about infected, thought fit to guard the ports with centinels and watchmen; and one day two travelling merchants, each with a pack of cloth upon a horſe, came to the town deſiring enterance that they might ſell their goods producing a paſs from the magiſtrates of the town whence they came, which was at that time found and free; yet notwithſtanding all this the centinels ſtopt them till the magiſtrates were called: and when they came, they would do nothing without their miniſter's advice: ſo Mr. Welch was called, and his opinion aſked; he demurred and putting off his hat with his eyes towards heaven for a pretty ſpace, though he uttered no audible words, yet continued in a praying geſture: and after a little ſpace told the magiſtrates they would do well to diſcharge theſe travellers their town, affirming with great aſſeveration, the plague was in theſe places, ſo the magiſtrates commanded them to be gone, and they went to Cumnock, a town ſome twenty miles diſtant, and there ſold their goods which kindled ſuch an infection in that place, that the living were hardly able to bury their dead. This made the people to think that Mr. Welch was an oracle. Yet as he walked with God, and kept cloſe with him, ⟨ſo⟩ he forgot not man, for he uſed frequently to dine abroad with ſuch of his friends, as he thought were perſons with whom he might maintain the comminion of ſaints; and once in the year he uſed always to invite all his familiares in the town to a treat in his houſe, where there was a banquet of holineſs and ſobriety.
He continued the courſe of his miniſtry in Ayr, till king James's purpoſe of deſtroying the church of Scotland by eſtabliſhing biſhops was ripe, and then it fell to be his duty to edify the church by his ſufferings, as formerly he had done by his doctrine.
The reaſon why king James was ſo violent for biſhops was neither their devine inſtitution, which he denied they had, nor yet the profit the church ſhould reap by them for he knew well both the men and their commnuications. but merely becauſe he believed they were uſeful inſtruments to turn a limited monarchy into abſolute dominion, ſubjects into ſlaves, the thing he minded moſt.
