Joshua Redivivus, or Mr. Rutherford's Letters

Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth and they lied unto him with their tongues. It is a part of our hypocrisy to give God •air white words, when he hath us in his grips [if I may speak so] & to flatter him till we win to the fair fields again. Try well green godliness, and examine what it is ye love in Christ: if ye love but Christ's sunny side, & would have only summer weather & a land-gate, not a sea-way to heaven, your profession will play you a slip, and the winter-well will go dry again in summer: Make no sports nor bairns-play of Christ: But labour for a sound & lively sight of sin, that ye may judge your self an undone man, a damned slave of hell & sin, one dying in your own blood, except Christ come and rue upon you, & take you up; and therefore make sure & fast work of conversion: Cast the earth deep; and down, down with the old work, the building of confusion that was there before, & let Christ lay new work & make a new creation within you: look if Christ's rain goeth down to the root of your withered plants, and if his love wound your heart while it bleed with sorrow for sin, & if ye can pant & fall a swoon & be like to die for that lovely one, Jesus: I know Christ will not to be hid ⟨p. 284⟩where he is, grace will ever speak for it self, be fruitful in welldoing: The sanctified cross, is a fruitful tree, it bringeth forth many apples. If I should tell you by some weak experience what I have found in Christ, ye or others could hardly believe me: I thought not the hundred part of Christ long since that I do now, though alas my thoughts are still infinitely below his worth. I have a dwining, sickly and pained life for a real possession of him, and am troubled with love brashes and love-fevers, but it is a sweet pain: I would refuse no conditions, not hell excepted [reserving always God's hatred] to buy possession of Jesus; but alas I am not a merchant who have any money to give for him, I must either come to a good cheap market where wares are had for nothing, else I go home empty: But I have cast this work upon Christ to get me himself: I have his faith & truth & promise [as a pawn of his] all engaged, that I shall obtain that which my hungry desires would be at, & I esteem that the choice of my happiness:

Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth and they lyed unto him with their tongues. It is a part of our hypocrisie to give God •air white words, when he hath us in his grips [if I may speak so] & to flatter him till we win to the fair fields again. Try well green godliness, and exmine what it is ye love in Christ: if ye love but Christ's sunny side, & would have onely summerweather & a land-gate, not a sea-way to heaven, your profession will play you a slip, and the winter-well will goe dry again in summer: Make no sports nor bairns-play of Christ: But labour for a sound & lively sight of sin, that ye may judge your self an undone man, a damned slave of hell & sin, one dying in your own blood, except Christ come and rue upon you, & take you up; and therefore make sure & fast work of conversion: Cast the earth deep; and down, down with the old work, the building of confusion that was there before, & let Christ lay new work & make a new creation within you: look if Christ's rain goeth down to the root of your withered plants, and if his love wound your heart while it bleed with sorrow for sin, & if ye can pant & fall a swoon & be like to die for that lovely one, Jesus: I know Christ will not to be hid