the Acts of
Assemblies and the laws of the land prior to 1651, the fatal year of
the "Resolutions." They asked also for a Commission of Visitation,
one half to be elected by the Resolutioners and one half by the
Protesters, to have the power of "planting and purging" in parishes
and of composing differences in Synods and Presbyteries. For urging
these propositions a deputation to Cromwell had been thought of, and
actually appointed. As it was postponed, however, Sharp was to be in
London first by himself. Hence some importance for the Protesters in
any counterweight there might be in Argyle's presence there already.
[1]

[Footnote 1: Baillie, Letters to Spang, in 1655 and 1656, as already
cited, with III. 568-573 for Instructions to Sharp and Propositions
of the Protesters; Life of Robert Blair, 325-329.]

No one was more anxious for the success of Mr. Sharp's mission than
the good Baillie of Glasgow University, now in his fifty-fifth year,
a widower for three years, but about to marry again, and known as one
of the stoutest Resolutioners and Anti-Protesters since that
controversy had begun. He had had his discomforts and losses in the
University under the new Principalship of Mr. Patrick Gillespie; but
had been busy with his lectures and books, and the correspondence of
which he was so fond. Among his letters of 1654-5, besides those to
Spang, are two hearty ones to his old friend Lauderdale in his London
captivity, one or two to London Presbyterian ministers, and an
interesting one to Thomas Fuller, regretting that they had not been
sooner acquainted, and saying he had "fallen in love" with Fuller's
books and was longing for his _Church History_. This was not the
only sign of Baillie's mellower temper by this time towards the
Anglicans. He was inquiring much about Brian Walton, whose name had
not been so much as heard of when Baillie was in London, and whose
Polyglott seemed now to him the book of the age. Baxter, on the other
hand, was an Ishmaelite, a man to be put down. All these matters,
however, had been absorbed at length in Baillie's interest in Mr.
Sharp's mission. He was to write to his old London friends, Rous,
Calamy, and Ashe, urging them to help Mr. Sharp to the utmost, and he
was to correspond with Sharp himself. "I pray God help you and guide
you; you had need of a long spoon [in supping with a certain
personage]: trust no words nor faces, for all men are liars," is the
memorable ending of the first