ens have manifested that I
was ordained from the beginning to launch the bolt that was chosen from
the quiver in the armoury of the Almighty avenger, to overthrow the
oppressor and oppression of my native land. It is therefore enough to
state that, upon my return home, where I expected to find my lands waste
and my fences broken down, I found all things in better order than they
maybe would have been had the eye of the master been over them; for our
kind neighbours, out of a friendly consideration for my family, had in
the spring tilled the ground and sown the seed by day-and-day-about
labour; and surely it was a pleasant thing, in the midst of such a
general depravity of the human heart, so prevalent at that period, to
hear of such constancy and Christian-mindedness; for it was not towards
my brother and me only that such things were done; the same was common
throughout the country towards the lands and families of the persecuted.

But the lown of that time was as a pet day in winter. In the harvest,
however, when the proposal came out that we should give bonds to keep
the peace, I made no scruple of signing the same, and of getting my
wife's father, who was not out in the raid, to be my cautioner. In the
doing of this I did not renounce the Covenant; but, on the contrary, I
considered that by the bonds the King was as much bound to preserve
things in the state under which I granted the bond as I was to remain in
the quiet condition I was when I signed it.

After the bonds of peace came the indulgence, and the chief heritors of
our parish having something to say with the Lord Tweeddale, leave was
obtained for Mr Swinton to come back, and we had made a paction with
Andrew Dornock, the prelatic curate and incumbent, to let him have his
manse again. But although Mr Swinton did return, and his family were
again gathered around him, he would not, as he said himself to me, so
far bow the knee to Baal as to bring the church of Christ in any measure
or way into Erastian dependence on the civil magistrate. So he neither
would return to the manse nor enter the pulpit, but continued, for the
space of several years, to reside at Quharist, and to preach on the
summer Sundays from the window in the gable.

In the spring, however, of the year 1674, he, after a lingering illness,
closed his life and ministry. For some time he had felt himself going
hence, and the tenour of his prayers and sermons had for several months
been of a hig