Joshua Redivivus, or Mr. Rutherford's Letters

Grace, mercy & peace be to you: It is the least of the princely & royal bounty of Jesus Christ, to pay a King's debts & not to have his servants at a loss: his gold is better then yours, & his hundred fold is the in-come & rent of heaven & far above your revenues: ye are not the first who have cast up your accounts that way: better have Christ your factor then any other, for he tradeth to the advantage of his poor servants. But if the hundred fold in this life be so well told, as Christ cannot pay you with miscounting or deferred hope, O what must the rent of ⟨p. 539⟩that Land be, which rendereth every day, & every hour of the years of long Eternity, the whole rent of a year, yea, of more then thousand thousands of ages, even the weighty in-come of a rich Kingdom, not every summer once, but every moment! That sum of glory will take you & all the Angels telling. To be a Tenant to such a Land-lord, where every berry & grape of the large field beareth no worse fruit then glory, fullness of joy & pleasures that endure for evermore, I leave it to your self to think what a summer, what a soil, what a garden, must be there, and what must be the commodities of that highest Land, where Sun & Moon are under the feet of the inhabitants: Surely the Land cannot be bought with gold, blood, banishment, loss of father & mother, husband, wife, children: We but dwell here because we can do no better; it is need, not virtue, to be sojourners in a prison; to weep & sigh, & Alas! to sin 60 or 70 years in a land of tears: the fruits that grow here are all seasoned & salted with sin. O how sweet is't that the company of the first born should be divided in two great bodies of an Army, & some in their country, & some in the way to their country! If it were no more but to see once the face of the Prince of this good land, & to be feasted for eternity with the fatness, sweetness, dainties of the rays & beams of matchless glory & incomparable fountain-love, it were a well spent journey to creep, hands & feet, through seven deaths & seven hells, to enjoy him up at the well-head. Only let us not weary, the miles to that Land are fewer & shorter then when we first believed: strangers are not wise to quarrel with their Host & complain of their lodging; it's a foul way, but a fair home.