Series 5 > Protestant piety in early-modern Scotland

271
DUNCAN, ‘MOST MEMORABLE PASSAGES’
towards me and is very sensible.
Unable as I was to speak, I asked him if he had indeed made a
covenant with God in truth and sincerity, as I knew he had done by
word and professedly, and if he stood to the covenant. He answered, ‘O,
I, O, I’,107 yes, yes, that sweet, sure, and wel-made covenant108 continued
by the blessed Trinity, the omnipotent, omniscient, and al[l]wise God for
the salvation of sinners thro’ the merits of Jesus Christ the Mediator; on
which alone renouncing mine own merits (if mine heart deceive me not)
I do intirely rest. O! the sweet mercies and sure mercies of the well-made
covenant. O! the wonderfull love of Christ. O! the love of the Holy
Ghost, the Spirit of God’. Thus and to the purpose he spoke a
considerable time, but his speech being marred with hoaneness, I could
not take it all sensibly up. Then I turned down to rest me upon my
couch, and a litde after rose up again upon my knees and prayed, to
which he gave closs attention. Being exhausted with the litde speaking
after I had prayed I had after prayer, I asked him, ‘Shall it not be well-
ordered if your next meeting and more shall be in the kingdome of
glory?’ ‘O! I . O! I’, said he, and several other sentences, all with much
composure, seriousness, and sensibleness. Upon all which, looking for
nothing but death to him and myself also, I blessed him in the name of
the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and my God, kissed him, took
farewell, and saw him not alive again, for after I returned down to my
body, it pleas’d God to bring back my pains again, which continued so
long as he lived, viz. till the Sabbath morning.
It is remarkable here as a considerable aggravation of my yokefellow’s
trouble that spectators look’d upon us both to be so near death as it was
dubious whither109 of us should demitt first. And particularly upon the
Sabbath morning, when he was posting to his glorious rest, I grew so ill
that my wife knew not whilk of us to wait upon. As also it’s wonderfully
remarkable that tho’ I was still expecting that the report of his expiration
should put a final period to my wretched life and weary warfare, yet it
pleased God to strengthen me with much patience and contentment to
receive the report and to bless him in prayer with my family that ever he
honoured me to be father of one of his own elect children and that he has
so graciously ordered my, tho’ but once, conversing with him to my so
great soul satisfaction, and that he had taken him away from the evil to
come, and delivered him from all his afflictions and from this present evil
world.
It is also very noticeable, and that contrary to my sinfull sense, I was so
far from being deeper sunk by his death, that ane hour after, my pains
; 2 Samuel 23:5; see IVLW, 31.