I have been ower proud of my sufferings in a gude
cause, Reuben, and now I am to be tried with those whilk will turn my
pride and glory into a reproach and a hissing. How muckle better I hae
thought mysell than them that lay saft, fed sweet, and drank deep, when I
was in the moss-haggs and moors, wi' precious Donald Cameron, and worthy
Mr. Blackadder, called Guess-again; and how proud I was o' being made a
spectacle to men and angels, having stood on their pillory at the
Canongate afore I was fifteen years old, for the cause of a National
Covenant! To think, Reuben, that I, wha hae been sae honoured and exalted
in my youth, nay, when I was but a hafflins callant, and that hae borne
testimony again the defections o' the times yearly, monthly, daily,
hourly, minutely, striving and testifying with uplifted hand and voice,
crying aloud, and sparing not, against all great national snares, as the
nation-wasting and church-sinking abomination of union, toleration, and
patronage, imposed by the last woman of that unhappy race of Stuarts;
also against the infringements and invasions of the just powers of
eldership, whereanent, I uttered my paper, called a 'Cry of an Howl in
the Desert,' printed at the Bow-head, and sold by all flying stationers
in town and country--and _now_"
Here he paused. It may well be supposed that Butler, though not
absolutely coinciding in all the good old man's ideas about church
government, had too much consideration and humanity to interrupt him,
while he reckoned up with conscious pride his sufferings, and the
constancy of his testimony.
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