Page:Life and prophecies of that faithful minister of God's word, Mr Donald Cargill.pdf/14

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The Life and Prophesies

8thly, After this remarkable escape, seeing nothing but the violent flames of treachery and tyranny against him above all others, he alone keeping up the public standard of the gospel at that time, went to England for about three months, where the Lord blest his labours in the ministry to the conviction and edification of many poor souls. In this none-such, melancholy, Egyptian darkness, Mr King, Mr. Kid, and Mr. Cameron, being publicly murdered; Mr. King, Mr. Kidd and, and Mr Dickson, in the enemies hands, Mr. Cargill, Douglas, and Hepburn, gone of the kingdom; the rest of the thirty ministers, who preached in the fields before Bothwel-bridge, being fallen in deep silence and compliance with the enemy: in this time while men slept, the enemy sowed his tares. In the beginning of the year 1681, the devil began a new project at Borrowstounness upon a few of those whom he could not drive to left-hand defections, by injecting into them demented enthusiastical delusions, driving them upon wild unheard-of right-hand extremes, with a spirit of division and unwarrantable separation from all that would not or durst not go up with him in every jot; which began in Holland a year before, which I have already given a true account of; and which remains rampart in Scotland to this day, and I sadly fear will outlive me.

John Gibb, a sailor in Borrowstounness, a great professor, (but still some serious souls jealous of him) drew about twenty-six women and three men with him, the greater part of them serious, exercised, tender, zealous, gracious souls, who stumbled upon that stumbling-block laid in their way, of ministers' compliance, silence and unfaithfulness, who before the break of Bothwell Bridge for about eleven years, had publicly preached the indispensable duty of all the Lord's people to follow the gospel, and defend the same: But a little thereafter, the enemy gave an indemnity, or third indulgence to all ministers who formerly preached in the fields, to preach in houses with