MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.

THE earliest information we have of Mr BROWN, occurs in one of the celebrated Samuel Rutherford's letters, dated at Aberdeen, March 13, 1637. It is addressed to his mother, Jean Brown, a woman of great intelligence and piety, usually termed by Mr Rutherford, "his sister." In this letter, Mr R. thus speaks of Mr Brown : "I rejoice to hear your son John is coming to visit Christ, and to taste of his love; I hope he shall not lose his pains, or rue of that choice. I had always (as I said often to you) a great love to dear Mr John Brown, because I thought I saw Christ in him more than in his brethren. Fain would I write to him to stand by my sweet Master; and I wish ye would let him read my letter, and the joy I have, if he will appear for, and side with, my Lord Jesus." In another letter, to another of his correspondents, about the same period, he expresses himself in the following terms: "Remember me to Mr John Brown : I could never get my love off that man : I think Christ hath something to do with him.” From these notices, and others of the same kind, we may infer that Mr Brown was then a young man, whose talents and piety gave promise of great things to the church, but who had not, as yet, taken any public and decided part in its concerns.

At what particular period he was appointed to the pastoral charge of the parish of Wamphray, in Annandale, we cannot exactly ascertain. It is not unlikely that he was settled soon after the date of the above letter. Whether he was a member of the celebrated Assembly, which met at Glasgow in 1638, and which abolished Episcopacy, with all its appendages, is uncertain. His name does not appear in any of the lists of the members present on the occasion; nor does he appear to have taken any public or ostensible part in the proceedings of the period between 1638 and 1660. Indeed, he must have been, during the greater part of this time, a young man; and, with a modesty becoming his years, would, no doubt, give place to such senior brethren, as Henderson and Rutherford, and Baillie and Dickson, and

others, whose talents and experience qualified them for taking the lead in all matters of ecclesiastical procedure.

While we are uncertain with regard to the precise date of Mr Brown's settlement at Wamphray, we have the best of evidence in favour of the fidelity, the talent and the success with which he exercised, for many years, his pastoral functions among the people of his charge. To them he was tenderly attached, and the feeling was mutual. In their spiritual welfare he took a deep and commanding interest; and he was ready, like his great prototype, Paul," to spend, and to be spent, for them." While they had the principal share of his anxieties and cares, and while he studied. to act in strict conformity to his ordination vows, his exertions, at the same time,. were not confined rigidly and exclusively to the people of Wamphray. From the scarcity of active and zealous ministers at that period, he found it necessary to enlarge the sphere of his ministerial exertions; and the inhabitants of the district in which his charge lay were admitted to share in the benefits of his public labours. In that district his name still lives in traditional remembrance; and it is associated with all those feelings of endeared affection, which the deeds and the sufferings of the fathers and confessors of the reformation in Scotland seldom fail to excite and to cherish.

At the period of the restoration of King Charles II., in 1660, Mr Brown and others, who opposed that measure, at least in its unqualified form, were speedily involved in trouble and distress. He was one of those three hundred pious and excellent ministers in Scotland, who, with nearly two thousand of the same class in England, were compelled to leave their people, and all their temporal comforts and hopes, because their consciences would not allow them to pledge an unconditional conformity to the corrupt system which had been established in both church and state. In May 1662, the parliament commenced a prosecution against Mr Brown, and eighteen other ministers, who had been most distinguished for opposition to prelatical and arbitrary power. After being harassed in various ways, Mr Brown was at length, in November of the same year, called before the council at Edinburgh, and condemned "to be imprisoned in the Tolbooth till further orders," on account of his having faithfully and strongly reproved some of his less consistent brethren for complying with the existing order of things, contrary to their avowed principles and express promises. He remained in prison till December 11, when, after Mr John Livingston, of Shotts, and others had received their sentence, the council came to this conclusion regarding him: "Upon a petition presented by Mr John Brown, showing that he had been kept close prisoner these five weeks bypast, and seeing that, by want of free air and other necessaries, for maintaining his crazy body, he is in hazard to lose his life; therefore humbly desiring warrant

to be put at liberty upon caution to enter his person when he should be commanded, as the petition bears; which being at length heard and considered, the lords of council ordain the suppliant to be put at liberty forthwith of the Tolbooth, he first obliging himself to remove and depart off the king's dominions, and not to return without license from his Majesty and council, under pain of death." The treatment he received in prison must have been severe, when it compelled him to comply with a decree by the tenor of which he was brought to the hard alternative of either perishing in a dungeon, or of being separated for ever from his friends and flock, and of seeking an asylum in a land of strangers." I need not observe (says Mr Wodrow) this unusual severity to this good man. The utmost he could be charged with was a reproof given to his (once) brethren for their apostacy; and for this he is cast in prison; and when there, deprived of the very necessaries of life; and when, through ill treatment, he is brought near death, and offers bail to re-enter when commanded, cannot be permitted to have the benefit of the free air till he signs a voluntary banishment for no cause."1

He was allowed two months, from the 11th December, to prepare for leaving the country; and at length, early in the year 1663, he went over to Holland, then the hospitable asylum of the banished covenanters of Scotland, where he lived many years, but never returned to his native country. He resided partly at Utrecht, and partly at Rotterdam; and in both places was usefully employed in preaching to the refugees, and to others who resorted to him for instruction and advice.—It was during his exile, also, that most of his voluminous and valuable works were written; and no person can peruse these without acknowledging that, had no other engagements occupied his time, the labour of their composition would suffice to prove incontestably, that he was not disposed "to hide his talents in a napkin," nor to lull himself in indolent repose.

It appears that the lapse of years did not effect any change in the feelings of the government of Scotland towards this excellent man; for we find that, so late as the year 1676, the king, by the instigation of archbishop Sharp, so infamous for his duplicity and fraud, wrote to the states-general of Holland, to remove Mr Brown and the other exiled ministers from their provinces. This the States, much to their credit, refused to do; and the illustrious exiles were permitted to enjoy, under their friendly protection, that peace and that encouragement which were denied them by their native land.2

During his residence in Holland, Mr Brown was in the habit of addressing let

1 Wodrow's History, vol. i., p. 142.

2 See Copy of the Reply of the Estates, in Wodrow, vol. i., p. 434, 435.

ters of consolation and encouragement to his friends at home, and particularly to his former parishioners. Of these letters several are still extant; and they give a most pleasing view of the affectionate spirit, the unquenchable zeal, and high-toned piety of their author.

A few years before his death, Mr Brown was appointed to be minister of the Scotch church in Rotterdam. In this important charge he exercised the same dilligence and pastoral fidelity, as in those departments of the vineyard which had been formerly intrusted to his care. His discourses, if we may judge from the published specimens, were sound, judicious, and evangelical; and, what deserves to be particularly noticed, they are characterised by a due mixture of doctrine and practice. He was not a dry, and merely systematic preacher. He enters deep into the discrimination of character; and makes all his instructions bear on the great interests of vital godliness.

The ordination of the famous Mr Richard Cameron seems to have been the last of his public employments. On this occasion he was aided by his friend and companion in tribulation, Mr Robert M'Ward, who was settled in the Outer High Church of Glasgow, 1656,1 and banished in 1661. The discourse which Mr Brown delivered on Jer. ii. 35,-" Behold I will plead with thee, because thou sayest, I have not sinned," &c., contained his last and dying attestation to the doctrines he had preached, and the testimony which he held. He died soon after, in the close of the year 1679, carrying along with him the affectionate regrets of thousands in Scotland, and in Holland, who revered his character, and who had profited by his labours.

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In estimating his character, we shall avail ourselves of the testimony of two most impartial witnesses. The first is that of a distinguished Dutch divine, Dr Melchior Leydecker, divinity professor at Utrecht, who thus expresses himself: Glory be to God in the highest, who hath reserved by his grace many protestant and learned divines against prevalent errors. And hence we have the learned labours of the worthy J. Burgess, J. Owen, A. Pitcairn, and other eminent divines, worthy to be remembered in all ages. And to those great doctors, we may very warrantably add MR JOHN BROWN, whose praise lives deservedly in the churches, and whose light did for a considerable space shine here in our Low Countries, when, through the iniquity of the times, he was, because of his zeal, piety, faithfulness, and good conscience, obliged to leave his native land. Yet was not he idle; for while he was here, he wrote with a great deal of wisdom against the philosophers of this time, who would subject the Scriptures to philosophy, setting

1 Cleland's Annals of Glasgow, p. 129.

up human reason for a rule of Scripture interpretations. Moreover he was known in our churches by his books on the perpetual morality of the Sabbath, written with a great efficacy of arguments, and approved by Frederick Spanheim, that worthy and most famous divine, besides what other treatises he wrote in English." 971

The other testimony is that of the candid and impartial Mr Robert Wodrow, who possessed the best opportunities of knowing his character. "I need not (says he) enter on the character of this great man. His abilities were so well known to the prelates that he must not be suffered any longer. He was a man of very great learning, warm zeal, and remarkable piety. The first he discovers in works printed in Latin, both against Socinians and Cocceians, which the learned world know better than to need any account of them from me. I have seen likewise a large Latin MS. history of his of the Church of Scotland; wherein he gives an account of the acts of the Assemblies, and the state of matters from the reformation to the restoration; to which is subjoined a very large vindication of the grounds whereupon Presbyterians suffered. The letters he wrote home to Scotland, and the pamphlets and books he wrote, especially upon the indulgence, manifest his fervency and zeal; and the practical pieces he wrote and printed, discover his solid piety, and acquaintance with the power of godliness. Such a man could not easily now escape."

The following is a complete list of Mr Brown's works, whether published by himself or by his executors, from his MSS. after his death. The dates of the different editions are also noticed:-Apologetical Relation of the Particular Sufferings of the Faithful Ministers and Professors of the Church of Scotland, since August 1660; with a Brief History of the Church from the Earliest Periods, &c., 18mo, pp. 424. 1665.-Christ the Way, the Truth, and the Life, 12mo, pp. 330. 1677.3— Libri Duo, Contra Woltzogenium et Velthusium, 12mo. Amsterdam, 1670.-De Causa Dei adversus Anti-Sabbatarios, 2 vols. 4to, pp. 757, and 1012. Rotterdam, 1674-6.-Quakerism the Pathway to Paganism, 4to, pp. 563. Edinburgh, 1678.-The Life of Faith in Times of Trial, 18mo, p. 396. 1679.-The SwanSong, or second part of The Life of Faith in Times of Trial, 18mo, pp. 474. 1680.-The Life of Justification Opened, 4to, p. 563. 1695.-Christ in Believers the Hope of Glory, 18mo, p. 162. Edinburgh, 1703; Glasgow, 1736.-Treatise on Prayer, 12mo, pp. 306. 1720; 1745 An Explanation of the Epistle to the Romans, 4to, pp. 600. Edinburgh, 1769.-Enoch's Testimony Opened, 12mo,

1 Preface to Mr Brown's work on Justification, p. 6, 7.

History, vol. i., p. 141.

3 New edition. Edinburgh. 1840. R. Ogle.