Alexander Peden at the grave of Richard Cameron

The Martyr Patrick Hamilton

Grace and its Abuse--John Dickie

The Right Study of the Law of God
The study of the law is so singularly useful, we not only press and commend it; but [also] add further some few directions, whereby we may be helped rightly to use it, and to guard against the abuse of it in our hearing and reading of it. 1. The first direction is, you would look on it as God’s Word, and take it as if you heard himself from Sinai pronounce it, that so you may tremble, and be more affected with holy fear whenever you read it hear it, or meditate upon it; for so were the people affected when it was first promulgated. 2. Be much in prayer for grace to take up its meaning. David (Ps. 119:18, etc) prayed often for this, and thought it not unbec

To Marion McNaught When Persecuted for Her Principles
Well–Beloved Sister, I have been thinking, since my departure from you, of the pride and malice of your adversaries; and you may not (since you have had the Book of Psalms so often) take hardly with this; for David’s enemies snuffed at him, and through the pride of their heart said, “The Lord will not require it” (Ps. 10:13). I beseech you, therefore, in the bowels of Jesus, set before your eyes the patience of your forerunner Jesus, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him who judgeth righteously (1 Pet. 2:23). And since your Lord and Redeemer with patience received many a black stroke on His

12 Directions for the Cast-down Soul
When any of your souls is cast down and disquieted within you, through a sense of indwelling sin or the hiding of God’s face, I advise you to guard against a speedy razing of the foundations: rather trust in God that that ye shall yet praise him, and let the following particulars be your grounds of comfort: 1. Though ye be very guilty, ye have without known guile fled to the city of refuge, and given your consent that Christ should be yours on his own terms, Heb. vi. 18 2. His covenant is well ordered, everlasting and sure, and Christ is the surety of it, 2 Sam. xxiii. 5 3. Plead his promise as Jacob did of old, Gen. xxxii. 12, “And Thou sayest I will sur

Of Christ’s Priestly Office
Heb 7:17.—Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. It is evident from the context, that the apostle is speaking of Christ as a Priest, applying to him this passage taken from Ps 110:4, Thou art a Priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec. Where two things are proposed; 1. That he is indeed a Priest, whose business it is to offer sacrifices. 2. That he is so after the order of Melchisedec; noting thereby the similitude betwixt the two, the one being a notable type of the other. This likeness consists not in an unbloody sacrifice, that of bread and wine, which Melchisedec brought forth to Abraham when he returned from the slaughter of

The Covenanter’s Night Hymn
[As a preface to this poem in Blackwood's Magazine was the following historical summary : — The religious per- secutions of the Covenanters were not mere things of a day, but were continued through at least three entire generations. They extended from the accession of James VI. to the Eng- lish throne (testibus the rhymes of Sir David Lyndsay, and the classic prose of Buchanan) down to the revolution of 1688, — almost a century, during which many thousands tyrannically perished, without in the least degree loosening that tenacity of purpose, or subduing that perfervidum ingenium, which, according to Thuames, have