Blessed be ye of the Lord, Madam, if ye would help a poor dyvour, and cause others of your acquaintance in Christ to help me to pay my debt of love, even real praises to Christ my Lord. Madam, let me charge you in the Lord, as ye shall answer to Him, to help me in this duty (which He hath tied about my neck with a chain of such singular expressions of His loving-kindness), to set on high Christ; to hold in my honesty at His hands[285]; for I have nothing to give to Him. Oh that He would arrest and comprise my love and my heart for all! I am a dyvour, who have no more free goods in the world for Christ save that; it is both the whole heritage I have, and all my moveables besides. Lord, give the thirsty man a drink. Oh, to be over the ears in the well! Oh, to be swattering and swimming over head and ears in Christ's love! I would not have Christ's love entering into me, but I would enter into it, and be swallowed up of that love. But I see not myself here; for I fear I make more of His love than of Himself; whereas Himself is far beyond and much better than His love. Oh, if I had my sinful arms filled with that lovely one Christ! Blessed be my rich Lord Jesus, who sendeth not away beggars from His house with a toom dish. He filleth the vessels of such as will come and seek. We might beg ourselves rich (if we were wise) if we could hold out our withered hands to Christ, and learn to suit and seek, ask and knock. I owe my salvation for Christ's glory, I owe it to Christ; and desire that my hell, yea, a new hell, seven times hotter than the old hell, might buy praises before men and angels to my Lord Jesus; providing always that I were free of Christ's hatred and displeasure. What am I, to be forfeited and sold in soul and body, to have my great and royal King set on high and extolled above all? Oh, if I knew how high to have Him set, and all the world far, far beneath the soles of His feet? Nay, I deserve not to be the matter of His praises, far less to be an agent in praising of Him. But He can win His own glory out of me, and out of worse than I (if any such be), if it please His holy majesty so to do. He knoweth that I am not now flattering Him.
[285] To keep up my character with Him.
Madam, let me have your prayers, as ye have the prayers and blessing of him that is separated from his brethren. Grace, grace be with you.
Your own, in his sweet Lord Jesus,