'Your letter, my dear James, gave me as much pleasure as it is possible for one to receive in these gloomy and evil days. We must not forget the apostolical injunction,"Rejoice always: rejoice in hope."Non si male nunc, et olim erit.Providence is often pleased to grant prosperity and long impunity to those whom it intends to punish for their crimes, in order that they may feel more severely from the reverse.... It is easy for a wicked man to throw a commonwealth into disorder: God only can restore it. Empires which have been procured by fraud cannot be stable or permanent. Pride and cruelty will meet with a severe, though it may be a late retribution; and, according to the Hebrew proverb, "When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes." The result of past events is oracular of the future: "In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." Why, then, exert our ingenuity and labour in adding to our vexation? Away with fearful apprehensions!'
'Your letter, my dear James, gave me as much pleasure as it is possible for one to receive in these gloomy and evil days. We must not forget the apostolical injunction,"Rejoice always: rejoice in hope."Non si male nunc, et olim erit.Providence is often pleased to grant prosperity and long impunity to those whom it intends to punish for their crimes, in order that they may feel more severely from the reverse.... It is easy for a wicked man to throw a commonwealth into disorder: God only can restore it. Empires which have been procured by fraud cannot be stable or permanent. Pride and cruelty will meet with a severe, though it may be a late retribution; and, according to the Hebrew proverb, "When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes." The result of past events is oracular of the future: "In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." Why, then, exert our ingenuity and labour in adding to our vexation? Away with fearful apprehensions!'
Turning his thoughts to his old friends and neighbours, the exile makes playful inquiries for their welfare:—
'What is theprofound Dreamer(so I was accustomed to call him when we travelled together in 1584)—what is our Corydon of Haddington about? I know he cannot be idle; has he not brought forth or perfected anything yet, after so many decades of years?Tempus Atla veniet tua quo spoliabitur arbos.Let me know if our old friend Wallace has at last become the father of books and bairns? Menalcas of Cupar on the Eden is, I hear, constant; and I hope he will prove vigilant in discharging all the duties of a pastor, and not mutable in his friendships, as too many discover themselves to be in these cloudy days. Salute him in my name; as also Damoetas of Elie, and our friend Dykes, with such others as you know to "hold the beginning of their confidence and the rejoicing of their hope firm to the end." ... We old men daily grow children again, and are ever and anon turning our eyes and thoughts back on our cradles. We praise the past days because we can take little pleasure in the present. Suffer me then to dote; for I am now become pleased with old age, although I have lived so long as to see some things which I couldwish never to have seen. I try daily to learn something new, and thus to prevent my old age from becoming listless and inert. I am always doing, or at least attempting to do, something in those studies to which I devoted myself in the younger part of my life. Accept this long epistle from a talkative old man.Loqui senibus res est gratissima, says your favourite Palingenius, the very mention of whose name gives me new life; for theregenerationforms almost the sole topic of my meditations, and in this do I exercise myself that I may have my conversation in heaven.'
'What is theprofound Dreamer(so I was accustomed to call him when we travelled together in 1584)—what is our Corydon of Haddington about? I know he cannot be idle; has he not brought forth or perfected anything yet, after so many decades of years?Tempus Atla veniet tua quo spoliabitur arbos.Let me know if our old friend Wallace has at last become the father of books and bairns? Menalcas of Cupar on the Eden is, I hear, constant; and I hope he will prove vigilant in discharging all the duties of a pastor, and not mutable in his friendships, as too many discover themselves to be in these cloudy days. Salute him in my name; as also Damoetas of Elie, and our friend Dykes, with such others as you know to "hold the beginning of their confidence and the rejoicing of their hope firm to the end." ... We old men daily grow children again, and are ever and anon turning our eyes and thoughts back on our cradles. We praise the past days because we can take little pleasure in the present. Suffer me then to dote; for I am now become pleased with old age, although I have lived so long as to see some things which I couldwish never to have seen. I try daily to learn something new, and thus to prevent my old age from becoming listless and inert. I am always doing, or at least attempting to do, something in those studies to which I devoted myself in the younger part of my life. Accept this long epistle from a talkative old man.Loqui senibus res est gratissima, says your favourite Palingenius, the very mention of whose name gives me new life; for theregenerationforms almost the sole topic of my meditations, and in this do I exercise myself that I may have my conversation in heaven.'
How keenly Melville felt the cruelty of the Government in driving himself and his nephew into exile appears in another part of the same letter:—
'What crime have you committed? What has the monarch now to dread? Does not the primate sit in triumph—traxitque sub astra furorem? What is there, then, to hinder you, and me also (now approaching my seventieth year, and consequentlyemeritus), from breathing our native air, and, as a reward of our toils, being received into the Prytaneum, to spend the remainder of our lives, without seeking to share the honours and affluence which we do not envy the pretended bishops? We have not been a dishonour to the kingdom, and we are allied to the royal family. [Melville claimed a consanguinity for his family with the Stuarts through their common extraction from John of Gaunt.] But let envy do its worst; no prison, no exile, shall prevent us from confidently expecting the kingdom of heaven.'
'What crime have you committed? What has the monarch now to dread? Does not the primate sit in triumph—traxitque sub astra furorem? What is there, then, to hinder you, and me also (now approaching my seventieth year, and consequentlyemeritus), from breathing our native air, and, as a reward of our toils, being received into the Prytaneum, to spend the remainder of our lives, without seeking to share the honours and affluence which we do not envy the pretended bishops? We have not been a dishonour to the kingdom, and we are allied to the royal family. [Melville claimed a consanguinity for his family with the Stuarts through their common extraction from John of Gaunt.] But let envy do its worst; no prison, no exile, shall prevent us from confidently expecting the kingdom of heaven.'
In the following year Melville was greatly cheered by hearing that all the exiled ministers had refused an offer which the Crown had made to allow them to return to their country on condition of their making a submission to Episcopacy; and he wrote expressinghis admiration of their heroism, and assuring them of his continual remembrance: 'I keep all my friends in my eye; I carry them in my bosom; I commend them to the God of mercy in my daily prayers.... I do not sink under adversity; I reserve myself for better days.'
In April 1614 there fell on Melville the heaviest blow his affection ever received—the tidings of his nephew's death. James Melville died well-nigh broken-hearted; he had not been allowed to return to his own country and resume his charge of his poor seafaring folk, nor to join in France the exile who was so endeared to him. On his deathbed, and within a few hours of the end, when one who was beside him asked if he had no desire to recover, he replied, 'No, not for twenty worlds.' His friends asked him to give them some sign that he was at peace, when he repeated the dying words of the martyr Stephen, and so passed away to that country of his own which all his life he had been seeking.
There is no one in the long line of great Scottish Churchmen whose memory deserves more honour than James Melville, or inspires so much affection, so gracious was his spirit, so pure his character, so disinterested his aims. With the solitary exception which we need not name, there was no one in his own day who rendered better or more varied service to the Church and to the country. For many years he was his uncle's right-hand man as a teacher in our two chief Universities; the Church never had a pastor who hadmore of the true pastor's heart, nor a leader of more wisdom in counsel, more persuasiveness in conference, more decision in action; it never had a more vivid historian, nor one whose writings are so great a treasure of our Scottish literature. When James Melville came to his grave, how different the world would be to his great kinsman, who could so truly have said, 'Very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.' His uncle's grief found its only solace in the thought that he was 'now out of all doubt and fashrie, enjoying the fruits of his suffering here.'
Melville himself never lost his hopefulness and happy ardour. In 1612 he wrote to Robert Durie, one of the banished brethren:—
'Am I not threescore and eight years old; unto the which age none of my fourteen brethren came? And yet, I thank God, I eat, I drink, I sleep, as well as I did these thirty years bygone, and better than when I was younger—in ipso flore adolescentiæ. Only the gravel now and then seasons my mirth with some little pain, which I have felt only since the beginning of March the last year, a month before my deliverance from prison. I feel, thank God, no abatement of the alacrity and ardour of my mind for the propagation of the truth. Neither use I spectacles now more than ever, yea, I use none at all, nor ever did, and see now to read Hebrew without points, and in the smallest characters. Why may I not live to see a changement to the better, when the Prince shall be informed truly by honest men, or God open His eyes and move His heart to see the pride of stately prelates?'
'Am I not threescore and eight years old; unto the which age none of my fourteen brethren came? And yet, I thank God, I eat, I drink, I sleep, as well as I did these thirty years bygone, and better than when I was younger—in ipso flore adolescentiæ. Only the gravel now and then seasons my mirth with some little pain, which I have felt only since the beginning of March the last year, a month before my deliverance from prison. I feel, thank God, no abatement of the alacrity and ardour of my mind for the propagation of the truth. Neither use I spectacles now more than ever, yea, I use none at all, nor ever did, and see now to read Hebrew without points, and in the smallest characters. Why may I not live to see a changement to the better, when the Prince shall be informed truly by honest men, or God open His eyes and move His heart to see the pride of stately prelates?'
The last production from Melville's pen was a pamphletagainst the Anglican ceremonies imposed by the King on the Church inThe Five Articles of Perthin 1618. We know little of the last years of his life. His health apparently gave way in 1620, and he died in Sedan in 1622, having reached his seventy-seventh year.
The only fault Melville's enemies could find with his personal character was his impetuous and explosive temper. In regard to this, he was his own best apologist when he said, 'If my anger is from below, trample upon it; but if from above, let it rise!' If he was 'zealously affected,' it was always 'in a good thing.' No one could ever charge him with personal or narrow ambitions. It was always, as he once wrote, his own desire 'to be concealed in the crowd even when the field of honour appeared to ripen' before him; and his nephew says of him: 'Whowbeit he was verie hat in all questiones, yet when it twitched his particular,[29]no man could crab him, contrare to the common custome.' No one of braver spirit or truer mould has been among us, and we need to allow but little for the colouring of affection to accept James Melville's judgment: 'Scottland never receavit a graitter benefit at the hands of God than this man.' He is one of those great personalities of our history who have left us an example of the moral daring which is the greatest property of the human soul, and the spring of its noblest achievements. The struggle for the advancement of human wellbeing is carried on in ever-changing lines; the problems of the Church and thenation alter; the battlegrounds of freedom and progress shift; but this spiritual intrepidity and scorn of consequence ever remains the chief and most indispensable factor in the highest service of mankind. It is to men like Melville, who have a higher patriotism than that which is bounded by any earthly territory, whose country is the realm of Truth, whose loyalty transcends submission to any human sovereign, that every people owes its noblest heritage. Such are the men who have been the makers of Scotland. 'Sic fortis Etruria crevit.'
FOOTNOTES:[29]When it concerned his private interest.
[29]When it concerned his private interest.
[29]When it concerned his private interest.
Aberdeen, the Assembly at,112.Act of 1592,70.Adamson, Patrick, Archbishop of St. Andrews,38,51-53,59,61.Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester,118.Armada, the Spanish,64,65.Assembly times in Melville's day,41.Balcanquhal, Walter, minister in Edinburgh,42.Balfour of Burley,38,82-84.---- James, minister in Edinburgh,117,135.Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury,125,127,128,131.Barlow, Bishop of Rochester,117,126.Basilicon Doron,108.Beza,21,22.Black Acts,51.Black, David, minister in St. Andrews,77,82,95,103.'Bonnie Earl' of Moray,69.Bouillon, Duke de,145.Bruce, Robert, minister in Edinburgh,66,67,69,111.Buchanan, George,24,25,44.Burton, John Hill,12,92.Casaubon, Isaac,143.Covenant, renewal of,85.Craig, John, minister in Edinburgh,53,144.Davidson, John, minister of Liberton and Prestonpans,46,104,105.Davison, the English Ambassador,54.Dunbar, Earl of, King's Commissioner for Scotland,124,135.Durie, John, minister in Edinburgh,36,46,48,53.---- Robert, minister of Anstruther,150.Edinburgh, the plague in,55.---- Vindictive Acts against the city of,99.Episcopacy, Scotland's dread of,10.Erskine, John, of Dun,15,16,53.Falkland,83,89,90.Fife, Synod of,60,76,100.Foreign students at the Scottish Universities,12,30.Geneva,21.Glasgow, Assembly of,84,138.---- University of,24,26.Gledstanes, Archbishop of St. Andrews,103,142.Gowrie Conspiracy,110.Hall, Bishop of Norwich,143.Intimates of Melville,41.James VI., precocity of, as a child,24.assumes the government,43.his Court favourites,43.his seizure by the Ruthven lords,48.his escape,48.described by Davison, the English Ambassador,54.his surrender to the Ruthven lords,55.in reArchbishop Adamson,61.his Popish sympathies,64,75.unseasonableness in the activity of,65.his marriage,67.his laudation of the Scottish Church,68.rated by Elizabeth,72,78.his attempt to bribe James Melville,78.his expedition against Huntly,81.removes his Court to Linlithgow,98.and Melville at Hampton Court (chap. ix.),116-133.his petty vindictiveness,140,141,144.Knox, John,13,144.Lawson, James, minister in Edinburgh,42,50,51,52.Maitland, Chancellor of Scotland,66,67,70.Melville, birth of,15.educated at Montrose,16.student of St. Andrews,17.goes abroad,17.at Paris,17.Melville at Poitiers,18.at Geneva,21.returns to Scotland,22.declines Morton's patronage,23.is offered the Principalships of Glasgow and St. Andrews,24.Principal of Glasgow,26.Principal of St. Andrews,27.attracts students from the Continent,30.his first Assembly,35.encounter of, with Morton,37.his intimates,41.in reArchbishop Montgomery,45,46.encounter of, with Arran,47.before the King and Council,48,49.his flight to England,50.returns to Scotland,56.in reArchbishop Adamson,61.his kindness to Adamson,62.and the Armada,65.in rePopish lords,76.admonishes the King and the Lords of the Articles,79.with the expedition against Huntly,81.at Falkland Palace,83,89,90.at the Dundee Assembly,102.at the Second Dundee Assembly,105.at the Holyrood Conference,106-108.at the Montrose Assembly,109.Melville attends the Parliament,summoned to London by the King,116.before the King and Council of England,121.attends Michaelmas Day service In Royal Chapel,123.his satiric verses on the service,123.before the Scottish Council in London,124.at Whitehall,125.his attack on Archbishop Bancroft,125.is ordered into ward,127.hisHenker-mahl,129.again before the English Council,131.is sent to the Tower,131.his occupations in prison,141.his visitors,143.his release,145.leaves for France,146.settles in Sedan as Professor in the University,146.his letters from Sedan,146,148,150.receives tidings of James Melville's death,149.the last production of his pen,150.his death,151.his character,151.James, affection of, for his uncle,16,24,51,132,141,143.a great literary impressionist,18.has a warrant issued for his apprehension,52.escapes by open boat to Berwick,52.his labours at Berwick,57.his attack on Archbishop Adamson,59.has a private interview with the King,77.as a courtier,78.with the expedition against Huntly,81.at Hampton Court (chap. ix.),116-133.is ordered into ward at Newcastle,132.his death,149.his character,149.his Autobiography and Diary quoted,24,25,37,41,47,48,49,55,60,79,80,83,90,107,109,120,122,129et passim.Morton, Regent,31,33,36,37,38,43.Nicolson, Bishop of Dunkeld,136.Paris, University of,18.Perth, theFive Articles of,151.Poitiers,18.Pont, Robert, minister in Edinburgh,51,144.Presbyterian Church the only voice of the nation,94.Presbyterianism, what Scotland owes to,10.Puritans of London and the Scottish ministers,116,125,132.Raid of Ruthven,48.Raleigh, Sir Walter,143.Reformation, Assembly scheme of,86.'Riot of December 17th' [1596, in Edinburgh],97.Ruthven lords,55,57.Salisbury, Earl of, Premier of England,121,128,131.Scott, William, minister of Cupar,122,132.Seaton, the Chancellor of Scotland,146.Second Book of Discipline,35,40.Sedan,145.Sempill, Sir James, of Beltrees,140.Spanish Blanks,73.Spotswood, Archbishop,117,142.St. Andrews, University of,17,27.Stewart, Esme, Duke of Lennox,43,48.Stewart, James, Earl of Arran,44,47,48,50,54,55.Strathbogie Castle, 'dinging doun' of,82.True Law of Free Monarchy,108.Tulchan Scheme (chap, iv.),31-42.Wallace, Robert, minister of Tranent,125.Wishart, George,15.