The following is part of Donald Cargill’s speech on the scaffold at the Cross in Edinburgh on 27th July 1681, taken from A Cloud of Witnesses for the Royal Prerogatives of Jesus Christ. Its application to the ministers of Scotland today is remarkable. Rev Donald Cargill was the minister of the Barony Parish in Glasgow. His life story is told in an excellent biography by Maurice Grant, No King but Christ, (Evangelical Press, 1988)
“… However it be with me at the last, though I should be straitened by God, or interrupted by men, yet all is sure, and shall be well. I have followed holiness – I have taught truth – and I have been most in the main things; not that I thought the things concerning our times little, but that I thought none could do anything to purpose in God’s great and public matters till they were right in their condition. O that all had taken this method, then there had been fewer apostasies. The religion of the land, and zeal for the land’s engagements, are coming to nothing, by a supine, loathsome and hateful formality; and there cannot be zeal, liveliness, and godliness, where people meet with persecution and want renovation of heart. My soul trembles to think how little of regeneration there is amongst the ministers and professors of Scotland. O the ministers of Scotland, how have they betrayed Christ’s interests, and beguiled souls! “They have not entered in themselves and them that were entering in they hindered.” They have sold the things of Christ, and the liberties of his church, for a short and cursed quiet to themselves, which is now near an end: they are more at one and at peace with God’s enemies, now that they have done all their mischiefs, than they were at first, when they had only put hand to them. And I much fear, that though there were not only godly minister on the earth, Christ would make no use of them: but there will be a dreadful judgement upon them, and a long curse upon their posterity.
As to our professors, my counsel to them is, that they would see well to their own regeneration, for the most of them have that yet to do; and yet let none think he is in the right exercise of true religion who has not a zeal for God’s public glory. There is a small remnant in Scotland from whom my soul has had its greatest comfort on earth. I wish your increase in holiness, number, love, religion, and righteousness. Wait and cease to contend with these men that are gone out from us; for there is nothing that shall convince them but judgement. Satisfy your consciences, and go forward; for the nearer you are to God, and the further from all others, whether stated enemies or lukewarm ministers or professors, it shall be the better. My preaching has occasioned great persecution, but the want of it will, I fear, occasion worse. I have, however, preached the truths of God to others; “I believed, and so I preached;” and I have not an ill conscience in preaching truth whatever has followed. This day I am to seal with my blood all the truths that ever I preached; and what is controverted of that which I have been professing, shall, ere long, be manifested by God’s judgements in the consciences of men.”
By the way... 