vote himself to the ministry, "for to that he judged the Lord had called him." During the engagement, Mr Durham met with two remarkable deliverances, and accordingly, considered himself bound to obey the stranger's charge, " as a testimony of his grateful and thankful sense of the Lord's goodness and mercy to him."
With this resolution, he came to the college of Glasgow, where he appears to have taken his degree,[1] and to have studied divinity under his celebrated friend David Dickson. The year 1647, in which he received his license, was one of severe pestilence. The masters and students of the university removed to Irvine, where Mr Durham underwent his trials, and received a recommendation from his professor to the presbytery and magistrates of Glasgow. Though now only about twenty-five years of age, study and seriousness of disposition had already given him the appearance of an old man. The session of Glasgow appointed one of their members to request him to preach in their city, and after a short period, "being abundantly satisfied with Mr Durham's doctrine, and the gifts bestowed upon him by the Lord, for serving him in the ministry, did unanimously call him to the ministry of the Blackfriars' church, then vacant." Thither he removed in November, the same year. In 1649, Mr Durham had a pressing call from the town of Edinburgh, but the general assembly, to whom it was ultimately referred, refused to allow his translation. In his ministerial labours he seems to have exercised great patience and diligence, nor was he wanting in that plainness and sincerity towards the rich and powerful, which is so necessary to secure esteem. When the republican army was at Glasgow, in 1651, Cromwell came unexpectedly on a Sunday afternoon to the outer high church, where Mr Durham preached "graciously and well to the time, as could have been desired," according to principal Baillie; in plainer language, "he preached against the invasion to his face."[2] The story is thus concluded by his biographer:—"Next day, Cromwell sent for Mr Durham, and told him, that he always thought Mr Durham had been a more wise and prudent man than to meddle with matters of public concern in his sermons. To which Mr Durham answered, that it was not his practice to bring public matters into the pulpit, but that he judged it both wisdom and prudence in him to speak his mind upon that head, seeing he had the opportunity of doing it in his own hearing. Cromwell dismissed him very civilly, but desired him to forbear insisting upon that subject in public. And at the same time, sundry ministers both in town and country met with Cromwell and his officers, and represented in the strongest manner the injustice of his invasion."[3]
- ↑ See Letter of Principal Baillie in M'Ure's History of Glasgow, ed. 1830, p. 364.
- ↑ Wodrow's Life of Dickson, MS. p. xix. In the Analecta of this historian [MS. Adv. Lib. v. 186,] occurs the following curious particulars: "——tells me, he had this account from old Aikenhead, who had it from the gentlewoman. That Cromwell came in to Glasgow, with some of his officers, upon a Sabbath day, and came straight into the high church, where Mr Durham was preaching. The first seat that offered him was P[rovost] Porter, field's, where Miss Porterfield sat, and she, seeing him an English officer, she was almost not civil. However, he got in and sat with Miss Porterfield. After sermon was over, he asked the minister's name. She sullenly enough told him, and desired to know wherefore he asked. He said, ' because he perceived him to be a very great man, and in his opinion might be chaplain to any prince in Europe, though he had never seen him nor heard of him before. She enquired about him, and found it was O. Cromwell."
- ↑ Life prefixed to Treatise concerning Scandal. Cromwell seems to have received "great plainness of speech" at the hands of the ministers of Glasgow. On a former occasion, Zachary Boyd had railed on him to his face in the high church: on the present, we are informed, that "on Sunday, before noon, he came unexpectedly to the high inner church, where he quietly heard Mr Robert Ramsay preach a very good honest sermon, pertinent for his case. In the afternoon, he came as unexpectedly to the high outer church, where he heard Mr John Carstairs lecture, and Mr James Durham preach graciously, and well to the time, as could have been desired. Generally, all who preached that day in the town, pave a fair enough testimony against the sectaries."—Baillie ut supra.
