Such was the state of affairs in both church and kingdom, when George Gillespie first appeared in public life. He had already refused to receive ordination at the hands of a bishop; he had marked well the pernicious effects of their conduct on the most sacred interests of the community; and his strong and active intellect was directed to the prosecution of such studies as might the better enable him to assail the wrong and defend the right. His residence in the household of the Earl of Cassilis, while it furnished the means of continuing his learned researches, was not likely to change their direction; for the Earl was one of those high-hearted and independent noblemen, who could not brook prelatic insolence, even when supported by the Sovereign’s favour. The first production from the pen of Gillespie, the fruit, doubtless, of his previous studies, was a work entitled “A Dispute against the English Popish Ceremonies obtruded upon the Church of Scotland.” Its publication was remarkably well timed, being in the summer of 1637, at the very time when the whole kingdom was in a state of intense excitement, in the immediate expectation that the Liturgy would be forced upon the Church. Nothing could have been more suited to the emergency. It encountered every kind of argument employed by the prelatic party; and, as the defenders of the ceremonies argued that they were either necessary, or expedient, or lawful, or indifferent, so Gillespie divided his work into four parts, arguing against their _necessity_, their _expediency_, their _lawfulness_, and their _indifferency_, with such extensiveness of learning and acuteness and power of reasoning, as completely to demolish all the arguments of all his prelatical antagonists. The effect produced by this singularly able work may be conjectured from the fact, that within a few months after its publication, a proclamation was issued by the Privy Council, at the instigation of the bishops, commanding all the copies of it that could be found to be called in and burned. Such was the only answer that all the learned Scottish prelates could give to a treatise, written by a youth who was only in his twenty-fifth year when it appeared. The language of Baillie shows the estimation in which that learned, but timid and cautious man, held Gillespie’s youthful work. “This same youth is now given out also, by those that should know, for the author of the ‘English Popish Ceremonies,’ whereof we all do marvel; for, though he had gotten the papers, and help of the chief of that side, yet the very composition would seem to be far above such an age. But, if that book be truly of his making, I admire the man, though I mislike much of his matter; yea, I think he may prove amongst the best wits of this isle.”