The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning. Hugh Binning
a peace. Whenever he preached, it was to a crowded audience, and when he pleaded or argued, he was regarded with mute attention.”45 Mr. William Guthrie, minister of Fenwick in the county of Ayr, was another of Binning's contemporaries. His memory, like that of other Scottish ministers of that century, has suffered from his name having been attached to sermons falsely said to be his, at least in the form in which they have been printed. Let any person, however, of unsophisticated taste and true piety read “The Christian's Great Interest,” which was the only work published by Guthrie himself, and it will not surprise him that a church, which had many such village pastors, should have fixed itself in the affections of the nation at large, and that instructed by such men, the humblest classes of the community should have had so much religious knowledge, as Bishop Burnet46 somewhat reluctantly admits they possessed. The wife of Wodrow the historian was the granddaughter of William Guthrie.47 In his Analecta, Wodrow says, it was well ordered that Mr. Guthrie died in Angus, “for his congregation would have idolized his grave had he died among them.” He also mentions that his Treatise was highly valued by Queen Mary, who caused it to be translated into the French language, and to whom it had been presented by Mr. William Carstares, chaplain to William III, and afterwards Principal of the University of Edinburgh, that Archbishop Tillotson commended it as one of the best written books in the language, and that Dr. John Owen declared, he valued it so highly, he had made it his vade mecum.48 Contrary to the general belief, the ministers of Scotland, in Binning's time, not only included among them many individuals, who were highly esteemed on account of their talents, literature, and piety, but a great number of them “were related to the chief families in the country, either by blood or marriage.”49 Binning himself, and Mr. William Guthrie minister of Fenwick, were the sons of respectable landed proprietors. Mr. Gabriel Semple, minister of Kirkpatrick of the Muir, was the son of Sir Bryce Semple of Cathcart, Mr. James Hamilton, minister of Dumfries, was the nephew of Lord Claneboy, afterwards Earl of Clanbrassil, Mr. David Fletcher, minister of Melrose, was the brother of Sir John Fletcher, King's Advocate, Mr. Patrick Scougal, minister of Saltoun, was the son of Sir John Scougal of that ilk, Mr. John Nevoy, minister of Newmills, was the brother of Sir David Nevoy of that ilk, Mr. James Hamilton, minister of Cambusnethan, was the son of Sir John Hamilton of Broomhill, and brother of the first Lord Belhaven, and to mention no others, Mr. Robert Melvil, minister at Culross, was the son of Sir James Melvil of Halhill.
One of the distinguishing peculiarities of Binning is his rejection of the endless divisions and subdivisions which, along with their subtle distinctions, were borrowed from the schoolmen, and which disfigured and incumbered the sermons of that age. In Scotland, as well as in England, before his time, sermons were formed as Dr. Watts expresses it, “upon the model of doctrine, reason, and use.”50 Those sermons often contained much excellent theology, which was faithfully and aptly applied to the heart and life. But the numerous parts into which they were divided, must have marred their effect, and operated as a restraint upon the eloquence of the preacher. This was plainly the opinion of Binning. “Paul speaks,” says he, “of a right dividing of the word of truth, (2 Tim ii. 15) not that ordinary way of cutting it all in parcels, and dismembering it, by manifold divisions, [pg xxii] which I judge makes it lose much of its virtue, which consists in union. Though some have pleasure in it, and think it profitable, yet I do not see that this was the apostolic way.”51 Binning, accordingly, had the courage and the good taste to adopt in conjunction with Leighton, a more simple and natural manner of preaching. After a building was completed, he did not think it added either to its beauty or convenience, to retain the scaffolding. For this, he was censured at the time, by Robert Baillie. But whoever will read the sermon of that learned divine, entitled “Errors and Induration,” which was preached by him in Westminster Abbey, in the month of July, 1645, will not be astonished to find, that Baillie disapproved of a mode of preaching, which was so completely at variance with his own. “He has the new guise of preaching,” said Baillie, speaking of Mr. Andrew Gray, who was the son of Sir James Gray, and one of the ministers of the High Church of Glasgow, “which Mr. Hugh Binning and Mr. Robert Leighton began, [not] containing the ordinary way of expounding and dividing a text, of raising doctrines and uses, but runs out on a discourse on some common head, in a high, romancing, and unscriptural style, tickling the ear for the present, and moving the affections in some, but leaving, as he confesses, little or nought to the memory and understanding. This we must misken, for we cannot help it.”52
It has been said that Binning himself, when on his death bed, regretted to one of his friends, that his sermons had been framed after a different model from that to which his countrymen had been accustomed, and had he lived, that “he was fully resolved to have followed that way of preaching by doctrine, reasons, and uses, and he declared he was then best pleased with.”53 We can easily believe this. The faithful Christian minister is not a man that is likely to be pleased with his own performances, in any circumstances, and more particularly, when he sees the hour approaching, when he expects to be called upon, to render an account of his stewardship and should his hopes of usefulness have been disappointed, he will be more disposed, even than others, to blame the teacher. Binning, it is not improbable, thought he had done wrong, in discarding from many of his sermons formal divisions altogether, and, like many English preachers who came after him, that in passing from one extreme, he had sometimes proceeded to another. He may likewise have discovered, when catechizing some of his simple parishioners, that from want of the usual landmarks to guide them, they were not always able to follow him, when addressing them from the pulpit, or to give such a good account of his sermons, as of the discourses of some other ministers, who in preaching adhered to the rules and method of the period.54
A small volume, having for its title “Evangelical Beauties of the late Rev. Hugh Binning,” was prepared for the press, by the Rev. John Brown of Whitburn, and published at Edinburgh, in the year 1828. Along with this interesting little work, a letter from the late Dr. M'Crie was printed, in which that judicious and popular writer says, “I am fond of Binning, he is thoroughly evangelical, is always in earnest and full of his subject, abounds in new and striking thoughts, and has many natural and unaffected beauties in his style and manner of writing. Had he paid a little more attention to order and method, and lived to correct his sermons for the press, he would, in my opinion, have carried every point of a good and great preacher. As it is, very few writers please me more. I will rejoice if the plan you propose shall be the means of producing a new edition of his works, which are far less known than they deserve to be, and have hitherto been chiefly in the [pg xxiii] hands of that class of persons least qualified for relishing some of his distinguishing excellencies.” There can be little doubt, as Dr. M'Crie has here hinted, that in Binning's discourses, there is occasionally an apparent neglect of order and method, and that we could have wished, for the sake of his hearers particularly, or with a view to attract attention and assist the memory, he had more frequently stated the outlines of his plan in two or three general heads. But few surely will feel sorry that his eloquent periods are not broken down into detached fragments, or will wish that he had substituted a dry detail of disjointed particulars for his powerful and impassioned appeals to the understanding and feelings of his auditors. Few will wish that he had discussed all his texts in the way he has handled 1 Tim. i. 5.55 The presbytery of Glasgow prescribed to him this text as the subject of one of his probationary discourses. That is the reason, probably, that his sermons upon it are composed upon a different plan from his others, and more in accordance with the conventional mode of the day.
Although Binning held the doctrine of predestination, in what the enemies of that scriptural doctrine consider its most repulsive form, being, like Samuel Rutherford, and David Dickson, the author of Therapeutica Sacia, and many other eminent divines of that time, a supralapsarian, he was far from exacting in others a rigid conformity to his particular opinions. It is impossible not to admire the Christian spirit that dictated the following passage in one of his sermons, “If we search the scriptures, we shall find that they do not entertain us with many and subtile discourses of God's nature, and decrees, and properties, nor do they insist upon the many perplexed questions that are made concerning Christ and his offices, about which so many volumes are spun out, to the infinite distinction of the Christian world. They do not pretend to satisfy your curiosity, but to edify your souls, and therefore they hold out God in Christ, as clothed with all his relations to mankind, in all those plain and easy properties, that concern us everlastingly—his justice, mercy, grace, patience, love, holiness, and such like. Now, hence