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TO THE

CHRISTIAN READER.

CHRISTIAN READER,

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IN each of these Epistles thou mayest perceive, how the Writer's heart is inflamed with a holy fire, and how his soul ascends, as if snatched up to heaven, and caught up above all that is below God. how much drops from his pen above the ordinary attainments and experience, even of such as seem to have out-run others! So that in respect of us, this angel of the church speaks as one standing already in the choir of angels, or as an angel come down from heaven among men. And thus, leaving thee to peruse what is made public for thy edification; and to press this pomegranate, and squeeze this grape; and to drink till thou find thy soul refreshed with its spiced wine; and wishing thee an experimental knowledge of that surpassing and inconceivable sweetness which is in the fruition of God, and to be enjoyed in a fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ, and a full draught of these pure streams of solid joy and consolation, wherewith the soul of this saint was refreshed, and which run through these lines. He speaks as coming forth out of the king's banquet

ing house, to persuade thee to go in thither, and feast and refresh thy soul with the same pure delights, and permanent pleasures, whereon he fed, and which flow in upon the soul, and overflow it, while the saint finds himself, with his Beloved's "left hand under his head, and his right hand embracing him.” I shall only wish and beg, that thou wouldst seriously seek of God the same thing for him who seeks this for thee, and hath this design in the pains taken in publishing these Letters; if thou be thereby provoked to seek till thou find, this is that adequate recompense which he seeks, earnestly entreats, and expects, who is

Thy soul's well-wisher,

and Servant in Christ Jesus.

LETTERS.

To VISCOUNTESS KENMURE. (1.)

MADAM,

ALL dutiful obedience in the Lord remembered: I have heard of your Ladyship's infirmity and sickness with grief; yet I trust you have learned to say, "It is the Lord, let him do whatever seemeth good in his eyes." It is now many years since the apostate angels made a question, whether their will, or the will of their Creator, should be done; and since that time, froward mankind have always pleaded in that same suit with them against God, in daily repining against his will. But the Lord, being both Party and Judge, hath declared, "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:" Isa. xlvi. 10. It is then best for us, in the obedience of faith, and in holy submission, to give that to God, which the law of his almighty and just power will have of us: therefore, Madam, your Lord wills you, in all states of life, to say, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven;" and herein shall you have comfort, that He who sees perfectly through all your evils, and knows the frame and constitution of your nature,

and what is most healthful for your soul, administers every cup of affliction with his own gracious hand. Never believe that your tender-hearted Saviour, who knows the weakness of your constitution, will mix that cup with one drachm weight of poison; drink then with the patience of the saints, and the God of patience bless your medicine. I have heard your Ladyship complain of deadness, and want of the bestirring power of the life of God: but courage,

He who walked in the garden, and caused Adam to hear his voice, will also, at some time, come into your soul, and make you to hear a more sweet word. You are, at such a time, like Jacob mourning the supposed death of Joseph, when Joseph was living. The new creature, the image of the second Adam, is living in you; and yet you are lamenting the supposed death of the life of Christ in you. I have good confidence, Madam, that Christ Jesus, whom your soul is seeking, is within you; and yet I speak not this, to lay a pillow under your head, or to dissuade you from a holy fear of the loss of your Saviour. I know, in spiritual confidence, the devil will be apt to come in, and endeavour to bring you under a fearful sleep, till he whom your soul loveth be departed from the door, and have left off knocking; and therefore, here the Spirit of God must hold your soul in the middle line, betwixt confident resting in the arms of Christ, and drowsy presumptuous sleeping in the bed of carnal security. Therefore, worthy lady, so count little of yourself, because of your own wretchedness and sinful drowsiness, that you count not also little of God, in the course of his

unchangeable mercy; for there be many Christians, most like to young sailors, who think the shore and the whole land doth move, when the ship and they themselves are moved-just so, not a few do imagine, that God moveth and changeth place, because their giddy souls are under sail, and subject to alteration, to ebbing and flowing. But "the foundation of the Lord abideth sure;" God knoweth that you are his own. Wrestle, fight, go forward, watch, fear, believe, pray, and then you have all the infallible symptoms of one of the elect of Christ within you. You have now, Madam, a sickness before you, and after that, a death; gather then food for the journey. God give you eyes to see through sickness and death, and to see something beyond death. Now, I believe you have only these two shallow brooks, sickness and death, to pass through; and you have also a promise that Christ shall do more than meet you, even that he shall come himself; yea, and bear

in his arms. you O then! O then, for the joy that is set before you, for the love of the man (who is also God over all, blessed for ever) that is standing upon the shore to welcome you, run your race with patience the Lord go with you. Your Lord will not have you, nor any of his servants, exchange for the worse. Death in itself includeth both the death

of the soul, and the death of the body. But to God's children the bounds and limits of death are abridged and drawn into a more narrow compassso that, when you die, death shall in part only seize upon you, or the least part of you only shall die, and that is, the dissolution of the body: for in Christ

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