Crime & punishment > Times of Claverhouse, or, Sketches of the persecution

THE TIMES OF CLAVERHOUSE.
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all her worthiest and holiest memhers, and which
eats up her people like bread. It is true, that the
blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the
Church; but how ? By an agency independent of
persecution. It was not the sufferings of the wit¬
nesses that raised up new hosts of believers, these
had rather a tendency to prevent such an increase,
and to deter men from uniting themselves to a
society that was enduring such tribulations; it was
something extrinsic to all this, it was the Spirit of
the Lord, who, by means of that truth for which
these holy men were suffering, gathered converts to
the cause, and raised up an army to supply the
place of those who had fallen in the good fight, and
who, in their turn, might also fall in sustaining the
same conflict. It is not persecution that converts,
but the grace of Him who shall never want a seed
to serve him, and to witness for him, so long as the
sun and the moon shall endure. One copious effu¬
sion of the Holy Spirit upon the Churches, would
effect more real benefit throughout the Christian
community than all the persecutions from the be¬
ginning, put together, have ever done.
The state of religion during the persecution was
very deplorable; and this was the obvious result of
the civil and ecclesiastical oppression of the times.
The general irreligiousness of the country at this
period, however, is to be viewed apart from the state
of things in this respect among the conventicles, and
even among the indulged. Among the strict Pres¬
byterians religion flourished, and flourished greatly;
for God was with them, and prospered them. But
then, in the outfield, matters were in a very different
position. In the districts of the curates a profli-