icting things which had been perpetrated after the dispersion of
the Covenanters, saying,--

"It's a thing to be deplored in all time coming, that the poor,
misguided folk, concern't in that rash wark, didna rather take refuge in
the towns, and amang their brethren and fellow-subjects, than flee to
the hills, where they are hunted down wi' dog and gun, as beasts o' an
ill kind. Really every body's wae for their folly; though to be sure, in
a government sense, their fault's past pardon. It's no indeed a thing o'
toleration, that subjects are to rise against rulers."

"True," said my brother, "unless rulers fall against subjects."

The worthy magistrate looked a thought seriously at him; no in reproof
for what he had said, or might say, but in an admonitory manner,
saying,--

"Ye're owre douce a like man, I think, to hae been either art or part in
this headstrong Reformation, unless ye had some great cause to provoke
you; and I doubt na ye hae discretion enough no to contest without need
points o' doctrine; at least for me, I'm laith to enter on ony sort o'
polemtic, for it's a Gude's truth, I'm nae deacon at it."

My brother discerning by his manner that he saw through them, would have
refrain't at the time from further discourse; but Esau Wardrop was,
though a man of few words, yet of such austerity of faith, that he could
not abide to have it thought he was in any time or place afraid for
himself to bear his testimony, even when manifestly uncalled on to do;
so he here broke in upon the considerate and worthy counsellor, and
said,--

"That a covenanted spirit was bound at a' times and in a' situations,
conditions, and circumstances, to uphold the cause."

"True, true, we are a' Covenanters," replied the deacon, "and Gude
forbid that I should e'er forget the vows I took when I was in a manner
a bairn; but there's an unco difference between the auld covenanting and
this Lanerk New-light. In the auld times, our forbears and our fathers
covenanted to show their power, that the King and government might
consider what they were doing. And they betook not themselves to the
sword, till the quiet warning of almost all the realm united in one
league had proved ineffectual; and when at last there was nae help
for't, and they were called by their conscience and dangers to gird
themselves for battle, they went forth in the might and power of the arm
of flesh, as weel as of a righteous cause. But, sirs, this donsie
business