Ll. to Mr Fulk Ellis

Ellis was an Irish Presbyterian serving as a captain in the Scottish

army.

WORTHY AND MUCH HONOURED IN OUR LORD, -- Grace, mercy, and peace be to

you.

1. I am glad of our more than paper acquaintance. Seeing we have one

Father, it reckoneth the less, though we never see one another's face.

I profess myself most unworthy to follow the camp of such a worthy and

renowned Captain as Christ.

2. As for our lovely and beloved church in Ireland, my heart bleedeth

for her desolation; but I believe that our Lord is only lopping the

vine-trees, but not intending to cut them down, or root them out. It is

but folly to measure the Gospel by summer or winter weather: the

summer-sun of the saints shineth not on them in this life.

How should

we have complained, if the Lord had turned the same providence that we

now stomach at upside down, and had ordered matters thus, that first

the saints should have enjoyed heaven, glory, and ease, and then

Methuselah's days of sorrow and daily miseries? We would think a short

heaven no heaven. Certainly His ways pass finding out.

3. Ye complain of the evil of heart-atheism: but it is to a greater

atheist than any man can be, that ye write of that. Oh, light findeth

not that reverence and fear which a plant of God's setting should find

in our soul! How do we by nature, as others, detain and hold captive

the truth of God in unrighteousness, and so make God's light a bound

prisoner?

Certainly there cometh great mist and clouds from the lower

part of our souls, our earthly affections, to the higher part, which is

our conscience, either natural or renewed: as smoke in a lower house

breaketh up, and defileth the house above. If we had more practice of

obedience, we should have more sound light. I think, lay aside all

other guiltiness, that this one, the violence done to God's candle in

our soul, were a sufficient ditty against us. There is no helping of

this but by striving to stand in awe of God's light.

I see there is a

necessity that we protest against the doings of the Old Man, and raise

up a party against our worst half, to accuse, condemn, sentence, and

with sorrow bemoan, the dominion of sin's kingdom; and withal make law,

in the New Covenant, against our guiltiness. For Christ once condemned

sin in the flesh, and we are to condemn it over again. And if there had

not been such a thing as the grace of Jesus, I should have long since

given up with heaven, and with the expectation to see God. But grace,

grace, free grace, the merits of Christ for nothing, white and fair,

and large Saviour-mercy, have been, and must be, the rock that we

drowned souls must swim to.

New washing, renewed application of

purchased redemption, by that sacred blood that sealeth the free

Covenant, is a thing of daily and hourly use to a poor sinner. And even

when we have won the castle, then must we eternally sing, 'Worthy,

worthy is the Lamb, who has saved us, and washed us in His own blood.'

ABERDEEN, Sept. 7, 1637