Rev. K. D. Macleod
Continued from page 150
11. Faithful unto Death
Banished in 1606, for the sake of the gospel, from Scotland to France by the Scottish Privy Council, at the command of the King, Welsh landed in Bordeaux. Eventually, a door was opened for him to preach the gospel regularly in France, when he was appointed the minister of Jonsac, a small town near Bordeaux, at the end of 1608. He removed to Nerac about 1614, and then to St Jean d’Angely in 1617. When this town was destroyed by Louis XIII in 1621, Welsh went to La Rochelle and then to Holland.
WELSH’S health had deteriorated too much for him to consider looking for a charge in Holland. His doctor advised that his only hope of recovery was to return home to breathe his native air. Welsh petitioned King James for the necessary permission, but it was refused. Welsh might, however, come to London “to be dealt with”. When Welsh arrived in London the King sent the Dean of Winchester to negotiate with him. Some general approbation of the present arrangements in the Scottish Church would have been enough, however superficial it might be. But, as so often before in similar circumstances, Welsh refused; duty was always dearer to him than life. So permission to return to Scotland was peremptorily refused.
At last, through the influence of some of her relations, Mrs Welsh gained her famous audience with the King. He asked who her father had been. “John Knox”, she told him. “Knox and Welsh,” exclaimed the King, “the devil never made such a match as that!” “It’s right like, Sir,” she answered, “for we never asked his advice.” The King then asked how many were left of her father’s family, and were they lads or lasses. Mrs Welsh told him that all three were lasses. “God be thanked,” responded James, lifting up both his hands, “for if they had been three lads I had never enjoyed my three kingdoms in peace.” She then urged the King to allow her husband to return to his native air. “Give him his native air,” the King exclaimed with further irreverence, “give him the devil!” “Give that to your hungry courtiers!” she rejoined. At last James told her that her request would be granted provided she would persuade him to submit to the bishops. She then held up her apron to the King and said, with that self-possession for which her father had been so noted, “Please your Majesty, I had rather receive his head here.”
Welsh’s friends at court pleaded with the King for permission for Welsh to preach in London. This too was refused until James realised that Welsh would not be long spared. Welsh preached once – long and fervently, we are told. He then returned to the place where he was staying and died within two hours. Welsh was buried on 4 April 1622, having reached the age of possibly no more than 54. In that same grave his grandson John, the Covenanter, was to be laid 57 years later.
“When dying,” says Fleming, “he was so filled and overcome with the sensible enjoyment of God that he was sometimes overheard in prayer to utter these words: ‘Lord, hold Thy hand, it is enough. Thy servant is a clay vessel and can hold no more’.” We need not be surprised that someone who was so consistent in seeking communion with God throughout his life should have been granted such a high degree of communion when he was about to pass from it. Even in London, when he was so weak, he continued to spend a great deal of time in prayer and study. When someone suggested that he should relax his efforts Welsh replied, “I have my life from God and therefore it should be spent for Him.”
“If the joy of the cross is so great,” Welsh wrote in one of his books, “what will be that of the crown? If the sufferings of Christ are mixed with consolations so great and superabundant, what will be those of His glories? And if it be the gift of God to suffer for the testimony of His kingdom, how superlative will be the gift of reigning with Him?” He already had a real understanding of these things, but he now knows the answers to his questions in a way that he could not do on earth.
Elizabeth Welsh returned to live in Ayr after her husband’s death, but survived him by less than three years. If the strain of his sufferings had told on her husband’s health, we can be sure that, while she did not have to endure the hardships of imprisonment in Blackness Castle, she suffered with him and for him in many other ways.
The Welshes had a second daughter Louise, but nothing is known about her, except that it was probably she who was born in Jonsac in 1613 and that she survived her mother. William, the oldest son, qualified as a doctor, but died in Holland as the result of an accident. The youngest son Nathaniel was shipwrecked; he was able to swim to a rock, but perished there, probably from exposure. It was a comfort to his friends to know that, when his body was found, he seemed to be in the posture of prayer.
When Robert Boyd, his longtime friend and correspondent in France, heard of Welsh’s death, he exclaimed, “He was a man filled with the Holy Ghost, full of zeal, of love, and of an incredible labour and diligence in his station and calling. In these he spent his whole life . . . under burdens of all sorts, afflictions in his body and his spirit, crosses in his ministry, in his outward estate, bearing always in his body the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose life was manifested in him in a most excellent degree and measure, if it was so in any man of his time. Blessed forever be the name of God, who gave him and raised him up to His Church in a time of so much necessity!” What better epitaph could anyone want?
And may the God who is still able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham raise up in our time another John Welsh! Not that we should be satisfied with one great ambassador of the King of heaven, for the world needs multitudes of them. May He then grant such multitudes, and pour out the Holy Spirit in rich measure to accompany their preaching, so that David’s plea would at last be completely fulfilled, “Let the whole earth be filled with His glory!”
Note: Brief accounts of Welsh’s life appear in the Scots Worthies and in Select Biographies, volume 1. Far more complete is The Life of John Welsh by James Young (Edinburgh, 1866). Young was a Secession minister who came into the Free Church in 1852 with the majority of the United Original Seceders. Because of ill health Young did not hold a charge after 1843; instead he devoted himself to writing. His work on Welsh is well written, and he shows genuine sympathy for the position of his subject. He seems to have left no stone unturned in attempting to discover information about Welsh. A volume of Welsh’s sermons, 35 in number, first appeared in 1744. A larger volume, Forty-eight Select Sermons preached by that eminent and faithful servant of Jesus Christ, Mr John Welsh, sometime minister of the gospel in Ayr, came out later the same year. Prefaced to the sermons is Kirkton’s brief life of Welsh.
Concluded