Wit & Attitude Quote by Donald Cargill

"But go on, valiant champion" is battlefield language smuggled into a church dispute, and that’s the point. Donald Cargill, a Covenanter preacher operating under persecution in Restoration Scotland, isn’t offering comfort so much as issuing a counter-verdict. When the state and the established church label dissenters as traitors, fanatics, or plain idiots marching toward a pointless death, Cargill reframes the condemned person as a "champion" entering martyrdom with eyes open. The line turns execution into testimony.

The sting is in the mid-sentence pivot: "you die not as a fool, though..". That "though" is a dagger aimed at the religious respectable. Cargill’s real target isn’t the hangman; it’s the clerical class that has made its peace with power. "Apostate, unfaithful, and lukewarm" is less name-calling than a theological charge sheet: apostasy (selling out the cause), unfaithfulness (betraying vows), lukewarmness (Revelation’s image of nauseating compromise). By stacking the terms, he builds a moral hierarchy where the persecuted rebel stands higher than the credentialed "ministers and professors" of the age.

"Think and say so" matters because Cargill knows narratives kill twice: first by the rope, then by reputation. He’s contesting the public record in real time, insisting that courage can be misread as madness when institutions grow allergic to conviction. The rhetoric is bracingly personal, almost like a coach at the edge of the arena, but the subtext is institutional: a church that survives by surrender may keep its buildings and lose its soul.