That there could not have been anything very serious in the rumour, may be inferred from the fact that no church court took any notice of the matter, though these were days when the reins of discipline were not held with a slack hand. But it is not unlikely that this may have been the time of which he says in a letter, "I knew a man who wondered to see any in this life laugh or sport."[2] It may have been then that he was led by the Spirit to know the things that are freely given us of God.[3] We have no proof that he was converted at an earlier period, but rather the opposite. He writes, "Like a fool as I was, I suffered my sun to be high in the heaven, and near afternoon, before ever I took the gate by the end."[4] And again, "I had stood sure, if in my youth I had borrowed Christ for my bottom."[5] The clouds returned after the rain; family trials, and other similar dealings of Providence, combined to form his character as a man of God and as a pastor. [2] Letter ccxxiv. [3] 1 Cor. ii. 12. [4] Letter clxxvii. [5] Letter ccxli. In 1627 he was settled at Anwoth,[6] a parish situated in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, on the river Fleet, near the Solway. The church stood in a wide hollow, or valley, at the foot of the Boreland Hill. Embosomed in wood, with neither the smoke nor the noise of a village near, it must always have been a romantic spot--the very ideal of a country church, set down to cherish rural godliness. Though at this period Episcopacy had been obtruded upon Scotland, and many faithful ministers were suffering on account of their resistance to its ceremonies and services, yet he appears to have been allowed to enter on his charge without any compliance being demanded, and "without giving any engagement to the bishop." He began his ministry with the text, John ix. 39. The same Lord that would not let Paul and Timothy preach in Asia,[7] nor in Bithynia, and yet sent to the one region the beloved John,[8] and to the other the scarcely less beloved Peter,[9] in this instance prevented John Livingstone going to Anwoth, which the patron had designed, and sent Rutherford instead. This was the more remarkable, because Livingstone was sent to Ancrum, the parish that borders on Nisbet, while he who was by birth related to that place was despatched to another spot. This is the Lord's doing. Ministers must not choose according to the flesh. [6] See notice of the topography at Letter cxcviii. It is a mile and a half from the modern Gatehouse of Fleet, a clean, English-looking village. [7] Acts xvi. 6, 7. [8] Rev. i. 11. [9] 1 Pet. i. 1.