CCCXXXVII.—To a Minister of Glasgow.[491]

CCCXXXVII.—To a Minister of Glasgow.[491]

[Wodrow annexes to this letter the following note:—"To one of the ministers of Glasgow, who probably was deposed by the Resolutionists, or at least a sufferer for the protestation,—Mr. M'Ward perhaps, or Mr. Patrick Gillespie." The letter bears internal evidence of having been written to a minister of Glasgow who had been censured by the General Assembly which met at Dundee in 1651, for his opposition to the public resolutions. By that Assembly three ministers, Mr. James Guthrie of Stirling, Mr. Patrick Gillespie of Glasgow, and Mr. James Simpson of Airth, were deposed, and one, Mr. James Nasmith of Hamilton, suspended, on the ground of their having protested against the lawfulness of that Assembly. ("Life of Robert Blair," p. 278.) There seems, then, little doubt that Mr. Patrick Gillespie is the person to whom this letter was addressed. It could not have been Mr. Robert M'Ward, for he was licensed only in 1655, and did not become a minister of Glasgow till 1656, when he succeeded Mr. Andrew Gray in the Outer High Kirk; nor, though he enlisted himself on the side of the Protesters, does he appear to have suffered on that account. Mr. Patrick Gillespie was the son of Mr. John Gillespie (second minister of the collegiate charge of Kirkcaldy), and brother of the celebrated George Gillespie. He was born at Kirkcaldy in 1617, and was for some time minister of that parish, previous to his translation to Glasgow. After the death of Charles I. he favoured the Commonwealth, and was appointed by Cromwell Principal of the University of Glasgow, into which office he was installed after encountering much opposition. At the Restoration he was ejected from the Principalship, in which he was succeeded by the celebrated Robert Baillie. He was also imprisoned successively in the Castles of Edinburgh and Stirling; and upon the sitting of the Parliament in 1661, was impeached of high treason, on the alleged ground of his having compiled "The Western Remonstrance," approved the pamphlet entitled "The Causes of God's Wrath," and kept correspondence with Cromwell. But, having made concessions, he was shortly after liberated, and confined to Ormiston and six miles around it. "His works speak for him," says Wodrow, "and evidence him a person of great learning, solidity, and piety, particularly his excellent treatises upon 'The Covenants of Grace and Redemption.'"]