kept from having hand in our concurrence with any public insurrection that was; so that there was nothing that could be laid to my charge but as concerning my God and conscience.

It is true, the very profession of religion did expose me to persecution, viz., to reproach and contempt, and made me not willing to bring my cause to their corrupt judicatories, choosing rather to suffer by unprofitable terms of peace, than to bring my cause before them to be heard publicly; for I knew both my person and principles were unfavourable, and therefore doubted much of the issue of my cause.

Hitherto my troubles reached none but myself; but now, being married, they reached others: for within a very few days after we were married, and were preparing to go to the North, a messenger came with a summons to me to appear before the council for keeping of conventicles. The Bishop of Murray, in whose diocy I had preached, and a privy counsellor, for some picque he had at my wife, did cause me this trouble. I was herewith troubled; but my wife's friends, to whom I communicate the matter, dealt with the messenger to take off his summons, and to lay on a new summons when we were to the North, where we were to be in a day or two, and then indorse on the back of his execution, that he found us not, which would make a new summons necessary; and he did so. My adversaries were enraged at this, and, disdaining to be thus outwitted, caused send one hundred and sixty miles a new summons, which, within two months after we were come North, came to our hand. I was therewith much troubled on my wife's account, fearing that the public would seize upon any thing belonging to her; however, I prayed to the Lord, and sought advice what to do, whether I should answer the council's citation (as my friends advised me) or not, and take my hazard. The Lord was pleased to clear it to me, that I was not to answer the citation, which light I followed; upon which I was denounced and outlawed. My wife was very cheerful under this. Within a short time thereafter we came South; and then, understanding who were the authors of my troubles, I thought it wisdom to take them off; and, for this

VOL. II.

Y

effect, employed such as had greatest influence with the privy counsellor to deal with him to abstain from such a matter and action so far below him. I likewise came myself and spoke to him; and the Lord blessed the means used so effectually, that he fell off, putting all the blame on the bishop, and was ever thereafter a good friend to me; and having the executions delivered him, he would never give them up, by which means they came to nothing, and, finally, were altogether forgotten.

After this there was "silence in heaven for half an hour," but then the angels of war did sound their trumpets; and amongst other ministers was I sought for, and of new denounced; was many times, while in the South, made to shift my lodging; was frequently in fears and alarms, and preached in great tentations through the lying in wait of enemies; was several times interrupted in the very act of preaching by soldiers that by orders came to apprehend me; I could get no business done. The Lord by this did only manifest his goodness in preserving and delivering me, rendering enemies who did forbid us to preach inexcusable, by this causing them fill up the measure of their iniquities; my spirit by these tossings was rather distempered and jumbled than bettered.

SECTION II.

Of my being Intercommuned.

The bishops, and other wicked men, perceiving all this time that they "laboured in the fire," for the number of dissenters increased, and the gospel spread further and further notwithstanding of all the violent means that were used for suppressing it and the professors thereof, they bethink themselves of intercommuning the chief ministers that were most active in preaching, and the chief professors both gentlemen and others, to the number of between three or four hundred in the first or second intercommuning. It was a

public writ, served by king and council's authority, straitly discharging, under highest pains, all his majesty's subjects to converse or speak with, harbour or receive into their houses, or administer any comfort to, the persons in the writ particularly expressed. This was proclaimed and printed; and thus for naked preaching were we processed as murderers and traitors, for such were only in use to be intercommuned. They thought this would keep the people from us, or force us, finding no shelter, to remove out of the land; and make us as ducks to decoy others, who, could they be proven to have received or harboured us, were fineable at the council's pleasure, and to be in the same circumstances which we were in ourselves. I was through the malice of the bishops put in with others; for they knew that I was against the very hearing of their ministers, and had several times preached in the fields, and was very popular; they imagined also my parts were greater than they were. And, therefore, though some friends dealt that I might not be intercommuned, yet could not prevail; the bishops would have it so.

Although this seemed to be the first storm of persecution that yet had fallen upon us, and that now the adversaries had boasted of an effectual mean for suppressing conventicles, and establishing prelacy and uniformity, and that good people feared it; yet the Lord did wonderfully disappoint them, and made and turned their witty counsels into folly; for this great noise harmed not at all, it was powder without ball: for, as for myself, never one that cared for me shunned my company; yea, a great many more carnal relations and acquaintances did entertain me as freely as ever they did; yea, so far did the goodness of the Lord turn this to my good, that I observed it was at that time I got most of my civil business expede. And as the Lord preserved myself in this storm, so I did not hear of any intercommuned, or conversers with intercommuned persons, that were in the least prejudiced thereby; nay, this matter of the intercommuning of so many good and peaceable men did but exasperate the people against the bishops the more, and procured to them, as the authors of such rigid courses, a greater

and more universal hatred; so that the whole land groaned to be delivered from them.

SECTION III.

Of my first Imprisonment in the Bass.

Some two years and a half did I continue intercommuned discharging the commission I had received from the Lord Jesus in great weakness, I confess, (yet desiring to serve the Lord better, and humbled and grieved upon the account of my great failing,) and in manifold tentations through the lying in wait of these who hunted after me. For the bishops knowing that I was a rigid nonconformist, who had not freedom to have any spiritual communion with their church, and that I laboured to keep some halting betwixt two opinions from joining with them, and to divert others from their (supposed by me) most sinful communion; and imagining me to be of some parts, and very active in preaching in the fields, and keeping up the Secession as they called it; they therefore did stir up the king's council against me, representing me to them as a person of very disloyal principles and practices; so as there was a particular eye upon me, and I was one of the three that a considerable sum of money was proffered for apprehending of, to any person, although nothing could be laid to my charge of sedition or insurrection, but only that I preached without the bishop's authority, and had influence to keep such of the nation as I had influence upon, or conversed with, from going alongst or joining with the public courses established by law. Many attempts were made against me, which for some years I escaped: at last the major of the town of Edinburgh, being solicited by the archbishop, and encouraged and importuned thereto by the promises of great rewards and acknowledgments, did on the Lord's day night, being the 28th January 1677, by the treachery of a servant-maid whom for money he had corrupted, who, being a servant-maid to a relation in whose house I ordinarily preached, had knowledge of

my coming and going; thus betrayed, I was apprehended by the said major about ten o'clock at night, which was the time the maid had appointed him to come to her master's house where I was for that day, as I was, after supper, recommending the house and family to God by prayer; I was then interrupted and carried to prison. I did not think fit to resist, lest some friends and relations which were with me might be made to suffer.

He who apprehended me went immediately to the archbishop, and told him the news of my apprehension, with which the archbishop was greatly rejoiced, and by giving some small token at present, and promises of greater reward, dismissed the major. The archbishop, overjoyed with his imaginary success and prosperity in apprehending me, longed for the next day impatiently, on which, so soon as it did dawn, he (being a counsellor) sent order to the jailor that I should be kept close, and none suffered to have access to me; which was done, until some of the counsellors in a committee met the same night, before whom at five o'clock at night I appeared, where I was examined, and verbally charged as a seditious person, who did rent the Church of Christ, and was very active to make and keep up the schism; as a preacher in field conventicles, which was death by the law; which they gladly would have me acknowledge, as likewise who they were that empowered me to preach: that I was intercommuned, and despised the law so far as I never made any application to be freed from that sentence: and that I was a person of very bad principles, destructive to all government. And thereupon the archbishop, who thereby thought to ensnare me by my own words, inquired, Whether I judged it lawful upon pretence of religion to take up arms against the king's majesty? This was the sum: and that I kept correspondence with some prisoners in the Bass, which the archbishop confidently averred he knew. These thing were not charged upon me all at once, but in a confused way; and many things by way of question. I cannot say of any of the committee of the council but they were all civil and sober persons, of whom, if the instigation and fear of the archbishop had not prevailed with them, I might have