Rutherford Revised (189)

190. To Carsluth (Kirkmabreck)   From Aberdeen 1637

(This is Robert Brown of Carsluth, a man of property near Anwoth who died in 1658)

Much honoured sir, - I long to hear how your soul prospers. I sincerely want you to test how things are between your soul and the Lord. Do not think it is easy to take heaven by violence. Salvation now comes to most men in a dream at night. Faith, such as it is, is not scarce; for you will not now find a man who does not say he has faith in Christ. But alas! Dreams make no-one right.
   Worthy sir, I beg you in the Lord to give your soul no rest until you have real assurance and Christ's rights confirmed and guaranteed to your soul. The common faith and ciountry holiness and week day zeal that is among people will never bring men to heaven. Make efforts for your salvation; for in that day when you will see many mens works and conquests and idol riches lying in ashes, when the earth and all its works will be burned with fire, oh how much would your soul give fr God's favour in Christ! It is a blessed thing to see Christ when the suns up, and to read your papers and soul accounts in a fair daylight. It will not be the time to call for a light when the Bridegroommis entering His room, and the door is shut. Fie, fie on blinded and impure souls who are prostituted with this idol clay, and hunt a poor, wretched hungry heaven, a hungry breakfast, a day's food, from this hungry world, and the loss of God's favour, and the rejection of their heaven (giving up as men used to say), for the laughter and games of their short morning.! Al that is under the sky, and between us and death, and n this side of the sun and moon, is, at their best, only toys, night dreams, fantasies, poor shadows, frothy water, godless vanities, and black hearts and salty and sour miseries, sugared over and sweetened with an hour or two's laughter, and the conceit of riches, honour, vain vain favour seeking and lawless pleasures. Sir, if you look at both the laughing side and the weeping side of this world, and if you domnot only look on the skin and colour of things but look inside and to the heart of their worth, you will see that one look from Christ's sweet and lovely ays, one hkiss from His fairest face, is worth ten thousand worlds of such rotten stuff as the foolish sons of men set their hearts upon. Oh sir, turn, turn your heart to the other side of things, and get it comptely free from there entanglements, considering eternity, death, the clay bed the grave, awesome judgement, everlasting burning alive in hell, where death would give as great a price (if there was a market where death could be bought and sold) as all the world.