REVEREND WORTHY SIR,--I would recommend to you the bearer, Mr. James Simpson,[505] a faithful preacher of the Gospel. Be pleased to hear him. I trust he shall give you a true and faithful relation of our affairs. You may be pleased to believe me, that men who have borrowed your ear to blacken the godly in the land, and who have now both deserted us and the Covenant, and joined feet with the Malignant party, and now have owned the present powers, and brought the intrants to the ministry to give under their hand a subscription, an engagement (the writ calls it, a resolution to live peaceably and unoffensively under the present Government), so that no holy man can get any maintenance in the land but such as will sinfully comply (and such as cannot, what an entry they have to that holy calling to embrace it!), these men seek more their own things, than the things of Jesus Christ. And being backed by the whole multitude of the promiscuous generality, throughout the land, who are for their way, as of old the prelatic conformists did, they do persecute the godly, and in pulpits and presbyteries declaim against us as implacable and separatists. You may, Sir, by this, and what the bearer will make known to you, perceive what wrong the compliance of these men hath done to the cause of God. But I spare, and do beg the favour of your other care. The grace of God be with you.
[505] Mr. James Simpson was minister of Airth. He subscribed the protestation which Rutherford gave in against the lawfulness of the Assembly held at St. Andrews in July 1651; for which he was deposed from the ministry by the adjourned meeting at Dundee. After the Restoration he was accused in Parliament, by the King's advocate, of seditious practices, and banished by Parliament, without being heard. He removed to Holland, where he died. Simpson at this time had been sent up to London by the Protesters, to represent their cause to Cromwell and the ministers of the city, in opposition to the notorious James Sharp, afterwards Archbishop of St. Andrews, who had been sent up by the Resolutioners.
I am your loving brother in Christ,