The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, Vol. 2 of 4 PDF Download

Author: Robert Wodrow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781331355656
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
Excerpt from The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, Vol. 2 of 4: From the Restoration to the Revolution Were we to form an estimate of Mr Wodrow's History, by the rules which rhetoricians have laid down for historical composition, we should be apt to draw most unfavourable conclusions. If that alone is entitled to the name of History which bears its reader along with the flow of a regular and well-compacted narrative; which descends not to the minutiae of private and domestic life; and which gives us the substance and the results of information acquired, rather than the information itself; then, most assuredly, will the work of our venerable author be found to occupy no very lofty niche in the gallery of historical portraiture. But it is the part of candour to judge of a work, not by a standard of our own, however just and equitable it may be, but by a fair and impartial estimate of the object which the author had in his eye at the time, and of the fidelity with which that object has been realized. Had the "History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland" been composed according to the rules laid down by the critics, and so admirably exemplified by many ancient and many modern names, we might unquestionably have had a better written narrative; but the church and the world would have lost much by the exchange. As the case actually stands, we have presented to us a most valuable depository of minute and well-authenticated facts, bearing with more or less aptitude on the general character of the period. We have a most exact and vivid picture of the manners of the age; and sketches of the leading individuals drawn to the life, in their actions and habits. We are admitted behind the scenes, and favoured with a view of the ever shifting agency by which the machine of public affairs is kept in play. We see passing in array before us, not only the great actors on the stage, but their less prominent, though not less important minions; while the great public men themselves arc stripped of their assumed disguise, and exhibited exactly as they are. The stately march of national events is so associated with the incidents of private and familiar life, as to produce a result not altogether in harmony with the established rules of historical composition, and yet singularly advantageous to the real student of human character. It is not the political, nor the literary, nor the constitutional, nor even the merely ecclesiastical history of the period that is given; but while there is a mixture more or less of them all, there is what the author had professedly in his eye throughout, the internal "history of the sufferings of the church," both in its associated capacity, and in the experience of individuals. The rigid historian might have confined him self almost exclusively to the first of these, and on this principle an interesting narrative might have been formed. But it is by the union of both objects that our historian has realized his own judiciously selected plan, and now stands forth to our merited regard as the only minute, and comprehensive, and faithful annalist of the period. Such another historian of the eventful era, from 1638 to 1660, is still a desideratum in our national literature; and I verily believe, that with all their prejudices, the Scotts and the Sharpes, and the Russels, and the Pearsons, of anti-covenanting celebrity, would be quite overjoyed to meet with such another. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com"