mous
church of Scotland; and happy had their successors been, had they
preserved and handed down to posterity the scriptural doctrines pure and
entire, as they were delivered by our first reformers, to Mr. Dickson
and his contemporaries, and from him and them handed down without
corruption to their successors.

All this time, _viz._ in 1650 and 1651, Mr. Dickson had a great share in
the printed pamphlets upon the unhappy debates betwixt the
resolutioners and the protestors, he was in his opinions for the public
resolutioners: and most of the papers on that side were wrote by him,
Mr. Bailey and Mr. Douglas; as those on the other side were wrote by Mr.
James Guthrie, Mr. Patrick Gillespie, and a few others.

Mr. Dickson continued at Edinburgh, discharging his trust with great
diligence and faithfulness, until the melancholy turn by the restoration
of prelacy upon the return of Charles II.; when, for refusing the oath
of supremacy, he was with many other worthies, turned out; so that his
heart was broken with this heavy change on the beautiful face of that
once famed reformed church.

He had married Margaret Robertson daughter to Archibald Robertson of
Stone-hall, a younger brother of the house of Ernock, in the shire of
Lanerk; by her he had three sons, John, clerk to the exchequer in
Scotland; Alexander, professor of Hebrew in the college of Edinburgh;
and Archibald, who lived with his family afterward in the parish of
Irvine.

On December 1662, he fell extremely sick, at which time worthy Mr.
Livingston, now suffering for the same cause, though he had then but
forty-eight hours liberty to stay in Edinburgh, came to see him on his
death-bed. They had been intimately acquainted near forty years, and now
rejoiced as fellow-confessors together. When Mr. Livingston asked the
professor, What were his thoughts of the present affairs, and how it was
with himself? His answer was, "That he was sure Jesus Christ would not
put up with the indignities done against his work and people:" and as
for himself, said he, "I have taken all my good deeds and all my bad
deeds, and have cast them together in a heap before the Lord, and have
fled from both to Jesus Christ, and in him I have sweet peace[123]."

Having been very low and weak for some days, he called all his family
together, and spoke in particular to each of them, and having gone
through them all, he pronounced the words of the apostolical blessing, 1
Cor. xiii. 13, 14, wi