BELOVED MISTRESS,--My dearest love in Christ remembered to you. Know that Mr. Abraham[120] showed me there is to be a meeting of the bishops at Edinburgh shortly. The causes are known to themselves. It is our part to hold up our hands for Zion. Howbeit, it is reported, they came sad from court. It is our Lord's wisdom, that His kirk should ever hang by a thread; and yet the thread breaketh not, being hanged upon Him who is the sure Nail in David's house (Isa. xxii. 23), upon whom all the vessels, great and small, do hang; and the Nail (God be thanked) neither crooketh nor can be broken. Jesus, that Flower of Jesse set without hands, getteth many a blast, and yet withers not, because He is His Father's noble Rose, casting a sweet smell through heaven and earth, and must grow; and in the same garden grow the saints, God's fair and beautiful lilies, under wind and rain, and all sun-burned, and yet life remaineth at the root. Keep within His garden, and you shall grow with them, till the Great Husbandman, our dear Master Gardener, come and transplant you from the lower part of His vineyard up to the higher, to the very heart of His garden, above the wrongs of the rain, sun, or wind. And then, wait upon the times of the blowing of the sweet south and north wind of His gracious Spirit, that may make you cast a sweet smell in your Beloved's nostrils; and bid your Beloved come down to His garden, and eat of His pleasant fruits (Cant. iv. 16). And He will come. You will get no more but this until you come up to the Well-head, where you shall put up your hand and take down the apples of the tree of life, and eat under the shadow of that tree. These apples are sweeter up beside the tree than they are down here in this piece of a clay prison-house. I have no joy but in the thoughts of these times. Doubt not of your Lord's part and the spouse's part; she shall be in good case. That word shall stand, "I shall be as the dew to Israel: he shall grow up as the lily, and cast out his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon" (Hosea xiv. 5, 6). Christ shall set up His colours, and His ensign for the nations, and shall gather together the outcasts of Israel (Isa. xi. 12). "Then the Lord said to me, Son of man, these dead bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, our hope is lost; we are cut off for our parts. Therefore prophesy unto them, and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel" (Ezek. xxxvii. 11, 12). These promises are not wind, but the breast of our beloved Christ, which we must suck and draw comfort out of. Ye have cause to pity those poor creatures that stand out against Christ, and the building of His house. Silly men! they have but a feckless and silly heaven, nothing but meat and cloth, and laugh a day or two in the world, and then in a moment go down to the grave; and they shall not be able to hinder Christ's building. He that is Master of work will lead stones to the wall over their belly.
[120] Possibly, Mr. Abraham Henderson; a staunch defender of Presbytery, who, in 1605, persisted, along with eight of his brethren, in convening at Aberdeen, in face of prohibition, in order to maintain a protest in behalf of the Church's inherent right to meet in General Assembly. (See Forbes' "Apolog. Narration," p. 136.)