←1999
←1999
The celebrated Rutherford, when petitioning the Assembly against his removal from Anworth, the beloved sphere of his parochial labours, to the Divinty chair, used as one plea—‘Let it be considered, if one, who dare not be able to answer to Christ for a lesser charge, should be burdened with a more weighty.’ Murray’s Life of Rutherford, p. 153.
Leighton assigns as one reason for his resignation from the see of Glasgow—‘The sense I have of the dreadful weight of whatever charge of souls, and all kind of spiritual inspection over all people, but much more over Ministers; and there is’— he added—‘an episcopal act, that is above all others formidable to me—ordaining Ministers.’ Pearson’s Life, 115. Compare Burnet’s Pastoral Care, ch. vi. The toil of sleepless nights seems to be implied in the Apostle’s emphatic term, agrupnosin (Heb. 13.17.) Were not the Apostle’s “watchings often” (en agrupniaiv 2Cor. 6.5.) probably connected with his deep intensity of Ministerial anxiety?