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The work of the great Lord Advocate who was traduced by Covenanting malice is in a certain sense more interesting: and that not merely because it is much shorter. Aretina or The Serious Romance, opens with an "apology for Romances" generally, which goes far to justify Dryden's high opinion of Mackenzie as a critic.
Sir George Mackenzie's conscience "dirled"; he refused to vote for toleration and he lost the Lord Advocateship, being superseded by Sir James Dalrymple, an old Covenanting opponent of Claverhouse in Galloway.
"I find," he writes to Linlithgow on April 21st, "Mr. Welsh is accustoming both ends of the country to face the king's forces, and certainly intends to break out into open rebellion." This Welsh is a famous figure in Covenanting history.
The magical use to which spittle may be put marks it out, like blood or nail-parings, as a suitable material basis for a covenant, since by exchanging their saliva the covenanting parties give each other a guarantee of good faith. If either of them afterwards foreswears himself, the other can punish his perfidy by a magical treatment of the purjurer's spittle which he has in his custody.
Now these successful effects of covenanting well minded, First, May hint to us a satisfactory reason, in case peace comes not presently. God hath some more adversaries to overthrow, to worm out; His sword hath not eaten flesh enough; neither are His arrows drunk with blood yet; with the blood of such earthly men, whom He hath appointed to destruction.
The fact of his being hated by the Covenanters is not necessarily to his discredit; but we may assume that he was not conciliatory in his speech, that he meddled more in civil matters than became his cloth, and, in short, was probably made much after the same pattern as some of the chosen vessels of the Covenanting tabernacle.
2dly, As to the latter, the things engaged unto render the nature of covenanting work difficult and weighty, which are duties of various kinds, such as, 1st, Holiness towards God, which is one special and chief part of the covenant, and that not for a time only, but for ever; both in regard that God, the party covenanted with, is holy and unchangeably so, and calls his people to imitate him in this attribute especially; and also in regard that the covenant itself is for its nature holy, all the articles being morally good and consonant to the royal law, the scriptures of truth; and for the extent of its duration, of perpetual force and obligation.
Instead, he got entangled in dark suspicions of plotting the murder of the covenanting lords, of connivance even in the Ulster massacre. Still, his return to London was welcomed with some enthusiasm, and a party was forming in the Commons itself, of men who revolted from the sweeping changes that menaced both church and state.
The reading of even the scant records of those times of Covenanting, telling of the prayers, and tears, and love, and courage of those who gave themselves to God, is fitted to inspire the coldest heart with noblest emotions. Their inward piety made them men of power, and enabled them to bear down every barrier to the kingdom of their Lord erected by the craft of prince and priest.
"Pay attention to what I say to you, my men," he cried in a loud and authoritative voice "a warrant will this day be issued for the arrest of Alice Nutter of Rough Lee, in whose service you have hitherto dwelt, and who is charged with the dreadful crime of witchcraft, and with invoking, consulting, and covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, and rewarding evil spirits, contrary to the laws of God and man, and in express violation of his Majesty's statute.
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