Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/198

334 ficient to justify proceedings to a certain extent against him. "The spleen of many," writes Baillie, "against the principal in the Assembly [of 1638] was great, for many passages of his carriage in this affair, especially the last two: his subscribing that which we affirmed, and he denied, to be a protestation against elders, and so [against] our Assembly, consisting of them and ministers elected by their voices: also, his deserting the Assembly ever since the commissioner's departure, upon pretence that his commission being once cast, because it was four, the elector would not meet again to give him, or any other, a new commission. Every other day, some one or other, nobleman, gentleman, or minister, was calling that Dr Strang should be summoned; but by the diligence of his good friends, it was shifted, and at last, by this means, quite put by." The Assembly, however, appointed a commission to visit and determine all matters respecting the university. "This," continues the writer, "was a terrible wand above their heads for a long time. Divers of them feared deposition. . . . We had no other intention, but to admonish them to do duty." From the account given by the same author of the proceedings of the Assembly of 1643, it appears that, at that period, the principal was still very unpopular with the more zealous noblemen and ministers; and if the account there given of the manner in which he managed the affairs of the college, and the stratagems uy which he sometimes attempted to gain his ends, be correct, we have no hesitation in pronouncing him deservedly so. According to that statement, the chancellor, the rector, the vice-chancellor, dean of faculty, the rectors, assessors, and three of the regents, were not only all "at his devotion," but most of them "otherwise minded in the public affairs, than we did wish;" and an attempt was made to introduce a system, by which he should always be appointed commissioner from the university to the Assembly. Baillie was at bottom friendly to the principal, and his fears that any complaint made against him at the Asembly, might raise a storm which would not be easily allayed, induced him to be silent. He contented himself with obtaining a renewal of the commission for visiting the university. "This I intend," he says, "for a wand to threat, but to strike no man, if they will be pleased to live in any peaceable quietness, as it fears me their disaffection to the country's cause will not permit some of them to do." It must be confessed, however, that these statements of Baillie, written to a private friend, and probably never intended to meet the eye of the public, form a strange contrast to the general strain in which he has written the life of Strang, prefixed to his work on the interpretation of Scripture. In the latter it is declared, respecting this period of his life, that "he fell under the ill-will of some persons, without his doing anything to lay the ground of it. When such made a most diligent search into his privat and publick management, that they might have somwhat against him, he was found beyond reproach in his personal carriage, and in the discharge of his office; only in his dictats to his schollars, some few things were taken notice of, wherein he differed in his sentiments from Dr Twiss and Mr Kutherfurd in some scholastick speculations. He was not so much as blamed for any departure from the confession of any reformed church, . . . but, in a few questions, exceeding nice and difficult, as to God's providence about sin, he thought himself at liberty, modestly to differ in his sentiments from so many privat men." Yet the clamour thus raised against Dr Strang, however groundless in Baillie's estimation, was eii-