Rutherford revised (78)

78. To my Lord Boyd  From Aberdeen 1637

(Covenanter with estate near Kilmarnock)

My very honourable and good Lord, - Grace, mercy and peace be to your Lordship. From the respectfully report that I hear about your Lordship's zeal for this despised and oppressed Gospel, I boldly write to your Lordship, begging you by the mercies of God, and by the honour of our royal and princely King Jesus, by the sorrows, tears and desolation of your afflicted mother-Church, and by the peace of your conscience, and your joy in the day of Christ, that your Lordship would go on, in the strength of your Lord, and in the power of his might, to stir yourself, to vindicate the fallen honour of your Lord Jesus. O blessed hands for evermore, that it will help to put the crown on the head of Christ again in Scotland! I dare promise, in the name of our Lord, that this will fasten and fix the pillars and stakes of your honourable family on earth, if you lend and promise in Christ's hand, on spiritual risk, life, estate, house, honour, credit, means friends the favour of men (like kings with three crowns), so that you can bear witness, and show yourself and man of valour and courage to the Prince of your salvation, for the cleansing of His temple, and sweeping out the lordly Diotrepheses, time serving the Demases, corrupt Hymenaeuses and Philetuses, and other such beasts, that with their excrement defile temple of the Lord. Is not Christ now crying, 'Who will help Me? Who will come out with Me, to take part with me,  and share in the honour of My victory, over these My enemies, who have said, 'We will not have this man to rule over us?
   My very honourable and dear Lord, join, join (as you do) with Christ. He is worth more to you and your descendants than the May-flowers of this world, and withering riches and honour, that will go away and vanish like smoke in an night vision, and will in one half hour after the blast of the archangel's trumpet, lie in white ashes. Let me beg your Lordship to draw back the curtain of time, and to look through the window to great and endless eternity, and consider if worldly price (supposing this little round clay globe of this ashy and dirty earth, the dying idol of the fools of this world, were all on your own) can be given for one smile of Christ's God-like and soul ravishing face. In the day when so many joints and knees of thousands thousands crying shall stand before Christ, trembling shouting and making their prayers to the hills and mountains to fall on them, and hide them from the face of the Lanb, O how many would sell lordships and kingdoms that day, and buy Christ! But O the market will be closed and ended before then! Your Lordship now has a blessed project of entering the court with the Prince of the kings of the earth. He Himself is weeping; truth knocked down and fallen in the streets, and an oppressed gospel; Christ's bride watery eyes and spoiled veil, her hair hanging around her eyes, forced to go in rags: the banished, cut off and imprisoned prophets of God, who do not have the freedom to prophesy in the sackcloth, all of these, I say, call for your help. Do not fear worms of clay; the moth will them like cloth. Let the Lord be your fear; he is with you  and will fight for you; and you will make the heart of this your mother-church to sing for joy. The Lamb and his armies are with you, and the kingdoms of this earth are the Lords. I'm sure that there is not another gospel, nor another saving truth, then that which you now fight for. I dare risk of my heaven and salvation on it, that this is the only way to glory.
   Grace, grace be with your Lordship.
   Your Lordships at all respectful obedience in Christ,    S.R.