John Howie of Lochgoin

12 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
and under the character of a religious woman ; after which
I kept more to the form of an outward profession ; and
having, from my younger years, had great pleasure in
reading biography, the eminent lives and comfortable deaths
of Christ's faithful witnesses, both under Antichrist Popish
and Prelatic, and having thereby gained a strong regard
for the memories and contendings of our Scots Worthies,
both in the reforming and suffering period ; in process of
time I thought of publishing Mr. James Renwick's large
life, which was wrote by Mr. Alexander Shields; but, upon
second thoughts, I took up a resolution to collect what mate-
rials I could obtain, and write a kind of lives of a number
of them, which I did at leisure hours, with small views that
ever anything I could do should merit the publishing of
them : however, my motives were ingenuous, out of love to
them and their contendings or cause they contended for :
and the Lord determined that they should both be published
and much esteemed by men of all ranks and denominations.
While I was writing and collecting the first draught of the
Scots Worthies, sometimes in the morning; one morning
my wife, who was not without an inclination to religion,
being in bed in the little closet where I was writing, she
was just going to give me a reproof for my folly in writ-
ing; what would I do but make people laugh at my folly;
immediately these words came into her mind, Mark vii. 37.
He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to
hear, and the dumb to speak. After which she durst never
speak against it."
Such is John Howie's simple, artless story as to how he
came to write his first and most popular book, and how he
managed to accomplish it. The title is :
"Biographia Scoticana: or a Brief Historical Account of
the Lives, Characters, and Memorable Transactions of the
most eminent Scots Worthies, noblemen, gentlemen, min-
isters, and others : from Mr. Patrick Hamilton, who was
born about the year of our Lord 1503, and suffered martyr-
dom at St. Andrews, Feb. 1527, to Mr. James Renwick,
who was executed in the Grass-market of Edinburgh, Feb.
17, 16S8. Together with a succinct account of the lives of
other seven eminent divines, and Sir Robert Hamilton of
Preston, who died at or shortly after the Revolution. Col-
lected from the Historical Records, Biographical Accounts,