ABERDEEN, _Jan. 5, 1638_.
CCLXXXIV.--_To the Honourable, Reverend, and Well-beloved Professors
of Christ and His truth in sincerity, in Ireland._
[At the date of this letter the Presbyterian Church of Ireland
was in a very depressed condition. In 1634 Robert Blair, with
some other ministers, were deposed for nonconformity; in the
autumn of 1636 five more were dealt with in the same manner, for
the same cause; and all of them were ultimately forced to leave
the country. The Presbyterians in Ireland were thus left to a
great extent destitute of the ministry of the Word, which had
been so eminently blessed of God. This letter was intended to
confirm them in their adherence to the cause for which their
ministers and themselves were suffering.]
(_THE WAY TO HEAVEN OFTTIMES THROUGH PERSECUTION--CHRIST'S
WORTH--MAKING SURE OUR PROFESSION--SELF-DENIAL--NO COMPROMISE--TESTS
OF SINCERITY--HIS OWN DESIRE FOR CHRIST'S GLORY._)
DEARLY BELOVED IN OUR LORD, AND PARTAKERS OF THE HEAVENLY
CALLING,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you, and from God our Father,
and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
I always, but most of all now in my bonds (most sweet bonds for Christ
my Lord), rejoice to hear of your faith and love, and to hear that our
King, our Well-beloved, our Bridegroom, without tiring, stayeth still
to woo you as His wife; and that persecutions, and mockings of
sinners, have not chased away the Wooer from the house. I persuade you
in the Lord, that the men of God, now scattered and driven from you,
put you upon the right scent and pursuit of Christ: and, my salvation
on it (if ten heavens were mine), if this way, this way that I now
suffer for, this way that the world nicknameth and reproacheth, and no
other way, be not the King's gate to heaven! And I shall never see
God's face (and, alas, I were a beguiled wretch if it were so!) if
this be not the only saving way to heaven. Oh that you would take a
prisoner of Christ's word for it (nay, I know you have the greatest
King's word for it), that it shall not be your wisdom to speer out
another Christ, or another way of worshipping Him, than is now
savingly revealed to you. Therefore, though I never saw your faces,
let me be pardoned to write to you (ye honourable persons, ye faithful
pastors, yet amongst the flocks, and ye sincere professors of Christ's
truth, or any weak, tired strayers, who cast but half an eye after the
Bridegroom), if possibly I could, by any weak experience, confirm and
strengthen you in this good way, everywhere spoken against.
I can with the greatest assurance (to the honour of our highest, and
greatest, and dearest Lord, let it be spoken!) assert (though I be but
a child in Christ, and scarce able to walk but by a hold, and the
meanest, and less than the least of saints), that we do not come nigh,
by twenty degrees, to the due love and estimation of that fairest
among the sons of men. For if it were possible that heaven, yea, ten
heavens, were laid in the balance with Christ, I would think the smell
of His breath above them all. Sure I am that He is the far best half
of heaven, yea, He is all heaven, and more than all heaven; and my
testimony of Him is, that ten lives of black sorrow, ten deaths, ten
hells of pain, ten furnaces of brimstone, and all exquisite torments,
were all too little for Christ, if our suffering could be a hire to
buy Him. Therefore, faint not in your sufferings and hazards for Him.
I proclaim and cry, hell, sorrow, and shame upon all lusts, upon all
by-lovers, that would take Christ's room over His head, in this little
inch of love of these narrow souls of ours, that is due to sweetest
Jesus. O highest, O fairest, O dearest Lord Jesus, take Thine own from
all bastard lovers. Oh that we could wadset and sell all our part of
time's glory, and time's good things, for a lease and tack of Christ
for all eternity! Oh how are we misted and mired with the love of
things that are on this side of time, and on this side of death's
water! Where can we find a match to Christ, or an equal, or a better
than He, among created things? Oh this world is out of all conceit,
and all love, with our Well-beloved. Oh that I could sell my laughter,
joy, ease, and all for Him; and be content with a straw bed, and bread
by weight, and water by measure, in the camp of our weeping Christ! I
know that His sackcloth and ashes are better than the fool's laughter,
which is like the crackling of thorns under a pot. But, alas! we do
not harden our faces against the cold north storms which blow upon
Christ's fair face. We love well summer-religion, and to be that which
sin has made us, even as thin-skinned as if we were made of white
paper; and would fain be carried to heaven in a close-covered chariot,
wishing from our hearts that Christ would give us surety, and His
handwrite, and His seal, or nothing but a fair summer until we be
landed in at heaven's gates!
How many of us have been here deceived, and have fainted in the day of
trial! Amongst you there are some of this stamp. I shall be sorry if
my acquaintance A. T. hath left you: I will not believe that he dare
to stay away from Christ's side. I desire that ye shew him this from
me; for I loved him once in Christ, neither can I change my mind
suddenly of him. But the truth is, that many of you, and too many also
of your neighbour Church of Scotland, have been like a tenant that
sitteth mail-free and knoweth not his holding whill his rights be
questioned. And now I am persuaded, that it will be asked at every one
of us, on what terms we brook Christ; for we have sitten long
mail-free. We found Christ without a wet foot; and He and His Gospel
came upon small charges to our doors: but now we must wet our feet to
seek Him. Our evil manners, and the bad fashions of a people at ease
from our youth, and like Moab not casten from vessel to vessel (Jer.
xlviii. 11), have made us (like the standing waters), to gather a foul
scum, and, when we are jumbled, our dregs come up, and are seen. Many
take but half a grip of Christ, and the wind bloweth them and Christ
asunder. Indeed, when the mast is broken and blown into the sea, it is
an art[395] then to swim upon Christ to dry land. It is even possible
that the children of God, in a hard trial, lay themselves down as
hidden in the lee-side of a bush whill Christ their Master be taken,
as Peter did; and lurk there, whill the storm be over-past. All of us
know the way to a whole skin; and the singlest heart that is hath a
by-purse that will contain the denial of Christ, and a fearful
backsliding. Oh, how rare a thing it is to be loyal and honest to
Christ, when He hath a controversy with the shields of the earth! I
wish all of you would consider, that this trial is from Christ; it is
come upon you unbought. (Indeed, when we buy a temptation with our own
money, no marvel that we be not easily free of it, and that God be not
at our elbow to take it off our hand.) This is Christ's ordinary
house-fire, that He maketh use of to try all the vessels of His house
withal. And Christ is now about to bring His treasure out before sun
and moon, and to tell His money, and, in the telling, to try what
weight of gold, and what weight of watered copper, is in His house. Do
not now jouk, or bow, or yield to your adversaries in a hair-breadth.
Christ and His truth will not divide; and His truth hath not latitude
and breadth, that ye may take some of it and leave other some of it.
Nay, the Gospel is like a small hair, that hath no breadth, and will
not cleave in two. It is not possible to twist and compound a matter
betwixt Christ and Antichrist; and, therefore, ye must either be for
Christ, or ye must be against Him. It was but man's wit, and the wit
of prelates and their godfather the Pope (that _man without
law_[396]), to put Christ and His prerogatives royal, and His truth,
or the smallest nail-breadth of His latter will, in the new calender
of indifferences, and to make a blank of uninked paper in Christ's
testament that men may fill up; and to shuffle the truth, and matters
which they call indifferent, through other, and spin both together,
that Antichrist's wares may sell the better. This is but the device
and forged dream of men whose consciences are made of stoutness, and
who have a throat that a graven image, greater than the bounds of the
kirk-door, would get free passage into. I am sure that when Christ
shall bring us all out in our blacks and whites, at that day when He
shall cry down time and the world, and when the glory of it shall lie
in white ashes, like a May-flower cut down and which hath lost the
blossom, there shall be few, yea none, that dare make any point, which
toucheth the worship and honour of our King and Lawgiver, to be
indifferent. Oh that this misled and blindfolded world would see that
Christ doth not rise and fall, stand or lie, by men's apprehensions!
What is Christ the lighter, that men do with Him, by open
proclamation, as men do with clipped and light money? They are now
crying down Christ some grain-weights, and some pounds or shillings;
and they will have Him lie[397] for a penny or a pound, for one or for
a hundred, according as the wind bloweth from the east or from the
west. But the Lord hath weighed Him, and balanced Him already: "This
is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him!" His worth
and His weight stand still. It is our part to cry, "Up, up with
Christ, and down, down with all created glory before Him." Oh that I
could heighten Him, and heighten His name, and heighten His throne! I
know, and am persuaded, that Christ shall again be high and great in
this poor, withered, and sun-burnt Kirk of Scotland; and that the
sparks of our fire shall fly over the sea, and round about, to warm
you and other sister churches; and that this tabernacle of David's
house, that is fallen, even the Son of David's waste places, shall be
built again. And I know the prison, crosses, persecutions, and trials
of the two slain witnesses, that are now dead and buried (Rev. xi. 9),
and of the faithful professors, have a back-door and back-entry of
escape; and that death and hell, and the world, and the tortures,
shall all cleave and split in twain, and give us free passage and
liberty to go through toll-free: and we shall bring all God's good
metal out of the furnace again, and leave behind us but our dross and
our scum. We may then beforehand proclaim Christ to be victorious. He
is crowned King of Mount Zion: God did put the crown upon His head
(Ps. ii. 6, and xxi. 3), and who dare take it off again? Out of
question, He hath sore and grievous quarrels against His church: and
therefore He is called, "He whose fire is in Zion, and whose furnace
is in Jerusalem" (Isa. xxxi. 9). But when He hath performed His work
on Mount Zion, all Zion's haters shall be as the hungry and thirsty
man, that dreameth he is eating and drinking, and behold, when he
awakeneth, he is faint, and his soul empty. And this advantage we have
also, that He will not bring before sun and moon all the infirmities
of His wife. It is the modesty of marriage-anger or husband-wrath,
that our sweet Lord Jesus will not come with chiding to the streets,
to let all the world hear what is betwixt Him and us. His sweet glooms
stay under roof, and that because He is God.
[395] It requires skill.
[396] Alluding to 2 Thess. ii. 8. "Ἄνομος," that Lawless one.
[397] Stand for.
Two special things ye are to mind: 1. Try and make sure your
profession; that ye carry not empty lamps. Alas! security, security is
the bane and the wrack of the most part of the world. Oh, how many
professors go with a golden lustre, and are gold-like before men (who
are but witnesses to our white skin), and yet are but bastard and base
metal! Consider how fair before the wind some do ply with up-sails and
white, even to the nick of "illumination," and "tasting of the
heavenly gift;" and "a share and part of the Holy Ghost;" and "the
tasting of the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come"
(Heb. vi. 4, 5). And yet this is but a false nick of renovation, and,
in a short time, such are quickly broken upon the rocks, and never
fetch the harbour, but are sanded in the bottom of hell. Oh, make your
haven sure, and try how ye come by conversion; that it be not stolen
goods, in a white and well-lustred profession! A white skin over old
wounds maketh an under-coating conscience. False under water, not
seen, is dangerous, and that is a leak and rift in the bottom of an
enlightened conscience; often falling and sinning against light. Wo,
wo is me that the holy profession of Christ is made a stage garment by
many, to bring home a vain fame, and Christ is made to serve men's
ends! This is, as it were, to stop an oven with a king's robes.
Know, 2. Except men martyr and slay the body of sin in sanctified
self-denial, they shall never be Christ's martyrs and faithful
witnesses. Oh, if I could be master of that house-idol, myself, my
own mind, my own will, wit, credit, and ease, how blessed were I! Oh,
but we have need to be redeemed from ourselves, rather than from the
devil and the world! Learn to put out yourselves, and to put in Christ
for yourselves. It would make a sweet bartering and niffering, and
give old for new, if I could shuffle out self, and substitute Christ
my Lord, in place of myself; to say, "Not I, but Christ; not my will,
but Christ's; not my ease, not my lust, not my feckless credit, but
Christ, Christ." But, alas! in leaving ourselves, in setting Christ
before our idol, self, we have yet a glaiked back-look to our old
idol. O wretched idol, myself! when shall I see thee wholly decourted,
and Christ wholly put in thy room? Oh, if Christ, Christ had the full
place and room of myself, that all my aims, purposes, thoughts, and
desires would coast and land upon Christ, and not upon myself! And,
howbeit we cannot attain to this denial of me and mine, that we can
say, "I am not myself, myself is not myself, mine own is no longer
mine own," yet our aiming at this in all we do shall be accepted: for
alas! I think I shall die but minting and aiming to be a Christian. Is
it not our comfort, that Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant, is
come betwixt us and God in the business, so that green and young
heirs, the like of sinners, have now a Tutor that is God! And now, God
be thanked, our salvation is bottomed on Christ. Sure I am, the bottom
shall never fall out of heaven and happiness to us. I would give over
the bargain a thousand times, were it not that Christ's free grace
hath taken our salvation in hand.
Pray, pray and contend with the Lord, for your sister-church; for it
would appear that the Lord is about to speer for His scattered sheep,
in the dark and cloudy day. Oh that it would please our Lord to set up
again David's old wasted and fallen tabernacle in Scotland, that we
might see the glory of the second temple in this land! Oh that my
little heaven were wadset, to redeem the honour of my Lord Jesus among
the Jews and Gentiles! Let never dew lie upon my branches, and let my
poor flower wither at the root, so that Christ were enthroned, and His
glory advanced in all the world, and especially in these three
kingdoms. But I know that He hath no need of me; what can I add to
Him? But oh that He would cause His high and pure glory to run through
such a foul channel as I am! And, howbeit He hath caused the blossom
to fall off my one poor joy, that was on this side of heaven, even my
liberty to preach Christ to His people, yet I am dead to that now, so
that He would hew and carve glory, glory for evermore, to my royal
King out of my silence and sufferings. Oh that I had my fill of His
love! But I know ill-manners make an unco and strange bridegroom.
I entreat you earnestly for the aid of your prayers, for I forget not
you; and I salute, with my soul in Christ, the faithful pastors, and
honourable and worthy professors in that land. Now the God of peace,
that brought again our Lord Jesus from the dead, the great Shepherd of
the sheep, by the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect
in every good work, to do His will, working in you that which is
well-pleasing in His sight. Grace, grace be with you.
Yours, in his sweetest Lord Jesus,