History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3. Henry Buckley

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Lady Colsfeild ‘had born two or three daughters, and was sinfully anxious after a son, to heir the estate of Colsfeild.’ Wodrow's Analecta, vol. iii. p. 293.

Under the influence of this terrible creed, the amiable mother of Duncan Forbes, writing to him respecting his own health and that of his brother, speaks ‘of my sinful God-provoking anxiety, both for your souls and bodies.’ Burton's Lives of Lovat and Forbes, p. 724. The theological theory, underlying and suggesting this, was, that ‘grace bridles these affections.’ Boston's Human Nature in its Four-fold State, p. 184. Hence its rigid application on days set apart for religious purposes. The Rev. Mr. Lyon (History of Saint Andrews, vol. i. p. 458) mentions that some of the Scotch clergy, in drawing up regulations for the government of a colony, inserted the following clause: ‘No husband shall kiss his wife, and no mother shall kiss her child on the Sabbath day.’

‘The more you please yourselves and the world, the further you are from pleasing God.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 55. Elsewhere (vol. ii. p. 45): ‘Amity to ourselves is enmity to God.’

‘Pleasures are most carefully to be auoided: because they both harme and deceiue.’ Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 251. At p. 268, the same authority says, ‘Beate downe thy body, and bring it to subiection by abstaining, not only from vnlawfull pleasures, but also from lawfull and indifferent delights.’

According to Hutcheson's Exposition of Job, p. 6, ‘there is no time wherein men are more ready to miscarry, and discover any bitter root in them, then when they are about the liberal use of the creatures, and amidst occasions of mirth and cheerfulness.’ How this doctrine ripened, cannot be better illustrated than from the sentiments entertained, so late as the early part of the eighteenth century, by Colonel Blackader, a Scotch officer, who was also an educated man, who had seen much of the world, and might, to some degree, be called a man of the world. In December 1714, he went to a wedding, and, on his return home, he writes: ‘I was cheerful, and perhaps gave too great a swing to raillery, but I hope not light or vain in conversation. I desire always to have my speech seasoned with salt, and ministering profit to the hearers. Sitting up late, and merry enough, though I hope innocent; but I will not justify myself.’ The Life and Diary of Lieut. – Col. J. Blackader, by Andrew Crichton, p. 453. On another occasion (p. 511), in 1720, he was at an evening party. ‘The young people were merry. I laid a restraint upon myself for fear of going too far, and joined but little, only so as not to show moroseness or ill-breeding. We sat late, but the conversation was innocent, and no drinking but as we pleased. However, much time is spent; which I dare not justify. In all things we offend.’ At p. 159, he writes, ‘I should always be mixing something that may edify in my discourse;’ and, says his biographer (p. 437), ‘Conversation, when it ceased to accomplish this object, he regarded as degenerating into idle entertainment, which ought to be checked rather than encouraged.’

‘Frequent the gravest company, and the fellowship of those that are sorrowfull.’ Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 416. Compare the attacks on ‘too much carnal mirth and laughter,’ in Durham's Law Unsealed, p. 323; in Fleming's Fulfilling of the Scripture, p. 226; and in Fergusson's Exposition of the Epistles of Paul, p. 227. See also Gray's Spiritual Warfare, p. 42. Cowper says, ‘Woe be unto them that now laugh, for assuredly they shall weepe, the end of their joy shall be endleese mourning and gnashing of teeth, they shall shed tears abundantly with Esau, but shall find no place for mercy.’ Cowper's Heaven Opened, p. 271. Hutcheson, in a train of unusual liberality, permits occasional laughter. He says, ‘There is a faculty of laughing given to men, which certainly is given for use, at least at sometimes; and diversions are sometime needfull for men who are serious and employed in weighty affairs.’ … ‘And particularly, laughter is sometimes lawful for magistrates and others in publick charge, not only that they may recreate themselves, but that, thereby, and by the like insinuating carriage, they may gain the affection of the people.’ Hutcheson‘s Exposition of the Book of Job, edit. folio, 1669, pp. 389, 390.

In 1650, when Charles II. was in Scotland, ‘the clergy reprehended him very sharply, if he smiled on those days’ (Sundays). Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, book xiii. p. 747, edit. Oxford, 1843.

It is said of Donald Cargill, that, ‘his very countenance was edifying to beholders; often sighing with deep groans.’ A Cloud of Witnesses for the Royal Prerogatives of Jesus Christ, p. 423. The celebrated James Durham was ‘a person of the utmost gravity, and scarce smiled at anything.’ Howie's Biographia Scoticana, p. 226. Of Livingston, we are told ‘that he was a very affectionate person, and weeped much; that it was his ordinary way, and might be observed almost every Sabbath, that when he came into the pulpite he sate doun a litle, and looked first to the one end of the kirk, and then to the other; and then, ordinarly, the tear shott in his eye, and he weeped, and oftimes he began his preface and his work weeping.’ Wodrow's Analecta, vol. ii. p. 249. James Alexander ‘used to weep much in prayer and preaching; he was every way most savoury.’ Ibid., vol. iii. p. 39. As to the Rev. John Carstairs, ‘his band in the Sabbath would have been all wett, as if it had been douked, with tears, before he was done with his first prayer.’ p. 48. Aird, minister of Dalserf, ‘weeping much’ (Ibid., vol. iii. p. 56), ‘Mr. James Stirling tells me he was a most fervent, affectionat, weeping preacher.’ p. 172; and the Rev. Alexander Dunlop was noted for what was termed ‘a holy groan,’ vol. iii. p. 21. See also, on weeping as a mark of religion, Wast's Memoirs, pp. 83, 84; and Robe's Narrative of the Extraordinary Work of the Spirit of God, pp. 21, 31, 75, 150. One passage from the most popular of the Scotch preachers, I hesitate as to the propriety of quoting; but it is essential that their ideas should be known, if the history of Scotland is to be understood. Rutherford, after stating whom it is that we should seek to imitate, adds: ‘Christ did never laugh on earth that we read of, but he wept.’ Rutherford's Christ Dying, 1647, 4to, p. 525. I publish this with no irreverent spirit; God forbid that I should. But I will not be deterred from letting this age see the real character of a system which aimed at destroying all human happiness, exciting slavish and abject fear, and turning this glorious world into one vast theatre of woe.

‘Walk with a sober pace, not “tinkling with your feet.”’ Memoirs of the Rev. James Fraser, written by Himself, in Select Biographies, vol. ii. p. 280. ‘It is somewhat like this, or less than this, which the Lord condemneth, Isa. iii. 16, ‘Walking and mincing, or tripping and making a tinkling with their feet.’ What is that but disdaining the grave way of walking, to affect an art in it? as many do now in our days; and shall this be displeasing to the Lord, and not the other? seeing he loveth, and is best pleased with, the native way of carrying the body.’ Durham's Law Unsealed, p. 324. ‘The believer hath, or at least ought to have, and, if he be like himself, will have, a well ordered walk, and will be in his carriage stately and princely.’ Durham's Exposition of the Song of Solomon, p. 365.

‘At home, writing letters to a friend. My vein is inclined to jest and humour. The letter was too comical and jocose; and after I had sent it away, I had a check that it was too light, and jesting foolishly. I sent and got it back, and destroyed it. My temper goes too far that way, and I ought to check it, and be more on my guard, and study edification in every thing.’ Crichton's Life and Diary of Blackader, pp. 536, 537. Even amongst young children, from eight years old and upwards, toys and games were bad; and it was a good sign when they were discarded. ‘Some very young, of eight and nine years of age, some twelve and thirteen. They still inclined more and more to their duty, so that they meet three times a day, in the morning, at night, and at noon. Also they have forsaken all their childish fancies and plays; so these that have been awakened are known by their countenance and conversation, their walk and behaviour.’ Robe's Narratives of the Extraordinary Work of the Spirit of God, pp. 79, 80.

‘To the unmortified man, the world smelleth like the garden of God’ … ‘the world is not to him an ill-smelled stinking corps.’ Rutherford's Christ Dying, p. 498. But those who were properly mortified, knew that ‘the earth is but a potter's house’ (Ibid., p. 286); ‘an old thred-bare-worn case’ (Ibid., p. 530); a ‘smoky house’ (Rutherford's Religious Letters, p. 100); a ‘plaistered, rotten world’ (Ibid., p. 132); and ‘an ashy and dirty earth’ (Ibid., p. 169). ‘The earth also is spotted (like the face of a woman once beautifull, but now deformed with scabs of leprosie) with thistles, thornes, and much barren wilderness.’ Cowper's Heaven Opened, p. 255.

‘Wearinesse and motion is laid on Moon and Sunne, and all creatures on this side of the Moon. Seas ebbe and flow, and that's trouble; winds blow, rivers move, heavens and stars these five thousand yeares, except one time, have not had sixe minutes rest.’ … ‘The Sunne that never rests, but moves as swiftly in the night as in the day.’ Rutherford's Christ Dying, pp. 12, 157. ‘This is the world's old age; it is declining; albeit it seem a fair and beautiful thing in the eyes of them who know no better, and unto them who are of yesterday and know nothing, it looks as if it had been created yesterday; yet the truth is, and a believer knows, it is near the grave.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 372.

‘This, then, I say, is the state all things ye see are in, – it is their old age. The creation now is an old rotten house that is all dropping through and leaning to the one side.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 398.

‘The lilies and roses, which, no doubt, had more sweetnesse of beauty and smell, before the sin of man made them vanity-sick.’ Rutherford's Christ Dying, p. 185.

‘The heavens that are supposed to be incorruptible, yet they wax old as doth a garment.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. i. p. 95.

‘The neerer the sun drawes to the end of his daily course, the lesse is his strength, for we see the Sunne in the evening decayes in heat; so it is, the longer by reuolution he turnes about in his sphere, he waxes alway the weaker; and, to vse the similitude of the holy spirit, as a garment the older it groweth becomes the lesse beautifull.’ Cowper's Heaven Opened, p. 255.

‘It is so delicate by nature, that since it was the first sense that offended, it is, aboue all the rest, made subject (as a condigne punishment) to as many maladies, as there are weekes in a yeere.’ Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 501. The Scotch divines were extremely displeased with our eyes. Rutherford contemptuously calls them ‘two clay windows.’ Rutherford's Christ Dying, p. 570. Gray, going still further, says, ‘these cursed eyes of ours.’ Gray's Great and Precious Promises, p. 53.

‘The true visible Kirk where God's ordinances are set up, as he hath appointed, where his word is purely preached, is the most beautifull thing under heaven.’ Dickson's Explication of the First Fifty Psalms, p. 341.

I have one very late, and, on that account, very curious, instance of the diffusion of this feeling in Scotland. In 1767, a vacancy occurred in the mastership of the grammar-school of Greenock. It was offered to John Wilson, the author of ‘Clyde.’ But, says his biographer, ‘the magistrates and minister of Greenock thought fit, before they would admit Mr. Wilson to the superintendance of the grammar school, to stipulate that he should abandon “the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making.”’ Lives of Eminent Scotsmen by the Society of Ancient Scots, 1821, vol. v. p. 169.

‘Sept. 22. 1649. – The quhilk day the Sessioune caused mak this act, that ther sould be no pypers at brydels, and who ever sould have a pyper playing at their brydell on their mariage day, sall loose their consigned money, and be farder punisched as the Sessioune thinks fitt.’ Extracts from the Registers of the Presbytery of Glasgow, and of the Kirk Sessions of the Parishes of Cambusnethan Humbie and Stirling, p. 34. This curious volume is a quarto, and without date; unless, indeed, one of the title-pages is wanting in my copy.

See the Minutes of the Kirk Session of Glasgow, in Wodrow's Collections upon the Lives of Ministers, vol. ii. part ii. p. 76; also the case of ‘Mure, pyper,’ in Selections from the Minutes of the Presbyteries of Saint Andrews and Cupar, p. 72.

This notion lingered on, probably to the beginning of this century; certainly to late in the last. In a work published in Scotland in 1836, it is stated, that a clergyman was still alive, who was ‘severely censured,’ merely because, when Punch was performing, ‘the servant was sent out to the showman to request him to come below the windows of her master's house, that the clergyman and his wife might enjoy the sight.’ Traditions of Perth by George Penny, Perth, 1836, p. 124.

‘17 Feb. 1650. Ane act of the commissioun of the Generall Assemblie wes red in all the churches of Edinburgh dischargeing promiscuous dansing.’ Nicoll's Diary, p. 3. See also Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1638–1842, p. 201; Register of the Kirk Session of Cambusnethan, p. 35; Minutes of the Presbyteries of St. Andrews and Cupar, pp. 55, 181; Minutes of the Synod of Fife, pp. 150, 169, 175; and a choice passage in A Collection of Sermons by Eminent Divines, p. 51.

See Selections from the Records of the Kirk Session, Presbytery, and Synod of Aberdeen, pp. 77, 78, forbidding any one to ‘giwe ony meatt or drink to these sangsteris or lat thame within thair houss.’ The singers were to be ‘put in prisoun.’

In 1643 the Presbytery of St. Andrews ordered that ‘because of the great abuse that is likewayes among them by conveening multitudes at baptismes and contracts, the ministers and sessions are appointed to take strict order for restraineing these abuses, that in number they exceid not sixe or seven. As also ordaines that the hostlers quho mak such feists salbe censured by the sessions.’ Minutes of the Presbyteries of St. Andrews and Cupar, p. 11. See also Records of the Kirk Session, Presbytery, and Synod of Aberdeen, pp. 109, 110, complaining of the custom ‘that everie base servile man in the towne, when he has a barne to be baptesed, invitis tuelff or sextene persones to be his gossopes and godfatheris to his barne,’ &c.; and enacting ‘that it shall not be lesume to any inhabitant within this burt quhasoever, to invite any ma persones to be godfatheris to thair barne in ony tyme cumming bot tua or four at the most, lyk as the Kirk officier is expresslie commandit and prohibitt that from hence furth he tak vp no ma names to be godfatheris, nor giwe any ma vp to the redar bot four at the most, vnder all hiest censure he may incur be the contrairie, and this ordinance to be intimat out of pulpitt, that the people pretend no ignorance thairof.’

They forbade music and dancing; and they ordered that not more than twenty-four persons should be present. See the enactment, in 1647, respecting ‘Pennie bryddells,’ in Minutes of the Presbyteries of St. Andrews and Cupar, p. 117. In 1650, ‘The Presbyterie being sadly weghted with the report of the continwance, and exhorbitant and unnecessarly numerous confluences of people at pennie brydles, and of inexpedient and wnlawfull pypeing and dancing at the same, so scandalous and sinfull in this tyme of our Churches lamentable conditioun; and being apprehensive that ministers and Kirk Sessiouns have not bein so vigilant and active (as neid werre), for repressing of these disorders, doe therfor most seriously recommend to ministers and Kirk Sessiouns to represse the same.’ Ibid. pp. 169, 170. See, further, Registers of the Presbytery of Lanark, p. 29; and Extracts from the Presbytery Book of Strathbogie, pp. 4, 144.

See two curious instances of limitation of price, in Irving's History of Dumbartonshire, p. 567; and in Wodrow's Collections upon the Lives of Ministers, vol. ii. part ii. p. 34.

‘What a vile, haughty, and base creature he is – how defiled and desperately wicked his nature – how abominable his actions; in a word, what a compound of darkness and wickedness he is – a heap of defiled dust, and a mass of confusion – a sink of impiety and iniquity, even the best of mankind, those of the rarest and most refined extraction, take them at their best estate.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 302. Compare Boston's Human Nature in its Four-fold State, pp. 26, 27.

‘The least sin cannot but deserve God's wrath and curse eternally.’ Dickson's Truth's Victory over Error, p. 71. ‘All men, even the regenerate, sin daily.’ Ibid. p. 153.

‘Our best works have such a mixture of corruption and sin in them, that they deserve his curse and wrath.’ Ibid. p. 130.

‘But now, falling away from God, hee hath also so farre degenerated from his owne kind, that he is become inferiour to the beasts.’ Cowper's Heaven Opened, p. 251. ‘O! is not man become so brutish and ignorant, that he may be sent unto the beasts of the field to be instructed of that which is his duty?’ Gray's Spiritual Warfare, p. 28. ‘Men are naturally more bruitish than beasts themselves.’ Boston's Human Nature in its Four-fold State, p. 58. ‘Worse than the beast of the field.’ Halyburton's Great Concern of Salvation, p. 71.

‘Infants, even in their mother's belly, have in themselves sufficient guilt to deserve such judgments;’ i. e. when women with child are ‘ript up.’ Hutcheson's Exposition on the Minor Prophets, vol. i. p. 255.

‘And in our speech, our Scripture and old Scots names are gone out of request; instead of Father and Mother, Mamma and Papa, training children to speak nonsense, and what they do not understand. These few instances, amongst many that might be given, are additional causes of God's wrath.’ The Life and Death of Mr. Alexander Peden, late Minister of the Gospel at New Glenluce, in Galloway, in Walker's Biographia Presbyteriana, vol. i. p. 140.

‘Yea, if the Lord did not restraine her, shee would open her mouth and swallow the wicked, as she did Corah, Dathan, and Abiram.’ Cowper's Heaven Opened, p. 257. Compare Hutcheson's Exposition on the Minor Prophets, vol. i. p. 507.

‘There is nothing so monstrous, so deformed in the world, as man.’ Binning's Sermons, vol. i. p. 234. ‘There is not in all the creation such a miserable creature as man.’ Ibid. vol. iii. p. 321. ‘Nothing so miserable.’ Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 37.