Vol 16 - TO JONET KENNEDY.

TO JONET KENNEDY.
GRACE, mercy, and peace, bye unto you! Ye are not a little obliged, to the rich grace of Him, who has separated you for, himself, and for the promised inheritance with the saints in light, from this condemned world. Hold fast CHRIST, contend for him; it is not possible to keep CHRIST peaceably, having once gotten him, except the Devil were dead. It must be your resolution, to set your face against Satan's storms. Nature would have heaven come to us sleeping. in our beds. We would all buy CHRIST, if we might make the price ourselves; but CHRIST is worth more blood and lives than either you or I have to give him. When we shall come home, when our heads shall find the weight of the eternal crown of glory, and when we shall look back to pains and sufferings, then we shall see life and sorrow to be less than one step from a prison to glory, and that our little inch of suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome to heaven. O thrice blinded souls, whose hearts are charmed and bewitched with the dreams and shadows of a miserable life of sin! Shame on us, who sit still, fettered with the love of the Lord of a piece of dead clay! O poor fools, who are beguiled with painted things, and this world's fair weather and smooth promises! May not the Devil laugh, to see us give out our souls, and get in but the corrupt and counterfeit pleasures of sin O for a sight of eternity's glory, and a little taste of the LAMB'S marriage supper! A drop of the wine of consolations, that is in our banqueting house, out of CHRIST'S own hand, would make us loathe the sour drink of a miserable life. O how far are we bereft of with to run, till our souls be out of breath, after a happiness of our own making! O that we were out of ourselves, and dead to this world, and this world dead and crucified to us! And when we should be out of love of any masked lover whatsoever, then CHRIST would be our night song and our morningsong; then the very noise of our Well beloved's feet when he cometh, and his first knock at the door, would be as the news of two heavens to us. O that our eyes, and our soul's smelling, should go after a blasted and sunburnt flower, even this fairplastered, outside world; and have neither eye nor smell for the flower of JESSE, for the choicest, the fairest, the sweetest rose that ever GOD planted! O let some of us die to feel the fragrance of him; and let my part of this rotten world be forfeited and sold for evermore, providing 1: may anchor my tottering soul upon CHRIST! I know that it is sometimes at this, a LORD, what wilt you have for CHRIST" But, O LORD, can CHRIST be sold Or, rather, May not a poor prisoner have him for nothing If I can get no more, O let me he pained to all eternity with longing for him! The joy of hungering for CHRIST should be my heaven for evermore. Alas.! that I cannot draw souls and CHRIST together! But I desire the coming of his kingdom, and that CHRIST would come upon withered Scotland, as gain upon the new mown grass. O let the King come! Grace, grace be with you!
Yours in his worthy LORD JESUS,
Aberdeen, 1637.