parts of the world, but this was no idle correspondence. He made it in all cases subservient to the purposes of improving his general knowledge, and of adding to his stores of information; and with this view he was in the habit of transmitting to his correspondents lists of queries, on subjects of general and public interest, and particularly on matters connected with religion, as they stood in their several localities. With all this labour, he regularly devoted two days in every week to his preparation for the pulpit, and bestowed besides the most assiduous attention on all the other duties of his parish.
In the case of professor Simpson of Glasgow, the successor of Mr Wodrow's father, who was suspended from his office by the General Assembly for his Arian sentiments, Mr Wodrow felt himself called upon as a minister of the gospel, and a friend to evangelical truth, to take an active part with his brethren against the professor. The latter, as already said, was suspended, but through a feeling of compassion the emoluments of his office were reserved to him; a kindness for which, it is not improbable, he may have been indebted, at least in some measure, to the benevolent and amiable disposition of the subject of this memoir. Soon after this occurrence Mr Wodrow took occasion, when preaching on the days of the 10th and llth June, 1727, in the Barony church of Glasgow, to illustrate the divinity of the Saviour in opposition to the sentiments of the Arians and Socinians. These sermons had the effect of rousing the religious zeal of one of the former sect, a Mr William Paul, a student of theology, to such a pitch as to induce him, on the day following, to challenge Mr Wodrow to a public or private disputation or to a written controversy. This challenge, however, the latter did not think it prudent to accept.
In the affair of the celebrated Marrow Controversy, which opened the way to the Secession in 1733, Mr Wodrow decided and acted with his usual prudence, propriety, and liberality. He thought that those who approved of the sentiments and doctrines contained in the work from which the controversy took its name, viz., the "Marrow of Modern Divinity," went too far in their attempts to vindicate them, and that the Assembly, on the other hand, had been too active and too forward in their condemnation. On the great question about subscription to articles of faith, he took a more decided part, and ever looked upon the nonsubscribers as enemies to the cause of evangelical Christianity.
On this subject he corresponded largely with various intelligent and some eminent men in different parts of the three kingdoms, especially in Ireland, from whom he collected a mass of opinion and information regarding presbyterianism in that country, which for interest and importance cannot be equalled.
The valuable and laborious life of the author of the History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, was now, however, drawing to a close. His constitution had been naturally good, and during the earlier part of his life he had enjoyed uninterrupted health; but the severity of his studious habits at length began to bear him down. He was first seriously affected in 1726, and from this period continued gradually to decline till 1734, an interval of pain and suffering of no less than eight years, when he expired, on the 21st March, in the 55th year of his age; dying, as he had lived, in the faith of the gospel, and love to all mankind. His remains were interred in the church-yard of Eastwood, where his memory has lately been commemorated by the erection of a monument.
Mr Wodrow was married in the end of the year 1708, to Margaret Warner, grand-daughter of William Guthrie of Fenwick, author of the "Trial of a Saving Interest in Christ," and daughter of the reverend Patrick Warner of Ardeer, Ayrshire, and minister of Irvine. He left at his death four sons, and
