Vol 16 - TO A CHRISTIAN GENTLEWOMAN.

TO A CHRISTIAN GENTLEWOMAN.
MADAM,
GRACE, mercy, and peace, be to you! If death, which is before you and us all, were any other thing but a, friendly dissolution, it would seem a hard voyage, to go through `such a: dark trance; so thorny a valley; as is the wages of sin: but I am confident, that the way ye know, though your foot never trod in that black shadow; and the loss of life tis gain to you. If CHRISTJESUS be the lodging, at the end of your journey, there is no fear, and ye go to a friend; and since ye have had communion with him in this; life and he hath a pledge of yours, even the largest share of your heart, ye may look death in the face with joy. If the heart be in heaven, the remnant of you cannot be kept the prisoner of the Second Death. But though he be the same CHRIST in the other life, as ye found him to be here, yet he is so' far, in his excellency, beauty, sweetness, and beams of majesty, above what he appeared here, when he is seen. as he is, that he shall appear a new CHRIST; and the ointment of his name, poured out on you,’ shall appear to have more of GOD, and a stronger fragrance of heaven, of eternity, of GODhead, of majesty and glory, there than here,; as water at the fountain, or apples. in the orchard, and beside the tree, have more of their native sweetness, taste, and beauty, than when transported to us some hundred miles. I mean not that CHRIST can lose any of his sweetness in the carrying; or that he in his GODhead can be changed for the worse, between the little spot of the earth ye are in, and the right hand of the FATHER, far above all heavens: but the change will be in you, when ye shall have new senses; when the soul shall be a more deep and more capacious vessel, to take in more of CHRIST; and when means, the chariot, the Gospel, in which he is now carried, and ordinances which convey him, shall be removed. Surely ye cannot now be said to see him face to face, or to drink of the wine of the highest fountain, or to take in seas of fresh love immediately without vessels, or messengers, at the fountain itself, as ye shall do a few days hence, when ye shall be so near as to be with CHRIST. Ye would (no doubt) bestow a day's journey, yea, many days' journey on earth, to go up to heaven, and fetch down anything of CHRIST; how much more may ye be willing to make a journey to go in person to heaven, (it is no lost time, but a gained eternity) to enjoy the full GODhead He is not there, as he is here with us, in a drop of grace and sweetness; but in his marriage robe of glory, richer, more costly, more precious, than a million of worlds. O the well is deep! Ye shall then think, that preachers on earth did but mar his praises, when they spoke of him. Alas! we but make CHRIST black, and less lovely, in making such dry, and cold, and low expressions of his transcendent super excellency. Go and see; and we desire to go with you. If, in that last journey, ye tread on a serpent in the way, and thereby wound your heel, as JESUS CHRIST did before you, the print of the wound shall not be known at the resurrection of, the just. Death is but a step over time and sin to CHRIST, who knew and felt the worst of death; for death's teeth hurt him. We know that death has no teeth now, no jaws, for they are broken. It is a free prison;. citizens pay nothing for the grave; the gaoler, who had the power of death, is destroyed: praise and glory be to the Firstbegotten of the dead! The worst that may be, is, that you leave behind you Children, husband, and the church of GOD in miseries; but ye cannot get them to heaven with you for the present; ye shall not miss them; and CHRIST cannot miscount one of the poorest of his lambs. Ye shall see them again in the day when the SON shall render up the kingdom to his FATHER. The evening of every poor hireling is coming; and the church of CHRIST'S sun in this life is declining low: not a soul of the militant company will be here within a few generations; our LORD will send for them all. It is a, rich mercy that we are not married to time longer than till the course be finished. Ye may rejoice, that ye got not to heaven till ye knew that JESUS is there before you so that when ye come thither, at your first entry, ye may find the smell of his myrrh, aloes, and cassia. And this first, salutation of his will make you find that it is no uncomfortable thing to die. Go and enjoy your gain; live on CHRIST'S love while ye are here, and all the way. As for the church ye leave behind you, the government is upon CHRIST'S shoulders, and he will plead for the blood of his saints. The bush has been burning above a thousand years, and we never yet saw the ashes of this fire. Yet a little while, and the vision shall not tarry; it shall speak, and not lie. I am more afraid of my duty, than of the head of CHRIST'S government. He cannot fail to bring judgment to victory. O that we could wait for our hidden life! O that CHRIST would remove the covering, draw, aside the curtain of time, and rend the heavens and come down! O that the night were gone, that the day would break, and that he would cry to his heavenly trumpeters, "Make ready; let us go down and fold together the four corners of the world!" His grace be with you! Now, if I have found favor with you, and if ye judge me faithful, my last suit to you is, that ye would leave me a legacy, and that is, that my name may be at the very last in your prayers; as I desire also that it may be in the prayers of those of your Christian acquaintance with whom ye have been intimate.
London,
Your Brother in his own LORD JESUS,
1646.
S. R.