The following interesting letter, so fragrant with a beautiful piety, is dated 29th September, 1668, and was written to George Porterfield, who is described as “late Provost of Glasgow.” It is taken from the Privy Council Register (vol. ii., pp. 671-674, Third Series). It fitly closes a volume in which there is very little of the spirit it breathes in the transactions of the men in power. It is when one reads such letters as these that the truth is brought home to us what an impossible task the Government had in crushing such men as these. They lived as men sojourning here for a season, and made it their business to make an arrangement, like “Mr. Honest,” that “Good Conscience” would meet them at the river when they were called to enter into God’s presence. The letter is as follows:—”Much honoured and very dear Sir,—I do by this line salute much in the Lord, yourself and your worthy yoke-fellow and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, whom He is graciously pleased to keep yet together when He hath made many sad separations and divorces betwixt other husbands and wives, partly by violent, partly by natural, deaths, which I know mightily alarms and provokes you to more than ordinary and more than ever diligent, careful, and conscionable improvement of one another’s fellowship, to the best spiritual advantage. It’s but a little, and that knot cast by God’s owne hand betwixt you two old disciples will by that same hand be loosed. He hath already untied it betwixt you and your children and children’s children, and given you instead thereof a name within His walls, better than the name of sons and daughters—ever an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. All the knots of the nearest and most immediate relations betwixt husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, are but running knots; there is but one harden knot (to speak so), fast and strongly drawn by the hands and everlasting arms of the mighty God of Jacob, which is eternally incapable of any dissolution—that blest knot of union and conjunction betwixt the believer and Christ Jesus. Neither men nor devils nor death can loose this knot nor cut it asunder, and Himself hath resolved and said that He will never loose it nor suffer the sinner to do it. Blest, blest, blest eternally be God that hath cast this unloosable knot betwixt His own Son and you both, and that you are both married to a husband that cannot grow old nor sick, neither can die. Comfort one another, even comfort ye your hearts together in the certain and solid hope and expectation of the consummation of the marriage when you shall, being clothed with wrought gold and with a garment of needlework, be brought unto the King with gladness and rejoicing and made to enter into His palace. That, O, that will be a night of observations—a night much to be remembered and observed ! Let the hope of it persuade each of you sweetlie to submit to the loosing of your marriage tie (which must necessarily precede the consummation of that marriage), and to live a while, sad and solitary, behind the other and after the other is gone, which will not be long, and yet even that little while the relict shall not be left alone—the Father will be with you ; blest be God, that when the one shall go home, the other will shortly follow, and that that sad and dreadful word shall not take place in you : ‘ And two shall be in one bed, and the one shall be taken and the other left,’ but both shall be taken. Let even your hearts say, ‘ Haste and go ; haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices. Let the day break and the shadows flee away ; let time pass. Come, sweet Lord Jesus, come.’ I know you are both in heaviness for the time through manifold temptations, and particularly through that late sad stroke of the removal of your precious neighbour—that excellent and singularly useful man in his generation—like whom, all things being considered, there are not many, if any, behind of his station. It looks ominous and wrath-like to the poor Church of Scotland, and particularly to Glasgow. You are well stricken in years, O single-hearted and faithful servant of God, and he is gone. Alas ! how few are behind these. The removal of so many choice men since our trial began—some of all ranks—hath affrighted me sore, and sadly threatened the dissolution of our visible Church state, and now the removal of this truly great man (if worth make men great, as it doth in my apprehensions) hath almost put the copestone upon my fears, and I am arrived at a persuasion that nothing but wonderfully free and sovereign grace can disappoint these fears. Our Church hath many death-like symptoms—most of the noble parts are consumed and wasted away—but He brings down to the grave and up again. The issues from death belong to Him. He kills and makes alive. The residue of the Spirit is with Him. He can easily raise up, spirit, and prompt men for work when He hath aught to do with them, and bring men out of corners who have scarce ever been noticed or heard of, and constrain the Church, our afflicted mother, as being surprised with their grace and gifts, to cry out : ‘ Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro ; and who hath brought up these ? Behold, I was left alone there ; where had they been ?’ But, oh, we look like a generation of His wrath, towards whom it seems His mind could not be, though Moses and Samuel, Noah, Job, and Daniel—those men of prayer—stood before Him to intercede for us. If the great High Priest and Intercessor interpose not, we are undone. As for us, for the great part, we cannot pray. We cry out when He binds us. Our strokes are highly above our groaning. Though all this hath come upon us, yet have we not made our prayer to Him, nor turned from our iniquities, that we might understand His truth. Though we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have carried us away, yet there is no man almost that calls on His name or stirreth up himself to take hold of God. Thus will it still be till the Spirit be poured out from on high. Come then, O breath from the four winds, and breathe on these slain. I salute in the Lord your worthy wife, also Mr. Spreul, and all our other dear friends there. The good Lord cease, if it be His will, from making any more breaches amongst you of that honourable society, and keep you all alive, that your feet may yet stand in the gates of our Jerusalem in Scotland, and that you may yet all praise Him in the great congregation there, though poor, insignificant I should not have the privilege to be with you. Encourage yourselves in Him. It will, no doubt, be found that He hath done even all these sad things well. It is not easy to get it believed when the wound aches and bleeds, but we must fight against all that sense can say for the faith of it. That late death, I must say again, hath struck me sore. Beside the Church’s loss, I have particularly lost one of the kindest friends I had in the world. It hath much crushed some of my poor purposes, but it’s the Lord, even the Lord, who will have us emptied of all things and persons that we looked too much unto, and necessitated—happily necessitated—to confine all our looke and expectation for what may make us happie—Himself only. It’s impossible to meet with disappointment there. Grace be with you.—I am, honoured and dear Sir, your own servant, such as I am,
JOHN JACKSON.