not but thank you for, but I am not easily taught that lesson. I confess it is the wiser way to trust nobody; but there is so much of the fool in my nature as carries me rather to the other extreme, to trust every body. Yet I will endeavour to take the best courses I can in that little business you write of. It is true there is a lawful, yea a needful, diligence in such things: but, alas! how poor are they to the portion of believers, where our treasure is.

That little that was in Mr. E.'s hands hath failed me; but I shall either have no need of it, or be supplied some other way. And this is the relief of my rolling thoughts, that while I am writing this, this moment is passing away, and all the hazards of want and sickness shall be at an end. My mother writes to me, and presses my coming up. I know not yet if that can be; but I intend, God willing, so soon as I can conveniently, if I come not, to take some course that things be done as if I were there. I hope you will have patience in the mean time. Remember my love to my sisters. The Lord be with you, and lead you in his ways.

Being in England sometime afterwards, his recent loss was touched upon by Mr. Lightmaker, who regretted that he had so sadly misplaced his confidence.

'Oh! no more of that,' cried Leighton; 'the good man has escaped from the care and vexation of that busi ness.' What, is that all you make of the matter?' rejoined his brother-in-law with surprise. Truly,' answered the other, if the Duke of Newcastle, after losing nineteen times as much of yearly income, can dance and sing, while the solid hopes of Christianity will not avail to support us, we had better be as the world.'

dent, which drew forth a proof of his admirable self-possession in the sudden prospect of death. He had taken the water at the Savoy stairs, in company with his brother Sir Ellis, his lady, and some others, and was on his way to Lambeth, when, owing to some mismanagement, the boat was in imminent danger of going to the bottom. While the rest of the party were pale with terror, and most of them crying out, Leighton never for a moment lost his accustomed serenity. To some, who afterwards expressed their astonishment at his calmness, he replied; Why, what harm would it have been, if we had all been safe landed on the other

6

side?' In the habit of dying daily, and of daily conversing with the world of spirits, he could never be surprised or disconcerted by a summons to depart out of the body.

'Another anecdote of him, which bears witness to his devout equanimity on perilous occasions, belongs to this period of his history. During the civil wars, when the royalist army was lying in Scotland, Leighton was anxious to visit his brother, who bore arms in the king's service, before an engagement which was daily expected should take place. On his way to the camp he was benighted in the midst of a vast thicket; and having deviated from the path, he sought in vain for an outlet. Almost spent with fatigue and hunger, he began to think his situation desperate, and dismounting, he spread his cloak upon the ground, and knelt down to pray. With implicit devotion he resigned his soul to God; entreating, however, that if it were not the divine pleasure for him then to conclude his days, some way of deliverance might be opened. Then remounting his horse, he threw the reins upon its neck; and the animal left to itself, or rather to the conduct of an Almighty providence, made straight into the high road,

threading all the mazes of the wood with unerring certainty.'

Mr. Leighton resigned his situa tion at Newbottle in 1652, eleven years after his appointment to the cure; and in the following year he was chosen principal of the University of Edinburgh.

In this situation he was eminently useful. One of his earliest measures was to revive the obsolete practice of delivering, once in the week, a Latin lecture on some theological subject. These prelections, which are fortunately preserved, attracted such general admiration, that the public hall in which he pronounced them, used to be thronged with auditors, who were all enchanted with the purity of his style and with his animated delivery.* To the students under his care he was indefatigably attentive, instructing them singly as well as collectively; and to many youths of capacity and distinction his wise and affectionate exhortations were lastingly beneficial.

'Of his proceedings, while he held this academical post, some particulars are extant, which bespeak him gifted with talents for active business. Two years after his appointment, he was deputed by the Provost and Council, to apply to the Protector in London for an augmentation of the revenues of the College. A minute of the Town Council Register indicates that his mission was successful.

hended within the immediate circle of his duties, a principal of austerer dignity, or of inferior zeal, might not have condescended. Observing that the collegians made little way in the higher branches of science and literature, he searched into the cause of their deficiency, and quickly found it in the want of a sound rudimental education. For the cure of this evil he proposed, that grammar schools should be founded in the several presbyteries, and be suitably endowed; and he advised that Cromwell should be solicited to assign the funds requisite for this purpose, "out of the concealed revenues of the Kirk rents.". He further recemmended that some elementary grammar, part English and part Latin, should be compiled for the use of these seminaries ; and in order to take immediate advantage of the Protector's bounty, should he graciously accede to their petition, he moved that instructions be issued forthwith to magistrates, ministers, and masters of families, enjoining them to set about obtaining a Locality' for the proposed establishments.

In the same year he offered to preach in the college hall to the scholars, once on the sabbath of every third or fourth week, taking turns with the professors; an offer which appears to have been accep. ted by the Town Council.'

Mr. Leighton continued principal of the University of Edinburgh, till the year 1662, when he was very unexpectedly called upon to resign it. Charles II. on his resto ration to the Throne of his ances tors, was exceedingly desirous to restore episcopacy to Scotland; and Sir Ellis Leighton, Mr. Leighton's younger brother, being secre→ tary to the Duke of York, recommended his brother so strongly to Lord Aubigny, one of the King's most intimate companions, that Mr. Leighton was appointed to the See of Dumblane, at the same time that Sharp was nominated to the

primacy, and Fairfowl, Hamilton, and A. Bennett, to other vacant

sees.

Leighton was very averse from his own promotion, and his reluctance to acquiesce was only overcome by a peremptory order of the court, requiring him to accept it, unless he thought in his conscience that the episcopal office was unlawful. Unable to screen himself behind this opinion, which he was far from entertaining, he surrendered at length to the royal instances, that he might not incur the guilt of contumacy towards the King; or of shrinking from a service, to which a greater Potentate seemed to summon him.'

In writing to a friend about this period, who appears to have expostulated with him on account of his accepting this important office, Mr. Leighton observes

I have received from you the kindest letter that ever you writ me; and that you may know I take it so, I return you the free and friendly advice, never to judge any man before you hear him, nor any business by one side of it. Were you here to see the other, I am confident your thoughts and mine would be the same. You have both too much knowledge of me, and too much charity to think, that either such little contemptible scraps of honour or riches sought in that part of the world, with so much reproach, or any human complacency in the world, will be admitted to decide so grave a question, or that I would sell (to speak no higher) the very sensual pleasure of my retirement for a rattle, far less deliberately do any thing that I judge offends God. For the offence of good people in cases indifferent in themselves, but not accounted so by them, whatsoever you do or do not, you shall offend some good people on the one side or other: and for those with you, the great fallacy in this business is, that they have misreckoned them

selves in taking my silence and their zeals to have been consent and participation; which, how great a mistake it is, few know better or so well as yourself. And the truth is, I did see approaching an inevitable necessity to strain with them in divers practices, in what station soever remaining in Britain; and to have escaped further off (which hath been in my thoughts) would have been the greatest scandal of all. And what will you say, if there be in this thing somewhat of that you mention, and would allow of reconciling the devout on different sides, and of enlarging those good souls you meet with from their little fetters, though possibly with little success? Yet the design is commendable, pardonable at least. However, one comfort I have, that in what is pressed on me there is the least of my own choice, yea on the contrary the strongest aversion that ever I had to any thing in all my life: the difficulty in short lies in a necessity of either owning a scruple which I have not, or the rudest disobedience to authority that may be. truth is, I am yet importuning and struggling for a liberation, and look upward for it but whatsoever be the issue, I look beyond it, and this weary, weary wretched life, through which the hand I have resigned to I trust will lead me in the path of his own choosing; and so I may please him I am satisfied. I hope

:

The

if ever we meet you shall find me in the love of solitude and a devout life.

• Your unalter'd Brother and
Friend,

R. L.'

، When I set pen to paper, I intended not to exceed half a dozen lines, but slid on insensibly thus far; but though I should fill the paper on all sides, still the right view of this business would be necessarily suspended till meeting. Meanwhile hope well of me, and

pray for me. This word I will add, that as there has been nothing of my choice in the thing, so I undergo it, if it must be, as a mortification, and that greater than a cell and haircloth: and whether any will believe this or no I am not careful.'

Some difficulties arose in consequence of Sheldon, then Bishop of London, insisting that Sharp and Leighton should receive ordination as deacons and priests from the English Bishops prior to their consecration. This was considered by some as a virtual denial of their former ordination. Such however was not the view entertained by Leighton; he considered that the re-ordaining of a priest ordained in another church imported no more but that they received him into orders according to their own rules, and did not infer the annulling the orders he had formerly received. A very different view however of this subject was taken by others, who contended that the honour and interest of the Scottish church were compromised by Leighton's concession.

On the 12th of December, 1661, the newly appointed Scottish bishops received consecration in London, and early in the following year proceeded in the same coach to Edinburgh. The Bishop of Dumblane however quitted his companions on the road, and arrived at Edinburgh privately, while they entered the Scottish capital with considerable pomp, which called forth from the spectators many severe observations.

Shortly after their arrival in Edinburgh, the Bishops were formally invited to take their seats in parliament: not that any invitation was requisite to authorize their attendance, but it was deemed a proper token of respect. By all, except the Bishop of Dumblane, the call was obeyed. He resolved from the beginning never to mix in parliament, unless some matter

affecting the interests of religion were in agitation; and to this resolution he steadily adhered.

His first appearance in parliament was on the question respecting the oath of supremacy. This oath was so worded as to carry on the face of it no demand beyond what the presbyterians were willing to admit, namely, that the king should be recognised for civil head of the church as well as of the state. Yet there was something in the phraseology so equivocal as to warrant a suspicion, that it was artfully contrived for a handle by which the sovereign might interfere, at pleasure and with absolute authority, in the internal regulation of the church. In England such explanations were given, when the oath was tendered, as brought it within the compass of a presbyterian conscience. But when it was required by the Earl of Cassilis, and by other stout covenanters in the parliament of Scotland, that the necessary qualification for reconciling its provisions to their scruples should be inserted into the body of the act, or at least be subjoined to their subscriptions, the High Commissioner would not listen to the demand. Leighton now stepped forward the fearless champion, the eloquent advocate, of moderation and charity. He maintained that trammelling men's consciences with so many rigorous oaths, could only produce laxity of moral principle, or unchristian bigotry and party feeling. With respect to the oath itself, he would not dissemble his opinion that it was susceptible of a bad sense; and therefore the tenderness of conscience, which refused to take it without guarding against an evil construction, ought not to be derided. The English papists had obtained this indulgence; and it was strange indeed if protestants were to be more hardly dealt by. When, in reply to this spirited remonstrance, it was contended by Sharp, that the com

plaining party, in the day of its ascendency, had been little tender of the consciences of those who revolted at the Solemn League and Covenant, Leighton exclaimed at the unworthiness of retaliating by measures which had been so justly reprobated; and he emphatically pointed out the nobler course of heaping coals upon the heads of adversaries, by the contrast of episcopal mildness with presbyterian severity. For them to practise, for the base purpose of quitting scores, the same rigour against which they had vehemently protested when themselves were the victims of it, would be a foul blot on their christian character, and would justify the sarcasm, that the world goes mad by turns. However solid these arguments were, they made no impression on the Earl of Middleton and his creatures, whose project it was to have the oath of that ambiguous cast, which should deter the stiffer covenanters from taking it, who

would thereby become liable to the penalties of disloyalty. One cannot without pain admit an opinion, that bears so hard upon the probity and humanity of the royal party. Yet this is not a solitary instance of an oath being artfully shaped to entrap persons, whom state policy has marked for its victims. Leighton used to observe, with some reference no doubt to this transaction, that a consolidation of the episcopal and presbyterian platforms, had it been judiciously and sincerely attempted at the outset, might have been accomplished: but there were "whose some evil spirits at work, device it was plainly again to scatter us; and the terms of comprehension were made so strait, in order to keep men out." It was a transaction, however, that gave an illustrious prominence to his own extraordinary virtues, to his enlightened charity, his inflexible honesty, and his generous courage.'

THY hands created me, O Lord;
From Thee my soul existence drew;
My being, at thy powerful word,

And sense, and thought, and reason,
grew.

And what at first thy hands had made,
Thy power continues to sustain :
I cease to be, without thine aid,
And into nothing fall again.

Each noble faculty of mind,

Each wonderful corporeal power, From Thee support continual find;

Not self-sustained one single hour. And more; whate'er our nature needs Thy bounteous providence supplies: Thy hand each living creature feeds; From Thee do all our blessings rise.

Thine earth we tread; thine air we breathe,

Thy light we see, thy works admire ; Life, but for Thee, would still be death, Void of delight, nor worth desire.

But more, far more than all beside,
When all was forfeited and lost,
A Saviour to redeem us died,

And paid th' inestimable cost!
That Saviour too, thine only Son,

Thine own ineffable delight, Thy choice, elect, and Holy One,

And Partner of thy Sovereign right! 'Twas He who came from realms of love, Us to redeem from endless woe, And raise to those bright realms above, Whence He vouchsafed to sink so low. Thus are we Thine by every right,

By each divine prerogative, Creating power, preserving might, Or rich redeeming love, can give. May we then yield ourselves to Thee! Live we as Thine, and not our own; Our bodies thy pure temple be,

And our meek hearts Thy holy throne! 'K.

"The Man that is my Fellow."