Glencairn said, 'There is no standing
before this great and mighty man!' I heard worthy Mr Rowat say, that Mr
Gillespie said, 'The more truly great a man is, he was really the more
humble and low in his own eyes,' as he instanced in the great man Daniel;
and, said he, 'God did not make choice of some of us as his instruments in
the glorious work of Reformation, because we were more fit than others,
but rather because we were more unfit than others.' He was called _Malleus
Mallignantium_, and Mr Baillie, writing to some in this church anent Mr
George Gillespie, said, 'He was truly an ornament to our church and
nation.' And Mr James Brown, late minister of Glasgow, told me that there
was an English gentleman said to him, that he heard Mr Gillespie preach,
and he said, he believed he was one of the greatest Presbyterians in the
world. He was taken from the Greyfriars' Church to the New Church. He has
written several pieces, as 'Aaron's Rod Blossoming,' and 'Some Miscellany
Questions,' and his 'Assertion of the Government of the Church of
Scotland, about Ruling Elders.' He had several little books wherein he set
down his remarks upon the proceedings of the Assembly at
Westminster."--WODROW'S ANALECTA, vol. iii. pp. 109-18.

"What follows here I have in conversation with Mr Patrick Simpson, whose
memory was most exact. What concerns Mr Gillespie, and the Marquis of
Montrose, I read over to him, and he corrected. The rest are hints I set
down after conversation, when two or three days with him in his house at
Renfrew, in the year 1707.

(ACCOUNT OF THE LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH OF MR GEORGE GILLESPIE.)

"Mr George Gillespie being moderator of the Assembly held at Edinburgh,
July 12th, 1648, was all the time thereof, as also half a year before, in
a greater weakness of body than ordinary; that being now come to a height,
which long before had been gathering. He had a great hoasting and
sweating, which in the time of the General Assembly began to grow worse;
but being extraordinarily (so I may say) upheld, was not so sensible as
when the Assembly dissolved it appeared to be. On occasion whereof, the
next Wednesday after the rising of the Assembly, he went with his wife
over to Kirkcaldy, there intending to tarry for a space, till it should
please the Lord, by the use of means, to restore him to some more health
to come over again. But when he was come there, his weakness and disease
grew daily more and more, so that no applicati