28 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
No. x.
A SLEEPY CONGREGATION.
THE wit of this Print consists in representing a set of citizens, well known
as little addicted to church-going, listening to a discourse from the most evangelical
clergyman in the city, in a place of worship whose ordinary congregation
was noted above all others for their ultra-Presbyterianism. The clergyman is
the celebrated Dr. Webster, the precentor John Campbell, the place of worship
the Tolbooth Church, being that in which Dr. Webster was the stated clergyman.
The church was the south-west portion of St. Giles’s, and was so designated
from its having been used in the reign of James VI. as a town-house, the
supreme civil court being usually, and the Parliament occasionally, held in it.
The congregation in Dr. Webster’s time were known by the appellation of ‘‘ the
Tolbooth Whigs,” as making the nearest approach in practice and doctrine to
the severe spirits of the days of Cameron and Cagill. It may well be supposed
with what mirth the wit of Mr. Kay would be hailed by those to whom the
character of both the real and the imaginary congregation was familiar.
Dr. Alexander Webster was the son of an equally distinguished preacher,
who had suffered in the persecuting times, and was afterwards clergyman in this
very church.l Born in 1707, and educated to his father’s profession, he was,
at an early age, ordained to the charge of Culross in Fife, where he made himself
so remarkable for his eloquence, his piety, and generally for the fidelity,
activity and diligence, with which he discharged the duties of the pastoral
office, that he received a unanimous call, four years after his first ordination,
from the congregation of the Tolbooth Church, to which charge he was inducted
on the 2d June 1737.
In this situation, which he held for the long period of forty-seven years, Dr.
Webster continued to practise, on a scale extending with his opportunities, all
those useful and amiable qualities which had distinguished him at the outset of
The elder Webster was asserted by the Jacobite8 to be mad. There is a curious “Godlie
Ballad,” lately privately printed from a MS. in the Advocates’ Library, of which he is the subject,
and in which he is most severely handled. It commences-
‘( Great Meldrum is gone, let Webster succeed,
A rare expounder of Scripture and creed,
Who’s learning is nonsense, who’a temper is bad,
It’s predestination that made him so mad
By algebra he makes it appear to be true,
Three deils and a half possest e-verie sow.
Though his head be light, hia carcass is heavy,
His bellie a midden of sack, flesh, and gravie,” etc. etc. etc.
He died May 17, 1720.
