That which some days in the end of the assembly troubled us, was, Mr Andrew Ramsay and Mr William Colvil’s process. Mr Andrew had, in preaching, often fallen out in divers impertinencies, and contradiction to his brethren: he had been oft admonished; but the man’s weakness and age, and divers who resorted to him, permitted him not much to amend. Not only he had spoken for the engagement; but in prejudice of our proceedings, and Presbyterian government itself. Much he denied; much was proven. He untimeously had fallen on an unhappy question, The magistrates power to remit blood. The general theses which he professed to maintain, “That the supreme magistrate, when the safety of the commonwealth does require, may dispense with the execution of justice against shedders of blood,” many of us declined to meddle with; but the moderator gladly would have had the assembly determining the negative expressly, which was eschewed; only the man for his doctrine and carriage was suspended till the next assembly. Mr William Colvill was referred to us only for his silence about the engagement. The man was generally too busy to countenance and encourage our statesmen in their way, and the chief mover of Mr Ramsay to his course; however, he himself walked very cannily. I was indeed offended at his malapert carriage in the commission of the church, and for it, albeit it was not libelled, I consented to his suspension; but it was against my mind that Dr Baron should have been censured for mere silence; yet it was carried.

One or two of your friends in our presbytery had been, for their silence and ambiguity about the engagement, referred to the assembly, had I not diverted and got that evil kept off them; for had they come before us, possibly they had never come off.

We appointed visitations for universities and hospitals, and put on them the sharpest men we had. Likely Edinburgh will not submit to have either universities or hospitals visited, though they have most need; and I pressed their visitation before any other; since, as yet, they have ever declined it.

The commissioners for uniformity with England were continued without change; only Lauderdale, to my grief, was justly omitted. I was scarce resolved to have seen him; yet my Lady Wariston sent me to him, as trusting in his friendship for her husband’s business. He told me, that, however, to his best knowledge, there was no design either on his place or person for the time; yet that he could not answer for what might be shortly, especially when in debate and discourse these things might escape him which might irritate them. The good Wariston, lest by his enemies, he might be brought in by violence, thought meet to retire to Kintyre, where, for the present, he passes his time with Argyle. Lauderdale continues kind to me, and regrets much the difference betwixt us; fears it become a fountain of great evils, either the overthrow of the design for the King against the sectaries, or the putting up of the malignant party so high, that they will hardly be got ruled; at best the making of the government of the church, as we exercise it, to be abhorred by all in England and abroad, and intolerable to our own state at home. I find the Treasurer in the same mind; but both of them fast enough, for ought I can see, to our covenant and persons, except to one or two whom they esteem the prime causes of this difference. In Mr William Colvill’s censure, Mr David Calderwood rashly had said, “he was the painfullest minister of Edinburgh.” This the Moderator exaggerated so far, as some spoke of his removal for censure. The moderator before had taken him up for his impertinencies indeed; yet too roughly, and more, as I thought, than became. After this rencounter, Mr David went home, and came no more to the assembly. At this I grieved; it may do harm.

The state, on the Friday before we rose, gave in a large paper of observations on our declaration. I take them to be Primrose their clerk’s draught. We appointed the commission to sit and answer them. They are but poor ones. That same day we renewed the commission of the church. There is too great a change of the persons, and too great addition of men who never have been members of any assembly; also their power is too much enlarged, even to process all who oppose their orders, as well as of the general assembly. I find divers in the mind, that if once our army in England had got any sensible success, our state are resolved totally to suppress the commission of the church, as a judicatory not yet established by law; and it is feared they will trouble the persons of some of us: but the Lord’s will be done. I think indeed the carriage of some is too high and peremptory; but if the state begin to trouble any of us with imprisonment, it will be a great ill of long and dangerous consequence.

On Saturday, August 12, we arose. In the morning I went away, desirous, after much toil, to be at home that night, unwilling to wait on the commission, to jangle more with the moderator. I was glad we had all ended in peace. The matter of this unhappy engagement I hope will not last, and so the ground of our difference with the state shall be removed. But new grounds of division may possibly arise, which may make our contentions greater.

THE
GENERAL ASSEMBLY,
AT EDINBURGH, 1649.

The mere perusal of the Acts of Assembly, 1648, supersedes the necessity of giving any particular description of its character. It approved of all the proceedings of its commission previous to its meeting, and superadded a great variety of declarations, warnings, and injunctions, couched in terms of defiance to the supreme authority of the State, by whose fiat alone it had its existence as an established church. It were a mere waste of time in this place to animadvert on these productions; but in the perilous state to which the Estates of the realm had reduced the kingdom, these proceedings dislocated and paralyzed the nation to such a degree, that it almost immediately after became an easy prey to the democratic levellers of England; and, before another year elapsed, they began to reap the bitter fruits of their infatuation, exemplified in their declarations of independence and supremacy.