and when obliged to rebuke ‘engagers’ in his own church, he exhorted them to repent of the immoralities of which they had been guilty during the expedition ‘without meddling with the quarrel on the grounds of that war.’ In 1652 the synod of Lothian sent him to London (which he had been in the habit of visiting annually as long as his father lived) to aid in effecting the liberation of the Scottish ministers who had been captured at Alyth and Worcester, and were prisoners in England. During his absence, which lasted from May till December, he made up his mind to resign his charge, partly on account of the weakness of his voice and the state of his health, but mainly because of the schism in the church betwixt the resolutioners and the protesters, and because he could no longer with a good conscience obey the injunctions that were laid upon him. The presbytery at first refused to accept his resignation, and asked Lord Lothian to urge him to remain, but while this matter was pending the town council of Edinburgh elected him principal of the university. On 3 Feb. 1653 he was loosed from his charge and entered upon the duties of his new office, which he discharged for the next nine years with the greatest ability and success.
Besides the principalship Leighton held the post of professor of divinity. On Sunday mornings he preached before the university, and took his turn with other professors in conducting an afternoon service. Once a week he preached to the students in Latin, and many of the townspeople flocked to this service. During the long vacation Leighton frequently went to London, where he made the acquaintance of Cromwell's courtiers, and sometimes to the continent, where he renewed his intimacy with the Jansenists. Though taking little part in ecclesiastical affairs, he was appointed a member of the general assembly of 1653, which was dispersed by Cromwell's officers, and he gave the covenants to the students as required by standing laws of the church. During the twenty years of his ministry and principalship Bishop Burnet says that he lived in the highest reputation that any man had in his time in Scotland.
When episcopacy was restored in 1661, he accepted the change. He was a latitudinarian in such matters, and often repeated the saying that religion did not consist in external matters, whether of government or worship. The conjunction of an episcopal with a presbyterian system had always seemed to him best, and he saw nothing in the covenant inconsistent with the union. Set forms he preferred to extempore prayers, and he was well satisfied with the liturgy and ceremonies of the church of England, but he did not wish them strictly imposed, and advocated the fullest toleration even to Roman catholics, quakers, and baptists. The offer of a bishopric was made to him on the application of his brother, Sir Elisha Leighton [q. v.], who had turned Roman catholic and had influence at court. He says that he had the strongest aversion to accepting the office that ever he had to anything in all his life, but his opposition was overcome by the urgency of the king, and by the hope that as bishop he might be useful in promoting the peace of the church. The Scottish presbyters who were consecrated in England in 1610 were not re-ordained, but this was insisted on now in the case of Leighton and Sharp, who were in presbyterian orders. Both of them objected, holding their previous ordination to be valid, but in the end they gave way and went through the ceremony privately, though they knew that the bishop who performed it meant one thing by it and they another, and that they were compromising the interests of their own and other reformed churches. On 15 Dec. 1661 they were consecrated in Westminster Abbey with two others who, like them, had taken the covenants. Leighton at his own request was appointed to Dunblane, the smallest of the Scottish dioceses. Synods and presbyteries were after a brief interruption restored, but their authority was now derived from the bishops, which had not been the case under the episcopacy of 1610–38. The ‘Register’ of the synod of Dunblane during Leighton's episcopate contains the substance of his charges. Year after year he urged upon the clergy reverence in public worship, the reading of two chapters and a portion of the psalter at each service, and the use of the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Gloria Patri, the preaching of plain and useful sermons, the regular visitation and catechising of their flocks, the restoration of daily service in church, and above all holiness in heart and life. All the clergy, except two or three, and the great body of the people under his charge, conformed, but in other dioceses (chiefly in the south and west) nearly a third of the ministers refused to submit to episcopacy, and the work of persecution began. Leighton, who said he would rather be the means of making one person serious-minded than the whole nation conformists, was so aggrieved by the measures taken that in 1665 he went to London and tendered his resignation to the king, telling him that the proceedings ‘were so violent that he could not concur in the planting the Christian religion itself in such a manner, much less a
