intended; but sitting down, desired her and others to pray for him. So he remained and was settled in that parish, where he continued to exercise his ministry with great success, to the unspeakable satisfaction both of his own parish, and all the godly that heard and knew him, until that, by the unhappy Restoration of Charles II. Prelacy was again restored. Upon the 26th of May following, the day consecrated in commemoration of the said Restoration, he had occasion to preach in his own church, it being his ordinary week-day’s preaching, when he saw an unusual throng of people come to hear him, thinking he had preached in compliance with that solemnity. Upon entering the pulpit, he said, ‘We are not come here to keep this day upon the account for which others keep it. We thought once to have blessed the day, wherein the King came home again, but now we think we shall have reason to curse it; and if any of you come here in order to the solemnizing of this day, we desire you to remove.’ And enlarging upon these words in the 9th of Hosea, Rejoice not, O Israel, &c. he said, ‘This is the first step of our going a-whoring from God; and whoever of the Lord’s people this day are rejoicing, their joy will be like the crackling of thorns under a pot, it will soon be turned to mourning; he (meaning the king) will be the wofullest sight ever the poor church of Scotland saw; wo, wo, wo unto him, his name shall stink while the world stands for treachery, tyranny, and lechery.’ This did exceedingly enrage the malignant party against him, so that being hotly pursued, he was obliged to abscond, remaining sometimes in private houses, and sometimes lying all night without, among broom near the city, yet never omitting any proper occasion of private preaching, catechising, and visiting of families, and other ministerial duties, but at length, when the churches were all vacated of Presbyterians by an act of Council, 1662, Middleton sent a band of soldiers to apprehend him, who, coming to the church, found him not, he having providentially just stepped out of the one door a minute before they came in at the other; whereupon they took the keys of the church door with them, and departed.--In the mean while the Council passed an act of confinement banishing him to the north side of the Tay, under penalty of being imprisoned, and prosecuted as a seditious person.--But this sentence he no ways regarded.