship's, at all obedience,