Joshua Redivivus, or Mr. Rutherford's Letters

Dearly beloved in our Lord, & partakers of the heavenly calling, Grace, mercy & peace be to you, from God our father, & from our Lord Jesus Christ: I always but most of all now in my bonds (most sweet bonds for Christ my Lord) rejoice, to hear of your faith, and love, & to hear that our King, our well beloved, our bridegroom, without tiring, stayeth still to woo you, as his wife; and that persecutions, & mockings of sinners have not chased away the wooer from the house, I persuade you in the Lord, the men of God now Scattered, & driven from you; put you upon the right sent and pursuit of Christ, & my salvation on it (if ten heavens were mine) if this way, this way that I now suffer for, this way that the world nicknameth, and reproacheth, & no other way, be not the Kings gate to heaven; & I shall never see Gods face (and alas I were a beguiled wretch if it were so) if this be not the only saving way to heaven. Oh that you would take a prisoner of Christs word for it, nay I know you have the greatest Kings word for it, that it shall not be your wisdom to spier out another Christ, another way of worshipping him, then is now savingly revealed to you. Therefore though I never saw your faces let me be pardoned to write to you ye honourable persons, ye faithful Pastors yet amongst the flocks, and ye sincere professors of Christs truth, or any weak tired strayers who cast but half an eye after the bridegroom; if possibly I ⟨p. 13⟩could by any weak experience, confirm and strengthen you, in this good way every where spoken against. I can with greatest assurance (to the honour of our highest, & greatest & dearest Lord let it be spoken) assert, (though I be but a child in Christ, and scarce able to walk, but by a hold, & the meanest and less then the least of Saints) that we do not come nigh, by twenty degrees, to the due love & estimation of that fairest among the sons of men; for if it were possible that heaven yea ten heavens, were laid in the balance with Christ, I would think the smell of his breath, above them all: sure I am he is the far best half of heaven, yea he is all heaven, and more then all heaven; & my testimony of him is, that ten lives of black sorrow, ten deaths, ten hells of pain, ten furnaces of brimstone, and all exquisite torments; were all too little for Christ, if our suffering could be a hire to buy him:

DEarly beloved in our Lord, & partakers of the heavenly calling, Grace, mercy & peace be to you, from God our father, & from our Lord Jesus Christ: I alwayes but most of all now in my bonds (most sweet bonds for Christ my Lord) rejoyce, to hear of your faith, and love, & to hear that our King, our welbeloved, our bridegroom, without tireing, stayeth still to wooe you, as his wife; and that persecutions, & mockings of sinners have not chased away the wooer from the house, I perswade you in the Lord, the men of God now Scattered, & driven from you; put you upon the right sent and pursuit of Christ, & my salvation on it (if ten heavens were mine) if this way, this way that I now suffer for, this way that the world nicknameth, and reproacheth, & no other way, be not the Kings gate to heaven; & I shall never see Gods face (and alace I were a beguiled wretch if it were so) if this be not the only saving way to heaven. Oh that you would take a prisoner of Christs word for it, nay I know you have the greatest Kings word for it, that it shall not be your wisdom to spier out another Christ, another way of worshiping him, then is now savingly revealed to you. Therfore though I never saw your faces let me be pardoned to write to you ye honourable persons, ye faithfull Pastors yet amongst the flocks, and ye sincere professors of Christs truth, or any weak tired strayers who cast but halfe an eye after the bridegroom; if possibly I