His Own Story
JOHN LIVINGSTON TELLS HIS OWN STORY.
"My Lord
Middleton’s journey into the western shires,” wrote the Earl of
Lauderdale to Sir Robert Moray, “was only a flanting and a feasting
journey; many ministers were put out in those parts, but no further done.”
The achievement in expulsion, to Lauderdale so paltry, was grievous to the
western shires themselves. Nor was it the west alone which suffered. The
preachers were ejected in other districts of Scotland. In the Border country
lies the village of Ancrum; and Ancrum in those years was happy in having John
Livingston for its minister. He was compelled to go. At the Monday service
after his Sacramental Sabbath, in October 1662, he spoke to his people for the
last time. His gentle and modest spirit revealed itself in his farewells.
“We have been labouring among you these fourteen years,” he said,
“and have that conviction we have not taken the pains, in private or
public, which we ought; yet in some sort, we hope we may say it without pride,
we have not sought yours but you. We cared not to be rich and great in this
world. In as far as we have given offence, less or more, to any in this
congregation, or any that have interest in it, or any round about it, or any
that are here present, or any of the people of God elsewhere, we crave
God’s pardon, and crave also your forgiveness.” Bravely John
Livingston laid down the work he loved, concealing the sharpness of the pain.
But his hearers could not suppress their tears. As on the seashore at Miletus,
so in Ancrurn Kirk, elders and folk sorrowed that they should see their
apostle’s face no more.
In December he appeared before the Privy
Council, accused of “turbulency and sedition “-a strange indictment
for one who esteemed it “better to walk the realm unseen than watch the
hour’s event.” “I have carried myself,” he pleaded,
“with all moderation and peaceableness, and have lived so obscurely that I
wonder how I am taken notice of.” He had, he told the Chancellor,
acknowledged the Lord’s mercy in restoring the King. He was prepared to
admit His Majesty’s supremacy over all persons and in all causes. But he
was not free to take the Oath of Allegiance in the terms in which was proposed
to him. The Chancellor offered to adjourn the court, that he might reconsider
his refusal “I humbly thank your Lordship,” he replied; “it is a
favour which, if I any doubt, I would willingly accept. But if, after seeking
God and advising anent the matter, I should take time, it would import that I
have unclearness or hesitation; I have not.” So the Council passed
sentence. Within two months the prisoner was to leave His Majesty’s
dominions. Within forty-eight hours he was to remove from Edinburgh and go to
the north side of the Tay. He solicited permission to pay a short visit to his
home, that he might have some talk with wife and children. But the favour was
withheld. There must be no more intercourse with Ancrum; the sooner its
minister was in exile, the better pleased his judges would be.
John
Livingston has written 'a brief historical relation' of his life, so that we
can look into his eyes, and can motives, and can see how human and how godly he
was. The land was in evil case whose governors sent such a citizen across the
seas!
He was a son of the manse, born at Kilsyth in 1603, his father
“all his days straight and zealous in the work reformation,” his
mother “a rare pattern of piety and meekness.” He could not remember
the time or the mode of his own conversion; from the outset his life had
belonged to God and His Christ. While he was yet a schoolboy in Stirling, he
was a member of the Church; and never could he forget the first occasion when
he sat down at the Holy Table “There came such a trembling upon me that
all my body shook, yet thereafter the fear departed, and I got some cornfort
and assurance.” His earliest inclination was to the profession of
medicine; but, spending a day in solitary communion with God, in a cave on the
banks of the Mouse Water, over against the Cleghorn woods, he had it made out
to him that he behoved to preach Jesus Christ. Thenceforward Livingston had
“one passion, and it was He, He alone.”
When Glasgow College was
left behind, and in 1625 he began to speak for his Master, he had his first
taste of persecution. Congregations in different parts - Torphichen,
LinlithgoW, Leith, Kirkcaldy - were eager to claim him; but in each case the
Bishops prevented the settlement. For five years he had no sphere of work
peculiarly his own. But God’s blessing went with him through the period of
waiting. Sometimes the preaching of the Covenanters is condemned as cold and
hard; but Livingston’s words had the flame of the Holy Ghost glowing in
them, and they conquered and captivated the souls of men. One of the great
revivals in the annals of the Church is linked with the name of the young
probationer whom the Bishops pursued with their hate. It happened at the Kirk
of Shotts, on the 21st of June 1630. Like that day of good-byes at Ancrum, it
was the Monday after a Sabbath of Communion. With some friends he had spent the
night before in laying fast hold upon the promise and the grace of Heaven. When
the midsummer morning broke, the preacher wanted to escape from the
responsibilities in front of him. Alone in the fields, between eight and nine,
he felt such misgivings, such a burden of unworthiness, such dread of the
multitude and the expectation of the people, that he was consulting with
himself to have stolen away; but he “durst not so far distrust God, and so
went to sermon, and got good assistance.” Good assistance indeed; for,
after he had spoken for an hour and a half from the text, "Then will I sprinkle
clean water upon yon, and ye shall be clean", and was thinking that now he must
close, he was constrained by his Lord Himself to continue. “I was led on
about ane hour’s time in ane strain of exhortation and warning, with such
liberty and Inciting of heart as I never had the like in publick all my
life.” No fewer than five hundred men and women, some of them ladies of
high estate, and others poor wastrels and beggars, traced the dawn of the
undying life to John Livingston’s words that day.
Healthful as his
fellowship would be, we cannot accompany him through the changeful experiences
of his ministry. His first parish was an Irish one, that of Killinchy in Co.
Down, to which the Bishop of Raphoe, more liberal than most of the prelates,
ordained him. In 1638, the expatratriate Scot recrossed the Channel, to
Stranraer, his residence for ten years, where, if the town was “but little
and poor,” the people were “very tractable and respectful,” and
their teacher was “sometimes well-satisfied and refreshed.” Then came
the fourteen summers in Ancrum; and then the ejection by the Privy Council.
Stirring incidents broke in on the quiet usefulness of Livingston’s career
in his various homes. In Ireland he and others like him were so harassed by the
ill-will of Church potentates more intolerant than his Grace of Raphoe, or than
Dr. Ussher, Primate of Armagh, “ane godly man although ane Bishop,”
that they built a ship near Befast of one hundred and fifty tons’ burden,
and called it The Eagle Wing, and were minded in the spring of 1636 to start
for the New England of the Pilgrim Fathers. It was September before they did
set sail; and then, when they were about four hundred leagues away from the
Irish coast, such pitiless storms overtook them that they concluded God meant
them to return. It was a perilous voyage back to Ulster; but the days were
vocal with social prayer and thanksgiving, and every heart felt a confidence
which nothing could damp “yea, some expressed the hope that, rather than
the Lord would suffer such an companie to perish if the ship should break, He
would put wings to all our shoulders and carry us safe ashoare.”
On
board the vessel a baby-boy came to Michael Coltheard and his wife, and, on the
suceeding Sabbath, he was baptised by John Livingston, who called him Seaborn;
one is tempted to think that Seaborn Coltheard must be younger brother of
Oceanus Hopkins, who had his wave-rocked cradle in the cabin of the Mayflower
sixtteen autumns before.
At the Hague, in 1650, the preacher wrestled with
worse billows than those of the Atlantic. He was among the commissioners who
treated with Charles “for security to religion and the liberties of the
country, before his admission to the exercise of the Government.” He did
not covet the errand. He had some scruple that ministers meddled too frequently
in State matters. He knew his own “unacquainted-ness and inability,”
and how he was “ready to condescend too easily to anything having any show
of reason,” so that he feared he “should be a grief and shame”
to those who sent him. He would even have preferred, if it had been the will of
God, to be drowned in the waters by the way. But the Church insisted that he
and James Wood and George Hutcheson, with the Earl of Cassillis and Alexander
Brodie, must be her representatives. To his last hour he had regretful memories
of the episode. He soon saw the frivolity of the King; “many nights he was
balling and dancing till near day.” He could not approve the treaty which
was made; “it seemed rather like ane merchant’s bargain of prigging
somewhat higher or lower than ingenuous dealing.” He tried to avoid
returning to Scotland in the retinue of the Prince, and was only enticed on
board by a trick. Altogether it was a humbling reminiscence. “So dangerous
it is for a man of a simple disposition to be yoked with these who, by wit,
authority, and boldness, can overmaster him.”
We begin to understand
John Livingston’s character. He was a Protester, but a Protester in whom
resided the New Testament grace of epiekeria, moderation and sweet
reasonableness. He suspected at times that those with whom he allied himself
“kept too many meetings,” and thus rendered the Church’s
divisions wider and more mournful than they need have been. Pre-eminent among
his gracious features is his Invincible modesty. He took the lowest room. He
was a proficient in the humility of which he wrote to a friend, that “it
fitteth the back for every burden, and maketh the tree sickerest at the root
when it standeth upon the top of the windy hill.” His gladness is
unfeigned when he recalls how the parishes, which wished to have him, but from
which he had been held back, were “far better provided.” On one
occasion, when competing calls came, “his own mind in most to Straiton,
because it was an obscure place, and. people landwart simple people.”
“I think,” he said, “every minister of my acquaintance gets his
work done better tban I, yet I would not desire to be another than myself, nor
to other manner of dealing than the Lord uses, for His power made perfect in
weakness.”
Yet Livingston had ample cause for an honourable pride. He
was a cultured scholar knew Hebrew and Chaldee and “somewhat also of
Syriack.” He longed to add an understanding of Arabic his other Semitic
conquests; but “the vastness of it” pause even to his indomitable
spirit. He was familiar French and Italian and Dutch, and read the Bible in
Spanish and German. In the noble army of book-lovers our Covenanter stands well
to the front. Like Richard de Bury, he “valued codices more than
forms”; and he would have sympathised with Thomas Hearne’s quaint and
particular thanksgiving when unexpectedly he lighted on three manuscripts
venerable age. Listen to him: “I had a kind of coveting when I got leisure
and opportunity, to read much and.of different subjects; and I was oft
challenged “that is to say my wideawake conscience upbraided me "that my
way of reading was like some men’s lust after play.” But he was no
Dryasdust, abjuring for his folios all less stringent joys. He had a melodious
voice, and, in his younger days, he fond of using it. When he was a student at
Glasgow, the Principal, Robert Boyd of Trochrigg, “of an austere -
carriage but of a most tender heart,” would now and then call him and
three or four others, and would lay down books before them, and would have them
sing those “sette musick” in which he and they took delight. In later
and more troublous years, Livingston did not sing so often in concert with his
friends, “wherein I had some little skill" just as he denied himself the
other recreation of hunting which once he had found “very
bewitching.” But no distresses could quite silence the song in his soul
“A line of praises” he thought “worth a leaf of prayer”;
and, growing more rapturous, he would break forth: “0, what a massy piece
of glory on earth is it, to have praises looking as it were out at the eyes,
praises written upon the forebrow; to have the very breath smelling of praises,
to have praises engraven on the palms of the hands, and the impression of
praises on every footstep of the walk: although this be that day, if ever,
wherein the Lord calleth to mourning and fasting!” He was one of those
delineated in the old verse, My people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation.
There were two places where John Livingston was seen at his best. One was
his home. It might be very poor. In Killinchy - the record is almost incredible
- his stipend was £4 a year. But the household was always rich in love.
His wife was the eldest daughter of Bartholomew Fleming, an Edinburgh merchant.
Before he married her, in 1635, many had told him of her gracious disposition;
but for nine months he had no clearness of mind to speak to her. But, going
with her one Friday to a meeting, he found her “conference so judicious
and spiritual” that his scruples were scattered to the winds. Yet it was
another month before he “got marriage affection to her, although she was
for personal enduements beyond many.” On his knees he asked it from God,
and, when it came, there were no limits to its fulness: “thereafter I had
greater difficulty to moderate it.” Livingston has none of that aloofness
from the gladnesses of the hearth which we note in some of his fellows. And his
wife was worthy of him. Years after, when he was gone, and when the skies hung
still more thunderously over Presbyterian Scotland, she faced the Earl of
Rothes, and sought liberty for the ill-treated ministers. Her husband’s
heart could trust in her.
The other place where he showed at his worthiest
was the pulpit He would not acknowledge it himself, girdled as he was
‘with the cincture of lowliness. “As concerning my gift of
preaching,” he wrote penitently, “I never attained to any accuracie
therein, and, through laziness, did not much endeavour it.” His custom was
to put down some notes beforehand, and to leave the enlargement of them to the
time of delivery. His style, he insists, was suited only to the common people,
and not to scholarly listeners. Yet he clear and shrewd ideas about the
architecture of a sermon. If he would not have too few doctrines, neither
reckon too many particular points, as “eighthly,” “tenthly"
“thirteenthly.” The matter should not be over-exquisite with the
abstruse learning which savours of affectation; It ought not to be childishly
rudimentary, for that procures careless hearing and contempt of the gift. There
should not be an excess of similitudes and pictures; but the absence them
altogether will impoverish rather than help. In his utterance, the speaker
ought not to sing his sentences, to draw out his words to an inordinate length,
nor to assume a weeping-like voice, nor to shout too loud, nor to sink too low.
John Livingston understood the technical side of sacred calling. And, despite
his self-depreciation, he was an ambassador who seldom failed to transact vital
business for his Master; as we should expect, when we know that his chief care,
before entering the pulpit, was to be in a spiritual frame, and that, in it, he
was aided most by “the hunger of the hearers.” On his deathbed these
were his words: "I cannot say much of great services; yet, if ever my heart was
lifted up, it was in preaching of Jesus Christ.” There were multitudes who
could corroborate the witness.
Mr. Lowell pays to the naturalist Agassiz
the fine tribute that, “where’er he met a stranger, there he left a
friend.” It is a coronet which might gleam on Livingston’s brow. He
had a genius for friendship. To the end of life he won new sisters and brothers
in the family of God. One of our debts to him is the series of portraits he has
bequeathed to us of his intimates. Miniatures these portraits are, but
miniatures done by a painter who has put both intellect and affection into his
work. There are ladies in his gallery: like Lady Robertland who said to him,
“With God the most of mosts is lighter than nothing, and without Him the
least of leasts is heavier than any burden”; and like Elizabeth Melville,
the Lady Culross, who would write, “Ye must be hewin and hamerd down and
drest and prepaired, before ye be a Leving Ston fitt for His building”;
and like Margaret Scott of Stranraer, who was “but in a mean
condition,” and yet contributed for the covenanting army “seven
twenty-two shilling sterling pieces and one eleven shillings’ piece of
gold,” and, when her minister asked how she could part with so much, made
the tender reply, “I was gathering, and had laid up this to be a portion
to a young daughter I had; and, whereas the Lord lately hath pleased to take my
daughter to Himself, I thought I would give Him her tocher also.”
There are Christian laymen among the artist’s subjects: Cathcart of
Carleton, who came out to family worship from the place of secret communion,
and, having prayed earnestly and confidently, ran back to his chamber as soon
as he had done; and John Mein, the merchant, who always sang some psalms as he
put on his clothes in the morning, and who could point to a room where he had
spent a whole night in fellowship with God, and where he had seen a light
greater than ever was the light of the sun. But the ministers are the favourite
themes. They pass before us, an inspiriting company of great-hearted gentlemen.
Robert Bruce, who was short in prayer with others, but then “every
sentence was like a strong bolt shot up to heaven”; John Smith of Maxtone,
who, whenever he met a youth studying for the Church, would draw him aside, and
“seriously and gravely exhort him, and heartily bless him”;
David Dickson, who told
Livingston with his latest breath, “I have taken all my good deeds and all
my bad deeds, and cast them in a heap before the Lord, and have betaken me to
Jesus Christ, in whom I have full and sweet peace”; Robert Blair, “of
a majestick, awfull, yet amiable countenance,” who was “seldom ever
brangled in his assurance of salvation”; Robert Cunningham, “the one
man to my discerning who resembled most the meekness of Jesus Christ,”
who, when his wife sat by his deathbed, prayed for the whole Church, and for
his parish, and for his brethren in the ministry, and for his children, and in
the end said, “And last, 0 Lord, I recommend to Thee this gentlewoman, who
is no more my wife,” and, with that saying, he softly loosed his hand from
hers, and gently thrust her hand a little from him :- we would not miss one in
the priestly and kingly succession. And his must have been a rich and roomy
nature, who could gather such friends.
But Middleton and the Council had
no place for him in Scotland. "At last, on the 9th of Aprile 1663, I went
aboarde in old John Allan's ship, and, in eight dayes, came to Rotterdam Until
the August of 1672 the exiled preacher tarried his Lord's leisure, and then the
earthly service was sublimed into heavenly. In Ancrum or in Holland, in honour
and dishonour it fared well with the man who could write: “If it were
given to my option, God knows I would rather serve Him on earth and then endure
the torments of the lost, than live a life of sin on earth and then have for
ever the bliss of the ransomed.”