Speaking Truth to Power

“One day [Robert Bruce] was preaching before His Majesty at Edinburgh, and the King [James VI] was sitting in his own seat, with several of the nobility waiting on him.  The King had a custom very frequently of talking with those about him in time of sermon.  This he fell into that day.  Mr. Bruce soon noticed it, and stopped, upon which the King gave over [fell silent]. 

The King fell a talking to those next him a second time, and Mr. Bruce stopped a second time, and if I remember, sat down in his seat.  When the King noticed this he gave over, and Mr. Bruce went on in his subject. 

A third time the King fell a talking.  Mr. Bruce was very much grieved that the King should continue in this practice, after the modest reproofs he had already upon the matter given him; and so a third time he stopped, and directing himself to the King, he expressed himself to this purpose: 

‘It’s said to have been an expression of the wisest of kings, (I suppose he meant an apocryphal saying of Solomon’s,) ‘When the lion roars, all the beasts of the field are at ease’; the Lion of the Tribe of Judah is now roaring, in the voice of his Gospel, and it becomes all the petty kings of the earth to be silent.”
 
Original Source:  Robert Wodrow, Sermons by the Rev. Robert Bruce, 1590