065. LXVI.—To ROBERT GORDON of Knockbreck, after arriving at Aberdeen
LXVI.—To ROBERT GORDON of Knockbreck, after arriving at Aberdeen (CHALLENGES OF CONSCIENCE—EASE IN ZION.)
DEAR BROTHER,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I am, by God’s mercy, come now to Aberdeen, the place of my confinement, and settled in an honest man’s house. I find the town’s-men cold, general, and dry in their kindness; yet I find a lodging in the heart of many strangers. My challenges are revived again, and I find old sores bleeding of new; dangerous and painful is an under-cotted conscience; yet I have an eye to the blood that is physic for such sores. But, verily, I see Christianity is conceived to be more easy and lighter than it is; so that I sometimes think I never knew anything but the letters of that name; for our nature contenteth itself with little in godliness. Our "Lord, Lord," seemeth to us ten "Lord-Lords." Little holiness in our balance is much, because it is our own holiness; and we love to lay small burdens upon our soft natures, and to make a fair court-way to heaven. And I know it were necessary to take more pains than we do, and not to make heaven a city more easily taken than God hath made it. I persuade myself that many runners shall come short, and get a disappointment. Oh! how easy is it to deceive ourselves, and to sleep, and wish that heaven may fall down in our laps! Yet for all my Lord’s glooms, I find Him sweet, gracious, loving, kind; and I want both pen and words to set forth the fairness, beauty, and sweetness of Christ’s love, and the honour of this cross of Christ, which is glorious to me, though the world thinketh shame thereof. I verily think that the cross of Christ would blush and think shame of these thin-skinned worldings, who are so married to their credit that they are ashamed of the sufferings of Christ. O the honour to be scourged and stoned with Christ, and to go through a furious-faced death to life eternal! But men would have law-borrows against Christ’s cross.
Now, my dear brother, forget not the prisoner of Christ, for I see very few here who kindly fear God. Grace be with you. Let my love in Christ and hearty affection be remembered to your kind wife, to your brother John, and to all friends. The Lord Jesus be with your spirit.
Yours in his only, only Lord Jesus,
S. R.
ABERDEEN, Sept. 20, 1636.