It has always been the case that when the Church of God endured the greatest persecutions it produced the largest number of stalwarts who contended earnestly for the faith. This was the case in an eminent degree in Scotland, showing that when the Lord was pleased to give days of sad adversity, He balanced it by giving many witnesses who had nearness to Himself, and who were living epistles known and read of all men. Among these witnesses He raised up many who were outstanding heralds of the Cross, and who went forth as “the he-goats before the flock.” Among these heralds, John Livingstone, of Ancrum, takes a very high place.
Livingstone was born at Monyabrock in Stirlingshire on 21st June, 1603, a year memorable in British history as that in which Scotland and England were united under one monarch. His father, William Livingstone, was minister, first at Monyabrock and then at Lanark, and suffered a great deal for his zeal against Episcopacy. The subject of this sketch was educated, first at home, under his father’s guidance, and then at Stirling, from which he went to Glasgow where he graduated Master of Arts in 1621. In both Stirling and Glasgow he had opportunities of hearing godly ministers, such as Mr. Patrick Simpson in the former, and Messrs. John Bell and Robert Smith in the latter. He was first inclined to go to France to study medicine, but the Lord showed him that He had work for him in His vineyard. It was in Glasgow that he was privileged to witness publicly, for the first time, against the Episcopal ceremony of receiving the communion in a kneeling posture.
Samuel Rutherford in a letter to Lord Loudon: “I am not of that mind that tumults or arms is the way to put Christ on His throne,” etc.
As he, with some other students, refused to conform to this innovation they were ordered by William Law, Bishop of Glasgow, to leave the table, which they did, but not before Livingstone testified publicly that as there was no warrant in God’s Word for kneeling when receiving the communion they ought not to be excluded from the Lord’s Table.
He was licensed to preach in 1625 and preached in Lanark and the neighbouring congregations for some time as a probationer. Steps were taken to settle him as minister of Torphichen, but owing to his well-known opposition to Episcopacy, the Bishop of St. Andrews put a stop to it. For nearly three years afterwards he acted as domestic chaplain to the Earl of Wigton. It was during this time that he preached his memorable sermon on the Monday of the Communion at the Kirk of Shotts. On the Sabbath night he and a number of eminent Christians were gathered together for prayer, and in view of the fact that he was engaged to preach on the Monday he left them and went out into the fields early in the morning. Through a sense of his own weakness he was seriously thinking of stealing away. However, he did not carry out his purpose, and preached from Ezekiel xxxvi. 25, 26: “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you,” etc. It is computed that about five hundred persons passed from death unto life under that sermon. This was the beginning of the Monday services with which the Communion seasons in Scotland used to end.
As there were no prospects of his being settled in his native land owing to the vigilance of the Bishops, he became minister of Killinshie in Ireland in 1630, and through the influence of Viscount Clannybuie, the Bishop of Rapho permitted his ordination according to the Presbyterian manner by other Scottish ministers who had gone to Ireland before him. There were a great many of the “salt of the earth” in the North of Ireland at this time, for Livingstone in his autobiography tells us: “I do not think that there were more lively and experienced Christians anywhere than were these at that time in Ireland, and that in good numbers, and many of them persons of a good outward condition in the world. Being but lately brought in, the lively edge was not yet gone off them, and the perpetual fear that the bishops would put away their ministers, made them with great hunger wait on the ordinances.” The following year he was suspended by the Bishop of Down for Nonconformity, but shortly afterwards, through the intervention of Archbishop Usher, he was restored. The enemies of the gospel, however, could not be at rest, and in a short time, at the instigation of the King upon complaints sent by the bishops in Scotland, he and Mr. Robert Blair were deposed. For some time he continued in Killinshie preaching privately, and occasionally publicly, and then returned to Scotland, where he went from place to place, preaching the gospel as he got opportunity.
During this period he, on two occasions visited Killinshie, and the people there, having decided to emigrate to New England, appointed him and another gentleman to go before them, but after all preparations had been made, various circumstances in providence prevented them from going further than London. When they returned they found that the sentence of deposition had been removed from Mr. Livingstone and other Presbyterian ministers who had been deposed, and thus he was enabled to continue preaching in Killinshie till 1635. In that year he married a daughter of Bartholomew Fleming, merchant in Edinburgh, who proved a faithful help-meet to him, always ready to encourage him in his afflictions and trials. Shortly afterwards he was again deposed and then excommunicated, but he continued preaching in his mother-in-law’s house for some time. As there did not seem to be any prospects of religious toleration being granted them in Ireland he, and another one hundred and forty persons decided to emigrate to New England. For this purpose they left Ireland and had reached a point much nearer to the banks of Newfoundland than they were to any part of Europe, when they encountered a severe storm which drove them back to Ireland. He now continued to preach in his mother-in-law’s house, as formerly, until he was informed against in 1637. He and Robert Blair escaped arrest by going across to Scotland where he eagerly embraced the many opportunities for preaching which presented themselves to him.
The year 1638 became well known as the year in which the Scottish people rejected Laud’s hated Service Book and banded themselves together by signing the National Covenant. In November of the same year the famous Glasgow Assembly sat and deposed the Bishops. In July of that year Livingstone was settled in Stranraer where he laboured for ten years. Some came from Ireland and dwelt in Stranraer in order to be under his ministry, and great numbers used to come to the Communion from there. At one time it was reckoned that about five hundred persons came across. During his Stranraer ministry he served for a short time as chaplain to the Earl of Cassill’s regiment in England. After a fruitful ministry of ten years he was transported by the General Assembly to Ancrum where he found the people simple and ignorant but after some time his labours were blessed.
In 1650 he was sent with other ministers and elders from the Church of Scotland to accompany the Commissioners which the Scottish Parliament sent to Breda to confer with King Charles II. This service he performed much against his will, and from his own observations of the king, he found many reasons for concluding that he was far from being sincere. Later on, he was constrained to preach before the king and tender to him the oath at the time when the king took the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant. About the year 1655 his old parish of Killinshie took steps to give him a call but the Synod of Merse and Teviotdale refused to allow him to go. He, however, visited them the following year but met with several things which confirmed him that it was not the Lord’s mind that he should be there.
King Charles II., soon after coming to the throne, showed that he had no respect for the most solemn oaths, and very soon began to persecute the Church in Scotland. In 1662 the Privy Council summoned twelve ministers, among whom was Livingstone, before them, and ordered them to take the Oath of Allegiance, acknowledging the king as supreme in ecclesiastical as well as civil matters. The minister of Ancrum refused to take the Oath and he was sentenced to banishment from the king’s dominions. So bitter was the spirit of persecution that he was even refused permission to go home to take leave of his family. He arrived at Rotterdam where he met the rest of the banished ministers, and, there being a Scots congregation in the town, he got frequent opportunities for preaching. In his exile he gave himself entirely to the study of the Bible and prepared a polygot Bible which gained the admiration and approbation of the most learned in Holland. He also left short biographical sketches of the principal ministers who were contemporary with him.
The time at last came when all his troubles were to have an end. On 9th August, 1672, in the seventieth year of his age, the grim messenger came to him, not as the king of terrors but as a messenger of peace, to bring him home to be for ever with Christ. King Charles and the Privy Council might banish him out of Scotland but neither had power to banish him out of heaven, for there he has an eternal inheritance.—J. C.