Upon the establishment of Episcopacy in Ireland, some of the Scottish inhabitants had determined to emigrate to New England, where liberty of conscience Mas permitted, but were driven back by storm, and as conformity was rigidly insisted upon, many of them returned to Scotland, where they obtained a favourable reception. The "errors of Brownism," had, in the meantime, crept in among them, but their remarkable piety procured the good will of the people, till they reached our author's parish of Stirling. The laird of Leckie, a gentleman who is said to have suffered much at the hands of the bishops, was at this time much esteemed for his intelligence and seriousness, and many who could not conscientiously acquiesce in the services of the church, had been in the habit of assembling with him for the exercise of private worship. In these meetings, it had been alleged, but whether with truth we arc not informed, that he had in prayer used some expressions prejudicial to Mr Guthrie. The holders of such meetings were therefore "delated" before the presbytery, and expelled their bounds, but Guthrie was not willing to dismiss them so easily—he left no means untried to injure their character, and the name of "sectarian" was at this time too powerful a weapon in the hands of a merciless enemy. In the assembly of 1639, he tried to obtain an act against private meetings; but some of the leading clergymen, fearing more injury to the cause of religion from his injudicious zeal than from the meetings he attempted to suppress, prevented the matter from being publicly brought before the assembly. He was still, however, determined to have some stronger weapon in his hand than that of argument—a weapon it need hardly be said the assembly allowed him,—and in order to prepare for a decisive conclusion at the next session, he roused the northern ministers, "putting them in great vehemency," to use Baillie's expression, "against all these things he complained of." Accordingly, in the assembly of 1640, after much debate, an act anent the ordering of family worship, was passed. By this act it was ordained, that not more than the members of one family should join in private devotion—that reading prayers is lawful where no one can express themselves extemporaneously—that no one should be permitted to expound the Scriptures but ministers or expectants approved of by the presbytery—and, lastly, that no innovation should be permitted without the express concurrence of the assembly. But this decision rather widened than appeased their differences, and the subject was again investigated in 1641, when an act against impiety and schism was drawn up by Mr Alexander Henderson.
For several years after this period, little is mentioned by our historians relative to Mr Guthrie. On Sunday the 3d of October, 1641, he had the honour of preaching before his majesty in the abbey church of Edinburgh,[1] but Sir James Balfour does not give us any outline of this sermon—a circumstance the more to be regretted as none of his theological works have come down to us. In his memoirs he mentions having addressed the assembly of 1643, when the English divines presented a letter from the Westminster Assembly, and the declaration of the English parliament, in which we are told they proposed "to extirpate episcopacy root and branch." It is remarkable that principal Baillie, the most minute of all our ecclesiastical historians of that period, and who has left behind him a journal of the proceedings of that very assembly, takes no notice of this speech; but it is evident from what he says elsewhere, that the presbyterians found it necessary to overawe Mr Guthrie. He had, in name of the presbytery of Stirling, written "a most bitter letter" to Mr Robert Douglas, "concerning the commissioners of the General Assembly's declaration against the cross petition;" and though it was afterwards recalled, it seems to have been used in terrorem, for, to quote the expressive words of Mr Baillie, "Mr Harry
- ↑ Balfour's Historical Works, vol. iii. p. 89.
