DEAR BROTHER,--Grace, mercy, and peace be multiplied upon you.--I bless our rich and only wise Lord, who careth so for His new creation that He is going over it again, and trying every piece in you, and blowing away the motes of His new work in you. Alas! I am not so fit a physician as your disease requireth. Sweet, sweet, lovely Jesus be your physician, where His under-chirurgeons cannot do anything for putting in order the wheels, paces, and goings of a marred[420] soul. I have little time; but yet the Lord hath made me so to concern myself in your condition, that I dow not, I dare not, be altogether silent.
[420] A soul that has been put out of order. The edition of 1675, and some others, has "married soul."
First: ye doubt, from 2 Cor. xiii. 5, whether ye be in Christ or not? and so, whether you are a reprobate or not? I answer three things to the doubt.--1. Ye owe charity to all men, but most of all to lovely and loving Jesus, and some also to your self; especially to your renewed self, because your new self is not yours, but another Lord's, even the work of His own Spirit. Therefore, to slander His work is to wrong Himself. Love thinketh no evil: if ye love grace, think not ill of grace in yourself. And ye think ill of grace in yourself when ye make it but a bastard and a work of nature; for a holy fear that ye be not Christ's, and withal a care and a desire to be His, and not your own, is not, nay cannot be, bastard nature. The great Advocate pleadeth hard for you; be upon the Advocate's side, O poor feared client of Christ! Stay, and side with such a Lover, who pleadeth for no other man's goods than His own; for He (if I may say so) scorneth to be enriched with unjust conquest. And yet He pleadeth for you, whereof your letter (though too, too full of jealousy) is a proof. For, if ye were not His, your thoughts (which, I hope, are but the suggestions of His Spirit, that only bringeth the matter into debate to make it sure to you) would not be such, nor so serious as these, "Am I His?" or "Whose am I?" 2. Dare ye forswear your Owner, and say in cold blood, "I am not His"? What nature or corruption saith at starts in you, I regard not. Your thoughts of yourself, when sin and guiltiness round you in the ear, and when you have a sight of your deservings, are Apocrypha, and not Scripture, I hope. Hear what the Lord saith of you: "He will speak peace." If your Master say, "I quit you," I shall then bid you eat ashes for bread, and drink waters of gall and wormwood. But, however Christ out of His own mouth should seem to say, "I come not for thee," as He did, Matt. xv. 24; yet let me say that the words of the tempting Jesus[421] are not to be stretched as Scripture, beyond His intention, seeing His intention in speaking them is to strengthen, not to deceive. And, therefore, here faith may contradict what Christ seemeth at first to say, and so may ye. I charge you by the mercies of God, be not that cruel to grace and the new birth as to cast water on your own coal by misbelief. If ye must die (as I know ye shall not), it were a folly to slay yourself. 3. I hope that ye love the new birth and a claim to Christ, howbeit ye do not make it good; and if ye were in hell, and saw the heavenly face of lovely, ten thousand times lovely Jesus, that hath God's hue, and God's fair, fair and comely red and white, wherewith it is beautified beyond comparison and imagination, ye could not forbear to say, "Oh, if I could but blow a kiss from my sinful mouth from hell up to heaven, upon His cheeks that are a bed of spices as sweet flowers!" (Cant. v. 13). I hope ye dare say, "O fairest sight of heaven! O boundless mass of crucified and slain love for me, give me leave to wish to love Thee! O Flower and Bloom of heaven and earth's love! O angels' Wonder! O Thou, the Father's eternal, sealed Love! and O Thou, God's old Delight! give me leave to stand beside Thy love, and look in and wonder; and give me leave to wish to love Thee, if I can do no more." 4. We being born in atheism, and bairns of the house that we are come of, it is no new thing, my dear brother, for us to be under jealousies and mistakes about the love of God. What think ye of this, that the man, Christ, was tempted to believe there were but two persons in the blessed Godhead, and that the Son of God, the substantial and coeternal Son, was not the lawful Son of God? Did not Satan say, "If Thou be the Son of God?"
[421] Jesus, when He puts us to trial (Gen. xxii.).