a surgeon dressed his
wounds, and Mrs. Puntens gave him some warm milk, and he lay in their
barn all night. From thence he went to the south, and next Sabbath
preached at Cairn-hill, somewhere adjacent to Loudon, in his blood and
wounds (for no danger could stop him from going about doing good). His
text was in Heb. xi. 32. _And shall I more say, for time would fail me
to tell of Gideon_, &c. At night some persons said to him, We think,
Sir, preaching and praying go best with you when your danger and
distress are greatest. He said, It had been so, and he hoped it would be
so, that the more that enemies and others did thrust at him that he
might fall, the more sensibly the Lord had helped him; and then (as it
had been to himself) he repeated these words, _The Lord is my strength
and song, and has become my salvation_, in the 118th psalm, which was
the psalm he sung upon the scaffold.

After this, he and Mr. Richard Cameron met and preached together in
Darmeid-muir, and other places, until that Mr. Cameron was slain at
Airs-moss, and then he went north, where, in the month of September
following, he had a most numerous meeting at the Torwood near Stirling,
where he pronounced the sentence of excommunication against some of the
most violent persecutors of that day, as formally as the present state
of things could then permit. Some time before this, it is said, he was
very remote and spoke very little in company; only to some he said, He
had a tout to give with the trumpet that the Lord had put in his hand,
that would sound in the ears of many in Britain, and other places in
Europe also. It is said[184], that nobody knew what he was to do that
morning, except Mr. Walt Smith, to whom he imparted the thoughts of his
heart. When he began, some friends feared he would be shot. His
landlord, in whose house he had been that night, cast his coat and ran
for it. In the forenoon he lectured on Ezek. xxi. 25, &c. and preached
on 1 Cor. v. 13. and then discoursed some time on the nature of
excommunication, and then proceeded to the sentence; after which, in the
afternoon, he preached from Lam. iii. 31, 32. _For the Lord will not
cast off for ever._

The next Lord's day he preached at Fallow-hill in the parish of
Livingston. In the preface he said, "I know I am and will be condemned
by many, for excommunicating those wicked men; but condemn me who will,
I know I am approven of by God, and am persuaded that what I have done
on earth i