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213 continued between Mr Guthrie and Sharp throughout the whole of their after lives. With Mr Sinclair, now his co-regent, Mr Sharp seems also for some time to have lived on very bad terms, and even to have gone the length of striking him at the college table on the evening of a Lord's day in the presence of the principal and the other regents. For this outrage, however, he appears to have made a most ample acknowledgment, and to have been sincerely repentant. Mr Sharp's contrition attracted the notice and procured him the good graces of several of the most highly gifted and respected ministers of the Scottish church, particularly Mr Robert Blair. Mr Samuel Rutherford, an eminent Christian, and a person of the highest attainments in practical religion, was so much struck with what had been related by some of the brethren respecting Mr Sharp's exercises of soul, that, on his coming in to see him on his return from a distant mission, he embraced him most affectionately, saying, "he saw that out of the most rough and knotty timber Christ could make a vessel of mercy." With the brethren in general Mr Sharp also stood on high ground, and at the request of Mr James Bruce, minister of Kingsbarns, he was, by the earl of Crawford, presented to the church and parish of Crail. On his appointment to this charge Mr Sharp began to take a decided part in the management of the external affairs of the church, in which he displayed singular ability. His rapidly increasing popularity in a short time procured him a call to be one of the ministers ot Edinburgh, but his transportation was refused, both by the presbytery of St Andrews and the synod of Fife. It was at length ordered, however, by an act of the General Assembly; but the invasion of the English under Cromwell prevented its being any further insisted in. In the disputes that agitated the Scottish church after the unfortunate battle of Dunbar, the subject of this memoir, who was a stanch resolutioner, was the main instrument, according to Mr Robert Baillie, of carrying the question against the Protesters. His conduct on this occasion highly enhanced his talents and his piety, and was not improbably the foundation upon which his whole after fortune was built. In the troubles which so speedily followed this event, Sharp, along with several other ministers and some of the nobility, was surprised at Elliot in Fife by a party of the English, and sent up a prisoner to London. In 1657, he was deputed by the Resolutioners to proceed to London to plead their cause with Cromwell in opposition to the Protesters who had sent up Messrs James Guthrie, Patrick Gillespie, and others, to represent the distressed state of the Scottish church, and to request, that an Assembly might be indicted for determining the controversies in question, and composing the national disorders. From the state of parties both in Scotland and England, and from the conduct which Cromwell had now adopted, he could not comply with this request, but he seems to have set a high value upon the commissioners; to have appreciated their good sense and fervent piety, and to have done everything but grant their petition to evince his good-will towards them. They, on the other hand, seem not to have been insensible either to his personal merits, though inimical to his government, or to that of some of the eminent men that were about him. This was terrifying to the Hesolutioners, who saw in it nothing less than a coincidence of views and a union of purposes on the part of the whole protesting body with the abhorred and dreaded sectaries. "Their [the leading protesters'] piety and zeal," says Baillie, "is very susceptible of schism and error. I am oft afraid of their apostasy;" and, after mentioning with a kind of instinctive horror their praying both in public and private with Owen and Caryl, he adds with exultation, "the great instrument of God to cross their evil designs has been that very worthy, pious, wise, and diligent young man, Mr James Sharp." It was part of the energetic policy of Cromwell, while he was not dependent on the party