Joshua Redivivus, or Mr. Rutherford's Letters

I Received one letter of your Lo: from C & another of late from A. B. wherein I find your Lo: in perplexity what to do: But let me entreat your Lo: not to cause your self mistake Truth & Christ, because they seem to encounter with your peace & ease: My Lord, remember that a prisoner •ath written it to you, As the Lord liveth, if ye put to your hand with other Apostates in this land, to pull down the sometime beautiful tabernacle of Christ in this land, & join hands with them in one hair-breadth to welcome Antichrist to Scotland, there is wrat• gone out from the Lord against you & your house. If the terror of a King hath overtaken you, & your Lo: looketh to sleep in your nest in peace & to take the nearest shore, there are many ways, too too many ways how to shift Christ with some ill-washen and foul distinctions; but assure your self, suppose a King should assure you he would be your God [as he shall never be, for that piece of service] your clay-god shall die and your carnal counsellors, when your conscience shall storm against you, & ye complain to them, they will say, What is that to us? Believe not that Christ is weak, or that he is not able to save: Of two fires that ye cannot pass, take the least: Some few years will bring us all out in our black's and white's before our Judge, Eternity is nearer to you then ye are aware of: To go on in a course of defection, when an enlightened conscience is stirring, & looking you in the face, & crying within you, That ye are going in an evil way, is, a step to the sin against the holy Ghost: Either many of this land are near that sin, or else I know not what it is: And if this for which I now suffer be not the way of peace, & the King's high-way to salvation, I believe there is not a way at all: There is not such breadth and elbow-room in the way to heaven as men believe, Howbeit