Rutherford, Of summering and wintering with Jesus Christ

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Whether time or the fashion has obtained of me, worthy Reader, that this sermon should come under the providence of your favorable judgment and candor, I can hardly determine; but you have it as it is, only I shall heartily desire, in [the] reviewing of it, your serious thoughts in these ensuing considerations:

1. What I speak here of God and his excellency is but a shadow to the expressions of others, and what others can say, men or angels, is but a short and rude shadow of that infinite All, the High Jehovah, Creator of heaven and earth; so my thoughts come forth as shadows of shadows. For there behooved to be much honey in the ink, much of heaven in the breast, much of God in the pen of any who speaks of such a transcendent subject; yet if these do affect you, it is possible I say more, if not, I shall desire not to spill the Lord’s highest praises with my low-creeping under-expressions.

2. Concerning God’s dispensations now in Britain and his church’s consideration, I shall be your debtor, in all humble modesty, to beg these thoughts to go along with God:

As (1), let the Lord have a charitable sense and good construction of his most wise dispensation, and believe that He who has his fire in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem (Isa. 31:9), sees good that Christ’s cross should be the church of Christ’s birthright, and that a life-rent of afflictions is a surer way for Zion, than summer days.

(2) You are not to stumble that God will not fit his times to men’s apprehensions, when to rain and when to shine fair. Neither is clay to usurp the chair, and dispute the matter, to make the All-wise providence a school problem, nor ask why is our Zion built with carcasses of men in two kingdoms, fallen, as dung in the open field, and as the handful after the harvest man (Jer. 9:22). Why is the wall of the daughter of Zion sprinkled with blood [Lam. 2:8, 18]? One thing I know, it is better to believe than to dispute, and to adore, than to plead with Him who gives not account of His matters (Job 33:13).

(3) Innocency in these times is better than court with princes, and the condition of the heirs of heaven, yea their tears, better than the joy of the hypocrite.

(4) Christ’s church can neither shift nor adjourn such a share of affliction, as is written in God’s book. It is a standing and current court which has decreed what grains of gall and wormwood England must drink, what a cup is prepared for Scotland, and the balance of wisdom has weighed by ounce weights how much wrath shall be mixed in the cup of wasted Ireland.

… (5) You know it is generally the condition of the church, if she have any summer, that it is but a good day between two fevers. Heaven, heaven is the home and the desired day of the Bride, the Lamb’s wife.

(6) It is much better to be afflicted than to be guilty, and that the church may have pardon, and[lack] peace.

(7) That the faith which is more precious than gold, can bid the devil do his worst, and that the patience of the saints can out-weary the malice of Babylon or Babel, on whose skirts is found the blood of the saints.

(8) That it is now and ever true, as when a hungry man dreams, and behold he eats, but he awakens and his soul is empty, or, as when a thirsty man drinks, but he awakes, and behold he (is) faint, so shall the multitude of all nations be that fight against mount Zion (Isa. 29:8).

(9) Vengeance is gone out from the Lord against those who feast upon Zion’s tears, and they must die the death of the uncircumcised (Ezek. 28:10), who clapped their hands, and stamped with the feet, and rejoiced in heart with all their despite against the land of Israel (Ezek. 25:6).

(10) They are in no better condition who refuse to help the Lord against the mighty, and whose heart is as a stone and a piece of dead flesh, at all the revolutions and tossings of Christ’s Kingdom, who dance, eat and laugh within their own orb, and if their desires be concentric to the world and themselves, care not whether Joseph dies in the stocks or not [Ps. 105:18], or whether Zion sinks or swims; because whatever they had of religion, it was never their mind both to summer and winter Jesus Christ….

(11) The rise of the gospel sun is like the prodigious appearance of a new comet, to the woman that sits on many waters, to that mother Rome-planted, as a vine in blood, the lioness, whose whelps, papists and prelates in Ireland and England, have learned to catch prey; and this comet prophesies woe to the Pope, King of the bottomless pit, and his bloody Lady Babel, if Christ shall arise and shine in the power of his gospel.

(12) God has now as great a work on the wheels, as concerns the race of the chariots of Jesus Christ through the habitable world; pray, Oh let his Kingdom come, and farewell.

Yours in the Lord Jesus,

S. R.

Samuel Rutherford, “To the Christian Reader,” prefixed to his House of Commons sermon, Sermons Preached Before the English Houses of Parliament by the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly of Divines 1643–1645 (Naphtali Press, 2011) 387–389.
 
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