repealed a long list of laws in favour of Episcopacy; legalized the illegal "rabblings" of the curates; vested the government of the Church in the survivors of the ejected clergy of 1661, and appointed a meeting of the General Assembly.1 Behind it all, too, was the hatred of Romanism, which was even stronger than the love of Presbytery. The "Settlement" was a compromise, but the establishment of Presbytery was in accordance with the wishes of the great majority of the Scottish people and justified the heroic struggles of the Covenanters. Yet notwithstanding it all, had Leighton's scheme been carried, bitter social differences would have been set at rest, and the Church of Scotland would have received a polity that restored to the Church, Bishops or Superintendents after Knox's Model, and included at the same time all that was best in later Presbytery. Who can tell if Leighton yet awaits his day to dawn, when Ephraim shall no longer vex Judah nor Judah vex Ephraim? when the differences of the past shall be at once justified and reconciled in a wider unity? 1 William Carstares, 187, 188. TH CHAPTER XIV LEIGHTONIANA HE life of Leighton is now as complete, as existing and accessible material will at present permit it to be. But from the pages of diaries, as well as from the records of his various editors from the end of the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, there may be gathered together certain anecdotes and sayings, that help to complete the portrait, which letters and historical facts bring before us. Although these are but as disjecta membra, they are not without importance as casting side-light upon the central figure. They are here gathered together,' and each conveys a distinct impression, which prevents classification of the whole under distinctive heads. His love for public worship on the Lord's Day was intense, and one day (probably in his retirement), when through indisposition he was hardly equal to going abroad, he still persisted, and said in excuse for his apparent rashness, "Were the weather fair, I would stay at home, but since it is foul, I 1 1 The best collection of such is in Pearson's Life prefixed to his edition of Leighton's Works. These anecdotes are authentic, for they were taken by Pearson from a compilation which Mr. Lightmaker, Leighton's nephew, had made for Bishop Burnet when that prelate was thinking of matching his Life of Bedell with a companion biography of Leighton. It is to be regretted that Burnet never attained his project, but the manuscript was in the hands of Pearson, and from it his anecdotes are derived. (Secretan's Troubled Times and Holy Life of Archbishop Leighton, p. 93.) * Compare this with John Wesley's statement regarding his itinerant preachers, who were deterred from their work by the weather: "I do not admire fair-weather preachers" (Tyerman's Life, iii. 355). must go, lest I be thought to countenance, by my example, the irreligious practice of letting trivial hindrances keep us back from public worship." His own taste in food was of the simplest nature, and he was abstemious, if not ascetic, to ascetic, to an extreme degree. Spiritual sensuality," as he termed the ardent desire for holy things, ought to leaven, moderate, and consecrate bodily appetite. Everything beyond the necessaries of life was to him the overflowing of a full cup, which ought not to run to waste, but descend into the poor man's platter. His nephew thought that he injured his health by excessive abstinence, but his own maxim was "that little eating and little speaking do no one any harm," and when dinner was announced, he would pleasantly say, "Well, since we are condemned to this, let us sit down." When his sister invited him to partake of a particular dish, he declined, saying, "What is it good for but to please a wanton taste? One thing foreborne is better than twenty things taken." "But," answered his sister, "To see how "why were these things bestowed upon us?" well we could forbear them"; and then added, “Shall I eat of this delicacy while a poor man wants his dinner?" It is told that his sister, at the request of a friend, once asked him what he thought was the mark of the beast, at the same time adding, "I told the inquirer that you would certainly answer you could not tell." "Truly you said well,” replied Leighton, " but if I might fancy what it were, it would be something with a pair of horns that pusheth his neighbour, and hath been so much seen and practised in Church and State." He passed a severe sentence on the Romanists, "who in their zeal for making proselytes fetched ladders from hell to scale heaven," and he lamented that men of the reformed Church should have adopted similar measures. In his public life Leighton always protested against force as a weapon to establish a Church, and he frequently reiterated that he would rather make one Christian than many conformists. Conciliation was to him the only means of advancing the Church. "The Scripture tells us, indeed, of plucking out a right eye for the preservation of the whole body: but if that eye admit of a cure, it should rather be preserved only let its cure be committed to the dexterous hands of the kindest oculist, and not to a mere bungler who would mar instead of healing. For himself he would suffer anything rather than touch a hair of the head of those, who laboured under such pitiable maladies as errors in faith must be accounted. Or, if he did meddle with them, it should be with such a gentle touch as would prove the friendliness of his disposition and purpose." "I prefer," he has been heard to say, an erroneous honest man before the most orthodox knave in the world: and I would rather convince a man that he has a soul to save, and induce him to live up to that belief, than bring him over to my opinion in whatsoever else beside. Would to God that men were but as holy as they might be in the worst of forms now among us! be holy, and miscarry if they can." who had changed his persuasion, all more meek: more dead to the world? happy change." Let us press them to One day, when going to confer with a Presbyterian minister, he found him discoursing on the duties of a holy life to his friends. Leighton fell in with the conversation, and departed without mentioning the point regarding the presbyter's nonconformity, for which he came. To some, who afterwards remonstrated with him, he replied, "Nay, the good man and I were in the main agreed: and as for the points in which we differ, they are mostly unimportant; and though they be of moment, it is advisable, before pressing any, to win as many volunteers as we can." Another anecdote of this type is narrated of him and is characteristic, that a friend calling on him one day and not finding him at home, learnt that he had gone to visit a sick Presbyterian minister on a horse which he had borrowed from the Roman Catholic priest. To his nephew, who complained that there was a certain text of Scripture which he could not understand, he replied, "And many more that I cannot." Being once interrogated about the saints reigning with Christ, he tried to elude the question by replying, "If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him." Pressed to give his opinion whether or not the saints would exercise rule on the earth, although Christ should not in person assume the sovereignty, he answered, "If God hath appointed any such thing for us, He will give us heads to bear such liquor: our preferment shall not make us reel." Leighton recognized human limitation in the interpretation of the deep things of God. Passionate curiosity he rebuked by the angel's answer to Manoah, "Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret ?" "Enough," he said, "is discovered to satisfy us that righteousness and judgment are within, although round about His throne are clouds and darkness," and he blamed those "who boldly venture into the very thick darkness and deepest recesses of the Divine majesty." "That prospect of election and predestination,” said he," is a great abyss into which I choose to sink rather than attempt to sound it. And truly any attempt at throwing light upon it makes it only a greater abyss, and is a piece of blameable presumption." Being told of an author who had entitled his work "Naked truth whipt and stript," his remark was, "It might have been better to clothe it." He disliked the rank zeal of those "who would rather overturn the boat than trim it," and his frequent prayer was, "Deliver me, O Lord, from the errors of wise men: yea, and of good men." It was an aphorism of his that "one half of the world lives upon the madness of the other." He inspired in his relatives both affection and reverence, and |