(_COMPLETE SURRENDER TO CHRIST--NO IDOLS--TRIALS DISCOVER SINS--A FREE SALVATION--THE MARRIAGE SUPPER_.) MISTRESS,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--I am glad to hear that Christ and ye are one, and that ye have made Him your "one thing," whereas many are painfully toiled in seeking many things, and their many things are nothing. It is only best that ye set yourself apart, as a thing laid up and out of the gate, for Christ alone; for ye are good for no other thing than Christ; and He hath been going about you these many years, by afflictions, to engage you to Himself. It were a pity and a loss to say Him nay. Verily I could wish that I could swim through hell, and all the ill weather in the world, and Christ in my arms. But it is my evil and folly, that except Christ come unsent for, I dow not go to seek Him: when He and I fall a-reckoning, we are both behind, He in payment, and I in counting; and so marches lie still unredd, and accounts uncleared betwixt us. O that He would take His own blood for counts and miscounts, that I might be a free man, and none had any claim to me but only, only Jesus. I will think it no bondage to be rouped, comprised, and possessed by Christ as His bondman. Think well of the visitation of your Lord; for I find one thing, which I saw not well before, that when the saints are under trials, and well humbled, little sins raise great cries and war-shouts in the conscience; and in prosperity, conscience is a pope, to give dispensations, and let out and in, and give latitude and elbow-room to our heart. Oh, how little care we for pardon at Christ's hand, when we make dispensations! And all is but bairns' play, till a cross without beget a heavier cross within, and then we play no longer with our idols. It is good still to be severe against ourselves; for we but transform God's mercy into an idol, and an idol that hath a dispensation to give, for the turning of the grace of God into wantonness. Happy are they who take up God, wrath, justice, and sin, as they are in themselves, for we have miscarrying light, that parteth with the child, when we have good resolutions only. But, God be thanked, that salvation is not rolled upon our wheels.