Page:Life and prophecies of Mr Donald Cargill.pdf/25

25 longest upon that town called the Craigs, being within their sight, and only a few families: And within four months thereafter. 30 corpses went out of that place. And bad crops followed for three years; the meal was at half-a-crown the peck: But, lo! in the year 1673, there was such a crop, that the Lothian barley was sold at four pounds the boll, and the pease at forty pence: and for that we got ten thousand Highlanders, five hundred English Dragoons the whole Militia of the kingdom and all the standing forces cast in upon the West of Scotland, at Bothwell-bridge: And as they said, they came to destroy, and destroy they would; and yet there was abundance for them all, and the inhabitants also.

After Mr. Cargill left the Under-bank Wood, he preached at Loudoun hill upon a week-day, the 5th of May. He designed only to preach once, and baptize some children: His text was, "No man that hath followed me in the regeneration shall be a loser, but great gainer." In his conference lately with the Gibbites, finding so much of Peter's religion among them that they had left all and followed him, made him to insist in shewing that, it was not every pretended way of following Christ he would either regard or reward; holding forth the great danger and ruin to place so much, if not all, of religion in these external parts of Christianity, as prayers, fastings, and mournings, and contendings for the testimony: For sufferings for the same, though they were duties, in themselves, yet, whoever rested upon them, would have a cauld coal to blow at in the end: Nothing is ours but sin, nor due to us but the wages of it. Death. In the application of that sermon, he gave warning of the snares and sins of the Gibbites and their actings, and how dangerous it was to cast off all ministers: And exhorted us to pray for faithful ministers to ourselves, and never content ourselves without them; C