CCLXXVIII.--_To the_ EARL OF CASSILLIS.
(_AMBITION--CHRIST'S ROYAL PREROGATIVE--PRELACY._)
RIGHT HONOURABLE AND VERY GOOD LORD,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to
your Lordship.--I hope that your Lordship will be pleased to pardon my
boldness, if, upon report of your zealous and forward mind, which I
hear our Lord hath given you in this His honourable cause, when Christ
and His Gospel are so foully wronged, I speak to your Lordship on
paper, entreating your Lordship to go on in the strength of the Lord,
toward, and against a storm of antichristian wind, that bloweth upon
the face of this your poor mother-church, Christ's lily among the
thorns. It is your Lordship's glory and happiness, when ye see such a
blow coming upon Christ, to cast up your arm to prevent it. Neither is
it a cause that needeth to blush before the sun, or to flee the
sentence or censure of impartial beholders, seeing the question,
indeed (if it were rightly stated), is about the prerogative-royal of
our princely and royal Lawgiver, our Lord Jesus, whose ancient
march-stones and land-bounds, our bastard lords and earthly generation
of tyrannizing prelates have boldly and shamefully removed. And they
who have but half an eye may see, that it is the greedy desires of
time-idolizing Demases, and the itching scab of ambitious and climbing
Diotrepheses (who love the goat's life, to climb till they cannot find
a way to set their soles on ground again), that hath made such a wide
breach in our Zion's beautiful walls. And these are the men who seek
no hire for the crucifying of Christ, but His coat.
Oh, how forlorn and desolate is the bride of Christ made to all
passers-by! Who seeth not Christ buried in this land, His prophets
hidden in caves, silenced, banished and imprisoned? truth weeping in
sackcloth before the judges, Parliament, and the rulers of the land?
But her bill is cast by them, and holiness hideth itself, fearing in
the streets for the reproaches and persecution of men. Justice is
fallen aswoon in the gate; and the long shadows of the evening are
stretched out upon us. Wo, wo to us, for our day flieth away! What
remaineth, but that Antichrist set down his tent in the midst of us,
except that your Lordship, and others with you, read Christ's
supplication, and give Him that which the most lewd and scandalous
wretches in this land may have before a judge, even the poor man's
due, law and justice for God's sake? Oh, therefore, my noble and dear
Lord, as ye have begun, go on, in the mighty power and strength of the
Lord, to cause our Lord, in His Gospel, and afflicted members, to
laugh, and to cause the Christian churches (whose eyes are all now
upon you) to sing for joy when Scotland's moon shall shine like the
light of the sun, and the sun like the light of seven days in one. Ye
can do no less than run and bear up the head of your swooning and
dying mother-church, and plead for the production of her ancient
charters. They hold out and put out, they hold in and bring in, at
their pleasure, men in God's house. They stole the keys from Christ
and His church, and came in like the thief and the robber, not by the
door, Christ; and now their song is, "Authority, authority! obedience
to church-governors!" When such a bastard and lawless pretended
step-dame, as our Prelacy, is gone mad, it is your place, who are the
nobles, to rise and bind them. At least, law should fetter such wild
bulls as they are, who push all who oppose themselves to their
domination. Alas! what have we lost, since prelates were made
master-coiners, to change our gold into brass, and to mix the Lord's
wine with water! Blessed for ever shall ye be of the Lord, if ye help
Christ against the mighty, and shall deliver the flock of God,
scattered upon the mountains in the dark and cloudy day, out of the
hands of these idol-shepherds. Fear not men who shall be moth-eaten
clay, that shall be rolled up in a chest, and casten under the earth:
let the Holy One of Israel be your fear, and be courageous for the
Lord and His truth.
Remember, that your accounts are coming upon you, with wings, as fast
as time posteth. Remember, what "peace with God" in Christ, and the
presence of the Son of God (the revealed and felt sweetness of His
love), will be to you, when eternity shall put time to the door, and
ye shall take good-night of time, and this little shepherd's tent of
clay, this inn of a borrowed earth. I hope that your Lordship is now
and then sending out thoughts to view this world's naughtiness,[387]
and vanity, and the hoped-for glory of the life to come; and that ye
resolve that Christ shall have yourself, and all yours, at command for
Him, His honour and Gospel.
[387] Some editions read _nothingness_.
Thus trusting that your Lordship will pardon my boldness, I pray that
the only wise God, the very God of peace, may preserve, strengthen,
and establish you to the end.
Your Lordship's, at all command and obedience in Christ,