WELL-BELOVED AND DEAR BROTHER,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I thank you most kindly for your care and love to me, and in particular to my brother, in his distress in Edinburgh.[230] Go on through your waters without wearying; your Guide knoweth the way; follow Him, and cast your cares and temptations upon Him. And let not worms, the sons of men, affright you; they shall die, and the moth shall eat them. Keep your garland; there is no less at the stake, in this game betwixt us and the world, than our conscience and salvation. We have need to take heed to the game, and not to yield to them. Let them take other things from us; but here, in matters of conscience, we must hold and draw with kings, and set ourselves in terms of opposition with the shields of the earth. Oh, the sweet communion, for evermore, that hath been between Christ and His prisoner! He wearieth not to be kind. He is the fairest sight I see in Aberdeen, or in any part that ever my feet were in.
[230] Rutherford here refers to the trial of his brother George, schoolmaster and reader in Kirkcudbright, before the High Commission, at Edinburgh, in November the preceding year, for his nonconformity and zealous support of Mr. Robert Glendinning, the persecuted minister of Kirkcudbright. As previously noticed (Letter LXVII.), he was condemned to resign his office, and to remove from Kirkcudbright before the ensuing term of Whitsunday. When at Edinburgh, and on his trial, he experienced much kindness from several of the correspondents of our author, who, in his letters to them, makes the most heartfelt grateful acknowledgments. After his ejection, "he seems," says Murray, "to have taken refuge in Ayrshire; for in a letter to Lord Loudon, Rutherford speaks of his brother as being nigh his Lordship's bounds; and every individual whom he addressed on his behalf (after his removal from Kirkcudbright) was connected with that county. The kindness and the frequency with which, in his letters, he speaks of him, do honour to his heart" ("Life of Rutherford," p. 93).
Remember my hearty kindness to your wife. I desire her to believe, and lay her cares on God, and make fast work of salvation. Grace be with you.
Yours in his only Lord Jesus,