Records of the Kirk of Scotland / containing the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies from 1638 downwards, as authenticated by the clerks of assembly.

by Church of Scotland. General Assembly

* * * *
To Mr William Spang. September 5, 1645.

This day we had a publick fast in all the churches within the lines for the miseries of Scotland. I confess I am amazed, and cannot see to my mind’s satisfaction, the reasons of the Lord’s dealing with that land. The sins of all ranks there I know to be great, and the late mercies of God, spiritual and temporal, towards them to have been many; but what means the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted, to humble us so low, and by his own immediate hand, I confess I know not.

* * * *

Yet all here is in the balance. In the assembly we are going on languidly with the Confession of Faith and Catechism. The minds of the divines are much enfeebled by the House their delay to grant the petition, a power to seclude from the table all scandalous persons as well as some. Mr Prin and the Erastian lawyers are now our remora. The Independents and sects are quiet, enjoying peaceably all their desires, and increasing daily their party. They speak no more of bringing their model in the assembly. We are afraid that this shameful and monstrous delay of building the Lord’s house, and their ingratitude and unkindness to us in our deep sufferings for them, will provoke God against them, which we oft earnestly deprecate; for their misery will be ours, and their welfare will profit all the Reformed churches I believe in time they will do all we desire.

* * * *
A Publick Letter. London, October 14, 1645.

For the great and seasonable mercies of God to desolate Scotland, our afflicted spirits do rejoice in God. Since he has begun to stretch out his arm for our deliverance, we hope he will not draw it back till he give us more matter of praise. We trust he will call back the destroying angel, and persecute the cruel enemy till he be no more. We hope the Lord will give repentance to that land, that after all these troubles we may be a holy and sanctified people; also, that those who ever have been but false-hearted, and now are discovered, and taken in the snare, will be so disposed upon, that they be no more able to serve the enemy.

* * * *

Great wrestling have we for the erecting of our presbytery. It must be a divine thing to which so much resistance is made by men of all sorts; yet, by God’s help, we will very speedily see it set up, in spite of the devil. We have great difficulties on all hands; yet if the Lord continue to blink in mercy upon Scotland, they will diminish. I long extremely to hear the condition of Glasgow, what the enemy has done in it, and how now it fares; what is become of my dear brethren and colleagues, and their families; and what of my own. We hear particularly from almost all the parts of Scotland weekly; but since that black day at Kilsyth, we have got nothing particularly from Glasgow.

* * * *

We were in a long expectation of a model from the Independents; but yesterday, after seven months waiting, they have scorned us. The assembly having put them to it, to make a report of their diligence, they gave us in a sheet or two of injurious reasons why they would not give us any reasons of their tenets. We have appointed a committee to answer that libel. We think they agree not among themselves, and that there are many things among them which they are loth to profess, which, by God’s help, ere long I mind to do for them in their own words. But our greatest trouble for the time is from the Erastians in the House of Commons. They are at last content to erect presbyteries and synods in all the land, and have given out their orders for that end; yet they give to the ecclesiastick courts so little power, that the assembly finding their petitions not granted, are in great doubt whether to set up any thing, till, by some powerful petition of many thousand hands, they obtain some more of their just desires. The only mean to obtain this, and all else we desire, is our recruited army about Newark. The inlacks of that army is the earthly fountain of all our difficulties here. If our distressed land be able to remeid it, it would be done quickly; else evils will grow both here and with you at home.