MY VERY HONOURABLE AND GOOD LORD,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--I am glad to hear that you, in the morning of your short day, mind Christ, and that you love the honour of His crown and kingdom. I beseech your Lordship to begin now to frame your love, and to cast it in no mould but one, that it may be for Christ only; for when your love is now in the framing and making, it will take best with Christ. If any other than Jesus get a grip of it, when it is green and young, Christ will be an unco and strange world to you. Promise the lodging of your soul first away to Christ, and stand by your first covenant, and keep to Jesus, that He may find you honest. It is easy to master an arrow, and to set it right, ere the string be drawn; but when once it is shot, and in the air, and the flight begun, then ye have no more power at all to command it. It were a blessed thing, if your love could now level only at Christ, that His fair face were the black of the mark ye shot at. For when your love is loosed, and out of your grips, and in its motion to fetch home an idol, and hath taken a whorish gadding journey, to seek an unknown and strange lover, ye shall not then have power to call home the arrow, or to be master of your love; and ye will hardly give Christ what ye scarcely have yourself.
I speak not this, as if youth itself could fetch heaven and Christ. Believe it, my Lord, it is hardly credible what a nest of dangerous temptations youth is; how inconsiderate, foolish, proud, vain, heady, rash, profane, and careless of God, this piece of your life is; so that the devil findeth in that age a garnished and well-swept house for himself, and seven devils worse than himself. For then affections are on horseback, lofty and stirring; then the old man hath blood, lust, much will, and little wit, and hands, feet, wanton eyes, profane ears, as his servants, and as a king's officers at command, to come and go at his will. Then a green conscience is as supple as the twig of a young tree. It is for every way, every religion; every lewd course prevaileth with it. And, therefore, oh, what a sweet couple, what a glorious yoke, are youth and grace, Christ and a young man! This is a meeting not to be found in every town. None who have been at Christ can bring back to your Lordship a report answerable to His worth; for Christ cannot be spoken of, or commended according to His worth. "Come and see," is the most faithful messenger to speak of Him: little persuasion would prevail where this was. It is impossible, in the setting out of Christ's love, to lie and pass over truth's line. The discourses of angels, or love-books written by the congregation of seraphim (all their wits being conjoined and melted into one), would for ever be in the nether side of truth, and of plentifully declaring the thing as it is. The infiniteness, the boundlessness of that incomparable excellency that is in Jesus, is a great word. God send me, if it were but the relics and leavings, or an ounce-weight or two, of His matchless love; and suppose I never got another heaven (provided this blessed fire were evermore burning), I could not but be happy for ever. Come hither, then, and give out your money wisely for bread; come hither, and bestow your love.