Series 5 > Religious Controversy in Scotland 1625-1639

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RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY IN SCOTLAND
ten years, never sober, but ofttymes at preaching. He was deposed.’52 He had
probably already left the country and later died in Cornwall.53 He published
two books, the first being the generally unexceptionable An Exposition of the
Lords Prayer (London, 1633). In 1642 he issued a poem of 7,000 fines entitled
Immanuel;5* he also wrote a brief poem,‘Aaron’s Obsequie’, upon the death of
Bishop Patrick Forbes in 1635.55The ‘Protestation’ is followed by an appendix,
containing excerpts from another poem by Wishart,‘Woman’s Universe’, cited
as one of the complaints against him.This is located in NAS,RH15/45/36/18.
‘A Reply to the Reasons for a Generali Assemblie’, 1638
Source: NLS,Wodrow MSS, Folio Ixvi, no. 35.
This document is important as an episcopal or at least episcopalian rejoinder to
Reasons for a Generali Assembly ([Edinburgh,] 1638), dated 29 June 1638, the day
after a royal proclamation announced the calling of an assembly,56 the first since
1618 when an assembly meeting in Perth authorised the five articles for use in
the Scottish church. Reasons is a tract of 9 pp.,and its section entided‘Objections
answered’ suggests the circulation of something earlier in support of the
episcopalian position. Hence this is the third item in a literary debate. Again
there is a dispute about history, and the Revolution in Scodand was, as in other
revolutions in the modern world, a struggle to control the apparatus of historical
interpretation.
John Guthrie, bishop of Moray, ‘Life’
Source: NLS,Wodrow MSS, Quarto Ixxxiii, no. 2.
Most of the century’s religious autobiographies were produced by radical cov¬
enanters, so it is of particular interest to have one from the hand of a bishop, in
fact one of only two such, the other being by Bishop William Cowper.57 Guthrie
52 NLS.Wodrow MSS, Octavo x,‘Mr Robert Douglas account of the Assemblys 1638 & 1639’ (but
referring to the Edinburgh Commission which dealt with charges against ministers in 1639), fo. 118r.
53 FES,i, 161-2.
54 Immanuel: or the Mistery of God, manifested in the Flesh (London, 1642):
The very Heav’ns are in thy sight impure,
O thou dread Soveraign of all Creature!
Thy Wisdom’s such, and eke thy pow’r so large
That thou layst folly to the Angells charge ... (p. 1).
55 In Funerals ofa Right Reverend Father in God Patrick Forbes of Corse, Bishop of Aberdeen (Edinburgh,
1845 [repr. of 1635 edition]), 438-9.
56 RKSJOA.
57 The Life and Death ofWilliam Cowper, Bishop of Galloway (1616), in Cowper, tVorkes (London, 1623).
One might also note Gilbert Burnet’s autobiography, published as A Supplement to Burnet’s ‘History of
my own Time’, ed. H.C. Foxcroft (Oxford, 1902), though this belongs more to England.