r,
where fifty thousand subjects of the same King and laws contended with
one another, and where the Lord, by showing himself on the side of the
people, gave a dreadful admonition to the government to recant and
conciliate while there was yet time.

Meanwhile the worthy Mr Swinton, having observed in me a curiosity
towards books of history and piety, had taken great pains to instruct me
in the rights and truths of religion, and to make it manifest alike to
the ears and eyes of my understanding, that no human authority could, or
ought to, dictate in matters of faith, because it could not discern the
secrets of the breast, neither know what was acceptable to Heaven in
conduct or in worship. He likewise expounded to me in what manner the
Covenant was not a temporal but a spiritual league, trenching in no
respect upon the natural and contributed authority of the kingly office.
But, owing to the infirm state of my father's health, neither my brother
Robin nor I could be spared from the farm, in any of the different raids
that germinated out of the King's controversy with the English
parliament; so that in the whigamore expedition, as it was profanely
nicknamed, from our shire, with the covenanted Earls of Cassilis and
Eglinton, we had no personality, though our hearts went with those that
were therein.

When, however, the hideous tidings came of the condemnation and
execution of the King, there was a stop in the current of men's minds,
and as the waters of Jordan, when the ark was carried in, rushed back to
their fountain-head, every true Scot on that occasion felt in his heart
the ancient affections of his nature returning with a compassionate
horror. Yet even in this they were true to the Covenant; for it was not
to be hidden that the English parliament, in doing what it did in that
tragical event, was guided by a speculative spirit of political
innovation and change, different and distinct, both in principle and
object, from the cause which made our Scottish Covenanters have recourse
to arms. In truth, the act of bringing kings to public condign
punishment was no such new thing in the chronicles of Scotland, as that
brave historian, George Buchanan, plainly shows, to have filled us with
such amazement and affright, had the offences of King Charles been
proven as clearly personal, as the crimes for which the ancient tyrants
of his pedigree suffered the death;--but his offences were shared with
his counsellors, whose duty