Vol 16 - TO HIS REVEREND AND MUCHHONORED BROTHER,

TO HIS REVEREND AND MUCHHONORED BROTHER,
DR. ALEXANDER LIGHTON,
Prisoner at London.
Reverend and muchhonored Prisoner of Hope,
GRACE, mercy, and peace, be to you! It was not my part, whom our LORD has enlarged, to forget You his prisoner. When I consider how long your night has been, I think CHRIST has a mind to put you in free grad's debt so much the deeper. But what if CHRIST Intend for you no joy but public joy, with enlarged and triumphant Zion I think, Sir, ye would love best to share and divide your song of joy with Zion, and to have mystical. CHRIST in Britain copartner with your enlargement. Worthy Sir, I hope I need not exhort you to go on, hoping for the salvation of GOD. There has not been, so much taken from your time of ease, as eternity shall acid to your heaven. Ye know, when one day in heaven shath paid, yea, and overpaid your blood, bonds, sorrow, and sufferings, that it would trouble an angel's standing to count that overplus of glory, which eternity can and will give you. Your sandglass of sufferings and losses cometh to little, when compared with the glory that waiteth for you, on the other side of the water! Ye have no leisure to rejoice and sing here, while time go about you, and where your psalms must be short; therefore ye will think eternity, and the long day of heaven, that shall be measured with no other sun than the long life of the ANCIENT OF DAYS, little enough for you. If your spanlength of time be cloudy, ye cannot but think that your LORD can no more take' your blood and your bands without the income and recompense of free grace, than he would take the sufferings of PAUL, and his other dear servants, that were paid home beyond all counting. (Romans 8:18.) It was the Potter's aim, that the clay should praise him; and I hope it satisfieth you, that your clay is for his glory. O who can suffer enough for such a LORD And who can lay out in bank enough of pain, shame, losses, or torture, to receive in again the free interest of eternal glory (2 Corinthians 4:17.) O how advantageous bargaining is it with such a rich LORD! If your hand and pen had been at leisure to gain glory in paper, it had been but paper glory; but the bearing of a public cross so long for JESUS, the Prince of the Kings of the earth, is glory booked in heaven. Worthy and dear brother, if ye go to weigh JESUS, his sweetness, excellency, glory, and beauty, and set against him your ounces of suffering for him, ye shall be straitened in two ways.—l. It will be a pain to make the comparison, the disproportion being by no understanding imaginable. Nay, if angels were set to work, they should never number the degrees of difference.—2. It should straiten you to find a scale for the balance, to lay that high and lofty One, that Prince of excellency, into. If your mind could fancy as many created heavens as time has had minutes, as trees have had leaves, or as clouds have had drops, since the first stone of the creation was laid, they should not make half a scale to bear and weigh boundless excellency. And therefore the King, whose marks ye are bearing, and whose dying ye carry about with you in your body, is, out of all consideration, beyond and above all our thoughts. For myself, I am content to feed upon wondering sometimes, on beholding but the skirts of his incomparable' glory; and I think, ye could wish for more ears to give him than ye have, since ye hope these ears ye now have given him shall be passages to take in the music of his glorious voice. O! who can add to him who is all If he would create new heavens, a thousand thousand degrees more perfect than these that now are; and would then make a new creation, ten thousand you sand. degrees in perfection beyond that new creation; and again, •would still, to eternity, multiply new heavens; they should never be a perfect resemblance of that infinite excellency, order, weight,% measure, beauty, and sweetness, that are in him. O how liftl, of him do we see! O how shallow are our thoughts of him!, O that I had pain for him, and shame and losses for him, and more clay and spirits for him; and that I could go upon earth without love, desire, or hope, because Chi 1sT has taken away my love, desire, and hope to heaven with him! I know, worthy Sir; your sufferings for him are your glory; and therefore be not weary; his salvation is near at hand, and shall not tarry. Pray for me: His grace be with, you!
St, Andrews,
Yours in his LORD JESUS,
Nov, 99, 1639.