A Man Of Principle

A Man Of Principle

He was a man who knew not only what he was living for but also what he was willing to die for.

JAMES GUTHRIE was born in a well-to-do Anglican family in Scotland in 1612. He attended St. Andrews University, where his soul was awakened as well as his mind. The two primary influences that God used to bring Guthrie to himself were weekly prayer meetings and his friendship with Samuel Rutherford, one of Scotland’s greatest theologians. Guthrie left St. Andrews in 1638 to enter the Presbyterian ministry.

In that same year Guthrie took a bold step in opposition to King Charles I by signing the National Covenant. The king was attempting to force Episcopalian government on the Scottish Church. The Scottish Presbyterians drew up a document called the National Covenant to oppose the king’s plan. Those who signed the Covenant committed themselves to uphold the Reformed faith and Presbyterian government, and to keep the church free of all civil control. On his way to sign the Covenant, Guthrie chanced to meet the town hangman and took it as an ominous sign. Later that day he said, “I know that I shall die for what I have done this day, but I cannot die in a better cause.”

Guthrie served as a pastor through the first and second English Civil Wars (1642–1648) and the resulting Puritan Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell (1648–1660). When Charles I was executed by the English Parliament in 1649, his son Charles II was proclaimed king in Scotland and took an oath to accept the National Covenant and to uphold Presbyterianism throughout his realm. However, in 1660 when Charles II was restored to the English throne following the end of the Puritan Commonwealth, he once again forced Episcopalian government on the Church of Scotland.

Guthrie led a group of twelve Scotsmen who petitioned the king to keep the oath he had previously sworn to uphold the Covenant and encouraged him to fill his government with godly men who were themselves committed to the Covenant. In response to their petition, Charles II threw Guthrie and the others into prison.

At his trial before the well-named Drunken Parliament, Guthrie declared, “It is not the extinguishing of me or of many others that will extinguish the Covenant or the work of the Reformation. My blood will contribute more for the propagation of these things than my life in liberty would do, though I should live many years.”

Guthrie was sentenced to be hanged, his head to be stuck on a pike and his estate to be confiscated. In prison he told his wife that he considered himself fortunate to be hanged on a tree as his Savior was. Before his hanging on June 1, 1661, he said to the hushed crowd,

“I take God to record upon my soul, I would not exchange this scaffold with the palace and mitre of the greatest prelate in Britain. Blessed be God who has shown mercy to me such a wretch, and has revealed His Son in me. . . . Jesus Christ is my Life and my Light, my Righteousness, my Strength, and my Salvation and all my desire. Him! O Him, I do with all the strength of my soul commend to you. Bless Him, O my soul, from henceforth even forever. Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”

And with those words he was with his Savior. His head was placed on a pike high above the Netherbrow Port of Edinburgh, where it remained for twenty-seven years.

Reflection

For what are you willing to die? What effect does that have on how you live your life? James Guthrie lived for twenty-three years with the knowledge that his stand to uphold the Reformed faith might cost him his life, yet he never wavered in his convictions. What is your attitude when God brings trials into your life?

I live in eager expectation and hope that I will never do anything that causes me shame, but that I will always be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past, and that my life will always honor Christ, whether I live or I die.

Philippians 1:20