# Scottish Puritans - Select Biographies (2 Volume Set)



## CarlosOliveira (Nov 3, 2008)

Just released by Banner of Truth - www.banneroftruth.org
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Description: Scottish Puritans - Select Biographies constitute one of the great treasures of Scottish Christian literature. In quick succession, we meet such justly famous and revered figures as John Welsh, David Dickson, William Guthrie, and James Fraser of Brea, but also the lesser known and long forgotten, like the land-labourer of Carrick, John Stevenson. Here are the stories and reflections of men and women who, in times of great darkness, testing, and suffering, tasted what the author of Hebrews calls 'the powers of the age to come'. 
This is a magnificent two-volume set, calculated to stir the soul and to find a place of honour and affection in every Christian who loves to read the thrilling history of the Scottish church! - Sinclair B. Ferguson 

The 17th century was a dynamic period in Scottish church history, and yet many of its rich records lay hidden in privately owned manuscripts for two hundred years. It was only with the evangelical awakening of the 1840s that close attention was given to their publication, and a Society, formed for that purpose in Edinburgh, took the name of the historian, Robert Wodrow (1679-1734). On the 26 volumes thus published subsequent authors have depended heavily, and particularly so with respect to the two volumes originally entitled Select Biographies. In an era when Puritan literature is again being rediscovered their reprint is timely, providing as it does the opportunity to go back to first-hand sources. Here, for the most part, men and women live in their own words, or in the witness of their contemporaries. The 19th-century editor, William Tweedie, himself an evangelical leader, thought it worthwhile to be the editor of this rare material, and all who have possessed them endorse his judgment. 

Of the two volumes packed with biography, the first tells the story of John Welsh, Patrick Simson, and John Livingstone, men ‘who acted a prominent part in their eventful times but whose histories were not so generally known’. The son-in-law of John Knox and minister of Ayr, Welsh was one of ‘the most remarkable men of his time . . . for his learning, piety, and zeal.’ Simson was minister at Stirling and, although less well known than Welsh, was of a similar noble character. It was said of him that few were able to surpass him in learning, judicious counsel, and boldness in opposing error. Livingstone, perhaps the most powerful preacher in Scotland during the mid-seventeenth century, was instrumental in a revival at the Kirk of Shotts, before going on to minister in Killinchy (Ireland), Stranraer, and Ancrum. He played a notable part in the tumultuous events of those years, including the negotiations that led to the return of the exiled King Charles II. Letters, sermons, and some other rare material supplement the biographies of these men. 

Also included in this first volume are: the Last and Heavenly Speeches of John, Viscount Kenmure (attributed to Samuel Rutherford), the Memoirs of Walter Pringle, and the Soliloquies of Mrs Janet Hamilton of Earlstoun. All give insight into, not only the manners and spirit of the age, but also the faith, love, zeal, and sufferings of men and women whose lives speak to us of apostolic Christianity. They devoted themselves to the Word of God and prayer. They enjoyed real communion with Christ. They knew the Holy Spirit and believed in his power to change both lives and nations. 

The second volume of Scottish Puritans – Select Biographies contains the lives of David Dickson, William Guthrie, and James Fraser of Brea. Dickson, ‘a star of the first magnitude’ among the eminent ministers of Scotland, laboured In Irvine with extraordinary fruitfulness for twenty-three years, before suffering ejection and exile under the episcopal policies of King James I. A leader of remarkable tact and learning, he was appointed Professor of Divinity at Glasgow and later at Edinburgh. Some of his works, including commentaries on the Psalms, Matthew, and Hebrews, as well as the first sympathetic and full commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith, are still available today. Guthrie, the minister of Fenwick, was widely regarded as ‘the greatest practical preacher in Scotland’. The author of The Christian’s Great Interest, John Owen reckoned him to be ‘one of the greatest divines that ever wrote’, and providing more theology in his small book than Owen had in several folios! Admired by many of his contemporaries, he acted a prominent part and exercised an extensive influence in his own day. Fraser of Brea, a gentleman by birth, was ‘one of the ablest men in a time of able men’. Ordained to the ministry in times of severe persecution, he was eventually arrested and imprisoned on the notorious Bass Rock. He is chiefly remembered for his memoirs, of which Alexander Whyte wrote, Fraser ‘will live in that remarkable book as long as a scholarly religion, and an evangelical religion, and a spiritual religion, and a profoundly experimental religion lives in his native land . . . it has few if any equals.’ Alongside the records of these three leaders are to be found the stories of lesser-known Christians: men such as John Nisbet, the covenanting soldier and martyr, and John Stevenson, the land-labourer of Carrick, whose experiences of the Lord’s grace amidst terrible suffering were so very remarkable. The volume concludes with short pieces about three women, Mrs Goodal, Lady Coltness, and Lady Anne Elcho, whose testimonies to God’s grace show us how Christian women lived in days often dark and difficult. 

In these records we find a whole gallery of men and women whose lives and deaths speak to us of apostolic Christianity. Although not to be used as models in all things, the Scottish Puritans and Covenanters still exemplify the same kind of spiritual and missionary zeal that has ever been associated with the advance of the kingdom of God. Their lives were centred on the Word of God and prayer and they enjoyed real communion with Christ. They knew the Holy Spirit and believed in his power to change lives and nations. What Spurgeon once said of David Dickson’s Explanation of the Psalms we say of Scottish Puritans – Select Biographies, ‘We commend it with much fervour.’ -- Iain H. Murray


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## NaphtaliPress (Nov 3, 2008)

Carlos,
Do you know if this is a reprint of the Wodrow Society edition or reset? I have a banged up copy of it I've used for years.


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## CarlosOliveira (Nov 3, 2008)

Yes, It's a Wodrow Society edition reprinting, Chris. See the article below writen by Iain H. Murray.

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Scottish Puritan Biographies Republished

Iain H. Murray

It was one of the lesser hardships suffered by Scottish Christians of the seventeenth century that material they wrote did not always reach a printing press and a publisher. Authorship is no ambition when a struggle for life itself is taking place. Some of their books found a press in Holland; only there could appear such books as David Calderwood’s attack on episcopacy in his Altar of Damascus (1621), and Samuel Rutherford’s Letters (1664). Some of their manuscripts – Rutherford’s commentary on Isaiah, for instance – simply disappeared.

Other material was copied by hand and, treasured by a few owners, survived to later generations. Two centuries later a number of Christians, aware of the existence of these fugitive, hand-written manuscripts, determined to see a number of them gathered and published. Thus the Wodrow Society was formed in 1841, to be supported by some 2,000 members, ‘for the publication of the works of the fathers and early writers of the Reformed Church of Scotland’. *By this means twenty-six volumes were published in handsome black bindings by 1850, and among the most valuable the two volumes of Select Biographies (1845) now reprinted as Scottish Puritans – Select Biographies.* The Society, and the series they published, took its name from Robert Wodrow (1679–1734), the distinguished historian of the Reformation and Puritan periods in Scotland.

The Wodrow Society volumes were published by the efforts of enthusiasts who already had some appreciation and knowledge of Scottish church history. The uninitiated today, who plunge into Select Biographies, may be bewildered by a micro-view of distant events altogether unfamiliar. Yet, while this close-up view of life in the seventeenth century has its difficulties, there is a fascination in reading material untouched and unabridged by later hands. Subsequent writers have culled material from the Select Biographies but there is much to be gained by possessing the originals. Even so, as a starting point for understanding Scottish church history, these may not be the right volumes to take up.

There is another difficulty of a different kind in these pages. From time to time the reader will come across unrecognizable words. There are two reasons for this. In seventeenth-century Scotland the English language was far from standardized, even names and place names could be spelt in different forms. The editor, in his Preface, notes five different spellings of the surname of John Welsh; a later biographer found nine! Similarly there was no consistency in the seventeenth-century spelling of place names; thus Anwoth, made famous by Samuel Rutherford, will be found sometimes spelt Alnwith (see, for example, p. 135 of volume 1). There are numerous examples of words known to us but spelt strangely; often, when these are read aloud they can be recognized. More difficult are the occasional Scots words that are no longer used in any form. To help with these words we have added a glossary at the conclusion of each volume, and where that is insufficient more help can be found in such books as The Concise Scots Dialect Dictionary compiled by Alexander Warnock (New Lanark: Waverley Books, 2000, repr. 2006).Most of the material in these volumes is taken from unpublished manuscript sources. We are indebted to William K. Tweedie (1803–63)
for what must have been laborious editorial work, including his helpful Introductory ‘Notes’. A more recent editor might have extended the editorial additions. A few statements, and an occasional date, would not be allowed to stand today without correction or qualification. Sometimes the original writers had no means of checking the information they recorded, and some of these pages, therefore, need to be read with a degree of caution. This applies particularly to the opening section of Volume One, ‘The History of Mr John Welsh’, which comes, not from a manuscript source, but from a short biography first published in 1703 and attributed to James Kirkton (1628–99). As Welsh died in 1622 the biography was clearly put together many years after his death, enough time for apocryphal elements to have become attached to his memory. The sympathetic and evangelical biographer of Welsh, James Young, in his Life of John Welsh – the definitive biography – had no hesitation in identifying Kirkton’s story of Welsh raising a dead young man as apocryphal (see below, pp. 35–6). On this incident Young rote: ‘Let it be observed, in the first place, that Welsh never pretended to be endowed with the power of working miracles, or of raising the dead to life. Secondly, the marvellous narrative rests upon no more solid foundation than a popular tradition, which in the course of transmission has evidently received numerous and incredible additions.’ He believed the story probably arose from what happened to a young cousin of Welsh who was seriously ill and at the point of death when the earnest prayer of his uncle was heard. But if there are question marks over a few points of detail in these pages, there is no doubt about the main thing. Welsh ‘was a man filled with the Holy Ghost, full of zeal, of love, and of an incredible labour and diligence in his station and calling’. In these records we find a whole gallery of such men and women whose lives and deaths speak to us of apostolic Christianity.

It was no antiquarian interest that induced William Tweedie to prepare this material for publication. At the very time he was doing the work he was caught up in the evangelical awakening that led to the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843. A minister of that denomination, his faithfulness cost him his manse and the Tolbooth Church, Edinburgh, at that date. Thereafter he continued to serve his ejected congregation, and as Convenor of the Foreign Missions Committee of the Free Church of Scotland he was a leader in evangelistic outreach.

For him these books were not for mere interest and leisurely reading. With others of his contemporaries who supported the Wodrow Society, he went back to the Scottish Puritans and Covenanters for inspiration to continue the same ‘fight of faith’ in the cause of Christ. He knew that they were not models in all things. The principle of toleration was not understood in their day (though Cromwell came nearer to it than did the Scots), and the idea that Scotland could have a theocratic status (like Old Testament Israel) led to some strange political judgments. But at the heart of the movement was the same kind of spiritual and missionary zeal that has ever been associated with the advance of the kingdom of God. These were men whose lives centred around the Word of God and prayer. They enjoyed real communion with Christ. They knew the Holy Spirit and believed in his power to change lives and communities. What Spurgeon once said of David Dickson’s Explanation of the Psalms we say of Select Biographies, ‘We commend it with much fervour.’

From the Banner of Truth Magazine October 2008


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## CarlosOliveira (Nov 4, 2008)

*bump*


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## NaphtaliPress (Nov 4, 2008)

Thanks; I missed the "now printed as" the first time around.
I have a nearly complete run of the Woodrow Society volumes I think; not the Melville Romans commentary, or Row's History But most of it. Here is a list; I think complete, at NLS.
Scottish History in Print: Published Documents Search Results



CarlosOliveira said:


> Yes, It's a Wodrow Society edition reprinting, Chris. See the article below writen by Iain H. Murray.
> 
> =================
> *By this means twenty-six volumes were published in handsome black bindings by 1850, and among the most valuable the two volumes of Select Biographies (1845) now reprinted as Scottish Puritans – Select Biographies.* The Society, and the series they published, took its name from Robert Wodrow (1679–1734), the distinguished historian of the Reformation and Puritan periods in Scotland.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Nov 4, 2008)

FYI - The 1845 edition (from the library of J.A. Alexander) is available online:

Vol. 1
Vol. 2


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## CarlosOliveira (Nov 4, 2008)

I don't believe it.....I'm sad indeed....only 63 pages on John Welsh and only 69 pages on David Dickson and William Guthrie!!!  80% of the 1st volume is all about John Livingstone and 80% of the 2nd volume is all about James Fraser of Brea!


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## MW (Nov 4, 2008)

Livingstone's "Memorable Characteristics" makes for succulent reading.


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