[30]. “There was never a man among them,” says Kirkton, “but he was drunk at the time, except only Lee.” Hist. Church of Scot. p. 149.
He early foresaw the approaching blackness that was about to overspread the land, and, anticipating for himself and his people a share in the general calamity, he was earnestly desirous to dispense the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper before the cloud came on. A general seriousness seems also to have pervaded the country side; for, on the Sabbath appointed for its administration, June 8, the number of communicants who offered was so great, that they could not all join in one day, and he intimated that on the Sabbath following, he would again dispense the ordinance, when those who had not participated might come forward. On Monday after sermon, he received a letter informing him that the presbytery had been summoned to Edinburgh for holding their meetings after the council had prohibited them. But he determined to proceed in his work, leaving the consequences to Providence, and he was favoured to conclude the solemnity without farther interruption. On the Monday, however, certain news arriving that a party was to be in the town that night to apprehend him, he withdrew, and next day they searched his house narrowly for him; but the bird for this time had escaped the snare of the fowler. He continued under hiding, till, through the exertions of his wife and the friendship of Lord Kenmure, he was allowed to return to his parish on the 10th of September. Now, without any new accusation, he was included in the same sentence with Donald Cargill, and ordered to be banished beyond the Tay.
England, on the 24th of August preceding, had exhibited the sublime and heart-stirring spectacle of upwards of two thousand of the ablest, most upright, and most devout ministers in the land, surrendering without hesitation their livings rather than violate their consciences by conforming to the restored national church. Yet, with this instance before his eyes, of obedience to God in preference to subjection to men, the Commissioner could not understand how persons with large families would voluntarily throw themselves upon the world, and leave their homes without any certain dwelling-place, rather than submit to a change which the prelates and he had found so easy; but they feared to sin; and now that a century has rolled by, and they and their oppressors rest in the grave together, who would not say that they did not act the wisest part, who preferred a good conscience, and trusted to the faithfulness of him who has promised never to leave, never, never, to forsake his servants, rather than to place their confidence in princes, and their trust in the sons of men? Of what value are the mitres now, for which the prelates in Scotland destroyed their usefulness, and which sat so uneasily for a few troubled years upon their heads? At the time, the case was dreadfully trying. When a man’s temporal interest comes in competition with his profession, then will appear the strength of his religious principle. Nearly four hundred ministers of the church of Scotland stood this severest of all tests. Turned from their houses in the midst of winter, and deprived of their stipends, they went out not knowing whither they went. Never did Scotland witness such a Sabbath as that on which they took leave of their parishioners; and the mourning and lamentation that filled the south and the west, was only equalled by the hatred and detestation excited against those who were the authors of so much sorrow, who, for their own ambitious and worldly schemes, ruptured ties so sacred and so dear as those that had subsisted between the Presbyterian ministers and their affectionate congregations.
It was questioned at the time, and even since, whether the Presbyterian ministers did not act improperly in all at once throwing up their charges? That they acted scripturally, is plain. They continued to exercise their calling as long as they could. When illegally forbid, they continued to preach, acting upon the apostolic precept of obeying God rather than man; but when a tyrannical power, under the form of parliamentary or council enactments, was ready to use force in ejecting them, then, as ministers of the gospel, they had no other resource left than to shake off the dust off their feet and go to another city—they bore testimony against their persecutors and retired. Following the advice of James v. 10., they took the prophets, who had spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering and of patience.
That they acted, even in a political view, in the very best manner that their circumstances admitted, is, I think, demonstrable. They showed to the people that it was not the fleece but the flock that had been the object of their care, and imprinted upon their minds a sense of the worth of the truth for which they were contending, beyond what they could have done in any other manner; and that truth was one written as with a sunbeam throughout the whole New Testament—that Christ is the king and head of his church, and that whatever form of church government does not acknowledge this, is essentially antichristian. It is not less evident, that the prelatists, as well as the papists, gave that dignity and power to another; and the solemn and universal testimony which so many godly men lifted up at once against acknowledging such unholy usurpation, has not lost its effect even unto this day—an effect it never could have had, had the ministers resisted and allowed themselves to have been thrust out one by one.
From Glasgow, Middleton and his Episcopalian reformadoes pursued their route, confirming their churches in the south, through Galloway as far as Wigton; and, upon the last day of October, returned to Holyrood-house.
On his arrival, the Commissioner was assailed by what was to him unexpected intelligence, that the whole south and west were thrown into confusion; and, enraged to find that both the archbishop and himself had so entirely miscalculated, he expressed his astonishment at the unaccountable conduct of the “madmen” with a volley of oaths and execrations—the now fashionable dialect of the court—and, on the first meeting of council, caused letters be sent off express to his lordship and the primate, requesting their presence and advice. Meanwhile, they proceeded in the usual course of endeavouring to intimidate the humbler refractory by their rigour to the more eminent. Mr Hugh M’Kail, chaplain to Sir James Stewart of Kirkfield, a youth of high promise, was forced into voluntary exile because he had defended in a sermon what he considered the scriptural mode of church government. Mr John Brown of Wamphrey, well known by his historical, controversial, and practical writings, not less respected for his piety than for his learning, having reproved some ministers for attending the Archbishop of Glasgow’s diocesan synod, styling them perjured, was banished to Holland—at that time the asylum of the persecuted; there he remained for many years, and, by his seasonable publications, strengthened the hands of the sufferers in his native land, and proved a thorn in the side of their tyrannical government.
Mr John Livingston, more honoured of God as the means of converting sinners to Christ than almost any minister of the church of Scotland since the Reformation, then minister at Ancrum, because he would not promise to observe the 29th of May as an holyday, nor take the oath of allegiance without any explanation, was subjected to a like punishment, as were Messrs Robert Traill of Edinburgh, Neave of Newmills, and Gardner of Saddle. Mr Livingston, in the true spirit of a Christian patriot, after sentence was pronounced, thus replied—“Well! although it be not permitted me to breathe my native air, yet into whatsoever part of the world I may go, I shall not cease to pray for a blessing to these lands, to his majesty, the government, and the inferior magistrates thereof; but especially for the land of my nativity!” In the same excellent spirit, having been denied the privilege of paying a farewell visit to his wife, children, and people, he addressed a pastoral letter to the flock of Jesus Christ in Ancrum. Their sins and his own, he told them, had drawn down this severe stroke; and, while it was their part to search out and mourn for them, “it is not needful,” he adds, “to look much to instruments, I have from my heart forgiven them all, and would wish you to do the like, and pray for them that it be not laid to their charge. For my part, I bless his name I have great peace in the matter of my sufferings. I need not repeat, you know my testimony of the things in controversy:—Jesus Christ is a king, and only hath power to appoint the officers and government of his house. It is a fearful thing to violate the oath of God, and fall into the hands of the living God. It could not well be expected,” he proceeds to remark, and the remark is applicable in all similar cases when religion has been in repute among a people—“there having been so fair and so general a profession throughout the land, but that the Lord would put men to it; and it is like it shall come to every man’s door, that, when every one according to their inclination, may have acted their part—and he seems to stand by—He may come at last and act his part, and vindicate his glory and truth. I have often showed you that it is the greatest difficulty under heaven to believe that there is a God and a life after this; and have often told you that, for my part, I could never make it a chief part of my work to insist upon the particular debates of the time, as being assured that if a man drink in the knowledge and the main foundations of the Christian religion, and have the work of God’s spirit in his heart to make him walk with God, and make conscience of his ways, such an one shall not readily mistake Christ’s quarrel, to join either with a profane atheist party or a fanatic party. There may be diversity of judgment, and sometimes sharp debates among them that are going to heaven; but, certainly, a spirit guides the seed of the woman, and another spirit the seed of the serpent.”
Several of lesser note were treated with not much less harshness, being ordered to confinement in distant places of the country, without the means of subsistence, and debarred from preaching in the rugged and barren districts to which they were banished.
Such, however, was the outcry the wide desolation of the church had occasioned, that the council were convinced they had acted with unwise precipitation, and endeavoured in some measure to retrace their steps. The author of the mischief, Fairfoul, though repeatedly called upon, does not appear to have assisted their deliberations, which were protracted, till the month of December, when a proclamation was issued, extending the time allowed ministers for procuring presentations and collocation to the 1st of February, but ordering those who neglected to do so to remove from their parishes and presbyteries; and such of them as belonged to the dioceses of St Andrews and Edinburgh, to go into banishment beyond the Tay. The older ministers, who had not been touched by the Glasgow act, and had hitherto remained exercising their parochial duties among their people, because they had not attended the diocesan meetings, were confined to their parishes. The people who left the hirelings intruded upon them, travelling sometimes twenty miles to hear the gospel, were now ordered to attend their parish churches, under a penalty of twenty shillings for every day’s absence; and because in those places where the ministers, in view of separation from their flocks, had celebrated the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to multitudes assembled from the surrounding districts—and much of the divine presence had appeared among them—these were stigmatized as unlicentiate confluences of the people; and the discourses delivered under such circumstances, with more than ordinary fervour, and accompanied with more than ordinary power, abused as the extravagant sermons of some ministers of unquiet and factious spirits—special engines to debauch people from their duty, and lead them to disobedience, schism, and rebellion: therefore every incumbent was prohibited from employing more than one or two of his neighbours at a communion without a license from the bishop, or admitting the people of any other parish to participate of the sacrament without a certificate from his curate.