From Samuel Rutherford's Christ dying and drawing sinners to himself:
A believer on Christ, breathes in Christ, speaks walks, prays, believes, eateth, drinketh, sickens, dies in Christ; Christ is the soil he is planted in, he groweth on the banks of the paradise of God; when he falleth, he cannot fall wrong. Some are trees growing on the banks of the river of fire and brimstone; when God hews down the tree, and death fells them, the tree can fall no otherwise than in hell. O how sweet to be in Christ, and to grow as a tree planted on the banks of the river of life! when such die, they fall in Christ's lap and in his bosom, be the death violent or natural; 'tis all one whether a strong gale and a rough storm shore the child of God on the new Jerusalem's dry land, or if a small calm blast even with rowing of oars bring the passenger to heaven, if once he be in that goodly land.
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Paul encouraging the Thessalonians, saith, 2 Thess. iii. 3. No man should be moved by these afflictions: why, for yourselves know we are appointed thereunto from eternity. The wise Lord did brew a cup of bloody sufferings for his church, and did mould and shape every saint's cross in length and breadth for him; our afflictions are not of yesterday's date and standing: before the Lord set up the world, as it now is, he had all the wheels, pins, wedges, works, and every material by him, in his eternal mind; all your tear's, your blood, all the ounces and pounds of gall and wormwood ye now drink, they were an eternal design and plot of God's wise decree before the world was, they were the lot God did appoint for your back, they are no sourer, no heavier this day, than they were in the Lord's purpose before time; your grave, O saints, is no deeper than of old the Lord digged it, your wound no nearer the bone than mercy made it; your death is no blacker, no more thorny and devouring than Christ's soft hands framed it; ere God gave you flesh and skin and heat in your blood, Christ's doom and the church's doom of the black cross was written in heaven: so Christ smiles and drinks with this word, John xviii. 11. Shall I not drink the cup that my Father hath given me? 2. Rom. viii. Predestination is the first act of free-grace, and ver. 29. in that act a communion with Christ in his cross is passed; this we consider not: will ye not think good to set your shoulders and bones under the same burden that was on Christ's back? we fear the cross less at our heels and behind our back than when it is in our bosom. The Lord Jesus speaks of his suffering often afore-hand, and it is wisdom to make it less, by antidated patience and submission, before we suffer; it were good, would we give our thoughts, and lend some words to death, as Christ here doth ere it come: opinion, which is the pencil that draws the face, arms and legs of death and sufferings, might honey our gall; if a martyr judge a prison a palace, and his iron chains golden bracelets, sure his bonds are as good as liberty; if a saint count death Christ's master-usher to make way to him for heaven, then death cannot be a mill to grind the man's life to powder: faith can oil and sugar our worm-wood; and if Christ come with the cross, it has no strength; the believer has two skins on his face against the spittings of storm and hail-stones; Christ can make a saint sing in hell, as impatient unbelief could cause a man sigh and weep in heaven. 3. We forget that the church is the vineyard of the Lord of hosts, and that the owner of the farm must hire Satan and wicked men to be his vine-dressers and reapers; but the crop is the Lord's, not theirs; they are plowers, but they neither know the soil, nor the husbandman, Psal. cxxix. 2.
