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ROBERT LEIGHTON.
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and him acquainted; for Leighton loved to know men in all the varieties of religion. In the vacation time he made excursions, and came often to London, where he observed all the eminent men in Cromwell's court, and in the several parties then about the city of London; but he told me that they were men of unquiet and meddling tempers; and that their discourses were very dry and unsavoury, full of airy cant or of bombast swellings. Sometimes he went over to Flanders to see what he could find in the several orders of the church of Rome. There he found some of Jansenius's followers, who seemed to be men of extraordinary tempers, and studied to bring things, if possible, to the purity and simplicity of the primitive ages; on which all his thoughts were much set. He thought controversies had been too much insisted upon, and had been carried too far. His brother, who thought of nothing but the raising himself at court, fancied that his being made a bishop might render himself more considerable; so he possessed lord Aubigny with such an opinion of him, that he made the king apprehend that a man of his piety and his notions, (and his not being married was not forgot,) might contribute to carry on their designs. He fancied such a monastic man, who had a great stretch of thought and so many other eminent qualities, would be a mean at least to prepare the nation for popery, if he did not directly come over to them, for his brother did not stick to say, he was sure that lay at the root with him. So the king named him of his own proper motion, which gave all those who began to suspect the king himself great jealousies of him. Leighton was averse to this promotion as much as possible. His brother had great power over him, for he took care to hide his vices from him, and to make before him a show of piety. He seemed to be a papist rather in name and show than in reality, of which I will set down one instance that was then much talked of. Some of the church of England loved to magnify the sacrament in an extraordinary manner, affirming the real presence, only blaming the church of Rome for defining the manner of it, saying Christ was present in the most inconceivable manner. This was so much the mode that the king and all the court went into it; so the king, upon some raillery about transubstantiation, asked Sir Elisha if he believed it. He answered he could not well tell, but he was sure the church of England believed it; and when the king seemed amazed at that, he replied, do you not believe that Christ is present in the most inconceivable manner, which the king granted. Then said he, that is just transubstantiation, the most inconceivable thing that was ever yet invented. When Leighton was prevailed upon to accept a bishopric, he chose Dumblane, a small diocese as well as a little revenue. But the deanery of the chapel royal was annexed to that see. So he was willing to engage in that, that he might set up the common prayer in the king's chapel, for the rebuilding of which orders were given. The English clergy were well pleased with him, finding him both more learned and more thoroughly versed in the other points of uniformity than the rest of the Scottish clergy, whom they could not much value; and though Sheldon did not much like his great strictness, in which he had no mind to imitate him, yet he thought such a man as he was might give credit to episcopacy, in its first introduction to a nation much prejudiced against it. Sharpe did not know what to make of all this. He neither liked his strictness of life nor his notions. He believed they would not take the same methods, and fancied he might be much obscured by him, for he saw he would be well supported. He saw the earl of Lauderdale began to magnify him, and so Sharpe did all he could to discourage him, but without any effect, for he had no regard to him. I bear still the greatest veneration for the memory of that man that I do for any person, and reckon my early knowledge of him, which happened the year after this, and my long and intimate conversation with him,