Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/83

Rh held by tho persecuted stranger. The pulpits were everywhere made to ring against him, and Dr Barren, their principal leader, did not scruple to attack him personally for his antipathy to the doctrines of Arminius and the ceremonies; "but three yokings," Rutherford afterwards wrote, "laid him by, and I have not been since troubled with him." Notwithstanding the coolness of his first reception, he soon became popular in Aberdeen, and his sentiments beginning to gain ground, the doctors were induced to petition the court that he might be removed still farther north, or banished from the kingdom. This last seems to have been determined on, and a warrant by the king forwarded to Scotland to that effect ; the execution of which was only prevented by the establishment of the Tables at Edinburgh, and the consequent downfall of episcopacy. In consequence of these movements, Rutherford ventured to leave Aberdeen, and to return to his beloved people at Anwoth, in the month of February, 1638, having been absent from them rather more than a year and a half. His flock had, in the mean time, successfully resisted all the efforts of Sydserff to impose upon them a minister of his own choosing. It is not probable, however, that after this period, they enjoyed much of the ministrations of Rutherford, as we soon after find him actively employed in the metropolis in forwarding, by his powerful and impressive eloquence, the great work of reformation which was then going so successfully forward. On the renewal of the Covenant, he was deputed, along with Mr Andrew Cant, to prepare the people of Glasgow for a concurrence in that celebrated instrument. He was also a delegate from the presbytery of Kirkcudbright to the general assembly, which met in that city in November, 1638, and was by that court honourably assoilzied from the charges preferred against him by the bishops and the high commission. To the commission of this assembly applications were made by the corporation of Edinburgh to have Mr Rutherford transported from Anwoth, to be one of the ministers of that city, and by the university of St Andrews to have him nominated professor of divinity to the new college there. To the latter situation he was appointed by the commission, greatly against his own mind, and to the no small grief of the people of Anwoth, who omitted no effort to retain him. The petitions of the parish of Anwoth, and of the county of Galloway on this occasion are both preserved, and never were more honourable testimonies borne to the worth of an individual, or stronger evidence afforded of the high estimation in which his services were held. The public necessities of the church, however, were supposed to be such ai to set aside all private considerations, and Rutherford proceeded to the scene of his new duties in October, 1639. On the 19th of that month, having previously entered upon his labours in the college, he was inducted by the presbytery as colleague to Mr Robert Blair in the church of St Andrews, which seems at this time to have been no very pleasing situation. In the days of Melville and Buchanan the university was the most flourishing in the kingdom ; now it was become, under the care of the bishops, the very nursery of superstition in worship, and error in doctrine: "but God," says one of Rutherford's pupils, "did so singularly second his in- defatigable pains, both in teaching and preaching, that the university forthwith became a Lebanon, out of which were taken cedars for building the house of God throughout the land." In the Assembly of 1640, Rutherford was involved in a dispute respecting private society meetings, which he defended along with Messrs Robert Blair and David Dickson, against the greater part of his brethren, who, under the terrors of independency, which in a short time overspread the land, condemned them. It was probably owing to this dispute, that two years afterwards he published his "Peaceable Plea for Paul's Presbytery," an excellent and temperate treatise; equally remote from anarchy on