LONDON, _Jan. 9, 1646_.
CCCXVIII.--_To my_ LADY KENMURE.
(_CHRIST NEVER IN OUR DEBT--RICHES OF CHRIST--EXCELLENCE OF THE
HEAVENLY STATE._)
MADAM,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--It is the least of the
princely and royal bounty of Jesus Christ to pay a king's debts, and
not to have His servants at a loss. His gold is better than yours, and
His hundred-fold is the income and rent of heaven, and far above your
revenues. Ye are not the first who have casten up your accounts that
way. Better have Christ your factor than any other; for He tradeth to
the advantage of His poor servants. But if the hundred-fold in this
life be so well told (as Christ cannot pay you with miscounting or
deferred hope), oh, what must the rent of that land be which rendereth
(every day and hour of the years of long eternity) the whole rent of a
year, yea, of more than thousand thousands of ages, even the weighty
income of a rich kingdom, not every summer once, but every moment!
That sum of glory will take you and all the angels telling.[459] To be
a tenant to such a Landlord, where every berry and grape of the large
field beareth no worse fruit than glory, fulness of joy, and pleasures
that endure for evermore! I leave it to yourself to think what a
summer, what a soil, what a garden must be there; and what must be the
commodities of that highest land, where the sun and the moon are under
the feet of the inhabitants! Surely the land cannot be bought with
gold, blood, banishment, loss of father and mother, husband, wife,
children. We but dwell here because we can do no better. It is need,
not virtue, to be sojourners in a prison; to weep and sigh, and, alas!
to sin sixty or seventy years in a land of tears. The fruits that grow
here are all seasoned and salted with sin.
[459] Will require all your power, and that of angels too, to unfold.
Oh how sweet is it that the company of the first-born should be
divided into two great bodies of an army, and some in their country,
and some in the way to their country! If it were no more than once to
see the face of the Prince of this good land, and to be feasted for
eternity with the fatness, sweetness, dainties of the rays and beams
of matchless glory, and incomparable fountain-love, it were a
well-spent journey to creep hands and feet through seven deaths and
seven hells, to enjoy Him up at the well-head. Only let us not weary:
the miles to that land are fewer and shorter than when we first
believed. Strangers are not wise to quarrel with their host, and
complain of their lodging. It is a foul way, but a fair home. Oh that
I had but such grapes and clusters out of the land as I have sometimes
seen and tasted in the place whereof your Ladyship maketh mention! But
the hope of it in the end is a heartsome convoy in the way. If I see
little more of the gold[460] till the race be ended, I dare not
quarrel. It is the Lord! I hope His chariot will go through these
three kingdoms, after our sufferings shall be accomplished.
[460] In a sermon preached at Kircudbright, in 1634, on Heb. xii. 1-3,
he says, "This condemns those who will not run one foot in the race
except the gold be in their hand."
Grace be with you.
Your Ladyship's, in Jesus Christ,