ABERDEEN, _Feb. 7, 1637_.
[187] Mr. John Ridge was an English minister, whom opposition to ceremonial impositions on conscience led to leave his native country for Ireland. He was admitted to the vicarage of Antrim on the 7th of July 1619, in which he laboured with success for many years; but being deposed by Henry Leslie, the Bishop of Down, for nonconformity, he came over to Irvine, where he died.
[188] Mr. Henry Colwart was also a native of England; and, like Mr. Ridge, left the land of his birth, and went to Ireland. He was admitted to the pastoral charge of Oldstone in 1630; but, being deposed by Bishop Leslie for refusing to submit to the innovations of Prelacy, he came over to Scotland, and was admitted minister of Paisley, where he died.
XC.--_To his Reverend and Dear Brother_, MR. JOHN LIVINGSTONE.
[JOHN LIVINGSTONE (the son of Alexander Livingstone, minister first at Monyabroch or Kilsyth, and afterwards at Lanark) was born at Monyabroch on the 21st of January 1603. At the College of Glasgow, he enjoyed the advantage of having as his regent for two years the famous Robert Blair, for whom he continued ever after to retain the highest veneration. He was first settled minister at Killinchie, in Ireland, towards the close of the year 1630, but had not laboured above twelve months in that charge when he was suspended by the Bishop of Down, for nonconformity. To enjoy religious liberty, he set out with Mr. Blair and others in their intended emigration to America; but, with the rest, was forced by the adverse state of the weather to return. Shortly after, he received calls from two parishes, Stranraer and Stewarton, but preferred the call from the former, and his induction took place on the 5th of July 1638. Here he continued in the assiduous discharge of his pastoral functions until 1648, when, by the sentence of the General Assembly, he was translated to the parish of Ancrum, in the Presbytery of Jedburgh. Upon the death of Charles I., he was sent to the Hague, and afterwards to Breda, as one of the commissioners from the Church of Scotland to treat with his son Charles II., whose character he had the penetration to discover. In the controversy between the Resolutioners and Protesters, Livingstone took the side of the latter, but was dissatisfied with the violence manifested by his party. After the restoration of Charles II., being summoned to appear before the Privy Council in 1662, he appeared; but, declining to engage to observe the anniversary of the death of Charles I., and to take the oath of allegiance in the precise way in which it was dictated to him, he was sentenced to quit his native land within two months. Having repaired to Rotterdam, he preached occasionally to the Scottish congregation there, and devoted the remainder of his life to the cultivation of Biblical literature. He died in that city on the 9th of August 1672, in the seventieth year of his age.
It was this same Livingstone that was so blessed in awakenings. By a sermon which he preached in 1630 at the Kirk-of-Shotts, on the Monday after the dispensation of the Lord's Supper, five hundred souls, it is believed, were converted. On a similar occasion, at Holywood, in the north of Ireland, in one day, he was the instrument of awakening double that number to inquiry after salvation. (See Brief Historical Relation of the Life of John Livingston in "Select Biographies," vol. i., Wodrow Society, 1845.)]