[604] ‘If God loved riches well, do ye think he would give them so liberally, and heap them up upon some base covetous wretches? Surely no.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 366. Gray, in his zeal against wealth, propounds another doctrine, which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere. He says, ‘All that the owner of riches hath, is, the seeing of them; which a man, who is a passer by, may likeways have, though he be not possessor of them.’ Gray's Spiritual Warfare, p. 128. I hope that the reader will not suspect me of having maliciously invented any of these passages. The books from which they are quoted, are, with only two or three exceptions, all in my library, and may be examined by persons who are curious in such matters.
[605] ‘The absence of external appearances of joy in Scotland, in contrast with the frequent holidayings and merry-makings of the continent, has been much remarked upon. We find in the records of ecclesiastical discipline clear traces of the process by which this distinction was brought about. To the puritan kirk of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, every outward demonstration of natural good spirits was a sort of sin, to be as far as possible repressed.’ … ‘The whole sunshine of life was, as it were, squeezed out of the community.’ Chambers' Annals of Scotland, vol. i. p. 336, vol. ii. p. 156.
[606] ‘A Christian should mortifie his affections, which are his predominant lusts, to which our affections are so much joined, and our soul doth so much go out after.’ Gray's Spiritual Warfare, p. 29. ‘That blessed work of weaning of affections from all things that are here.’ Gray's Great and Precious Promises, p. 86.
[607] ‘One of our more northern ministers, whose parish lies along the coast between Spey and Findorn, made some fishermen do penance for sabbath-breaking, in going out to sea, though purely with endeavour to save a vessel in distress by a storm.’ Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, vol. i. p. 173.
[608] ‘The master of a family may, and ought to, deny an act of humanity or hospitality to strangers that are false teachers.’ Rutherford's Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, p. 176. ‘The Holy Ghost forbiddeth the master of every Christian family to owne a hereticke as a guest.’ Ibid., p. 219. See also p. 235.
[609] ‘We hold that tolleration of all religions is not farre from blasphemy.’ Rutherford's Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, p. 20. ‘If wolves be permitted to teach what is right in their own erroneous conscience, and there be no “Magistrate to put them to shame,” Judg. xviii. 7, and no King to punish them, then godlinesse and all that concernes the first Table of the Law must be marred.’ Ibid., p. 230. ‘Wilde and atheisticall liberty of conscience,’ p. 337. ‘Cursed toleration,’ p. 400. See also, in the same work (pp. 110, 244), Rutherford's remarks on the murder of Servetus. In 1645, Baillie, who was then in London, writes, ‘The Independents here plead for a tolleration both for themselfes and other sects. My Dissuasive is come in time to doe service here. We hope God will assist us to remonstrate the wickedness of such an tolleration.’ And on account of the Independents wishing to show common charity towards persons who differed in opinions from themselves, Baillie writes next year (1646), ‘The Independents has the least zeale to the truth of God of any men we know.’ Baillie's Letters and Journals, vol. ii. pp. 328, 361. Blair, who was in London in 1649, was sorely vexed with ‘the most illegal, irreligious, and wicked proceedings and actings of the sectarian army;’ one of their crimes being the attempt ‘to ruin religion by their toleration.’ Continuation of the Autobiography of Mr. Robert Blair, Minister of St. Andrews, p. 213. For other evidence of this persecuting spirit, see Dickson's Truth's Victory over Error, pp. 159, 163, 199–202; Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 215; Durham's Exposition of the Song of Solomon, p. 147; Durham's Commentarie upon the Book of the Revelation, pp. 141, 143, 330; and Shields' Hind let loose, p. 168.
[610] ‘A third benefit (which is a branch of the former), is zeal in the godly against false teachers, who shall be so tender of the truth and glory of God, and the safety of the Church (all which are endangered by error), that it shall overcome natural affection in them; so that parents shall not spare their own children, being seducers, but shall either by an heroick act (such as was in Phinehas, Numb. XXV. 8), themselves judge him worthy to die, and give sentence and execute it, or cause him to be punished, by bringing him to the Magistrate,’ &c…. ‘The toleration of a false religion in doctrine or worship, and the exemption of the erroneous from civil punishment, is no more lawful under the New Testament than it was under the Old.’ An Exposition of the Prophecie of Zechariah, in Hutcheson's Exposition on the Minor Prophets, vol. iii. p. 203, 8vo. 1654.
[611] Selections from the Registers of the Presbytery of Lanark, pp. X. 33, 56, 63, 65, 73.
[612] I copy the exact words from Wodrow's Collections upon the Lives of Ministers of the Church of Scotland, vol. ii. part ii. p. 71. An order had been previously obtained from the government, ‘requiring the magistrates to expell furth of the Toun all excomunicated persons.’