Rutherford Revised (258)

258. To the right honourable my Lord Loudon                           From Aberdeen Sep 10 1637

Right honourable, - Grace, mercy and peace be to your Lordship - I rejoice exceedingly to hear that your Lordship has a good mind to Christ, and His now suppressed truth. My very dear Lord, on on in the strength of the Lord, to carry your honours and worldly glory to the New Jerusalem. For this cause your Lordship received these from the Lord. This is a sure way for the establishment of your family, if you are among those who are willing in your place to build Zion's old waste places in Scotland. Your Lordship does not lack God's and man's law, both, now to come to the street for Christ; and suppose the bastard laws of man were against you, it is an honest and zealous error, if here you slip against a point of standing policy.When your foot slips in such known ground as the royal prerogative of our high and most true dread Sovereign (who has many crowns on His head), and the liberties of His house, He will hold you up. Blessed will they be who take Babel's little ones, and dash their heads against the stones. I wish your Lordship may have a share of that blessing, with other worthy nobles in our land
   It is true that it is now accounted wisdom for men to be partners in pulling up the stakes, and losing he ropes of the tent of Christ. But I am persuaded, that that wisdom is cried down in heaven, and will never pass for true wisdom with the Lord, whose word cries shame on cleverness against Christ and truth; and accordingly it will prove shame and confusion of face in the end. Our Lord has given your Lordship light of a better stamp, and learning also, in which you are not behind the disputer and the writer. Oh, what a blessed thing it is to see nobility, learning and sanctification concur in one! For these you owe yourself to Christ and His kingdom. God has bewildered and confused the intelligence and learning of the writers and disputers of this time; they look asquint at the Bible. This blinding and confusing world blindfolds men's light, so they are afraid to see straight out before them; no, their very light plays dishonest or worse to the truth. Your Lordship knows that in a little while, policy against truth will blush, and the works of men will be burnt up, even their spider's webs who spin out many hundred measures and webs of indifference in the Lord's worship; more than ever Moses, who would reckon a hoof material (Ex 10:26), and Daniel who would have a look out of a window a matter of life and death, than ever I say, these men of God, dreamed of. Alas, the men dare to shape, carve, cut and clip our King's princely testaments in length and breadth, and in all dimensions, answerable to the conceptions of such policy, as a wiseacre thinks a safe and trim way of serving God! How men have forgotten the Lord, that they dare to go against even that truth which once they themselves preached, though their sermons are now as thin sown as strawberries in a wood or wilderness! Certainly the sweetest and safest course is, for this short time of the afternoon of this old and declining world, to stand for Jesus. He has said it, and it is our part to believe it, that before long, 'time will be no more, and the heavens will grow old like clothes.' Do we nt see it already, an old, hole and threadbare garment? Does not cripple and lame nature tell us, that the Lord will fold up the old garment and lay it aside; and that the heavens will be folded together as a scroll, and his pest house will be burnt with fire, and that both furnishings and walls will melt with fervent heat. For at the Lord's coming, He will do with his earth, as men do with a leper house; He will burn he walls with fire, and the furnishings of the house too (2 Pet 3:10,12). My very dear Lord, how will you rejoice in that day, to have Christ, angels heaven, and your own conscience to smile on you? I am persuaded that one sick night, through  the terrors of he Almighty, would make men whose conscience has such a wide throat that an image like a cathedral church would go down it, have other thoughts of Christ and His worship, than now they please themselves with. The scarcity of faith in the earth says, 'We are close to the last  stroke of time:' blessed are those who keep their clothes clean for the bridegroom's coming. There will be spited clothes and many defiled garments, at His last Coming; and therefore few found worth to walk with Him in white.  
   I am persuaded my Lord, that this poor suffering Woman, our pained church, is pregnant with victory, and will bring forth a Man child all lovely and glorious, who will be caught up to God and to His throne, though  the dragon, in his followers, are attending the childbirth pain, as an Egyptian midwife, to receive the birth and strangle it. But they will be disappointed who thirst for the destruction of Zion. ' As when a hungry man dreams, and behold, he is eating, and awakes with his hunger not satisfied, or as when a thirsty man dreams, and behold, he is drinking, and awakes faint, with his thirst not quenched, so shall the multitude of all the nations bethat fight against Mount Zion.'(Is 29:8) Therefore the weak and feeble, those who are as 'signs and wonders in Israel,' have chosen the best side, even the side on which is victory. And I think this is no evil policy.
   Truly, for myself, I am so well pleased with Christ, and His noble and honestly carried cross, this cross that has come form Christ's house and is related to Himself, that I would weep if it should come to suffering and bartering of lots and conditions with those  'at ease in Zion.' I keep to my choice and bless myself in it. I see and believe that there is salvation in this way, which is spoken against everywhere. I hope to go to eternity, and to journey on he last evil to the saints (even on death), that this only, even this, is the saving way for racked consciences, and for heavy and laden sinners to find ease and peace for evermore in. And indeed it is not for any worldly respect that I speak of it so. The weather is nt so hot that I have great cause to be startled in my prison, or to boast of that entertainment that my good friends, the bishops, intend for me (which is banishment), if they obtain their desire, and effect what they design. But let it come; I am not sorry I made Christ my choice; yes, I think Him, the longer the better.
   My Lord, it will be good service to God, to hold your noble friend and chief on a good course for the truth of Christ. Now the very God of peace establish your Lordship in Christ Jesus until the end.
   You Lordship's, in his sweet Lord Jesus,  S,R.