Joshua Redivivus, or Mr. Rutherford's Letters

Grace mercy & peace be unto you: I am yet waiting what our Lord will do for his afflicted church, & for my reentry to my Lord's house. Oh that I could hear the forfeiture of Christ [now cast out of his inheritance] recalled & taken off by open proclamation, & that Christ were restored to be a Free holder and a landed Hieritour in Scotland: & That the courts fenced in the name of the bastard Prelates [their Godfather's the Pop's Bailiffs & Sheriffs] were cried down! Oh how sweet a sight were it to see all the Tribes of the Lord in this land fetching home again our banished king Christ to his own palace, his Sanctuary and his throne! I shall think it mercy to my soul, if my faith shall out-watch all this winter night & not nod or slumber, till my Lord's summer day dawn upon me. It is much if faith & hope in the sad nights of our heavy trial escape with a whole skin, & without crack or crook: I confess unbelief hath not reason to be either father or mother to it: [for unbelief is always an irrational thing] but how can it be, but such weak eyes as ours must cast water in a great smoke; or that a weak head should not turn giddy when the water runneth deep and strong? But God be thanked that Christ in his children can endure a stress & storm: howbeit soft nature would fall down in pieces. Oh that I had that confidence as to rest