us to love him in sincerity, which is the very joy and exultation of heaven:-Rev. v. 12. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And no other thing than the soul breathing forth love to Jesus Christ, can rightly apprehend the joys of heaven."

The last words which he spoke at supper, were in the commendation of love above knowledge, saying, "O but notions of knowledge without love, are of small worth, evanishing in nothing, and very dangerous." After supper, his father having given thanks, he read the 16th Psalm, and his first words thereafter were, "If there were any thing in this world sadly and unwillingly to be left, it were the reading of the scriptures: :- I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living,' but this needs not make us sad; for where we go, the Lamb is the book of scripture, and the light of that city, and there is life, even the river of the water of life, and living springs." To this he added many excellent observations, and making mention of the 23d verse of the 31st Psalm, "O love the Lord, all ye his saints," added, "That where love was, it was so operative, that it made flesh spirit, and where it was not, there spirit was made flesh :" thereafter he sung a part of the same Psalm.

Supper being ended, he calls, smilingly, for a pen, saying, "it was to write his testament," wherein he only ordered some few books, which he had, to be re-delivered to several persons.

He went to bed a little after eleven o'clock, and having slept well till five in the morning, he arose and called to his comrade, John Wodrow, saying pleasantly, "Up, John, for you are too long in bed; you and I look not like men going this day to be hanged, seeing we lie so long." Thereafter he said to him, in the words of Isaiah, xlii. 24. "Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the Lord, he against whom we have sinned, for they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law.' And I think, John," said he, "I have not known, nor do I lay it to heart, as is said in the end of the 25th verse. But, John," said he, "for all this be not afraid, but read the xliii. chap. ver. 1, 2. for all will go well with us.' John said to him, " You and I will be chambered shortly in heaven, beside Mr. Robertson." He answered, "I fear, John, you bar me out, because you was more free before the council than I was; but I shall be as free as any of you upon the scaffold." Before breakfast, he said, " he had got a clear ray of the majesty of the Lord after his awaking, but it was a little again overclouded." Thereafter he prayed, and attested the Lord," that he had devoted himself to the service of God in the ministry of the Lord Jesus, and the edification of souls, very early;" adding, "Albeit, I have not been so with my God, yet thou hast made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure; this is all my de sire,' joy, and salvation, albeit thou make me not a house to grow. Now, Lord, we come to thy throne, a place we have not been acquainted with; earthly kings' thrones have advocates against poor men, but thy throne hath Jesus, an advocate for us. Our supplication

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this day, is not to be free of death, nor of pain in death, but that we may witness before many witnesses, a good confession."

His father coming to him that morning to bid him farewell, his last words to him were, after prayer and a little discourse, "That his suffering would do more hurt to the prelates, and be more edifying to the Lord's people, than if he were to continue in the ministry for twenty years." And then he desired his father to leave him, else he would but trouble him. "And I desire it of you," said he, “ best and last service you can do me, to go to your chamber, and pray earnestly to the Lord to be with me on that scaffold; for how to carry there is my care, even that I may be strengthened to endure to the end."

as the

About two o'clock in the afternoon, he was carried to the scaffold, with other five that suffered with him; where he appeared, to the conviction of all that formerly knew him, with a fairer, better, and more stayed countenance than ever they had before observed. Being come to the foot of the ladder, he directed his speech northward to the multitude; and premising, "That as his years in the world had been but few, so his words at that time should not be many," he spoke to the people the following testimony, which he had before written and subscribed.*

2. HIS TESTIMONY.

"Being by a great surprisal of providence, thus staged before the world, in a matter of so universal concernment to all that fear God, and desire to be stedfast in his covenant, I could not forbear to leave behind me this standing testimony, concerning the occasion and uses thereof, for the glory of God, and the vindication of my profession from the aspersions cast thereon by men, and the edification of these by my death, to whom I had devoted my life in the work of the ministry.

"I have esteemed the government of this church by presbytery, to be among the chief of the ordinances of Jesus Christ, which by his blood he has purchased, and ascended up on high to bestow as a gift upon it; as being the very gospel ministry in its simplicity and purity from the inventions of men, and so the mean by which other ordinances are administered, and the most fundamental truths made effectual in the hearts of his people, and therefore that it ought with that same carefulness to be contended for. Experience, both of the having and wanting of it, hath given it this epistle of commendation, so that it may be both known and read of all men: which is also true of the solemn engagements of the nation thereto, by the national covenant, the solemn league and covenant, which I have esteemed in their rise and renewing, pregnant performances of that promise, Isa. xliv. 5. where it is evident, that where church reformations come to any maturity, they arrive at this degree of saying, I am the Lord's; and subscribing with the hand unto the Lord.' So was it in the days of

Naphtali, pp. 341-345

the reforming kings of Judah, and after the restoration from the captivity in the days of Nehemiah. This same promise did the Lord Jesus make yea and amen to us, when he redeemed us from spiritual Babylon; which is so much the greater evidence, that these were the very motions of God's Spirit in our first reformers, that they were expressly designed against the greatest motions of the spirit of darkness in antichrist and his supporters, and against the greatest confirmations that ever these abominations attained by the decrees of the council of Trent, and that bloody bond called the Holy League. Aud there. fore, whatever indignity is done unto these covenants, I do esteem to be no less than doing despite unto the Spirit of grace in his most eminent exerting of himself, but especially, declaring against the same as flowing from a spirit of sedition and rebellion, to be a sin of the same nature with theirs, who ascribed Christ's casting out of devils to Beelzebub; and that, with this aggravation, that these Scribes and Pharisees came never the length of professing Christ, and submitting themselves to him and his ways.*

"But we are condemned to death upon the account of this covenant, for adhering to the duties therein sworn to, by such as once did as much themselves as we have done, and some of them more than some of us which considerations have moved me to great fears of God's wrath against the land, according to the curse that we are bound under, if we should break that covenant, and in the fear of it, many times to pour out my soul before the Lord; and as soon as I heard of a party up in arms in behalf of the covenant, (all other doors being shut, whereby the redress of the manifest violations of it might be obtained; and these by manifest and unheard of violence obtruded upon others to go along with them,) being bound by that covenant against detestable indifferency and neutrality in this matter, and to esteem every injury, done to any engaged in this covenant upon account of it, as done to myself:-very conscience of duty urged me to this against some reluctancy of fear of what might follow. Upon the same reasons, at Lanark, with the rest I declared my adherence to the cove

• In one sense it may be said, that whatever opposes his work in the world -the progress of truth and the triumphs of the Redeemer's kingdom, is a sin committed against the Holy Spirit of God. In so far then as the covenants were means under providence of promoting and perpetuating genuine Christianity," the declaring against them as flowing from a spirit of sedition and rebellion," might be viewed as a sin somewhat similar to, though not perhaps " of the same nature with theirs, who ascribed Christ's casting out of devils to Beelzebub." In this latter instance, we have reason to believe there was a special degree of malignity against God, a determined hostility to his truth, combined at the same time with a perception and consciousness of its claims upon their reception, such as is not often exhibited in ordinary instances of infidelity. But yet it is impossible not to remark the resemblance, existing between the circumstances of those, who thus insulted the Saviour to his face and sinned against the Holy Ghost, and of those who, notwithstanding the impressions they must have had of their devotedness and worth, did, with unrelenting severity, exclude from their sacred office, men, whose fidelity and success in ministerial labours, loudly proclaimed them the servants of God-supplying their places with those, whose characters displayed that they were the very reverse.

nant, by my lifting up of my hand, after the articles thereof were read.

"And here I cannot but with grief of heart acknowledge my fainting in a day of trial, that being engaged with them upon such accounts, I many times in fear designed to withdraw, and at length did, which, as it was the occasion of my falling into the hands of the enemy, so I think among other things it was the cause why God delivered me into their hands. Upon the same fear, in all my examinations, I have denied my engagement with them, and endeavoured to vindicate myself by asserting the real designs I had to part from them, and have utterly cast away the glory of a testimony, which my very being in their company, as a favourer of the ends of the covenant, and as one willing to contribute my best endeavours for the promoting of them, but especially my declaring for the covenant, did bear unto the truth and ordinances of Jesus Christ against this untoward generation : this I confess to be no less than a denying of Jesus Christ, and a being ashamed of his words before men; but I hope the Lord, who remembereth that we are but frail dust, shall not lay it to my charge, and according to his faithfulness and grace will forgive me, who by this public confession, take to myself shame and confusion of face, and fly to the propitiation offered to all sinners in Jesus Christ. And these things as they have procured this death unto me, as an act of God's justice; so they mind me of other evils in mine own heart, that have been the source of this my unwillingness, to take on Christ's cross: my heart hath not studied to maintain that spirituality in walking with God, and edifying exemplariness with others, that became one that had received the first-fruits of the Spirit, and aimed at the ministry of the gospel, living in times of so much calamity for the church of God, and particular afflictions as to myself. If I had spent my days in groaning after my house from heaven, would I have shifted so fair occasion of being clothed with it? Alas, that I have loved my Lord and Master Jesus Christ so little! Alas, that I have done so little service to him, that I have so little labour to follow me, to my everlasting rest! This I speak to these especially, with whom I have familiarly conversed in my pilgrimage, that seeing the Lord will not grant me life to testify my real reformation of these things, my acknowledgment at death may have influence upon them, to study not only godliness but the power of it.*

• The inconstancy (if it may be so termed) which Mr. M'Kail_regrets so bitterly, throughout the foregoing paragraph, was that exhibited in his declaration before the council, and especially in his supplication of December 11th, entreating an adjournment of his trial, whilst as yet he was writhing under the effects of his late torture-and his petition, after sentence, for the king's pardon, or a mitigation of punishment. Into this last document, it is proper to observe, that his friends, out of zeal for his life, introduced several expressions which he never sanctioned; and that even with these expressions retained, it does not, in the judgment of charity, present any thing very inconsistent with the most cordial approval of those principles, for which he now was ready to lay down his life. But such was the extreme tenderness of his conscience, and such the ardent desire to glorify God, of which he was now conscious, that what might well appear to other men as venial shortcomings, prompted by the

"As I acknowledge that I have not been free and ingenuous in these particulars forementioned, so in other things, wherein I interponed that holy name of God, as to the not being upon the contrivance of this rising in arms, nor privy to any resolution thereanent, nor conscious of any intelligence at home or abroad concerning it, I was most ingenuous and they have wronged me much, who said that I denied upon oath, that which they were able to make out against me, or knew to be truth; but none allege perjury against me, but such as are so manifestly guilty of it before the world, that their tongues in such allegements are no slander.

"Although I be judged and condemned as a rebel amongst men, yet I hope, even in order to this action to be accepted as loyal before God. Nay, there can be no greater act of loyalty to the king, as the times now go, than for every man to do his utmost for the extirpation of that abominable plant of prelacy, which is the bane of the throne, and of the country: which, if it be not done, the throne shall never be established in righteousness, until these wicked be removed from before it. Sure I am, those who are now condemned as rebels against him, by them, are such as have spent much time in prayer for him, and do more sincerely wish his standing, and have endeavoured it more by this late action so much condemned, than the prelates by condemning them to death.

"This disaster hath heightened greatly the afflictions of our church, and ought to teach all of you to drink the wine of astonishment: ye have not known tribulation till now: now we judge them happy that are fallen asleep, and removed far away, and know that God hath been taking away his servants from the evils that were to come. Know that God's design is, to make many hearts contrite, that have been formerly too whole, and have not lamented sufficiently the removal of his ordinances and ministry, and the reproach rubbed upon the work of reformation. Beware that your sorrow be not a momentary motion of common compassion, that evanisheth, when it may be, there is some intermission in this violent course of shedding innocent blood; but labour to have a constant impression that may sanctify the heart; nay, ye should live much in the apprehension of approaching judgment. Certainly the withdrawing of many from us, and not contributing their help to the great work they were engaged to, as well as we; the general rising against us in many places of the country; but, above all, this open shedding of the blood of the saints, which involveth the land in the guiltiness of all the righteous blood shed from the foundation of the world, have made Scotland fit fuel for the fire of God's wrath. I can say nothing concerning times to come, but this, All things shall work together for good to them that love God,' and so this present dispensation. And they shall have most comfort in this promise, who are most willing that such afflictions as we are brought to, be the way that God chooseth to work their good.

love of life, and justifiable even, on the score of duty, were felt by him as sins lying heavy upon his heart, and demanding of him, the contrition and acknowledgments which are here expressed.