Note 425 — Chapter IV

‘Each new victory of Montrose was expressly attributed to the admonitory “indignation of the Lord” against his chosen people for their sin, in “trusting too much to the arm of flesh.”’ Napier's Life of Montrose, Edinburgh, 1840, p. 283. Compare Guthrie's Considerations contributing unto the Discovery of the Dangers that threaten Religion, pp. 274, 275, reprinted Edinburgh, 1846. Guthrie was at the height of his reputation in the middle of the seventeenth century. Lord Somerville says of the Scotch, when they were making war against Charles I., that it was ‘ordinary for them, dureing the wholl tyme of this warre, to attribute ther great successe to the goodnesse and justice of their cause, untill Divyne Justice trysted them with some crosse dispensatione, and then you might have heard this language from them, that it pleased the Lord to give his oune the heavyest end of the tree to bear, that the saints and people of God must still be sufferers while they are here away; that that malignant party was God's rod to punish them for their unthankfullnesse,’ &c. Somerville's Memorie of the Somervilles, vol. ii. pp. 351, 352.