Bellerophontæis vita volato rotis:
Rouæi Hebracis sit mors male grata Camoenis.
Haec relege, ast artem dixeris esse brevem.
Soon after, he was appointed Regent, or Professor, of Humanity, though there were three other competitors; for his talents had attracted the notice of many. But, on occasion of a rumour that charged him with some irregularity—whether with or without foundation, it is now difficult to ascertain—he demitted his office in 1625, and led a private life, attending prelections on theology, and devoting himself to that study.
That there could not have been anything very serious in the rumour, may be inferred from the fact that no church court took any notice of the matter, though these were days when the reins of discipline were not held with a slack hand. But it is not unlikely that this may have been the time of which he says in a letter, "I knew a man who wondered to see any in this life laugh or sport."[2] It may have been then that he was led by the Spirit to know the things that are freely given us of God.[3] We have no proof that he was converted at an earlier period, but rather the opposite. He writes, "Like a fool as I was, I suffered my sun to be high in the heaven, and near afternoon, before ever I took the gate by the end."[4] And again, "I had stood sure, if in my youth I had borrowed Christ for my bottom."[5] The clouds returned after the rain; family trials, and other similar dealings of Providence, combined to form his character as a man of God and as a pastor.
In 1627 he was settled at Anwoth,[6] a parish situated in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, on the river Fleet, near the Solway. The church stood in a wide hollow, or valley, at the foot of the Boreland Hill. Embosomed in wood, with neither the smoke nor the noise of a village near, it must always have been a romantic spot—the very ideal of a country church, set down to cherish rural godliness. Though at this period Episcopacy had been obtruded upon Scotland, and many faithful ministers were suffering on account of their resistance to its ceremonies and services, yet he appears to have been allowed to enter on his charge without any compliance being demanded, and "without giving any engagement to the bishop." He began his ministry with the text, John ix. 39. The same Lord that would not let Paul and Timothy preach in Asia,[7] nor in Bithynia, and yet sent to the one region the beloved John,[8] and to the other the scarcely less beloved Peter,[9] in this instance prevented John Livingstone going to Anwoth, which the patron had designed, and sent Rutherford instead. This was the more remarkable, because Livingstone was sent to Ancrum, the parish that borders on Nisbet, while he who was by birth related to that place was despatched to another spot. This is the Lord's doing. Ministers must not choose according to the flesh.
During the first years of his labours here, the sore illness of his wife was a bitter grief to him. Her distress was very severe. He writes of it: "She is sore tormented night and day.—My life is bitter unto me.—She sleeps none, and cries as a woman travailing in birth; my life was never so wearisome."[10] She continued in this state for no less than a year and a month, ere she died. Besides all this, his two children had been taken from him. Such was the discipline by which he was trained for the duties of a pastor, and by which a shepherd's heart of true sympathy was imparted to him.
The parish of Anwoth had no large village near the church. The people were scattered over a hilly district, and were quite a rural flock. But their shepherd knew that the Chief Shepherd counted them worth caring for; he was not one who thought that his learning and talents would be ill spent if laid out in seeking to save souls, obscure and unknown. See him setting out to visit! He has just laid aside one of his learned folios, to go forth among his flock. See him passing along yonder field, and climbing that hill on his way to some cottage, his "quick eyes" occasionally glancing on the objects around, but his "face upward" for the most part, as if he were gazing into heaven. He has time to visit, for he rises at three in the morning, and at that early hour meets his God in prayer and meditation, and has space for study besides. He takes occasional days for catechising. He never fails to be found at the sick-beds of his people. Men said of him, "He is always praying, always preaching, always visiting the sick, always catechising, always writing and studying." He was known to fall asleep at night talking of Christ, and even to speak of Him during his sleep. Indeed, himself speaks of his dreams being of Christ.[11]
His preaching could not but arrest attention. Though his elocution was not good, and his voice rather shrill, he was, nevertheless, "one of the most moving and affectionate preachers in his time, or perhaps in any age of the church."[12] "In the pulpit (says one of his friends), he had a strange utterance—a kind of skreigh, that I never heard the like. Many times I thought he would have flown out of the pulpit when he came to speak of Jesus Christ." An English merchant said of him, even in days when controversy had sorely vexed him and distracted his spirit, "I came to Irvine, and heard a well-favoured, proper old man (David Dickson), with a long beard, and that man showed me all my heart. Then I went to St. Andrews, where I heard a sweet, majestic-looking man (R. Blair), and he showed me the majesty of God. After him I heard a little, fair man (Rutherford), and he showed me the loveliness of Christ."[13]
Anwoth was dear to him rather as the sphere appointed him by his Master, than because of the fruit he saw of his labours. Two years after being settled there, he writes, "I see exceedingly small fruit of my ministry. I would be glad of one soul, to be a crown of joy and rejoicing in the day of Christ." His people were "like hot iron, which cooleth when out of the fire." In a sermon on Song ii. 8, he complains of it being spiritually winter in Anwoth. "The very repairing of God's house, in our own parish church, is a proof. Ye need not go any farther. The timber of the house of God rots, and we cannot move a whole parish to spend twenty or thirty pounds Scots upon the house of God, to keep it dry." Still he laboured in hope, and laboured often almost beyond his strength. Once he says, "I have a grieved heart daily in my calling." He speaks of his pained breast, at another time, on the evening of the Lord's day, when his work was done.[14] But he had seasons of refreshing to his own soul at least; especially when the Lord's Supper was dispensed. Of these seasons he frequently speaks. He asks his friend, Marion M'Naught, to help with her prayers on such an occasion, "that being one of the days wherein Christ was wont to make merry with His friends."[15] It was then that with special earnestness he besought the Father to distribute "the great Loaf, Christ, to the children of His family."