I believe that your prison is enacted in God's court not to keep you till your hope breathe out its life and last. Your cross is under law to restore you again safe to your brethren and sisters in Christ. Take heaven's and Christ's back-bond for a fair back-door out of your suffering. The Saviour is on His journey with salvation and deliverance for Mount Zion; and the sword of the Lord is drunk with blood, and made fat with fatness. His sword is bathed in heaven against Babylon, for it is "the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompense for the controversy of Zion:" and persuade yourselves the streams of the river of Babylon shall be pitch, and the dust of the land brimstone and burning pitch (Isa. xxxiv. 8, 9). And if your deliverance be joined with the deliverance of Zion, it shall be two salvations to you.
It were good to be armed beforehand for death or bodily tortures for Christ; and to think what a crown of honour it is, that God hath given you pieces of living clay to be tortured witnesses for saving truth; and that ye are so happy, as to have some pints of blood to give out for the crown of that royal Lord, who hath caused you to avouch Himself before men. If ye can lend fines of three thousand pounds sterling for Christ, let heaven's register and Christ's count-book keep in reckoning your depursements for Him. It shall be engraven and printed in great letters upon heaven's throne, what you are willing to give for Him. Christ's papers of that kind cannot be lost, or fall by.
Do not wonder to see clay boist the great Potter, and to see blinded men threaten the Gospel with death and burial, and to raze out truth's name. But where will they make a grave for the Gospel, and the Lord's bride? Earth and hell shall be but little bounds for their burial. Lay all the clay and rubbish of this inch of the whole earth above our Lord's Spouse, yet it will not cover her nor hold her down; she shall live and not die; she shall behold the salvation of God. Let your faith frist God a little, and not be afraid for a smoking firebrand. There is more smoke in Babylon's furnace than there is fire. Till doomsday shall come, they shall never see the kirk of Scotland and our Covenant burnt to ashes; or, if it should be thrown into the fire, yet it cannot be so burnt or buried as not to have a resurrection. Angry clay's wind shall shake none of Christ's corn: He will gather in all His wheat into His barn. Only let your fellowship with Christ be renewed.