Bishop Hall bears honourable testimony to the character and professional accomplishments of the ministers of Scotland, in the early part of the seventeenth century. In a sermon preached by him in London, on Easter Monday, 1618, he says, “For the northern part of our land, beyond the Tweed, we saw not, we heard not, of a congregation without a preaching minister, and though their maintenance generally hath been small, yet their pains have been great, and their success answerable. As for the learning and sufficiency of those preachers, whether prelates or presbyters, our ears were for some of them sufficient witnesses; and we are not worthy of our ears, if our tongues do not thankfully proclaim it to the world.” When we approach somewhat nearer the time of Binning, we can point, in the Church of Scotland, to such men as Robert Leighton, who was then the Presbyterian minister of the parish of Newbottle, and to Alexander Henderson, minister of the parish of Leuchars, in the county of Fife, men who would have done honour to any Protestant church in Europe. Nothing need be said of the piety and eloquence of Leighton, whose name has been preserved from obscurity, by his subsequent elevation to the episcopal chair, and the publication of his admirable writings. The name of Henderson may not be so familiar to some. But what says an English historian of him? “Alexander Henderson, the chief of the Scottish clergy in this reign, was learned, eloquent, and polite, and perfectly well versed in the knowledge of mankind. He was at the helm of affairs in the General Assemblies in Scotland, and was sent into England in the double capacity of a divine and plenipotentiary. He knew how to rouse the people to war, or negotiate a peace. Whenever he preached, it was to a crowded audience, and when he pleaded or argued, he was regarded with mute attention.”(45) Mr. William Guthrie, minister of Fenwick in the county of Ayr, was another of Binning’s contemporaries. His memory, like that of other Scottish ministers of that century, has suffered from his name having been attached to sermons falsely said to be his, at least in the form in which they have been printed. Let any person, however, of unsophisticated taste and true piety read “The Christian’s Great Interest,” which was the only work published by Guthrie himself, and it will not surprise him that a church, which had many such village pastors, should have fixed itself in the affections of the nation at large, and that instructed by such men, the humblest classes of the community should have had so much religious knowledge, as Bishop Burnet(46) somewhat reluctantly admits they possessed. The wife of Wodrow the historian was the granddaughter of William Guthrie.(47) In his Analecta, Wodrow says, it was well ordered that Mr. Guthrie died in Angus, “for his congregation would have idolized his grave had he died among them.” He also mentions that his Treatise was highly valued by Queen Mary, who caused it to be