Note 51 — Chapter II
Reading edition
I give this story as it is found in the Harleian Miscellany, and Murch’s Hist. of the Presbyterian Churches. Ferguson was first a Presbyterian, then an Independent, and for some time he acted as assistant to Dr. Owen. Calamy, chiefly on the authority of Burnet, gives him a bad character, and this is endorsed in Palmer’s Nonconf. Memorial, and by Wilson in his Dissenting Churches, i. 284.
It is said that there are letters in existence which authorize a different idea of Ferguson than the current one. However this may be, there can, I apprehend, be no doubt of his eccentricity and violence, and of his taking the side of the Jacobite plotters after the Revolution, as he had taken the opposite side before. See his own extraordinary letter to Secretary Trenchard. Ralph (ii. 524) gives a full account of it.