Note 2 — BOOK I.

Kirkton mentions that the English often offered the protesters the government of the nation, which they refused, till Cromwell, “weary with their scrupolosity, and being highly caressed by Mr (afterwards Archbishop) Sharpe, his large proffers in behalf of the resolutioners, was forced to allow them equal liberty, and so they continued in a balance till after his death.—Hist. of the Church of Scotland, pp. 48-56.—Law, in his Memorials, has a similar statement. “It is not to be forgotten, that from the year 1652 to the year 1660, there was great good done by the preaching of the gospel in the west of Scotland, more than was observed to have been for twenty or thirty years before; a great many brought into Christ Jesus by a saving work of conversion, which was occasioned through ministers preaching nothing all that tyme but the gospell, and had left off to preach up parliaments, armies, leagues, resolutions, and remonstrance, which was much in use before, from the year 1638 till that time 52, which occasioned a great number of hypocrytes in the church, who, out of hope of preferment, honour, riches, and worldly credit, tooke on the form of godliness but wanted the power of it.” P. 7.