ST. ANDREWS, _Jan. 7, 1651_.
CCCXXXIII.--_To the much honoured and truly worthy COLONEL GILBERT
KER, when taken prisoner._
(_COMFORTING THOUGHTS TO THE AFFLICTED--DARKNESS OF THE
TIMES--FELLOWSHIP IN CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS--SATISFACTION WITH HIS
PROVIDENCES._)
MUCH HONOURED AND WORTHY SIR,--I have heard of your continued
captivity in England, as well as in this afflicted land. But, go where
ye will, ye cannot go from under your Shadow, which is broader than
many kingdoms. Ye change lodging and countries; but the same Lord is
before you, if ye were carried away captive to the other side of the
sun, or as far as the rising of the morning star. It is spoken to your
mother (who hath yet received no bill of divorce), which was written
to Judah, "Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion,
like a woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city,
and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon;
there shalt thou be delivered; there the Lord shall redeem thee from
the hand of thine enemies" (Micah iv. 10). England shall be
accountable for you, to render you back: "I will say to the north,
'Give up;' and to the south, 'Keep not back'" (Isa. xliii. 6). It is a
sermon that flesh and blood laugheth at: "Prophesy upon these dry
bones, and say unto them, 'O ye dry bones, hear the word of the
Lord!'" It is a preaching to the cold grave: "Thus saith the Lord
unto the bones, 'Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye
shall live; and I will lay sinews upon you, and bring up flesh upon
you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall
live'" (Ezek. xxxvii. 4, 5, 6). "And the sea gave up the dead that
were in it" (Rev. xx. 13). Berwick must render back the Scottish
captives, and Colonel Gilbert Ker with them. "For thus saith the Lord,
your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, For your sake I have sent to
Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans
whose cry is in the ships" (Isa. xliii. 14). "If any of thine be
driven out to the utmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord
thy God gather thee, and from thence will He fetch thee" (Deut. xxx.
4). "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Behold, I will save My people from
the east country and from the west country, and I will bring them, and
they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and they shall be My
people, and I will be their God, in truth and in righteousness" (Zech.
viii. 7, 8). Sir, ye are both booked by the Lord who writeth up the
people (Ps. lxxxvii. 5, 6), and counted to the Lord as one of the
house and stock (Ps. xxii. 30). Fear not, faint not; all your hairs
are numbered.
It is the desire of the people of God, that, as your bonds hitherto
have been exemplary to the strengthening of the feeble and to the
stopping of the mouth of the adversary, without any declining to the
right or left hand; so your sufferings in the place ye now go to, may
be (as we are confident in the Lord of you, and in humility boast of
His grace in you) savoury, convincing, and like unto this honourable
cause, that will prevail in Britain, contrary to all the machinations
and counsels of devils and men. And though there were no other ink in
the pen I now write with but some dewing of my last cooling blood,
this I purpose (His grace, whose I am, enabling me) to stand to. Sir,
we desire to adore no instruments; yet we conceive the shining and
rays of grace from the Fountain, Jesus Christ, the fulness of the
Godhead, bestowed on sinful men, hold forth the good thoughts of
Christ to this poor land, whose multiplied graves, and whose souls
under the altar, slain by Sectaries and Malignants, cry aloud to
heaven.
I see nothing, Sir, if the Lord be not near (though I dare not say how
soon) to awake for the year of Zion's controversy. "For my sword shall
be bathed in heaven" (Isa. xxxiv. 5). Behold, it shall come down upon
England, and on the residue of His enemies in Scotland. Wo is me for
England! That land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat
with fatness; that pleasant land shall be a wilderness, and the dust
of their land pitch; a judgment upon their walled towns, their
pleasant fields, their strong ships, etc., if they do not repent.
Ye have not, I conceive, seen such searching and trying times as now
these are. And yet the question will be drawn to a more narrow state,
and multitudes will yet leave the cause; for we took all into the
covenant that offered to build with us. But Christ must have but a
small remnant (few nobles, if any; few ministers; few professors),
though our way standeth unchanged. "By honour and dishonour, by good
report and evil report: as deceivers and yet true; as unknown, yet
well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not
killed" (2 Cor. vi. 8, 9). Neither is this your condition alone, but
the experienced lot of all the saints that have gone before you. It is
one and the same cross of Christ; but there be sundry faces and
diverse circumstances in the same remnant (Col. i. 24), the sufferings
of Christ and yours. Sir, to be delivered to soldiers, and in
captivity, looketh like His suffering of whom Isaiah saith, "He was
taken from prison, and from judgment" (Isa. liii. 8): yea, and taken
bound (John xviii. 12). When the cause is the truth of God, the lustre
and face of suffering is so much the more lovely that it hath the hue
and colour of Christ's sufferings, who endured contradiction of
sinners and despised the shame. Oh it is a great word, "Christ shamed,
and Christ abased!" But thus was the Head, and so are the members,
dealt with in the world; and truly anything of Christ, even the worst
of Him (to speak so), His reproach and shame, are lovely. Though
superstitious love to the material cross He suffered upon be foolery,
and doting upon the holy grave[483] be cursed idolatry; yet is there a
communion with Him in His sufferings most desirable. "But rejoice,
inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings" (1 Pet. iv. 13):
in which sense, the cup that His lip touched hath the sweeter taste,
even though death were in it; the grave, because He did lie in it, is
so much the softer and the more refreshful a bed of rest; and that
part of the sky and clouds that the Beloved shall break through, and
come to judgment, is as lovely a piece of the created heaven as any
is, if we may love the ground He goeth on the better. But all this is
to be understood in a spiritual manner. The Lord calleth you, Sir,
upon whom the Spirit of God and His glory resteth, to put your soul's
AMEN to this dispensation; and requireth of us, that our desires
follow the now-declared decree of God concerning the desolation of our
sinful land, so many ways guilty of a despised Gospel, and a broken
Covenant; and that with all submission. Certainly, no man hath failed
more in this thing, than he who writeth to you. For I have brought my
health into great hazard, and tormented my spirit with excessive
grief, for our present provocations, and the rendings of our kirk; and
I see it is a challenging of, and a bold pleading against, Him upon
whose shoulder the government is (Isa. xxii. 22). The Father hath put
a glorious trust upon Christ: "And I will fasten Him as a nail in a
sure place, and He shall be for a glorious throne to His Father's
house; and they shall hang upon Him all the glory of His Father's
house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity,
from the vessels of cups even to all the vessels of flagons" (Isa.
xxii. 23, 24). Our unbelieving apprehensions do so quarrel at the
prosperity of enemies in an evil cause, that we wrestle with defeats,
spoiling, captivity of the godly, killing of His people, the wasting
of our land, starving and famishing of the kingdom, which is worse
than the sword. But this is a sinful contradicting of the Lord's
revealed decree. His wisdom saith, "Spoiling and desolation is best
for Scotland;" and we say, "Not," and so accuse Christ of
misgovernment, and of not being true to the trust put upon Him. But
since He doth not drag the government at His heels, but hath it upon
His shoulder, and since the Nail fastened in a sure place cannot be
broken,[484] nor can the smallest vessel fail to find sweet security
in dependence upon Him, since all the weight of heaven and earth, of
redeemed saints and confirmed angels, is upon His shoulder, I am a
fool, and brutish to imagine that I can add anything to Christ's
special care of and tenderness to His people. He who keepeth the
basins and knives of His house, and bringeth the vessels again to the
second temple (Ezra i. 8-10), must have a more tender care of His
redeemed ones than of a spoon, or of Peter's old shoes (Acts xii. 8),
which yet must not be lost in His captivity. Oh for grace to suffer
Christ to tutor His own minors and young heirs! But we cannot endure
to be under the actings of His government; we love too much to be our
own. Oh, how sweet to be wholly Christ's, and wholly in Christ! to be
out of the creature's owning, and made complete in Christ! to live by
faith in Christ, and to be, once for all, clothed with the uncreated
majesty and glory of the Son of God, wherein He maketh all His friends
and followers sharers! to dwell in Immanuel's high and blessed land,
and live in that sweetest air where no wind bloweth but the breathings
of the Holy Ghost, no seas nor floods flow but the pure water of life,
that proceedeth from under the throne and from the Lamb! no planting
but the Tree of Life that yieldeth twelve manner of fruits every
month! What do we here but sin and suffer? Oh, when shall the night be
gone, the shadows flee away, and the morning of that long, long day,
without cloud or night, dawn? The Spirit and the bride say, "Come."
Oh, when shall the Lamb's wife be ready, and the Bridegroom say,
"Come!"
[483] The Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
[484] Isa. xxii. 25 is alluded to, where the Hebrew word means either
"broken," or cut down. See note, p. 655.
Worthy Sir, I mind you to the Hearer of prayer. Oh help me in that
kind.
The Spirit of Jesus be with your spirit.
Yours, in his only Lord Jesus,