"A firm persuasion of the superintendence of Providence over all our concerns, is absolutely necessary to our happiness. Without it, we cannot be said to believe in the Scriptures, or practise any thing like resignation to his will. I am convinced, that no affliction can befal me without the permission of God. I am convinced likewise, that he sees and knows that I am afflicted; believing this, I must in the same degree believe, that if I pray to him for deliverance, he hears me; I must needs know likewise, with equal assurance, that if he hears, he will also deliver me, if that will, upon the whole, be most conducive to my happiness; and if he does not deliver me, I may be well assured that he has none but the most benevolent intention in declining it. He made us, not because we could add to his happiness, which was always perfect, but that we might be happy ourselves; and will he not, in all his dispensations toward us, even in the minutest, consult that end for which he made us? To suppose the contrary, is (which we are not always aware of,) affronting every one of his attributes; and, at the same time, the certain consequence of disbelieving his care of us is, that we renounce utterly our dependance upon him. In this view, it will appear plainly, that the line of duty is not stretched too tight, when we are told we should accept every thing at his hands as a blessing, and to be thankful even while we smart under the rod of iron with which he sometimes rules us. Without this persuasion, every blessing, however we may think ourselves happy in it, loses its greatest recommendation, and every affliction is intolerable. Death itself must be welcome to him who has this faith, and he who has it not, must aim at it, if he is not a madman.'

We might quote the sentiments of many a sufferer, and in so far as their cases resembled his, his thoughts would quadrate with theirs. For as in water, face answereth to face, so doth the heart of man to man. We must however now introduce to our readers, some of his contemporaries and fellowexiles

"Men once like him with suffering tried,

But now with glory crown'd."

We shall allow him to wander on the secluded banks of some of the numerous canals with which Holland is intersected; he may hang his harp upon the willows which shade their banks; there he may meditate on the works of his Heavenly Father, and consider his doings; there he may pour out his heart to him, and receive the consolations of his

Holy Spirit, which are neither few nor small. By Him he may have the Scriptures applied, till his heart burns within him. Nothing else, and nothing less, will soothe the stranger's

woe.

We shall proceed to give an account of Mr Macward, the first perhaps whom he met, and the last from whom he parted, when he took the swellings of Jordan.

Mr Robert Macvaird, as Woodrow calls him, or Macward, as he is called by others, was a native of Glenluce, in Galloway. The time of his birth, and condition of his parents, are not certainly known. His circumstances were such as enabled him to prosecute without interruption those preparatory studies which were necessary to qualify him for being a minister of the everlasting gospel. He was enrolled a student of Divinity, under the celebrated Mr Samuel Rutherford, then Professor of Divinity in New College, or St Mary's, in St Andrews, and was highly esteemed by that eminent scholar and divine. He accompanied Mr Rutherford to London, in the capacity of amanuensis, where he was sent one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly, in 1643. He was some time one of the regents or teachers, in one of the chairs of philosophy, in the College of St Andrews, of which his illustrious friend and patron Mr Rutherford, was principal. On the 26th July 1655, he applied to the Presbytery of St Andrews to be taken on probationary trials. He met with some opposition, because he had not kept a fast appointed by the Assembly.

Being rejected there, it does not appear where he received licence. In 1656, he succeeded the justly celebrated Mr Andrew Gray, in the Outer High Church, in the city of Glasgow. In this extensive sphere of usefulness, he laboured with apostolic zeal, for the space of five years, and by a conscientious discharge of his official engagements, he gained an imperishable name for pastoral fidelity. While thus employed he incurred the marked displeasure of the prelatic party, whose influence at court was now daily on the ascendency. A mind like that of Mr Macward, deeply imbued with Christianity, and strongly attached to Presbyterianism in all its simplicity, could ill brook the imperious dictates, which were incessantly issuing with the insidious design of depriving Scotland of its ecclesiastical polity. He timeously and loudly raised his voice against those inroads which were making under the sanction of the king, and which threatened not merely the annihilation of Presbytery, but the extinction of pure and un

defiled religion. For a sermon preached on a week-day, in the Tron Church of Glasgow, in February 1661, in which he bore public testimony against the glaring defections of the times, he was arrested, carried to Edinburgh, thrown into prison, and indicted by Sir John Fletcher, his Majesty's advocate, for sedition and treasonable preaching. His text was Amos iii. 2. " You only have I known of all the families. of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." He had preached upon it for some time upon the weekdays, and, in this discourse, goes through the sins and iniquities now abounding, which were drawing down the punishment threatened in the text, in a most serious, close, and pathetical manner; and after he had, in a fluent oratory, of which he was peculiarly a master, run through abounding personal sins, and those of the city he preached to, he comes to the general and national sins at present abounding. Some few hints may not be unacceptable; he begins with national backsliding from God. "Alas!" says he, "may not God expostulate with us, and say, we are backslidden with a perpetual backsliding, and what iniquity have you found in him? We make ourselves transgressors by building the things we lawfully and laudably destroyed: and if a word in sobriety be dropped against such a course, one presently forfeits his reputation, and passes for a hot-headed and turbulent person-this leaven hath leavened the whole lump; we are backslidden in zeal and love-the glory of a begun reformation in manners is eclipsed, and an inundation of profanity come in-those who once cried, Grace, grace, to the building, are now crying, Raze it, raze it—many who once loved to walk abroad in the garment of godliness, now persecute it-the faithful servants of Christ are become enemies, because they tell the truth-the upright seekers of God are the marks of great men's malicehe that in this general backsliding departs from iniquity, makes himself a prey; and may become so to councils and synagogues. May it never be said of faithful ministers and Christians in Scotland, 'We have a law, and by this law they must die.' Backsliding is got up to the very head, and corrupts the fountains, and wickedness goeth forth already from some of the prophets, through the whole land. The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint, and many of his disciples are like to go back. What would our fathers, who laid the foundation of our reformation, think, if they saw our state? Would they not say, Is this the Church of Scotland? How is thy gold become dim? The foundations are out of

course, the noble vine is degenerate to the plant of a strange vine is this the land that joined in covenant with the Lord? Are those the pastors and rulers that bound themselves solemnly, and acknowledged their former breaches? How hath the faithful city turned an harlot! What shall the end of those things be? We are in a forlorn condition: sin is become national by precept and practice; sins nationally condemned are become national by precept, and evil is called good, and good, evil. We walk willingly after the commandment, and there is not a party so meek as to offer a dissent.' After he has enlarged upon these things in Scripture eloquence, and a most moving way, he gives a good many pertinent directions to mourn, consider, repent, and return, to wrestle and pray, and pour out their souls before the Lord; and encourages them to hope from this, that God will look upon those duties as their dissent from what is done prejudicial to his work and interest, and mark them among the mourners in Zion. But the passage most noticed was that with which he closes the sermon, after what I have just now set down: 'As for my own part, as a poor member of the Church of Scotland, and an unworthy minister in it, I do this day call upon you, who are the people of God, to witness, that I humbly offer my dissent to all acts which are or shall be passed against the covenants, and work of reformation in Scotland, and, 2ndly, protest that I am desirous to be free of the guilt thereof, and pray that God may put it upon record in heaven.'-Thus he ends his sermon, (says Wodrow,) as my copy from his mouth bears."

The noise of this sermon quickly flew abroad, and Mr Macward was brought to Edinburgh under a guard, and imprisoned, and indicted for sedition and treasonable preaching. He was allowed lawyers, and his process was pretty long and tedious. We know no further of it than by his own papers and letter to Mr Wylie, where he says, "I know you have heard of the sad, and yet in many respects, sweet and comfortable, of steadfast and faithful Mr Guthrie's death, Saturday last, June 1st, 1661. Upon Thursday, I was called in before the Parliament, and expected to have accompanied him, but the president, my Lord Crawford, shifted it off that day. I was sent back again to prison, to be in readiness against the next diet. That night they adjourned to this Tuesday, when I expected to be called, but was not. It is thought they were expecting Mr Sharp's brother with some new orders, which made them sist. expect to be called in to-morrow, the 6th. Dear brother,

I

there is no way for us to stand upon our feet before such fury and force, but by your and our falling upon our knees, praying with all manner of prayer and supplication, to be strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power unto all long-suffering and patience, with joyfulness. What will be the issue of my process, whether death or banishment, I know not; and he can put me in case to say, I care not. Pray for nothing to us, but steadfastness." Mr Gillespie's submission, &c. as I have already set down above. And then he tells him, he has sent Argyle and Mr Guthrie's speeches; and adds, "before this comes to your hands, my business will be at some close. God may restrain them, but I expect the Oh! for a heart to give him this head. I desire not this to be much noised till you hear further, lest my friends hear of it; only pray for strength to us, to endure to the end. Time will permit me to say no farther, save that I am your unworthy brother in bonds, R. M." Accordingly, June 6th, he was brought before parliament, where he had a very public opportunity to give a proof of his eminent parts and solid judgment. His charming eloquence was owned even by his adversaries, and he defended, by scripture and reason, the expressions in his sermon. We have no more of this great man's case than his speech at the bar of the house, and therefore we insert it here.

sentence of death.

"Mr Robert Macward, Minister of the Eastquarter in Glasgow, his speech before the Parliament, Thursday June 6, 1661.

My Lord President,-Since it is permitted that I may speak before my lord commissioner, his Grace, and this honourable court of parliament, 1 must in the entry confess, that I am neither so far below nor above all passion and perturbation of mind, as not to be somewhat troubled, yea, sensibly touched, to see and feel myself thus loaded with the crime, and lashed with the reproach of a traitorous and seditious person; but withal, I must say this also, that nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa, doth exceedingly sweeten the bitterness of this lot, and mitigate the asperity of my present trouble. It is to me murus aheneus, indeed, a brazen wall and bulwark against the storm, tempest, and impetuosity of calumny and reproach, that herein, according to my weak measure, I have endeavoured to exercise myself, to have and keep a conscience void of offence, as to that particular guilt wherewith I am charged in my indictment. This, I say, is