Addressing the Chancellor, “My lord,” said the intrepid minister in conclusion, “I shall, in the last place, humbly beg—having brought such pregnant and clear evidence from the word of God, so much divine reason and human law, and so much of the common practice of the kirk and kingdom in my own defence; and being already cast out of my ministry, driven from my dwelling, and deprived of my maintenance, myself and my family thrown upon the charity of others; and having now suffered eight months’ imprisonment—that your lordships would put no farther burden upon me. But, in the words of the prophet, ‘Behold! I am in your hands, do to me what seemeth good to you.’ I know for certain that the Lord hath commanded me to speak all these things, and that if you put me to death you shall bring innocent blood upon yourself and upon the inhabitants of this city. My lord! my conscience I cannot submit; but this old crazy body and mortal flesh I do submit to do with whatever you will, whether by death, by banishment, or imprisonment, or any thing else, only I beseech you ponder well what profit there is in my blood; it is not extinguishing me or many others that will extinguish the covenant and the work of reformation since 1638. No! my bondage, banishment, or blood, will contribute more for their extension than my life or liberty could, were I to live many years. I wish to my Lord Commissioner, his Grace, and to all your lordships, the spirit of judgment, wisdom, and understanding, and the fear of the Lord, that you may judge righteous judgment, in which God may have glory, the king honour and happiness, and yourselves peace in the great day of accounts.” But all was of no avail; his life was determined on as an example to the ministers, and he was found guilty, upon his own confession, of the charges brought against him. Sentence was delayed till the 28th of May, when the doom of a traitor was pronounced by the Earl of Crawford, in absence of the Chancellor. As he arose from his knees—for he had been ordered to kneel—“My lords,” said he, “may never this sentence more affect you than it does me; and let never my blood be required of the king’s family!” He had assisted in managing his defence with an eloquence, acuteness, and legal knowledge, that drew forth the admiration of the professional gentlemen who were his advocates.
When his case was decided, and he was removed to wait till his sentence was written out, while he remained amid the soldiers, and officers, and servants of the court, he afterwards declared he never felt more of the sensible presence of God, of the sweet intimations of peace, and the real manifestations of divine love and favour, than when surrounded with all their bustle and confusion. From that time till he went to the scaffold, he remained in a serene, tranquil frame of mind. On the day of his execution, June 1, several of his friends dined with him, when not only his cheerfulness, but even his pleasantry, did not forsake him. After dinner, he jocularly called for a little cheese, of which he was very fond, but had been forbid by his physicians to eat on account of a gravelish complaint, saying, “I hope I am now beyond reach of the gravel.”
He delivered his last speech from the ladder with the same composed earnestness with which he was wont to deliver his sermons. “He thanked God that he suffered willingly, having had it in his power to have made his escape, or by compliance to have obtained favour, but he durst not redeem his life with the loss of his integrity.” “I bless God,” he proceeded, “that I die not as a fool, not that I have any thing wherein to glory in myself. But I do believe that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, whereof I am chief; through faith in his righteousness and blood, I have obtained mercy, and through him and him alone have I the blessed hope of a blessed conquest over sin and Satan, death and hell, and that I shall attain unto the resurrection of the just, and be made partaker of eternal life. I know in whom I have believed, and that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him unto that day. I have preached salvation through his name; and as I have preached, so do I believe, and do recommend the riches of his free grace and faith in his name unto you all, as the only way whereby ye can be saved.”
“And,” continued he, “as I bless the Lord I die not as a fool, so also that I die not for evil-doing. God is my record, that in these things for which sentence of death is passed against me, I have a good conscience. My heart is conscious of no disloyalty. The matters for which I am condemned, are matters belonging to my calling and function as a minister of the gospel; such as discovering and reproving of sin, the pressing and holding fast of the oath of God in the covenant, and preserving and carrying on the work of reformation according thereto, and denying to acknowledge the civil magistrate as the proper, competent, immediate judge in causes ecclesiastical.” He then warned his hearers that the wrath of God was hanging over the land for that deluge of profanity that was overflowing it; for their perjury and breach of covenant—“Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this! shall he break the covenant and prosper? shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with God, which frameth mischief by a law?” for their ingratitude; for their dreadful idolatry and sacrificing to the creature—a corruptible man, in whom many had placed almost all their salvation and all their desire; for a generation of carnal, time-serving ministers, men who minded earthly things, enemies to the cross of Christ, who pushed with the side and shoulder, who strengthen the hands of evil-doers, and make themselves transgressors by studying to build again what they did formerly warrantably destroy.
Next, he earnestly exhorted the profane, the lukewarm, and the indifferent, to repentance, and the godly to confidence and zeal, expressing his belief that God would neither desert his people nor cause in Scotland. “There is yet,” exclaimed he, “a holy seed, a precious remnant, whom God will preserve and bring forth; but how long or dark our night may be, I do not know; the Lord shorten it for the sake of his chosen. In the mean while, be patient, steadfast, and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Beware of snares, decline not the cross, and account the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasure of the world. Let my death grieve none of you. I forgive all men the guilt of it, and I desire you to do so also. Pray for them that persecute you; bless them that curse you; bless, I say, and curse not!” After bearing testimony to the faith of the gospel, the doctrine and discipline of the church of Scotland, the protestation, and against the course of backsliding then afoot in the land,
He ended in this strain of triumphant exultation, well becoming a martyr for the truth—“Jesus Christ is my light and my life, my righteousness, my strength, and my salvation, and all my desire. Him! O him! do I with the strength of all my soul commend unto you; blessed are they that are not offended in him. Bless him, O my soul! from henceforth even for ever. Rejoice, rejoice all ye that love him; be patient and rejoice in tribulation. Blessed are you, and blessed shall you be for ever and ever. Everlasting righteousness and eternal salvation is yours; all is yours; and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s!” His last words were—“Remember me, O Lord, with the favour thou bearest to thy people. O visit me with thy salvation, that I may see the good of thy chosen; that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation; that I may glory with thine inheritance. Now let thy servant depart in peace, since my eyes have seen thy salvation!”
An obscure individual, named William, sometimes Captain, Govan, was executed along with Mr Guthrie. He met death with the same joyful confidence, resting on the same sure foundation. For what specific charges he suffered, is uncertain. In his speech which he left, he says it was for laying down his arms at Hamilton, as all the company did. Sir George M’Kenzie alleges it was for joining in the English army in 1651. “But so inconsiderable a person,” he adds, “had not died if he had not been suspected to have been upon the scaffold when King Charles the First was murdered, though he purged himself of this when he died; and his guilt was, that he brought to Scotland the first news of it, and seem’d to be well satisfied with it.” His chief crime, however, appears to have been that he was a pious, consistent, and zealous Presbyterian. Mr Guthrie was turned off first; and his behaviour must have tended greatly to strengthen his fellow-sufferer, who, in his last speech, after exhorting the licentious and the lukewarm to repent, remarked—“As for myself, it pleased the Lord, in the fourteenth year of my age, to manifest his love to me; and now it is about twenty-four years since, all which time I professed the truth which I suffer for and bear testimony to at this day, and am not afraid of the cross upon that account. It is sweet! it is sweet! otherwise how durst I look on the corpse of him who hangs there with courage, and smile upon that gibbet as the gate of heaven?” When he had ended, he took a ring from off his finger, and gave to a friend, desiring him to take it to his wife and tell her—he died in humble confidence, and found the cross of Christ sweet. Christ, he added, had done all for him; and it was by him alone he was justified. Being desired to look up to that Christ, he replied—“He looketh down and smileth upon me;” and mounting the ladder—“Dear friends,” said he to those around him, “pledge this cup of suffering before you sin, as I have now done; for sin and suffering have been presented to me, and I have chosen the suffering part.” When the rope was put about his neck, he observed—“Middleton and I went out to the field together upon the same errand; now I am promoted to a cord and he to be Lord High Commissioner; yet for a thousand worlds would I not change situations with him! Praise and glory be to Christ for ever!”
Besides those who suffered unto death at this time, many others were prosecuted and punished, by removal from their office, imprisonment, or exile. Among these, the most conspicuous were, Mr Robert Traill, minister of the Greyfriar’s church, Edinburgh. He had been in the Castle while it held out against Cromwell, had encouraged the governor and garrison to be faithful to their trust, and had received a severe wound during the siege; yet he was now charged with disloyalty and a participation in all the obnoxious transactions for which Mr Guthrie laid down his life. His indictment had been drawn up, as all the libels of that time were, with great acrimony and peculiar virulence of expression, to exaggerate the crime of disloyalty, which formed the prominent feature of the accusation. In replying, Mr Traill averred he durst appeal to the Lord Advocate’s own conscience, whether he believed him to be such an one as he had represented him, and complained of bitter and injurious words, but abstained from any angry retort. “I have not,” was his meek answer, “so learned Christ; yea, I have learned of him not to render evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing; and therefore I do from my heart pray for the honourable drawer up of the libel, as I would do for myself, that the Lord would bless him with his best blessings, and would give him to find mercy in the day of the Lord Jesus!” When the remonstrance was presented, he was confined in the garrison; but, with respect to the other charges, his replies were similar to Mr Guthrie’s, although not perhaps quite so strongly expressed assertions of the legality, propriety, and the imperative necessity of ministers being faithful in the discharge of their duty. He had been seven months confined before being brought to trial; and to that he alludes in the following solemn conclusion of his defence:—
“Now, my lord, I must in all humility beg leave to entreat your lordship that you would seriously consider what you do with poor ministers, who have been so long kept, not only from their liberty of preaching the gospel, but of hearing it—that so many congregations are laid desolate for so long a time, and many poor souls have put up their regrets on their deathbed for their being deprived of a word of comfort from their ministers in the hour of their greatest need! The Lord give you wisdom in all things, and pour out upon you the spirit of your high and weighty employment, of understanding and the fear of the Lord, that your government may be blessed for this land and kirk—that you may live long and happily—that your memory may be sweet and fragrant when you are gone—that you may leave your name for a blessing to the Lord’s people—and that your houses and families may stand long and flourish to the years of many generations! Above all, that you have solid peace and heart-joy in the hour of the breaking of your heart-strings, when pale death shall sit on your eyelids—when man must go to his long home and the mourners go about the streets: for what man is he that liveth and shall not see death? or who can deliver himself from the power of the grave? Even those to whom he saith, ye are gods, must die as men; for it is appointed to all men once to die, and after death the judgment, and after judgment an endless eternity! Let me therefore exhort your lordship, in the words of a great king, a great warrior, and a holy prophet—Be wise, be taught, ye rulers of the earth; serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice before him with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but for a little. Then blessed will all those, and those only, be who put their trust in him. Now the Lord give you, in this your day, to consider the things that belong to your eternal peace, and to remember your latter end, that it may be well with you world without end!”
An address such as this, from a prisoner at the bar to his judges, who had his life and death in their hands, could not fail but to have been productive of a powerful effect upon the minds of such as were not altogether hardened against every impression, and presents the sufferer for truth and a good conscience upon a commanding elevation, unattainable in any other cause, fearless of personal safety, and anxious only that, while he be found faithful in the service of his master, his persecutors may enjoy the same privilege. How forcibly does it recall the Apostle’s address to Agrippa—“I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.” Mr Traill was remitted to prison, where he lay for some time, and was afterwards banished to Holland. While uncertain of his fate, he thus wrote to another minister from his prison—“Your imprisoned and confined brethren are kindly dealt with by our kind Lord, for we have large allowance from him could we take it. We know it fares the better with us. You and such as you, mind us at the throne. We are waiting from day to day not knowing what man will do with us. We are expecting banishment at the best; but our sentence must proceed from the Lord, and whatsoever it be, it shall be good as from him, and whithersoever he send us, he shall be with us; for the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof!”