Joshua Redivivus, or Mr. Rutherford's Letters

Grace, Mercy & Peace be to you. I hope ye know what conditions past betwixt Christ & you at your first meeting: Ye remember he said, your summer days would have clouds and your rose a prickly thorn bend it: Christ is unmixed in heaven, all sweetness and honey, here we have him with his thorny and rough cross; yet I know no tree beareth sweeter fruit then Christ's cross, except I would raise a lying report on it: It is your part to take Christ as he is to be had in this life: Sufferings are like a wood planted round about his house, over door and window: If we could hold fast our grips of him; the field were won: Yet a little while and Christ shall triumph: Give Christ his own short time to spin, out these two long threads of heaven and hell to all mankind, for certainly the thread will not break; and when he hath accomplished his work in mount Zion and hath refined his silver, he will bring new vessels out of the furnace, and plenish his house and take up house again. I counsel you to free your self of clogging temptations, by overcoming some, & contemning others; and watching over all: abide true and loyal to Christ, for few now are fast to him: they give Christ blank paper for a bond of service and attendance, now when Christ hath most ado: to waste a little blood with Christ, and to put out part of this drossy world in pawn over in his hand, as willing to quite it for him, is the safest cabinet to keep the world in: But these who would take the world & all their flitring on their back & run away from Christ, they will fall by the way & leave their burden behind them, & be taken captive themselves. Well were my soul to put all I have; life & soul, over in Christ's hands; let him be forth-coming for all. If any ask, how I do? I answer, none can be but well that are in Christ: And if I were not so, my sufferings had melted me away in ashes and smoke; I thank my Lord that he hath something in me that this fire cannot consume. Remember