le man, in whom many have placed almost all their salvation.
God is also wroth with a generation of carnal corrupt time-serving
ministers. I know and do bear testimony, that in the church of Scotland
there is a true and faithful ministry, and I pray you to honour these;
for their works sake. I do bear my witness to the national covenant of
Scotland, and solemn league and covenant betwixt the three kingdoms.
These sacred solemn public oaths of God, I believe can be loosed or
dispensed with by no person or party or power upon earth, but are still
binding upon these kingdoms, and will be so for ever hereafter, and are
ratified and sealed by the conversion of many thousand souls, since our
entering thereinto. I bear my testimony to the protestation against the
controverted assemblies, and the public resolutions. I take God to
record upon my soul, I would not exchange this scaffold with the palace
or mitre of the greatest prelate in Britain. Blessed be God, who hath
shewed mercy to me such a wretch, and has revealed his Son in me, and
made me a minister of the everlasting gospel, and that he hath deigned,
in the midst of much contradictions from Satan and the world, to seal my
ministry upon the hearts of not a few of his people, and especially in
the station wherein I was last, I mean the congregation and presbytery
of Stirling. Jesus Christ is my light and my life, my righteousness, my
strength and my salvation, and all my desire. Him! O him! I do with all
the strength of my soul commend to you. Bless him, O my soul, from
henceforth, even for ever!" He concluded with the words of old Simeon,
_Now let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy
salvation._ He gave a copy of this his last speech and testimony,
subscribed and sealed, to a friend to keep, which he was to deliver to
his son, then a child, when he came to age. When on the scaffold he
lifted the napkin off his face just before he was turned over and cried,
The covenants, the covenants shall yet be Scotland's reviving.

A few weeks after he was executed, and his head placed on the
Neitherbow-port, Middleton's coach coming down that way, several drops
of blood fell from the head upon the coach, which all their art and
diligence could not wipe off, and when physicians were called, and
desired to inquire, If any natural cause could be given for this, but
they could give none. This odd incident being noised abroad, and all
means tried, at length the leather