tioned, when it was scarce believed he understood or could speak, there was a sunshine of serene joy looked out of his countenance, and a lifting up of hands on high, as to receive the confessor's crown, together with a lifting up of the voice with an aha! as to sing the conqueror's song of victory. And to close, I must tell you also, he lived and died in deep detestation of that wretched indulgence, and of all the ways of supporting it; and this abrupt account of his death you may give to his friends. In a word, as a compound of all, he fell asleep in the furnace, walking with the Son of God, and now his bones will rise up with the bones of the other great witnesses buried in a strange land, as a testimony against the wrong done to Christ, and the violence used against his followers, by this wicked generation, whom the righteous Lord, in his time, from him who sitteth upon the throne to the meanest instrument that hath put the mischiefs he framed into a law in execution, will make a generation of his wrath of special wrath, which must answer and keep proportion unto the wrongs done to the Mediator."

Excerpt " Mr Macward to Mr Donald Cargil."(30)—No date.

"Great Wallace is gone to glory. I shut his eyes, while he went out of my sight, and was carried to see God, enjoy him, and be made perfectly like him, in order to both. Forget not to give me a particular account whether there be any such agreement amongst these young men lately licensed with you."

To conclude about Colonel Wallace. Mr John Carstairs, in a postcript to a letter to Mr Macward, February 17, 1679, thus writes:- "Please to inquire at Mr Russel, if he knew how worthy, now glorified Colonel Wallace, disposed of his little affairs, and whether he left anything for William's wife, a sober, grave, godly gentlewoman, pleaing now here at law, for she hath heard nothing of it. Send word by the first occasion by post about that matter. Desire your wife to remember me dearly to James Dunlop, to sweet John, (query Brown,) and our own Margaret.”

"For Mr John Blackadder.-Jan. 26, 1679.

"Worthy and dear Brother,—I saw yours by post of the 28th December, I saw also a draught of an answer of my worthy brother, which was so fully to my mind and satisfactory, that I have no more to say, but to let you know that I

comply with him therein in all points. You suppose that we were misinformed about the resolution of that meeting against Mr R. Cameron, and this medium is ordinarily made use of to make anything we say of no effect. But if we have been misinformed, it is our mishap that we cannot get right information. You mention one of yours written to that effect, and sent by a young man in Queensferry, which we have never yet seen. You tell us in this, that some of that meeting say they intended no censure against him, but only a rebuke. We had heard also some such thing said by some of them, but not at that time, nor before that much noise was made among the people upon the account of that meeting. And we heard also of some expressions or questions, moved by the moderator of their first meeting, and others to Mr R. Cameron, that make it probable enough that their intention was to go further than a rebuke, though I believe upon the mere report of some of that meeting; yet you know, in meetings matters are carried by plurality of voices. One thing I think strange of, that they are so much offended at his declining. If they had no resolution to censure as a presbytery, that having only a purpose to rebuke, they took not a more private-like way, or at least publicly and judicially told himself so much. But as to the ground of all this, I am longing for information, to wit, to know how and after what manner they come to constitute themselves in presbyteries. I know what power of jurisdiction belongs to presbyteries as such, in actu signato, but I suppose there is, by the law of nature, a certain fixed and methodical order required unto the exercise of the same, so that presbyteries must be associated to that end, and that in some certain fixed manner, and the extension of this exercise must be regulated, as that every person a member of such a national Church may know unto what session, presbytery, or synod he belongeth, otherwise, if a company of presbyters meet occasionally, or of their own head, and think that because they are presbyters they may assume the power of a general assembly, or of a grand commission, and so call before them any man of the Church of Scotland for a crime, real or supposed, committed within Scotland. I know no presbyterian principles of order that will allow this; nor know I what sort of government (that presupposeth order) can give countenance to it. I will show the inevitable absurdities that would follow upon this, but I forbear. Only let me informed as to these things, as also what is the reason that

e now referred him to such as opened his mouth, as

being only his competent judges, whereby they tacitly acknowledge that they have no power over him, and so approve of his declinature, and put a bar in the way of them that licensed him, so that they cannot censure him for declining those that had no power over him. We were put in expectation of some full information as to these things, but though we have seen two papers, one written to whom we know not, and by whom we know not, and the other by Mr John Scot, subscribing himself Veridicus, of whom I shall say no more; but if these be sent for information, we are disappointed. One thing they indeed inform us of, to wit, that there is a Spirit aloft that occasioneth our sorrow and grief. But enough of this. As to the other particular, I shall add nothing to what my worthy and dear brother hath said in his to you. Only, I crave leave to say that I apprehend the motion shall not succeed, partly because I perceive by what hath passed, the indulged are more confirmed in their ways than ever, and even such as formerly were willing to confess they had fainted, are not so much as acknowledging an escape as to a circumstance, and partly because I fear the Lord shall not bless such endeavours now when so late, and so only occasioned or taken upon such an account, is too obvious. Oh that I were disappointed. I am also apprehensive that your keeping up of that paper shall not prove a fit medium to that end. The Lord's Spirit be with you."

We said that Mr Brown and the Colonel, now no more, returned to Rotterdam in 1678, and his bodily inability was also intimated. We have now to follow him shortly to the dark and narrow house. Had Mr Brown not written and published not a little, and written well, it might have been said of him, as has been since alleged of many others, that he read little but the news of the day, and frequently stole what he gave to others. Although we cannot say what he was doing every day, or every year, we are certain hew as seldom idle one hour. He could adopt, in a very qualified sense indeed, for to whom can the eternal, only-begotten, and only beloved Son of God be compared,—he could and did adopt his words, "I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work.” The next notice that we have of him is in one of Mr John Carstairs' letters to Mr Macward, Feb. 17, 1679. I must transcribe the whole of it, for Mr Brown is certainly once, I think twice, mentioned, and another time alluded to in it. It forms, moreover, the foundation of what follows between Mr Macward and Mr Brown.

"My dearest, and of all men most obliging, friend and brother, I take this occasion to salute you much in the Lord, to whom you are dear, and in whose heart you have much room, and to tell you, that remembering your peremptory assertion, that you would do nothing that way, poor, insignificant, and very ignorant, I the unfittest, you know, of many, have constrained myself to scribble an epistle to that book, which is now I suppose printed, being unwilling it should stick there for want of one; either of you two there are a thousand times fitter for such a work. If there be any thing unsound or unsuitable in it, I know you will, and earnestly desire you may, for the work's sake, and for my poor sake, help it; if it be not fit and apposite, lay it aside, and deny yourself that far as to write another, which I know the Lord hath many ways enabled you to do to much better purpose. If you think that this may pass without disgrace or prejudice to the book, (for it hath my subitan, and raw thoughts and reasonings, without reading any thing on the subject for such an end, from some glimmering of light and reminiscence of what I think I have some time read or heard,) you will see to the exact revising and printing of it yourself, and the punctuation of it; if it be otherwise than as I say in the close, as to not one line or sentence added to it, taken from it, or altered to the perverting of the author's sense, (as there was none by me,) you will alter what I have so peremptorily said, and put it in some safe general, that no untruth be so confidently asserted, which may also be contradicted. Use your freedom with it, for the work and cause sake. I dare not trouble you with any account of our matters; but great and growing are our confusions, distempers, and distractions. We are made by them exceedingly contemptible, and, for any thing I know, Presbyterian government got never such a blow in Britain as it is like to receive by them; and it is more than probable that several that are weary of prelacy, and might incline to favour our persons, are frighted and scarred from us, because of our dividing and contentious practices, as if the very principles of our government and party had a genuine and native tendency to them, since we thus so readily fall by the cars on every occasion. Ah! He the jealous and much provoked God, hath divided us in his anger, and there is little hope of healing! My dearest, and even as womb-born brother, suffer me to tell you, that it is wondered at by many, and even by some that are your real friends and mine, and I confess I somewhat wonder at it myself, that whatever is or may be your just dis

satisfaction with the indulgence, that you should not only run this great and unexpected length in encouraging and persuading to withdraw and separate, and to allow and patronise these poor petulent young men, who, though no plene ambassadors of Jesus Christ, roam up and down the country, and in places where they have no calling, and very magisterially charge, under highest pains, to withdraw from the indulged brethren's ministry, and load all with the imputations of fainting and unfaithfulness, who run not at that same rate; but also state yourselves, being knowing and godly, eminently godly men, in an open, and to the world declared, opposition to all (a very few, if any excepted) the honest suffering ministers of the Church of Scotland, so as to write against opinions, practices, proceedings, forbearings, and all things about these differences here in men, many of whom you know, and so much in favours and commendation of some novices whom you know not, some of whose insolent extravagances, I persuade myself, the sober and humble soul of the tender, godly, knowing, and judicious Mr Macward, would as much abhor, if known to him, as they are incapable of a just apology. Is there no forbearance in these things to be expected which we justly disallow and shall our differences be screwed to such a height, and so keenly and eagerly pursued, so as all fears of popery and a foreign sword (which are like only to put a period to them) are swallowed up and forgotten? Is there, my dearly beloved brother, and man greatly beloved, no place for entreaties and beseechings, to consider and endeavour to prevent, before things be quite past remedy, (for I will dispute none,) is there, I say, no place to consider whether it were better to supersede our contendings than to have our Church ruined? I scarcely see a middle way for any thing. I hear the sober and judicious godly in Scotland will not hold up with these late methods, and indirect ways are taken to blast every man's repute that finds not in his heart to go all the length that some go; but it is a small thing to be judged of men. As for poor me, O ! if I knew of a cottage in the wilderness while I live, and were sure thence to go to the kingdom. I hear there are animadversions on Mr Brown's letters to Mr Dickson about the brethren's meeting at Edinburgh, and to Mr Cameron, as if none such had been raised up in the Church of Scotland for many years before; where, I suppose they will, and can hardly but have great advantage of him, neither will after replies, I fear, well help errors in the first concoction. I hear also there is an answer to his twenty-four arguments

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