CHARACTER OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTOUN. WT man ITH these * there was a fourth found out, who was then at London at his return from the Bath, where he had been for his health; and on him I will enlarge more copiously. He was the son of Doctor Leightoun, who had in Archbishop Laud's time writ "Zion's Plea against the Prelates;" for which he was condemned in the Star-chamber to have his ears cut and his nose slit; he was a man of a violent and ungoverned heat. He sent his eldest son Robert to be bred in Scotland, who was accounted a saint from his youth up. He had great quickness of parts, a lively apprehension, with a charming vivacity of thought and expression. He had the greatest command of the purest Latin that I ever knew in any man. He was a master both of Greek and Hebrew, and of the whole compass of theological learning, chiefly in the study of the scriptures. But that which excelled all the rest was, he was possessed with the highest and * The three persons named for vacant bishopricks in Scotland after the Restoration. noblest sense of divine things that I ever saw in any man. He had no regard to his person, unless it was to mortify it by a constant low diet, that was like a perpetual fast. He had a contempt both of wealth and reputation. He seemed to have the lowest thoughts of himself possible, and to desire that all other persons should think as meanly of him as he did himself: He bore all sorts of ill-usage and reproach, like a man that took pleasure in it. He had so subdued the natural heat of his temper, that in a great variety of accidents, and in a course of twenty-two years intimate conversation with him, I never observed the least sign of passion, but upon one single occasion. He brought himself into so composed a gravity, that I never saw him laugh, and but seldom smile; and he kept himself in such a constant recollection, that I do not remember that ever I heard him say one idle word. There was a visible tendency in all he said to raise his own mind, and those he conversed with, to serious reflections. He seemed to be in a perpetual meditation; and though the whole course of his life was strict and ascetical, yet he had none of the sourness of temper that generally possesses men of that sort. He was the freest from superstition, of censuring others, or of imposing his own methods on them, possible; so that he did not so much as recommend them to others. He said there was a diversity of temper; and every man was to watch over his own, and to turn it in the best manner he could. His thoughts were lively, oft out of the way and surprising, yet just and genuine ; and he had laid together in his memory the greatest treasure of the best and wisest of all the ancient sayings of the Hea thens as well as Christians, that I have ever known any man master of it; and he used them in the aptest manner possible. He had been bred up with the greatest aversion imaginable to the whole frame of the Church of England. From Scotland his father sent him to travel. He spent some years in France, and spoke that language like one born there. He came afterwards and settled in Scotland, and had Presbyterian ordination. But he quickly broke through the prejudices of his education. His preaching had a sublimity both of thought and expression in it. The grace and gravity of his pronunciation was such, that few heard him without a very sensible emotion: I am sure I never did. His style was rather too fine; but there was a majesty and beauty in it that left so deep an impression, that I cannot yet forget the sermons I heard him preach thirty years ago.And yet with this, he seemed to look on himself as so ordinary a preacher, that while he had a cure, he was ready to employ all others: and when he was a bishop, he chose to preach to small auditories, and would never give notice before-hand He had indeed a very low voice, and so could not be heard by a great crowd. He soon came to see into the follies of the Presbyterians, and to dislike their covenant; particularly the imposing it, and their fury against all who differed from them. He found they were not capable of large thoughts: theirs were narrow, as their tempers were sour. grew weary of mixing with them. He scarce ever went to their meetings, and lived in great retirement, minding only the care of his new parish at Newbottle, near Edinburgh. Yet all the opposition that he made to them was, that he preached up a more exact rule of life than seemed to them consistent with human nature; but his own practice did even outshine his doctrine. So he |