It was on the Wednesday that my father came home from Edinburgh. On
Friday the farmer lads and their fathers continued coming over to our
house to hear the news, and all their discourse was concerning the
manifest foretaste of papistry which was in the praying of the prayers,
that an obdurate prince and an alien Arminian prelate were attempting to
thrust into their mouths, and every one spoke of renewing the Solemn
League and Covenant, which, in the times of the Reformation and the
dangers of the Spanish Armada, had achieved such great things for THE
TRUTH AND THE WORD.
On Saturday, Mr Sundrum, our minister, called for my father about twelve
o'clock. He had heard the news, and also that my father had come back. I
was doing something on the green, I forget now what it was, when I saw
him coming towards the door, and I ran into the house to tell my father,
who immediately came out to meet him.
Little passed in my hearing between them, for, after a short inquiry
concerning how my father had fared in the journey, the minister took
hold of him by the arm, and they walked together into the fields, where,
when they were at some distance from the house, Mr Sundrum stopped, and
began to discourse in a very earnest and lively manner, frequently
touching the palm of his left hand with the fingers of his right, as he
spoke to my father, and sometimes lifting both his hands as one in
amaze, ejaculating to the heavens.
While they were thus reasoning together, worthy Ebenezer Muir came
towards the house, but, observing where they were, he turned off and
joined them, and they continued all three in vehement deliberation, in
so much that I was drawn by the thirst of curiosity to slip so near
towards them that I could hear what passed; and my young heart was
pierced at the severe terms in which the minister was condemning the
ringleaders of the riot, as he called the adversaries of popedom in
Edinburgh, and in a manner rebuking my honest father as a sower of
sedition.
My father, however, said stiffly, for he was not a man to controvert
with a minister, that in all temporal things he was a true and leil
subject, and in what pertained to the King as king, he would stand as
stoutly up for as any man in the three kingdoms; but against a
usurpation of the Lord's rights, his hand, his heart, and his father's
sword, that had been used in the Reformation, were all alike ready.
Old Ebenezer Muir tried to pacify him, and reasoned in great gentleness
with both, expressing his concern that a presbyterian minister could
think that the attempt to bring in prelacy, and the reading of
court-contrived prayers, was not a meddling with things sacred and
rights natural, which neither prince nor potentate had authority to do.
But Mr Sundrum was one of those that longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt,
and the fat things of a lordly hierarchy; and the pacific remonstrances
of the pious old man made him wax more and more wroth at what he
hatefully pronounced their rebellious inclinations; at which bitter
words both my father and Ebenezer Muir turned from him, and went
together to the house with sadness in their faces, leaving him to return
the way he had come alone--a thing which filled me with consternation,
he having ever before been treated and reverenced as a pastor ought
always to be.
What comment my father and the old man made on his conduct when they
were by themselves I know not; but on the Sabbath morning the kirk was
filled to overflowing, and my father took me with him by the hand, and
we sat together on the same form with Ebenezer Muir, whom we found in
the church before us.
When Mr Sundrum mounted into the pulpit, and read the psalm and said the
prayer, there was nothing particular; but when he prepared to preach,
there was a rustle of expectation among all present, for the text he
chose was from Romans, chapter xiii. and verses 1 and 2; from which he
made an endeavour to demonstrate, as I heard afterwards, for I was then
too young to discern the matter of it myself, the duty and advantages of
passive obedience--and, growing warm with his ungospel rhetoric, he
began to rail and to daud the pulpit in condemnation of the spirit which
had kithed in Edinburgh.
Ebenezer Muir and my father tholed with him for some time; but at last
he so far forgot his place and office, that they both rose and moved
towards the door. Many others did the same, and presently the whole
congregation, with the exception of a very few, also began to move, so
that the kirk skayled; and from that day, so long as Mr Sundrum
continued in the parish, he was as a leper and an excommunicant.
Meanwhile the alarm was spreading far and wide, and a blessed thing it
was for the shire of Ayr, though it caused its soil to be soakened with
the blood of martyrs, that few of the ministers were like the
time-serving Mr Sundrum, but trusty and valiant defenders of the green
pastures whereon they had delighted, like kind shepherds, to lead their
confiding flocks, and to cherish the young lambs thereof with the tender
embraces of a holy ministry. Among the rest, that godly and great saint,
Mr Swinton of Garnock, our neighbour parish, stood courageously forward
in the gap of the broken fence of the vineyard, announcing, after a most
weighty discourse, on the same day on which Mr Sundrum preached the
erroneous doctrine of passive obedience, that next Sabbath he would
administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, not knowing how long it
might be in the power of his people to partake of it. Every body around
accordingly prepared to be present on that occasion, and there was a
wonderful congregation. All the adjacent parishes in succession did the
same thing Sabbath after Sabbath, and never was there seen, in the
memory of living man, such a zealous devotion and strictness of life as
then reigned throughout the whole West Country.
At last the news came, that it was resolved among the great and faithful
at Edinburgh to renew the Solemn League and Covenant; and the ministers
of our neighbourhood having conferred together concerning the same, it
was agreed among them, that the people should be invited to come forward
on a day set apart for the purpose, and that as the kirk of Irvine was
the biggest in the vicinage, the signatures both for the country and
that town should be received there. Mr Dickson, the minister, than whom
no man of his day was more brave in the Lord's cause, accordingly made
the needful preparation, and appointed the time.
In the meanwhile the young men began to gird themselves for war. The
swords that had rested for many a day were drawn from their idle places;
and the women worked together, that their brothers and their sons might
be ready for the field; but at their work, instead of the ancient
lilts, they sung psalms and godly ballads. However, as I mean not to
enter upon the particulars of that awakening epoch, but only to show
forth the pure and the holy earnestness with which the minds of men were
then actuated, I shall here refer the courteous reader to the annals and
chronicles of the time,--albeit the truth in them has suffered from the
alloy of a base servility.